Wreck liked Rosewood well enough for a small, midwestern town and I was just happy to be away from the chaos and crime of a sprawling metropolis. It was a good place to set down roots and maybe raise a family although we hadn’t talked about that much just yet. I was happy to take things slow as long as we were together.
Bravo and Vikki had set us up in an apartment downtown and had found us jobs in the meantime. It wasn’t anything glamorus. They asked me to help run their website, be their researcher and do a bunch of IT work which was fine for the time being since I had so much experience with all of Patrick’s legal and illegal projects. Wreck went to work as a bike mechanic and helped out on any off-the-books problems that Bravo needed taken care of.
When we got back though everything was going to change.
I’d just passed my GED test before we left on this vacation and would be starting an art history class at a local college in a few weeks with a goal of teaching art eventually. It was always something that brought me peace in dark times and I really liked the idea of using art to help or enrich the lives of others. I was very nervous about taking the steps necessary for the enrolment process but fortunately some of the other ladies at the club kept nudging me along, non- more so than my new close friend, Elisha. She owned her own bounty hunting business and was relatively new to the Devil Kings as well. She was a tough love kind of woman and would call bullshit whenever I found excuses not to follow through. She was a lot stricter about it with me than even Wreck!
Wreck was actively trying to figure out his place in a world that wasn’t so transient. The time for being a nomad had passed for him and he was also quickly growing unhappy with being a club enforcer as well. ‘Bashin’ skulls was a young man’s game,’ he was fond of saying. While he would stay in the MC, he liked the idea of being a mechanic for the town instead of just the club.
I think he wanted to be known for fixing things rather than destroying them.
Buck’s words and what happened to his brothers still kept him up at night occasionally and every once in a while would cause him to excuse himself to deal with the grief privately. At my behest Wreck agreed to talk to a therapist. Bravo actually set one up for him that he used personally to overcome some demons of his past. It was going to be a long road for Wreck, but he was making progress with the healing process thanks to an exceptional local therapist. For the first six months after his brothers died he refused to so much as mention their names and now he could openly recount some of the good times. It was a start.
Dreamer had started therapy with Wreck, but it wasn’t a good fit for him. Instead, after several months he decided to transfer to a Devil Kings chapter in southern California and reconnect with some family, especially a few close cousins. Last we heard he’d found a nice girl and was putting together a new book of poetry. We’d go visit him over my winter break from college.
One of the tour guides passed us with his group and told us we were in the home stretch, which was good because the sky was starting to bleed with the oranges of sunset.
“Last set of soul-crushing stairs,” I signed to Wreck as we looked up at a forty-five degree incline of about fifty feet. Each step was nearly twice the size of a standard stair and there was a sheer drop of what felt like a couple miles on one side. The Incas really had a flair for the dramatic when they built this place.
“Last stairs?” Wreck looked up at the steep incline, hopeful.
“Oh no, there will probably be a ton more stairs.” I signed, winking at him. “This is just the last of the soul-crushing ones.”
“At this point, they’re all fucking soul-crushing,” Wreck grumbled, then hoisted both packs into tighter positions on his body and started up.
Looking out over the valley once more before tackling the first giant step, I thought about my mom and brother and how they would love the view.
Reaching out to my mom and brother after I was free and set up by the Devil Kings was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life. Gone were the days of sleepovers, school proms, flicking cheerios at Jeffy before school, dance recitals and being grounded for flunking science and skipping a class. Mom’s baby girl died that night in the car with her friend. So many thoughts paralyzed me.
Would she even recognize the person I was now or would she see me as a stranger that looked like Sarah?
I wouldn’t have blamed her or Jeffy if they didn’t know who I was. For the longest time – with what Patrick kept me doing – I didn’t recognize myself. Wreck was a huge help in getting me to push past those fears. One of the many things he said really hit home and pushed me through my fear. He told me, ‘Every second I spend apart from them now is another second Patrick keeps me locked away in that shitty room above the laundromat. The door is open and when you walk out that whole fucking bulding burns to the ground. You’ll never be in that prison again.”
His words resonated so much that I immediately started feverishly typing my estranged, back-from-the-dead daughter reintroduction email. It took me two full days to write and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite...but when I finally finished it I didn’t hesitate for a second to hit send.
Then
