After the quick promised to trip to Shirley’s, we headed out to our old stomping grounds. The Bonaventure Cemetery was a place I stayed far away from — those hallowed pathways full of resting places for the dead were also pathways to memories I wanted to keep dead.
This is where we’d fallen in love.
Our first kiss, those first desperate attempts at more, whispered confessional conversations and endless laughter. We’d walked every path of those hundreds of acres, usually only lit up by the moonlight while we made up outlandish stories for all the dead, climbed the trees and enjoyed every single moment alone we could steal as teenagers in love.
It was only fitting we’d go back there now.
I hated that Little Gracie’s grave had been desecrated. Now, it was a morbid place to visit for an entirely different reason and one a lot less innocent and wholesome. I was grateful when, once we arrived and hopped off the bike, Blade led me in the opposite direction from her gravesite.
His hand in mine, he began talking as soon as we entered, and he didn’t stop for a while, as if he’d been holding all the words in for a very long time. He didn’t look at me, his eyes straight ahead, but I kept stealing glances at him.
“I remember the last time we were here,” he began. “It was a week before I left. We were so happy. You didn’t know this, but I was saving up for an engagement ring. I had that stupid job at the gas station and I was planning it all out. I was going to propose to you under the tree where we first kissed.”
I was speechless. We walked a bit before he continued.
“A few days later, I was looking in the window of that little jewelry store downtown when I ran into your dad and his friends. They were having lunch at the diner next door. They took me into the alley and in no uncertain terms told me to leave town. I resisted, of course, I didn’t care what your family thought about us. I knew they never approved of me. Your dad told me if I knew what was good for me, I’d leave and never come back. I didn’t believe him, of course. And when they left me there in that alley, I thought that was the end of it.”
He took a deep breath and shook his head.
“But the next day, I was at home working on my bike when Seraphina came home. She was crying. And alone. Without Rudy, that little brown mutt that never left her side. She’d been playing with him in the park when a man she didn’t know walked up and shot her dog. He died in front of her right there. The man told her to tell her brother it was time to leave.”
I gasped, horrified. I’d cut my family out of my life years ago, but Blade probably didn’t know that. I knew they were horrible, constantly trying to control my every move to keep up ‘appearances’, as my father was fond of saying. My mother went along with him, enabling him with complete obedience, but I tired of that very quickly. I wasn’t surprised in the least that they were the reason Blade left.
“I was so in love with you. You were everything to me, you were perfect. But after that, I knew they wouldn’t stop until I was gone. Next, they’d hurt Sera. Or you. I figured at the time that I had no choice. I couldn’t go to the police, hell your dad was best friends with the Sheriff back then. I regret that choice deeply now. I should have been stronger. I should have fought back. I never should have left you, Rose.”
“Blade,” I finally said, turning to him and shaking my head, my eyes searching his.
“Shhh, just listen,” he said. “After I left, I was lost. I hadn’t planned for a life without you, hell I had never even dreamed of one. I always thought we’d stay in Savannah and have a bunch of kids and just live, you know? But then I had the whole world in front of me to think about. I went to Atlanta at first. But it was too close. I kept being tempted to sneak back into Savannah. For a while I had this crazy idea that I was going to come kidnap you in the middle of the night and whisk you away to a foreign country, far away from your family, somewhere they’d never find us. But that dream was complicated, because Sera was still here. And of course, all of that takes a hell of a lot of money to actually execute, and I was a poor bastard, as you know. Eventually, I just kept going west to get further and further away until I couldn’t go anymore.”
“The west coast is an entirely different world. Everyone’s open and friendly, but not in a fake way, not like here. It’s a real live and let live attitude and it suited me just fine. I was always good with bikes, so I got a job working on Harleys. I met a bunch of guys in a club, and after a while, I figured out I could make a hell of a lot more money with them. Things were pretty crazy after that. For a few years, I rode with them, and it was hard, but it was nice to have a family, be a part
