Undeniable

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO:

The Demons buried Frankie on a cloudy Tuesday, wearing his cut; my engagement ring and wedding ring on his pinkie finger. Deuce stayed by my side holding me up when I would have collapsed. I was overwhelmed with grief and regret, swamped with guilt and at the same time, relief so great I felt dizzy from it.

I hoped in death Frankie found the peace he never could find in life.

I stayed a long time after the service disbanded. I talked to Frankie for a while, cried for a while.

Before I left I traced his name on his tombstone, "Sweet dreams baby," I whispered. "Always."

Before we headed home, Kami and I visited Chase's grave. Hand in hand, we sat down in the grass and leaned back against his tombstone. Sharing a seventy five thousand dollar bottle of whiskey, we held each other and cried. We cried for very different reasons, but for Chase all the same. As fucked up as both our relationships with him were, he had been loved. He’d just been too fucked up to realize it.

Then Kami, Cox, Deuce and I went home to our kids and our club and the healing began.

Deuce was in a bad way. Worse off than anyone else. For a long time he wouldn’t touch me, couldn’t touch me. He blamed himself for everything. It was his fault Frankie hadn’t been found; it was his fault Frankie had been able to break inside the club; his fault that Frankie had forced himself on me and his fault that I’d been the one to kill him.

But it wasn’t. None of it was. It was Frankie’s fault, all of it. This, I’d had a hard time accepting as well. At first, I’d placed blame on myself, for letting my relationship with Frankie get to the point it had.

But I got there…alongside my family and my friends and my club…I got there.

Getting Deuce there was another matter altogether.

But we got through it. Together. It didn’t happen overnight and it wasn’t easy.

Nothing worth doing ever is.

And love is worth everything.