Page 2 of Carver (Satan’s Angels MC #8)

No matter how much it hurts her, Bronte hasn’t given up the way I have. She still cares. Deeply. About me. About her family. About this place. About everything and everyone.

She walks through the door right behind me, closer than I thought she was.

I have to bite down on a wry, lopsided grin as I notice that she’s only got a few records in her hands. She gave everything else to me.

I did what I could with the old farmhouse, but there’s only so much that could be done.

It leans more than it stands straight, and has more weathered splinters than paint.

I’ve hung thrifted artwork chaotically all over the place, to cover as many holes in the lathe and plaster as I could.

I patched the ones low to the ground, but they’re obviously newer than the rest. The bedrooms upstairs are plain as they come, the bathroom old and grimy no matter how much scrubbing it gets.

The living room is full of sagging, ugly furniture, and the kitchen looks straight out of the fifties, and not in a good way.

I set the bags down on the nasty old linoleum, peeling in places, revealing a brown layer under the yellowed white. Bronte opens up the ugly fridge and starts putting in perishables. I wedge the box on the countertop.

“There’s meat in there. Beside the jars of jam. “Pork and beef. I just brought a few things, but there’s more coming once everything ages and cures.”

Bronte’s family farms land, but they also raise pigs, cows, and chickens.

She removes a carton of eggs from the bag and pops it in the fridge.

They’re farm eggs, set carefully inside one of those cardboard cartons they’ve saved from the store.

She’s brought vegetables from their garden, milk, cream, and cheese from their cows, as well as store staples.

Coffee, teabags, and a few boxes of cereal.

The jam is homemade, and there are two bags of buns, and a container of chocolate chip cookies.

“Are you going to tell me what happened to the statues?” Bronte asks as she arranges and rearranges my fridge.

“I sold them.”

She doesn’t pull her head out. “To one person?”

“Yeah. All of them.”

“You didn’t message me about a pickup. Something like that would have been a big venture.”

“I-it wasn’t a big deal. I met a guy online.

I wanted to clean up the yard and I posted some of the old junk that’s been lying around.

” I don’t even know why I did it, other than in that exact moment, I hated this place so viciously that it eclipsed whatever nostalgia I might have been able to dredge up.

It was a moment of weakness, and a stupid one at that, but it ended up being a blessing in disguise.

I’m not used to those.

Not used to good things happening.

That’s such a fucking lie. The best thing that ever happened to you is standing right here in your kitchen, waiting to love you, and you keep fucking pushing her away.

I swallow hard, my throat so dry that I stumble over to the nasty old sink, crank a tap that barely works, and pour water into a glass.

There’s sediment floating in it, probably dirt too, but I gulp it back.

Having water that tasted like metal was the least of my problems living here, and now I’m just used to it.

One of the only positive memories I have of my dad is him standing at this sink, laughing about the discolored water, telling me it would put hair on my chest.

Later that night, he got drunk off my uncle’s shine, tore the house apart, and then went racing through the fields, screaming that something was chasing him and was going to kill him.

His demons, probably.

It took my uncles two full days to find him.

Even at eight years old, I understood that he went out there to die.

“And this person came to buy junk and saw your work and bought… almost all of it?”

“He bought a bunch of scrap parts to restore one of the old bikes.” And restore it, Dravin and his club fucking did.

The Triumph is parked strategically in the only standing outbuilding left on my property. I can’t ride the bike right now, but maybe one day I will.

I’d been messaging back and forth with Dravin for a few weeks before he came out here to buy that scrap.

He’s a good man. I actually liked him. He’s an ex-SEAL, with scars all over the place.

Meeting him put me at ease, men like that don’t judge.

He brought his old lady out with him, and she was good shit too.

Dravin’s club is in Hart, a few hours away, but he was all about wanting to show the sculptures to his club.

He thought they might buy a few to beautify their place.

He and some of his club brothers made the drive.

He arranged for them to come out the same day he brought the Triumph.

He spun it like he wanted to show me the bike once he’d restored it.

And then he gave me the damn keys and told me it was mine.

I’ve never had anyone but Bronte and her family show me such kindness.

Bronte shuts the fridge. “This guy, he’s into old bikes? Or just old things in general?”

“He’s a biker. A one percenter. He’s prospecting with the club in Hart.”

Even out here, we know all about the Satan’s Angels.

They have a reputation. Not for being criminals, but for cleaning up Hart a good while back and making sure that the city stayed that way.

Sure, people talk about them with fear and prejudice, but there are others whose tone rings with respect, bordering on admiration.

Bronte’s one of the smartest people I know. Her mind works fast. “He brought his club back out to see your work?”

“It’s odd, but not that strange. They wanted some statues for parks and shit in Hart. A few for in front of their clubhouse.”

“That’s almost… nice of them.”

“They paid my asking price. I didn’t give them a group discount.”

I’ve been trying to think of how to tell Bronte about this. Part of me didn’t want to because I know that it’ll give her false hope, but the realistic parts of me knows that she’d show up here while I’m gone and panic when she can’t find me.

Now that I’m about to drop this on her, it’s almost a relief.

“I’m going to Hart, Bronte. I have enough money for surgery and the club has a private physician.

He’s a plastic surgeon. Dravin asked if he could send the guy my information, and after reviewing it, he’s confident that he can do…

something.” Realistically, just about anything would be an improvement.

The initial surgery dealt with the functional side of things, but from a cosmetic point of view I’m no oil painting.

Her eyes flare with hope. I watch her try to pull it back and contain it, but this is Bronte, so of course she gives up on that and lets her elation shine through.

She’s so breathtakingly beautiful that my soul starts bleeding out and my stomach crashes down to the floor. “Let me come with you,” she breathes. “Let me be there, Dom. Please.”

I knew she’d ask this and the only way I can think to get her to back down is to push and push and push.

Cruelly. I hate being like that, being an asshole, but it’s the only way.

“I don’t want you there. Not because I don’t want you to see me like that, or I don’t want you to have to waste days of your life on me, but because I just don’t love you.

You keep clinging to what we had, but it’s gone.

You’re throwing away your time and your hopes and your dreams so stupidly.

You’re better than this, Bronte. I’ve been telling you that since the day your family moved here and I saw you in first period English class. ”

I’ll always remember the first moment I ever saw Bronte.

I was struck by her beauty. Struck dumb and literally so intimidated I couldn’t talk to her.

I was fourteen years old, and it was immediate lust. I didn’t fall hard and fast. It was straight ass over tits.

The crazy thing? She fell just as hard. For me.

They say first love never dies… that might be true, but sometimes you just have to put it out of its misery.

Bronte’s response? She rolls her eyes and clicks her tongue like I’m being silly.

“If you’re not going to give up on this place, then at least stop throwing your life away waiting for me. Pining isn’t romantic. It’s pathetic. Life isn’t a novel, even though your mom named you that way.”

She puts one hand on her hip and juts it out. “The Bronte’s wrote gothic fiction. Their characters’ love stories were hard won, and their heroes were more than flawed.”

Christ .

I try to formulate a good argument, but I have nothing. Bronte’s seen me scared, sick, bleeding, damaged, broken over the years, all before the accident.

I’ve tried everything to convince her to just move the fuck on.

I’ve used the whole you deserve better cliched as fuck argument every which way I know how.

Bronte sees right through all of that shit.

She knows that in my heart, there’s only grief.

She’s patient. She’ll wait a thousand years if that’s what it takes.

Find me in another lifetime. Dance with me as ghosts.

Carve out an alternate reality, and all of that other poetic bullshit.

It wasn’t the accident that broke us. It was me . I couldn’t give her hope. Couldn’t let her down gently. She’s still refused to be parted from me.

She can’t leave me here to die.

She’s all soft and I’m all hard edges and she just keeps breaking up on me over and over again. I shove and wrench and scream into the wind, coming at life in a flurry of agonized punches and what does she do? She understands.

Knowing Bronte gave me a reason to live. She taught me how to see myself and how to do what I thought was impossible—fall in love with myself. Before her, life was a silent scream. All I’d known was my father and uncles’ drunken binges, the violence, and the abuse.