Page 71 of Caution to the Wind

He’d fallen on a sword for me, but the consequence was eternal banishment from his life.

Sometimes, I wished he’d let me bear the consequences of my mistakes back then, not only for his sake but selfishly, for my own. Maybe then I’d still be someone to him.

As it stood, he was still everything to me.

I was twenty-five years old, and I’d only ever been in love once, and maybe even to say that was misleading. I’d only ever loved once because I wasstillin love with him.

The best man I’d ever known.

When Florent sent me away after that night at Turner Farm, I’d been forced into daily therapy sessions. My therapist there, Mr. Cox, had proclaimed that I only thought I was in love with Henning because he was the first man outside my family to show me kindness. I’d told him he should get a refund from the university that issued his psychology degree because he was a shit therapist.

You didn’t fall in love with someone simply because they werenice. Nice should be a given, a social prerogative. You fell in love with someone because they felt like the only person who could see through your skin and bones straight down to the soul, and even knowing all of you––the good, the bad, the motherfucking ugly––they still accepted you.

As terrified as I was to face Henning and, therefore, the biggest mistake I’d ever made, I was also unaccountablygiddyat the idea of seeing him in the flesh again. He was forty now, aged in ways I hadn’t had the chance to digest at the hospital, living a life full of question marks I’d finally be able to answer.

I only knew the basics of Henning’s life after he got out, because Cleo was deliberately vague about him. After he’d left prison, he’d transferred to the notorious mother chapter of The Fallen MC, run by a man by the name of Zeus Garro, who was as infamous as his club. They owned the Sea to Sky Highway, the strip of asphalt that linked the entire province of British Columbia together like a vital artery, and ran drugs and guns up and down the coast. There might have been other gangs in Vancouver, a few small ones on Vancouver Island, but there was nothing to rival the stronghold The Fallen had on the whole province.

Though many tried.

I’d been surprised to learn Henning would go back to the club after the disaster that befell him with Rooster’s Calgary chapter. He’d never been naturally criminal or rebellious in my estimation, not like me. Yet last I’d heard, and not from Cleo, Henning was an officer for the club, the Treasurer and Secretary, who ran their finances and laundered their money.

From doctor to money launderer.

A shift that had occurred largely, I knew, because of me.

I’d made him into a criminal, so could I really judge him for staying the path so many years later? What hospital would let him practice with a criminal record?

I turned a long curving corner up a steep incline and then levelled out, a carved wooden sign with wolves and bears appearing to my left.

Welcome to Entrance, BC.

The town presented itself like a postcard as I hit residential streets and then, Main Street. It was quaint, the buildings old and carefully maintained, the streetlamps antique, and the main square prettily landscaped even in the cold winter months. The cold air was scented with the brine of the ocean wafting up from the bay where I could just make out the tops of sailboats bobbing on the waves. I could see why Cleo would love it. It was as pretty as a picture.

The only incongruous detail came from the line of shiny-backed motorcycles parked outside of a place called Stella’s Diner. Within the huge front windows, I could see two booths packed with men in leather cuts, the back of one clearly depicting a skull with fiery wings and the top rocker readingThe Fallen. The sound of my own motorbike must have alerted those closest to the door to my presence because a dark-haired man packed with muscle walked to the window to study me through the glass where I waited at a red light. He was handsome even from afar, something about him tickling the back of my mind.

The light turned green before I could think more about it, and I gunned forward, letting the GPS on my phone give me directions through the Bluetooth in my helmet to the place Cleo now called home.

It took a further twenty minutes to reach the secluded address, but as soon as there was a break in the thick forest, I understood why Henning had chosen the spot to make their home. The large lake was bright in the grey light, a polished pool of melted-down aquamarine the same shade as Henning’s eyes. At its edge sat one house, a rustic log cabin built of dark wood with a painted green front door. As I pulled up the gravel driveway to park before the separate garage, that front door swung open, and a familiar figure filled the space.

Cleopatra Joan Axelsen.

I swung off the bike in one fluid motion, taking off my gloves as I went. My hair caught in the helmet as I pulled it off, but I ignored the pain and dumped the bucket to the ground, already running toward the stairs.

I took them two at a time, heart thumping so madly I thought I might faint before I reached her.

Happily, I didn’t.

It had only been six weeks since I visited in the hospital, and we’d gone much longer stints without seeing each other, but under the circumstances, it was six weeks too many. Even the two weeks it had taken me that long to figure out how to take time away from Vancouver to temporarily move up here to be closer to her had dragged on painfully slow.

My sight was blurry, warped by tears, as I reached out for her mid-step, but I caught the motion of her reaching right back, gripping me by the forearm to tug me into her body. Vaguely, I was aware of a clatter as something fell to the deck, but it was only later that I realized it was a pair of crutches.

We pressed together gently because Cleo was still so weak, but our molecules fused back together so tightly it seemed organic, two magnets meeting after years apart. Once again united the way we were always meant to be.

I wasn’t sure who it was who sobbed first, an explosion of tears pressed out of the eyes and gasping mouth, but the other soon followed.

We stood on the front porch in the cold, wrapped so tightly there was no space between our bodies, her face in my neck and mine in hers. There were so many reasons to cry that we cried for a very, very long time. I cried for our separation and the ways her body was different against mine, brittle and frail like she hadn’t eaten in weeks. I cried for what was done to her and taken from her. I cried for the shame of not being there to protect her and for the way she still smelled the same, like Vera Wang perfume, after all these years apart.

Mostly, I cried because holding her felt like coming home.