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“Those girls are okay for the short term, Jacob,” Jean pointed out. “But they’re not the settling down types. How about me and ya mama introduce you to a couple of nice girls?”

My eyes slid toward my wife’s grave marker. “This is weird as all hell. It’s Allie’s birthday. I’ve ridden nearly a thousand miles to come and raise a glass to my dead wife, and her ma’s tryin’a set me up with other chicks.”

Malcom sat forward and shrugged. “You know ya mamas, Jake.” He pointed his finger at his temple and moved it in a circle. “They’re loopy as the day’s long.”

“And pie-eyed,” Dad added, nodding toward the two empty bottles of wine lined up on the grass.

“Oh, hush now, Doug,” Ma muttered. “We just want Jacob to be happy.”

“I am happy,” I assured her. “It’s just not the kind of happy you want. I love my life, and I love my job because I get to do things most men only dream about. After I lost Allie, I needed something more than the Air Force, and I got it with the club. Can’t that be enough?”

The moms glanced at each other.

“Ma,” I chastised gently. “You gotta let me work this out my way. I’m not averse to meeting somebody and settling down, but I am averse to forcing it with the wrong person and ending up in a worse position than I am now.

If Allie taught me anythin’, it’s that life’s too short to waste by being caught up in something that ain’t right. ”

“I just worry you’re waiting for another Allie to come along,” Jean stated.

My throat began burning like a motherfucker.

“There is no other Allie. What I had with her was ours, and it was everythin’.

What I get with the next woman will be ours too, but it’ll be different ‘cause again, she won’t be Allie, and honest to God, Jeanie, whoever she is, I just want her to be her.

..” My voice trailed off as a cool, guitar rift played over the radio and a clear, sweet, angelic, raspy, sexy-as-all-fuck voice began to sing. ..

Stage lights, sultry nights, halcyon ice blue.

Crowd chants, and your face haunts. Empty without you.

Lost pride, lost chance, lost love, lost souls.

Beyond my comprehension. Beyond my control.

Crowd chants, but your face haunts. I’m empty without you...

My heart kicked inside my chest.

God, I fucking hated that song so much, but at the same time, I fucking loved it.

Over the last couple of years, it had gotten more airtime on the radio than any other song. Everybody raved about it, and it had made Saint McClure, my damsel in distress from two years before, and her band famous.

“Empty” had hit number one all over the world and subsequently launched the band Saint’s Rapture into the stratosphere.

The song had also won a Grammy, an AMA, and an MTV award, and had launched the corresponding album into the number one spot in multiple countries too.

The lyrics were critically acclaimed, and admittedly, there was something special about Saint’s Rapture songs that buried deep, so I got it, albeit begrudgingly.

Saint herself had won writing accolades for the album, and “Empty” in particular, which not only pissed me off but also jaded me a little because how the fuck did that bitch get bestowed all the success when there were so many more deserving people out there?

Though to be fair, she was talented, I had to give her that.

All the songs that came after “Empty” were just as good, and they’d turned Saint’s Rapture into global superstars.

Saint was considered the leader and frontwoman of the band and the main singer-songwriter, and it was her talent that had garnered their success.

Still, I was an out and proud Saint ‘bitch’ McClure hater. Even saying her name stuck in my throat like the bitterest of pills that refused to be swallowed down.

Fuck her.

Fuck her.

“My girl would’ve loved this song.” Jean smiled, leaning back in her chair. “It’s the kind of song you and Allie would’ve danced to around the kitchen table.”

My mother-in-law was right, but still, I wasn’t about to admit it.

“Nah. Allie would’ve thought it was pretentious crap,” I argued. “And the singer’s a diva by all accounts, so she would’ve hated her more.”

“Saint McClure’s a diva?” Mom questioned. “She’s always seemed nice on the interviews I’ve seen with her.”

I popped open a bottle of beer, suddenly needing a goddamned drink. “The Dischordium boys know her. They run in the same circles, and one of ‘em says she’s an entitled bitch.” I took a swig and blew out a hard breath. “Fame’s probably gone to her head.”

“Or she’s a strong woman who knows what she wants,” Jean cut in. “You know how females get the short end of the stick when it comes to sticking up for themselves in the entertainment industry. ”

I took another pull. “Blue reckons she’s up her own ass.”

“Blue probably tried to get in her pants and got knocked back,” Mom bandied back.

The thought of that made a curl of heat lick through my chest, but I pushed it down.

It wasn’t my business if Blue De Santis tried to fuck Saint McClure.

I mean, it wasn’t like he didn’t fuck everyone else.

Still, I didn’t think he was that much of an asshole to bad-mouth her for turning his ass down.

It had nothing all to do with me anyway.

She’d made that abundantly clear when she screwed me over in days gone past.

“Delphine Babin’s divorce just came through,” Jean announced, throwing my mom a sly look. “She’s on the market now. Maybe you should give her a call and see if she wants to go to dinner while you’re here.”

I tipped my head back and looked at the sky, cursing under my breath.

“Woman, leave the boy alone,” Malcom snapped. “He’s told you where he’s at, and you’re still goin’ on at him.”

“I was just sayin’ is all.” Jean raised her glass to her mouth and took a sip. “Allie came to me in a dream and told me Jacob had to find a good woman. She also said she’d give him a sign, and there’s no sign bigger than a pretty lady from a decent family who just came back onto the market.”

Malcolm rolled his eyes. “Allie comes to you in a dream at least four times a week. She must be fucking exhausted from all the flying through Heaven to get to your ass with all these messages about Jacob. The poor kid spends more time with you now she’s dead than when she was alive. ” He looked at Dad and made big eyes .

Pop grinned, his eyes sliding toward me, and murmured so only I could hear, “I told ya, Son. They mean well.”

My eyebrow cocked, and I shook my head exasperatedly.

There was a reason I only visited a couple of times a year, and this was it.

I loved that I had a relationship with Allie’s folks where they thought enough of my unworthy ass to look out for me, even if the way they did it bordered on highly inappropriate.

The problem was that Jeanie and my mom were like Dobermans with a bone once they got going.

Weirdly, though, all the fix-up talk didn’t make me uncomfortable.

It was funny, and although it was weird, I knew if Allie were here, she would piss her pants laughing at her mom’s antics.

The way my wife found humor in darkness was another reason I loved her so much, ‘cause I was the same way.

It may have seemed strange to some people, but Jean and Mal saw me as the son they never had, and twelve years had gone by since Allie’s passing.

They didn’t want me to be lonely, and they thought they were honoring their daughter by giving me the green light to do what Allie would’ve wanted me to do and move the fuck on already.

Except, I had moved on, just not in the way they wanted.

I dated, I fucked, I worked; I had a good time with my brothers and generally whooped it up. The way I honored my wife was by living my life to its fullest in all the ways she couldn’t. Except I hadn’t met the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my days (and nights) with yet.

A memory flashed through the recesses of my mind again of the bluest eyes I’d ever seen, darker than a summer sky but lighter than the oceans .

There’d been nobody who’d piqued my interest since Saint.

I’d tried. Recently, I’d gotten to know a girl called Marnie, who turned out to be as much of a bitch as Saint was, though honestly, I kinda had a feeling from the jump that she was a dead end but still forced it anyway.

I’d tried to date, but the connections I found never seemed to live up to what came before—first, Allie and then Saint.

As much as I hated to admit it to myself, the cute, curvy singer had me in a chokehold. No other woman since Allie had moved me in a way that made me wish for more.

What a shame the promise of her turned out to be a lie. I thought there was something between us, something pure and honest, except it wasn’t honest at all because she turned her back on me without a word of explanation.

“Remember her twenty-fourth birthday?” Jean asked, leaning down for her plastic cup. “You were deployed, and she was furious with you.”

“I think she was more furious about that damned singing telegram turning up at her office,” Malcom muttered, sipping his beer.

I busted out a laugh. “I thought it was cool as fuck, charming even.”

“I did too,” Malcom agreed with a grin. “But then what do I know? I married her mother.”

My shoulder lifted in a shrug, and I smirked. “Nothing says ‘I love you’ more than a man in a gorilla suit singing “Crazy in Love.”

“I’ve still got the video,” Jean murmured, her eyes taking on a faraway look.

“Her face was a picture. I thought she was gonna sink through the floor with embarrassment. She’d only been working at that job for a couple of months, and there’s this big hairy gorilla in her face singing Beyonce at the top of his lungs while doing the dance moves.

After she’d calmed down, she called me laughing and said, ‘That’s what I get for marrying a fighter pilot.

A life that revolves around time zones and gorillas. ’”

The best kind of laughter filled the air, the kind that could only come from remembering somebody so well loved. My eyes fell on my wife’s plaque, and for a second, I imagined she was with us, shaking her head and smiling her beautiful smile as she rolled her eyes.

There weren’t words in existence to describe how much I missed Allie or to describe the pain that sliced through me every morning when I woke, and it hit me that she was gone.

It was never-ending; I went through the hell of losing my wife on the daily.

She was always there in the back of my mind, at least except for one time when I saved another girl from being attacked backstage at a rock gig.

That was the only time Allie had ever taken a back seat, and probably why I was so fucking obsessed with Saint McClure when really, she should’ve faded into obscurity a long-damned time ago.

Girls were easy come, easy go, especially in my lifestyle, but one in particular refused to fade into the background. In a single night, Saint showed me I was still vital, still alive, and that I wasn’t as broken as I’d thought.

For one night, she made me feel whole again.

Then, days later, she turned into a ghost, and it was like she’d died too, to the point where, for a while there, I spiraled.

The club was just getting off its feet. Our brother, Ace, was still in the picture, and there wasn’t much in the way of discipline to pull me back from the brink of self-destruction.

I drank, I fought, I fucked, I caroused and generally acted the fool until a few months later when our new VP Blade turned up, sat me down, and told me if I didn’t pull my shit together, he’d have to demote me from the enforcer role .

Losing Saint wasn’t in the same league as losing Allie. Still, it hurt more than it should have, and it affected me in ways I couldn’t explain. I was constantly reminded of our one night and the way she made me feel, but it wasn’t in the same way I remembered my wife.

With Saint, the memories crashed over me every time I heard one of her songs playing on the radio or when I opened a magazine, and there she was with her blue eyes gazing out of the pages into mine.

Allie was dead, and Saint was very much alive, but still, it didn’t stop me from being haunted by two very real women.

Allie died suddenly and unexpectedly, and I never got to say goodbye. Maybe in order to vanquish the ghost of Saint, I needed to have a conversation and let her know what a bitch move she’d pulled, especially when just days before, I’d saved her ass from some crazed fan.

For two years, I’d stayed quiet and convinced myself I was done with her, and I was, but being here with Allie made me realize that perhaps there was something I needed from Saint ‘bitch’ McClure.

Just, for once in my life, maybe I could get some goddamned closure.