Page 35 of The Loves We Lost

I stand up straight and chug half the water. “No.”

“How are you feeling about it?”

A million confusing, conflated, and contradictory sentences flood my brain as an answer. “I’m feeling everything.”

Niro sits down on the bench where we do bench presses. “Tell me.”

I look at him. “Why are you here so early?”

“Had a feeling you’d be hurting. Wanted to make sure I was the one you took your confusion out on.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Niro shrugs. “I figured if you were mad, you might say shit to Viola you couldn’t take back. And I remember that night we got drunk, and you talked about her.”

I grab my towel and wipe my face before looping it over my neck. “I couldn’t speak to her last night. I was too fucking angry. Still am.”

“You’ve got every right to be, brother. But do you want to be so mad that she leaves again?”

“I don’t fucking care what she does.”

Niro huffs. “You might be cool lying to yourself, but don’t lie to me. You care, or you wouldn’t be pulverizing the punching bag this early in the morning. Break it down for me.”

“You know, you’ve been spending too much time with Rae. You almost sound like a psychologist.”

“Maybe it’s because it helps. You must be pissed. What at?”

I raise an eyebrow. “You really need me to answer that?”

“Humor me,” Niro says. “Is it because Vi’s a cunt and hid your kid?”

“Don’t call Vi a cunt.” The words come out harsh, but I mean it.

Niro smiles. “So, you’re pissed that Vi did something awful in hiding your kid, but you’re also really happy to see Vi.”

I shake my head. “That’s what’s so confusing. Yeah, I’m pissed I don’t know shit about Avery except she looks exactly like me and likes cupcakes and has a stuffed dinosaur. But ...”

“But what?”

“But the two of them in my room is how it should be, the three of us. But it’snotbecause ... fuck ... it’s not because there is no me and Vi. And she hid my own daughter from me. And I fucking slept with her two weeks ago. She could have said something then.” I spit out the words, turn, and punch the bag five more times. My shoulders ache. “Like, wouldn’t that have been a good time to say, ‘Hey, Miles, we made a kid’?”

I sit on the floor, stretch my legs out in front of me, and begin the process of cooling down.

“If Vi said she could accept the life, be your old lady, and move here with Avery, would you have her back?”

In a heartbeat.

The answer is instantaneous. But my mind immediately modifies it. “We’d have to get to know each other again. We’re not the same people. And from what she said in New York, she still has the same opinion of the club and what we stand for.”

Niro leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees. “You need a woman who supports you in this life. Can’t be half in, half out.”

“Can you keep a secret?”

Niro chuckles. “I have an eighty-six percent success rate with secrets.”

I smile at that. I know my best friend. He won’t tell if I ask him not to. “King asked me to step up as sergeant at arms in the event Spark gets distracted by Iris being pregnant.”

Niro stands. “That’s fucking brilliant. That’ll make me a solo enforcer. Oh, shit, that’s one of those inside thoughts, right? Where I make it about me.”