Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 105398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 527(@200wpm)___ 422(@250wpm)___ 351(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 527(@200wpm)___ 422(@250wpm)___ 351(@300wpm)
I knew what I had to do.
Going to his bedroom, I packed all my things and loaded them into the car. If I wasn’t here anymore, he wouldn’t have to worry about his baby. If I wasn’t here, she wouldn’t be in danger. Gone would be the danger swirling around her.
So I decided the best thing to do was to go to the cabin. Once I got there, I would figure out my next move. I knew I had to get out of Kilgore though. This wasn’t going to work anymore, and I would have to pick somewhere that the Blue Skulls didn’t have any affiliation with, maybe somewhere up North.
Once all my stuff was loaded, I gave a last glance around the living room. I took the ring off my finger, laid it down on the coffee table, and wrote a quick note.
Gabe,
I’ll let you know where I end up. Don’t worry about me, worry about your sweet girl for now. I’ll give Max updates when I can.
Ember.
Once the note was written, I tucked the ring on top of it, and stared for a few seconds. A lone tear rolled out of my eyes and dropped to the paper, splashing onto it and making a small watermark. That was my cue to go before I was crying too hard to see.
I got into my car, started her up, and took off out of the driveway. Luckily Free had an automatic gate for those who had the tag reader in the window. If not, I might have ran the thing down in my haste to leave. I drove for nearly an hour before I pulled up into the old driveway. The last time I’d seen it the road was nearly washed out where the creek ran under. Max must have had it fixed recently because a brand new road was poured, and a shiny huge tube ran under the road to allow the creek to flow through it without causing any damage.
I drove up and passed the pond, wondering if there were any fish after all these years. Most likely there wasn’t. Years ago, we used the pond as a shooting range. Daddy would toss bottles and cans and we would practice shooting, or just shoot for fun. Mom would sit back and take pictures while I shot to my heart’s desire. That had to be the thing I missed the most about them.
I spent more time with my dad. It wasn’t that I didn’t get along with my mom; it was because my father did the things that I loved doing. Hunting, fishing, riding 4-wheelers, and shooting guns were my hobbies back then. When he died, all of that was a distant memory, along with my parents.
Seeing this cabin brought back bittersweet memories. As I made it up the steps, a smile crossed my face as I remembered the time my uncle fell through the railing when he was drunk. Then I passed the window that my dad’s best friend shot a hole in while he was cleaning his gun. Using the key on my keychain that hadn’t been used in years, I breathed a sigh of relief when it opened the door. It never occurred to me until right then that Max might have changed the locks.
The cabin still had the smell of the old wood burning stove that took up the majority of the living room. The kitchen and living room had an open floor plan with vaulted ceilings. Two bedrooms sat across from each other, and a bathroom in the middle of the two. It was a small, quaint retreat that held many loving memories. Today was a good day to remember those loving times, because if I didn’t have those to think about, I would be remembering the smell of Gabe’s skin, or the deep timber of his voice.
The longing for Gabe was too powerful to ignore, unfortunately, because it wasn’t two seconds later that I started bawling and didn’t stop. Laying down in my parent’s old bedroom, I saw that Max hadn’t changed a thing since they left. The candle still sat at the bedside. The same comforter adorned their bed. My dad had had an old green plaid one for years before he met my mother, and they brought it out here as soon as they bought the cabin. It’d been washed so many times that it was smooth and soft just like a t-shirt that had been worn a million times.
Burying my face into the comforter, I cried. I cried for my parents, for Gabe, for Gabe’s situation, and finally for the baby that I was carrying that I had no clue would live or die. This has turned out to be one hell of a week, and I didn’t think I could handle anymore. I just wanted to lay here and sleep forever. Sleep didn’t come easily, I must have cried for nearly two hours before it finally caught up to me.
Maybe everything would look better after a nap.
Chapter 13
I promise to treat you as good as my leather, and ride you as much as my Harley.
-Sons of Anarchy
Gabe
I knocked on Cheyenne’s door looking for Ember. I’d ridden my bike for three hours before I decided I was being an ass and needed to apologize.
I’d seen the way she looked at me when I told her earlier I couldn’t do this anymore. I knew she was worried, but something had to give with those assholes. I couldn’t keep putting my future wife and children’s lives at stake. Luke said all they needed was a little more information on a crime ring that the gang was involved in, and nearly the whole East Texas chapter of the gang would god down. If that didn’t work out, then I would turn to the more drastic measures of taking care of the problem myself. My family couldn’t live in fear for the rest of their lives.
I’d stopped in the office and had a sit-down with Sam and Max. We agreed that something needed to be done, and we would have a meeting with everyone (minus the women and kids) at the shop later that night. I’d left them shortly after to go find Ember and apologize for not going to get her last night. I knew she was upset, but after I unloaded all the junk front the truck, I’d sat down and gone over what I could possibly do to fix this situation. I’d come up with those two options and nothing else. I hadn’t even realized it was so late until the sun peaked over the horizon and stabbed through a crack in the blinds.