Page 2 of Slaughter
I didn’t turn around. Didn’t want to face whatever was coming next.
I heard Reaper get up, heard him talking to someone in the hallway. Heard the murmur of voices—Savage, Whiskey, Digger. My brothers, here to support me through the worst moment of my life. Then Reaper was back, his hand on my shoulder. “Brother. The doctor needs to talk to you.”
“No.” The word came out flat, final.
“Chapman.”
“I said no. I’m not ready. I’m not—” My voice broke completely. “I can’t let her go.”
“Her body is shutting down,” Reaper said gently. “The latest tests came back. If you don’t let her go now, you’re going to watch her fade away in front of your eyes. Is that what you want? Is that what Julie would want?”
Fuck. Fuck.Fuck.
I knew he was right. Knew it in my bones, in the part of me that had loved Julie since we were kids, the part that knew her better than anyone. She wouldn’t want this. Wouldn’t want to be kept alive by machines, her body failing piece by piece while I held on out of selfish desperation.
But knowing it and accepting it were two different things.
“I need—” I couldn’t finish the sentence. Couldn’t say the words out loud.
“Take your time, brother,” Reaper said. “We’re right outside if you need us.”
The door closed softly behind him, and I was alone with Julie again. Just me and her and the machines that were breathing for her, keeping her heart beating, maintaining the illusion that she was still here.
I stood up on shaking legs and climbed onto the bed beside her, careful of all the tubes and wires. I gathered her into my arms the way I had a thousand times before. Her body was warm but wrong. Too still, too lifeless. Not my Julie at all.
“I love you,” I whispered against her hair. “I love you so fucking much, baby. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you. I’m sorry I wasn’t enough.”
The machines kept beeping. Kept breathing for her. Kept lying to me that she was still alive.
I started singing. My voice cracked and broken, the words to the song we danced to at our wedding. Garth Brooks. “To Make You Feel My Love.”
My voice broke on the second line, but I kept going. For her. Always for her.
I felt her slip away as I sang. Felt the exact moment her heart stopped fighting, when the machines’ beeping became irregular, frantic, then flat. The nurses rushed in, but I didn’t let her go. Held her tighter, kept singing even as they tried to pull me away, even as alarms screamed and the world fell apart around me.
She was gone.
Three days later...
The rain soaked through my cut, through my shirt, straight down to my bones, but I didn’t feel it. I felt nothing except the gaping, raw wound in my chest where my heart used to be. Three days. It had been three fucking days since I listened to her heart stop beating, since I felt the last remaining bit of life drain from her body, since I held her and sang her our song, against thebeeping of machines as our family watched, knowing nothing could save her.
The priest’s words were muffled, lost in the wind’s mournful cry and the roar of blood in my ears. I couldn’t hear him. Didn’t want to hear him. What the fuck could he say that would make this right? What words existed in any language that could fill the void she left behind?
She was never coming back. No matter how hard I wished, no matter how many bargains I tried to make with whatever cruel bastard was running this universe, she was gone. Forever. That word echoed in my skull like a death sentence.
My knuckles were white where I gripped the single white rose in my hand, the thorns biting into my palm. I welcomed the pain. It was the only thing that felt real. Everything else was a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from. I could see her so clearly in my mind. Eight years old, pigtails flying as she raced me to the creek behind her mama’s house. Fourteen, blushing when I kissed her for the first time under the bleachers after a football game. Eighteen, walking toward me in a simple white dress at the courthouse, her smile brighter than the Tennessee sun. Twenty-three, laughing as I carried her over the threshold of our first apartment, telling me she was pregnant, her eyes shining with joy and hope, only to shed tears weeks later.
Every memory was a knife twisting deeper.
She hated being the center of attention. She would have hated this. All these people, all these flowers, all this fuckingceremony. She would’ve wanted something small, something quiet. Just me and her and the people who mattered. But I couldn’t even give her that. Couldn’t give her anything anymore except this cold ground and a headstone that would never, ever be enough.
The faces around me blurred. My brother, Digger, stood to my left, his hand on my shoulder, steady and solid. Ravage wasthere too, and Reaper, along with half the fucking club. They all came to pay their respects, to support their brother, but their condolences sounded hollow and distant, like they were speaking from the other end of a tunnel.
I wanted to scream at them to leave. To take their pity and their sorrow and get the fuck away from me. This wasmine. This grief, this agony, this unbearable weight crushing my chest. It was all I had left of her, and I didn’t want to share it.
A single tear escaped, hot against my frozen cheek, and I hated myself for it. Hated that I was standing here crying like a broken man when I should’ve been strong enough to save her. Should’ve been strong enough to keep her here, to keep her safe, to keep heralive.
I was an executioner. I dealt in death. I’d killed more men than I could count, had looked into their eyes as the light faded, had felt nothing but cold satisfaction at a job well done. But I couldn’t save the one person who mattered. Couldn’t protect the woman I had loved since I was eight years old and she shared her lunch with me because I had forgotten mine.
