I didn’t understand how I could have been so stupid, how I could have thought that I’d saved her. That I could fix her.

She’d been slowly drowning for years, and I’d missed it. I’d missed all the signs because I’d believed that as long as I took care of her, she’d be fine. I’d fucking loved the way she needed me, reveled in the way she’d been so clingy in the beginning of our relationship.

And in the end, that had fucked her up even worse.

It killed me to think of the way I’d ignored her when I was pissed, the way I’d thrown her out of the house because she wouldn’t go get groceries, the way I’d pushed and pushed for her to act normal when she was doing the best she could.

I hadn’t seen it before, but I sure as fuck saw it as she held me off with a pistol bigger than her arm.

So when she’d told me that she didn’t want to see me, I’d taken her at her word for once. I’d given her the space she needed as I watched her slowly get stronger and leave the hospital.

I’d given her space as she met with a psychologist three times that first week out of the hospital, and I’d waited. When no word came from her that I would ever be welcome again, I said goodbye to my son.

“You know you can come see him whenever you want,” Gram assured me sadly. “She doesn’t mean to keep you from him.”

“I know, Rose,” I told her with a nod as I watched Will drive his monster truck into a table leg.

“Told you years ago to call me Gram,” she scolded, wrapping up banana bread for me to take.

“Shit’s different now,” I mumbled, my heart breaking as I watched Will’s little diaper-covered ass shake to the low music coming from the stereo.

“Nothin’s different for me,” she scolded over the edge of her glasses. “You’re still one of mine.”

I nodded again, my throat feeling tight, and then jumped to my feet as Cody came barreling in the front door.

“You leaving?”

“Yeah, it’s time I take care of some things and let your sister be,” I answered, the words tasting like acid.

“You getting payback?”

“Payback?” I laughed a little. “You mean am I going to take care of it? Yeah.”

“Take me with you,” he demanded earnestly. “That’s my sister. Those were my parents. Take me with you.”

I stared at him for a moment and realized that the kid I remembered—all big feet and arms that were too long for his body—had turned into something entirely different. He was a man. When the hell had that happened?

He looked like a backroom brawler, cleaned up in Ivy League clothes.

“Your sister would kill me,” I mumbled, aware of Gram’s eyes on the back of my head.

“My sister isn’t even talking to you,” he replied bluntly, making me want to punch him in the fucking mouth.

“You okay with this?” I asked Gram, turning my back on Cody.

“He’s an adult,” she murmured, looking up at Cody and then back at the bread she was wrapping. “He can make his own choices. Don’t put me in the middle of it.”

How the fuck I ended up riding to Eugene with Cody following behind me in a piece of shit rental, I will never understand.

And once we were there, he made himself known. He joked with Slider and Poet like they were his best friends, and in doing so, bought himself the respect of every member in the clubhouse that night. It was insane, but I was too wrapped up in my own shit to give a fuck.

Missing Callie was like missing a limb. It still felt like she was there, and at times I’d reach for her as I slept, or pick up the phone to call her, and in a rush of clarity realize I couldn’t. I’d spent so much time waiting on her and working toward our life together, that I didn’t know what to fucking do with myself once she was gone.

The boys and I headed down to San Diego that week, using Cody as a sneak to find out what was going down with the Jimenez brothers. He had contacts all over the fucking place, and I had no clue how, because he’d been going to school out of state for the past ten years. However he found them, I couldn’t argue that the guy wasn’t effective. He knew shit before the rest of us did, and he could move in and out of places like no one I’d ever seen.

He just seemed to blend into the crowd, wherever we were, and fucking disappear. You could be looking right at him and still not see him. It was weird as hell.

We used his contacts to find out where the big dogs were having their weekly meeting, and sure as shit, we found them in a warehouse so far south that it may as well have been in Mexico. They didn’t expect us, and not even one of them had the time to rise from his seat around the poker table before he was dead.

“Don’t fuck with my family,” Slider mumbled, leading us back out of the warehouse and onto our bikes. “Good work, kid.”

Cody lifted his chin in reply, but I could tell by the wild look in his eyes that he was about to lose his shit.

“Lock it down, little brother,” I warned him, grabbing the back of his neck and giving it a squeeze. “All over now. Callie’s safe and you got what you came for.”

He nodded a few times, climbed on the bike he’d bought from one of the brothers, and slid on his helmet. The little shit was going to keep his cool. Thank fuck.

“Hey,” Poet called as he climbed on his bike and motioned toward Cody with his chin. “Name’s Casper. Kid moves like a fuckin’ ghost.”