Vicious Cycle (Vicious Cycle #1)(74)

My phone rang on the nightstand. When I glanced at the ID, my chest tightened even harder. I couldn’t bring myself to answer it. The door opened, and Rev stepped inside. He eyed the phone, and I shook my head. “It’s Willow.”

“I figured it was when I heard the ringing.”

Shaking my head, I said, “I can’t.”

He took the phone from me. “Hey, rug rat, whatcha doing?”

I heard her questioning voice all the way across from him. “Yeah, she’s busy, so I thought I’d answer her phone.” Willow then proceeded to rattle on.

“Yeah, we were thinking about coming up to get you today—” He paused at Willow’s screech. “I know you just got there and you’re not supposed to come back until Wednesday.” His gaze flickered to mine.

Let her stay, I mouthed.

His brows shot up in surprise. “Hang on, rug rat,” he said before pressing the mute button on the phone.

“She’s having so much fun, isn’t she?” At Rev’s nod, I said, “Give her a few more days of innocent fun. Who knows when she’ll be able to enjoy anything again.”

After processing my words, he said, “You’re right. We’ll just wait to do a memorial until she gets back. We’ll be busy enough with Case’s.” Rev unmuted the phone. “Okay, rug rat, you get your way like usual. You can come back with Jimmy on Wednesday.” Tears stung my eyes at her excited squeal. A shadow of a smile played at his lips. “I’ll tell her. I love you, baby.”

He then ended the call. “She wanted me to remind you to give Walter kisses for her like she asked.”

A sob choked off in my throat as I thought about the day Deacon had brought me the squirming puppy and Willow had given him his unusual moniker. At that moment, I couldn’t stand to be in the compound one second longer. “I have to get out of here,” I said, my chin trembling.

He merely nodded before offering me his hand. I slipped mine into his, and then we walked down the hall. The mood in the main room of the clubhouse was somber, to say the least. Where the men and women once talked and laughed as they drank, they now spoke in hushed tones if they even talked at all. Of course, all voices hushed at the sight of me.

“Alex needs some time away from here. Take her wherever she needs to go,” Rev instructed Archer.

“It would be my honor,” he replied.

His words and the reverence with which he spoke them caused the familiar suffocating pain to ripple through me. While Deacon and I were far from marriage or even being engaged, I had come to be recognized as his widow, just like Kim.

I leaned over to hug Rev. “I won’t be gone long.”

“Take all the time you need.”

With a nod, I started out of the roadhouse with Archer at my side. When he walked over to his bike, I faltered. I couldn’t imagine riding with anyone but Deacon. At my hesitation, he turned around. “If you’re not okay with this, we can take your car.”

As I contemplated his words, I thought about how once I had gotten over my initial fear, the open road had felt so peaceful. “No, it’s fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

He handed me a helmet, and I slipped it on. After I slid across the seat, my arms froze before I could bring them around him. It all felt so wrong—touching him as intimately as I had Deacon. When Archer glanced over his shoulder, he gave me a sad smile as if he knew exactly what I was thinking. With trembling hands, I finally reached forward and brought my arms around his waist. He gunned the engine, and we took off.

“Where we going?” he called.

“Haynes Road,” I shouted back.

He nodded. There was only one place I could think of where I wanted to escape to. I couldn’t go back home. It held too many unpleasant memories. I would go to the one place that gave me purpose—the school.

When we arrived, it was a little after three. All the students were gone except for the ones in the after-school program, which was housed in the gym and cafeteria. After we pulled into a parking space, I eased off the bike and handed the helmet back to Archer. I couldn’t begin to imagine the looks I was going to get from the teachers who remained in the building. Sure, some of them knew I was involved with a biker, and by now I’m sure they knew he was dead. I’d called my principal to ask for a few days off.

Thankfully, I’d remembered my keys, so we were able to slip in one of the side doors, rather than going in the front. When I started into my classroom, I noticed that Archer’s feet seemed rooted to the floor. His posture seemed as if he were on high alert.

Even though I already knew the answer, I asked, “You don’t want to come inside?”

He shook his head. “I’ll wait out here.”

“Okay.” While I should have felt comforted with him keeping an eye on things, I also didn’t want to be alone. Not even in my classroom, with its cheerfully decorated bulletin boards and posters. I slipped inside and closed the door behind me. Whoever they’d gotten to be my sub was obviously trying to survive with fifteen five-year-olds, because the room was a wreck.

With a renewed sense of purpose pumping through me, I went to the closet and grabbed the necessary cleaning materials. I don’t know how long I spent washing down desks and chairs, scraping off clumps of glue, and reorganizing my bookshelves and centers. Ironically, it seemed to do me a lot of good. For that brief respite, I was able to forget that the man I loved more than anything in the world had been killed yesterday.