His admission came out in a rush, the words stumbling over one another.
“Wait.” Steele held up his hand. “Wait. You used the word bridge. You said hold the bridge. That day, I couldn’t keep my eyes on him. They took him to another room. When I got to him, he was so far gone and he kept trying to tell me something important for you, but I couldn’t hear him. He wasn’t making sense. He kept saying he crashed the bridge. Tell Absinthe he crashed the bridge.”
“He said he crashed the bridge?” Absinthe turned. He had to sit on the concrete wall abruptly. “Are you certain?”
“He was all but gone but he mumbled it over and over. Crashed bridge. Crashed bridge. I didn’t tell you because I fuckin’ let you all down by taking my eyes off of him.”
“You were tied up. They wrapped you in barbed wire. You still have the scars,” Absinthe said. “It’s absurd to think you could have kept your eyes on him. He really crashed the bridge?” He rubbed his chest, trying to breathe.
Steele caught him by the nape of his neck and pressed his head down. “You’re hyperventilating. Yeah. That’s what he said. Bridge. Crash. Hell. He broke the connection between you because you were feeling everything he was, and he knew he was dying. You were keeping him alive.”
“Damn that son of a bitch. He made me live when I didn’t want to. When my guts were torn out.” His lungs burned until he couldn’t breathe, and he had to keep his head between his knees. His brother. Demyan.
Steele shook his head. “He wouldn’t have survived. It was impossible. I saw him. I’m a healer. They ripped him to shreds. I couldn’t even touch him. I couldn’t hold him. There wasn’t a place on him to touch. He tried to spare you, Absinthe. He wanted to spare me. That was the way he was. You know that. If there was a connection between the two of you, he was the one to break it, not you.”
It made sense. It was exactly what Demyan would do. He had done it. Of course he’d done it. Absinthe would have done it to spare Demyan, to spare any of them. He closed his eyes, trying not to let the burn behind them become anything more than his own. He couldn’t take on Steele’s grief, not when his was so visceral. That cut went so deep for both of them.
Steele sank down onto the cement beside him. Close, but not touching. “I’m sorry, brother. He was like you. Brilliant. The best of us. Sensitive. Willing to take on too much for all of us. I loved him with everything in me.”
“I didn’t know how to go on for the longest time,” Absinthe admitted.
“I know you think you know you’re one lucky son of a bitch to have found Scarlet, but brother, it’s far more than that. We’re, all of us, so fucked up and we’re always going to be. We aren’t like other clubs in that they put the brotherhood before their women. We don’t do that. But somehow in that shithole, all of us, in order to survive, we had to take pieces of one another in order to make ourselves whole.”
Absinthe nodded. He knew that. “It’s true. When I’m in the room with everyone, I can feel the way we’re mixed together. We’re definitely one person, not eighteen.” He hesitated. “The weird thing is, Destroyer doesn’t upset that balance the way I thought he might. He fits with us.”
“The point I’m making is that our women have to be able to not just fit into club life, but to fit into the way we are with one another. To be able to deal with our fucked-up ways and needs. Blythe, man, she puts up with all of us for Czar and she loves us. Soleil, she loves what Ice loves and gives him everything. Breezy was born into the life and she’s down for it. Anya, she and Reaper deal with his shit. Scarlet, she just pleases you, Absinthe. She just does whatever the fuck you want or need because she loves the fuck out of you.”
Absinthe knew Steele was right. He hadn’t looked at it quite that way, but he knew Steele was telling him something important.
“That doesn’t come along all that often. All of us, we hit the jackpot and the women we’ve got, we have to know what we have. You have to look at her and really see what she’s worth. Know it in your soul. These women—Blythe, Anya, Breezy, Soleil and now Scarlet—they are what we live for. They’re what Czar meant when he said we could turn our lives around. You see the way the others treat them. The way they accept them. They wouldn’t do that if they didn’t know what these women are. What they mean.”