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Savannah

“Uncle Jonah? I’m home.”

I finally let the exhaustion hit me and it fucking nails me.

“Percy?” I call since I hear nothing back.

Climbing the stairs up to our rooms, I push open my cousin’s bedroom door first.

Seeing him still tucked away in bed, I creep out and head down the hall to my uncle’s bedroom. Tapping a knock on the door, I wait for an answer.

“Come in.” I hear his voice and spin the brown knob in my hand.

“Hey Uncle Jonah, I’m home. Damon just dropped me off. I…I need to talk to you if you’re ready.”

I know I’m in trouble.

Questions bounced around my head like the pain did in the rest of my body.

The only light in his room coming through the curtains and the way he sat on the end of his bed made him look so worn out and tired that I wanted to hug him and tuck him into bed.

I wanted to give him peace. If anyone in this entire world deserves it, it’s my Uncle Jonah.

“What did you do, Savannah?”

I made my way closer, the sound of my wooden-soled boots and the clink of the metal spur against the hard wood of his bedroom floor made him finally look at me completely.

A smile grew on his face and it took years off the aging man I owed more to than I would ever get to repay.

“Met Gail, did you?”

“Damon’s Grams? Yeah…we had breakfast with her and she dressed us. I like it, honestly. Thinking about making it my everyday look. You should have seen Damon. We have matching boots now. I know, we’re adorable.”

I toss my tangled mess of hair off my shoulder and attempt to make my uncle laugh.

“Where were you all night?”

Coming to sit beside him, I pulled my boots off and bent my knee to a more comfortable position and leaned in on Uncle Jonah’s shoulder.

“So, one hundred percent truth, uncle. I was with Damon. We are dating, we went to a party and I played truth or dare.”

My uncle cussed and I felt the stress sinking into his bones.

“Nobody got hurt. Brady’s a chicken who owes me some money, now that I think of it. He dared me to jump off the fire falls and—”

“You did it.” Uncle Jonah shakes his head in disbelief but also I sense some pride.

I don’t care how much trouble I’ve gotten into over the years, and how many times my mom and dad or Uncle Jonah has ever said anything about my truth or dare games, I know they’re impressed by my commitment.

“Well Damon actually jumped with me…and then the water police showed up and we ran…and…I rode away on Damon’s bike.”

Uncle Jonah turned to look at me, tilting his head to take in the little girl I had turned back into at his side.

“You did?”

“Yeah, I actually loved it. It was so freeing and not like driving or being back in a car. It was like Damon and I were flying right above the road.”

My uncle’s blue eyes lit up. I could see through the muck of darker blues to the glass-like specks he, Percy, and my dad all had. Morgan got mom’s blue eyes.

“I’m so damn proud of you, Savannah.”

His arm came around to lock me in under his wing and keep me close.

The smell of sterile cleaning supplies and new car smell was so deeply ingrained in my uncle’s skin I doubt he ever smelled like anything else.

“Uncle Jonah, Grams said… Damon’s mom, Nina, she was friends with my mom. And she said she knew dad. But how is that possible when they didn’t meet until college and mom wasn’t from here?”

The darkest color of sadness crept into my uncle’s blue eyes. The years speed up in the time it took me to ask my question, and the way he sighed made it seem like he was dreading this conversation.

“Savannah…” He shook his head like my name was the word for defeat.

A gut-wrenching feeling dug so damn deep in my stomach, I thought if I looked I would see it.

My heart in my throat and anxiety coming on like a bad storm to destroy the progress I have made.

“Jeremiah and Ellis loved you so much, Savannah. They loved you with everything that they were made of. You never could do a single thing in your life that would ever change that. Alive or dead, their love is still here. You know that, don’t you, Van?”

That foreboding feeling of something bad sucker punches me in the gut.

I nod out a ~yes~.

My parents never made me feel anything else but their love. They always had my back and never made me feel like a shitty kid even with all the trouble I caused.

I was never an inconvenience, and they never asked me to change. They were my safety rails and stood tall on whatever path I took.

Good or bad, they never made me feel anything other than loved and supported.

“Nina, before she was a Henley, was Ellie’s best friend. They were inseparable... I don’t have but maybe five memories of Nina without your mother in it.”

More questions pop up, but I let my uncle continue.

“Savannah, some things are better left in the past. You knowing or not knowing won’t change what happened.”

I leaned away from my uncle and stood up. The scream my knee gave was masked by the feelings brewing in me like some evil witch’s cauldron.

“It does when it affects my future. Damon and I are together. Whatever reason Luci has on hating the Madis family line is working to keep us apart, and I won’t have it. I need to know so I can fix it.”

My uncle, following my lead, stands up with the red that colors his cheeks.

“You can’t fix it. None of it was your fault. None of it was anyone’s fault. Things happen in this life that just happen. It... it just happened, and Lucien is a goddamn idiot for thinking the way he does.”

“What happened? Why does Grams know my mom and dad when they told me a million times that story of them running into each other at college with Dad’s basketball hitting Mom’s book out of her hand and how it landed in the mud and she freaked out about it being a first edition?

“How could Mom and Nina be best friends when Grams’s store is twenty minutes from here and this is Dad’s hometown? That would mean Nina, Dad, you, and Luci all went to high school together.

“That would mean Mom had to come five hundred miles to visit Nina. That would mean... they lied.”

My hand over my mouth, I gape in shock. The look of my uncle, even with the mask of cop-face pulled tight and secure—I could see it. That panicked and sad look.

“They lied about…meeting in college? Why? Why would they lie? Why would Mom lie about where she grew up? Why? No. This isn’t right. I…I they NEVER would have. What’s going on?!”

The door opening to show a groggy-looking Percy with wide eyes. I’m sure getting woken up to the sound of me yelling my questions.

“What’s going on?” I ignore it and push further into the past.

“They loved you, Savannah. No matter what, they loved you and they did everything they needed to so they could make sure you were happy and loved and safe. They loved you.”

My uncle, twisting at his hands the same way he did when I asked about Morgan after I woke up from a coma.

I knew before we were hauled off to the hospital that our parents were gone…it was Morgan’s death that came as a surprise.

That’s the thing about death.

It could be a surprise or an ongoing battle that one succumbs to after a hundred years on this planet and still, the loved ones will hurt all the same.

~Death is death.~

It is the missing and longing and misery.

It affects the ones that love you more than it ever could the one that actually died.

“I know they loved me. I’m asking you, Uncle Jonah, what the fuck is going on? Why would they lie to me, why would you? Why does Lucien Henley hate us?”

My Uncle Jonah giving a look to Percy that shared this ~please don’t hate me for this~ before he ever even looked at me.

“When we were kids, just like how you are now, Jeremiah was on a drastically different path then what he ended up on. You know about the ~club~ he was in with his friends and the ~bad boy~ jacket.”

I nod, giving him my whole attention.

“It was a gang.”

I sucked in a short breath that didn’t do anything to help.

“He said it was just a few friends.” I repeat my dad’s words on the same loop he once told them to me on.

“It was. But it was a gang nonetheless. They did illegal shit, wore matching colors, patches, the whole nine.”

“Okay, so, what? Lucien and Dad were in rival gangs?”

Again he says my name like he is waving the white flag on the battlefield.

“Lucien was in it. He was your father’s second, the vice president. That’s how your parents met.”

This time I choke on my spit and start to cough. I feel like an anvil was just dropped on me like some Coyote-Road Runner cartoon.

Fearing everything under the sun, I push on with my advance and ask my next question.

“How does Mom fit in with Nina then?”

I have a thousand more things to ask, like how the fuck does Luci hate us then if they were best friends?

Or how did he become the biker king if he was in a rinky-dink version of his biker kingdom and how all of this goes together?

If Luci and Dad knew each other and that’s how Dad met my mom, then the comment he made about fucking her was what?

Just to piss me off?

Uncle Jonah allowing me one more question, he lets his eyes drop to the floor like the next answer will be something God-awful.

“Ellie’s mom married Luci’s dad when they were kids.”

And just like that, my heart fell out of my ass.