Today & Tomorrow (11 page)

Bart came into the kitchen holding Declan. “He needs a change, babe.”

Her hands in a sink full of soapy water, Riley turned a deadly look on her husband. “Are you serious right now?”

“Hey—if you’re around, I don’t have to. That’s our deal.”

Faith, who was pregnant, though the only way anyone would be able to tell was that her husband, Demon, wouldn’t stop rubbing her belly, punched Demon on the arm as he was leaning into the fridge for a beer.

“Hey! What?” Demon complained, rubbing his arm.

“You’re changing diapers. Whenever.”

Bart laughed. “Careful, Deme. You start agreeing to terms already, before long she’ll have you agreeing to pop that kid out yourself.”

Smiling at the laughter behind her, Analisa stood at the sliding glass door and watched the kids play. She cracked the door open a little so she could hear them giggle and squeal. She knew she could go out there, but it seemed right that she should be separated from their play by the glass.

Today, this day. Only this one. Today she had exactly the life she’d wanted. Only this one day.

As if to agree with her, It coiled Its slimy fist around her insides and squeezed, and she doubled over, unable to withstand the pain with any kind of stoicism.

Nolan was at her side immediately, his arms around her. “Ani! What?”

She stayed in that folded position until the spasm let go. “I’m okay.” She grabbed his hand and stood straight again.

He looked hard at her, his eyes dark with concern. “You’re not.”

“No, I am. I promise. I need some more meds, but I’ll be okay. I’ll just sit down for a little. Not exactly me making dinner anymore, is it?”

“It’s still your dinner, babe. Full of family and chaos.”

She smiled. “I know. This is better. So much better than I had planned. This is perfect. Thank you.”

Nolan kissed her head and went to get her meds. Analisa noticed Bart, still holding Declan, watching them. She saw him make eye contact with Nolan, then smile a sad smile and nod.

She wasn’t sure exactly what had been communicated between them, but she knew enough to be able to read that sad smile. It was strange to have so many people know how close she was to leaving.

~oOo~

Dinner wasn’t exactly what she’d planned, but it was perfect anyway. Her soup was a hit, even though she noticed some raised eyebrows. The rolls didn’t bake right under the turkey—they were burned on the bottoms and raw on the tops—but Bibi had brought several loaves of fresh bread. The turkey turned out golden and moist. There wasn’t enough to go around, but Veda had brought a ham. And there was
plenty
of booze.

The tables made a long ‘L’ from the dining room and around the corner, the full length of the large living room. The kids ate at the coffee table, sitting on throw pillows. Analisa sat at the table next to Nolan, with tiny tastes of everything on her plate, and watched her family and guests dig in. She took video and pictures, and she felt good.

Her father and Tristan had a great time. Even her father seemed to forget that she was sick for a few hours, getting into a lively argument with several bikers about the state of the NFL. Tristan had sat outside with Double A and Trick for a long time, all of them drinking and talking with intently interested expressions.

She’d had to go lie down for a couple of hours after dinner, but she was up again and sufficiently dosed to feel pretty good while everyone was still around. While she’d rested, the kitchen had been cleaned, and everyone was sitting or standing around, talking and drinking. When she came out, it was obvious that the evening was winding down. They’d waited to be able to thank her and say good night. Or, she knew, for almost all of them, goodbye.

When it was just the four of them again, her father’s sad eyes came back, and this time her brother caught them, too. She knew why. This dinner had been wonderful. It had been perfect. It had fulfilled a dear wish.

And it had felt like a Last Supper.

Tristan hugged her hard. Then he hugged Nolan. And then he left.

Her father looked down at her, his brow creased and his sad eyes brimming. “It was a good day, sweetheart. I’m glad we had this.”

She hugged him. “Me, too, Daddy.”

When she released him, he turned to Nolan. “I was wrong to try to keep you two apart. You’re exactly what she needs. Thank you. You’ve given her what I couldn’t.” He held out his hand and, when Nolan shook it, pulled him into a hard hug. “Thank you,” he said again.

And then he, too, left. And Analisa and Nolan were alone in their house.

He pulled her close, and she hooked her arm around his waist. She always felt safe tucked so tightly to his firm, warm body. Even now, she felt safe. And loved.

Leaning his cheek on the top of her head, he said, “That’s your whole list, isn’t it?”

“Almost. Just one more thing.” It would have been two, but she knew ‘spend Christmas with Nolan’ was not going to happen. So there was just one more—and she knew for a fact that one would happen. It was already happening.

“Make a movie?”

“No. That’s crossed off. I’ve been making it for a long time, and Tris will turn everything into a movie. So I can call that one done.”

“Then what?”

She shook her head, rubbing her cheek against his shirt. “I’ll tell you when the time is right. For now, it’s just for me. Okay?”

“Okay.” He kissed her head. “What do you want to do now?”

Only one thing, and she was pretty sure it would be the last time. “Can we go to bed?”

~oOo~

She couldn’t both lie flat and breathe anymore, so she slept every night propped on about a million pillows.

Now, they moved all those pillows off the bed. Nolan sat in the middle, his back against the headboard, and Analisa sat straddled over his lap. When he reached to the nightstand for a condom, she grabbed his hand. “I won’t get pregnant.”

He cocked his head. “Ani…”

“I won’t. I’m sure. Please?”

Nodding, he brought his hand around to her back instead. She curled her hand around his erection and lifted up, but when she tried to settle on him, she was too dry.

“Hold on,” he murmured, and stuck his fingers in his mouth. Then he slid them between her legs. He did that a few times, and then he rolled his wet fingers over himself. “Now.”

He slid into her easily.

“Oh,” she gasped. It felt different, just the two of them. Hotter. Better. Closer. And she began to get wet.

Nolan hugged her close and tucked her head against his neck. Holding her tightly, he rocked. They moved together quietly, slowly. All of it was different from the way they’d been together before, but it was perfect. Intimate and loving and sexy.

When she came, it washed over her before she’d even known she was close, and it was slow and gentle, just a rolling tension and release, over and over. When he came, she felt him, felt his semen leaving him and then leaving her as he stayed inside her, still moving.

Neither of them was willing to end their connection.

~oOo~

In the middle of the night, at the end of the Thanksgiving weekend, Analisa woke up with her whole insides, her heart and lungs, her stomach, everything, clenched in a fist of fire. She would have screamed, but she had no air. She flailed her arm out, looking for rescue, and slapped Nolan in the head.

He was awake immediately, pulling her into his arms, yelling her name. When he turned away to grab his phone, she wanted to beg him to hold on to her, but there was no air anywhere.

And then the pain simply stopped. Completely. There was no air, but there was no pain, either.

He was yelling into his phone for help. It broke her heart to see him so scared. It broke her heart to think of leaving him. She had known real love, and her heart broke to know that he had, too, that she was leaving him behind to mourn her.

That was the last thing on her list: to know what it was like to have a broken heart. That had always felt to her like the most important thing in life—to love and lose and know that you’d felt everything there was to feel, that you’d really lived.

He’d gathered her up in his arms, and he was crying and saying he loved her. Over and over he said it.

She’d always known when she was sicker. She’d always been able to feel what was wrong inside her, and when it got more wrong. Now, she knew that there was no more wrong to be.

Summoning all the strength she had left, she reached up and put her hand on his cheek, rough with stubble, wet with tears.
It’s okay, Nolan
, she thought.
I finished my list. And I stayed me.

She tried to tell him one more time that she loved him, but there was no air.

Nolan sat on a chair in the corner of the room and watched Analisa’s father talk to the doctor. The doctor talked, and Donovan shook his head. Finally, the doctor put his hand on Donovan’s arm and then left the room.

Tristan was…elsewhere. In the hospital, Nolan was sure, but not in this room. He could barely be in here at all, and never for more than five minutes.

Nolan, on the other hand, hadn’t left. He looked at the bed. Analisa was gone. Her body was there, under the covers, filled with wires and tubes, but he knew that she’d left when she’d been in his arms. He’d seen her leave, seen her eyes, those amazing pale eyes, like moonstones, go flat and empty.

It didn’t matter that the paramedics had arrived and made her heart beat. She was gone, and the doctor had just told her father, for the second time in as many days, that there was no hope.

He watched as Donovan went to the side of her bed and picked up her hand. He stood there, staring down at his daughter, alone in the world with her.

Nolan stood up. “I’m going to go track down Tris.”

“No. Let him be. He won’t go far. Can we talk?”

“Yeah.” He went to the other side of the bed, but he didn’t look down at the body between them. That wasn’t his Ani.

“You heard the doctor, I guess.”

“Yeah. He said the same thing yesterday.”

“You understand why I can’t do it? You love her, too, right? I know you understand.”

He understood. But he said, “No, I don’t. You know she didn’t want this. This”—he waved at the bed without looking down—“isn’t her.”

Donovan lifted the slender, freckled hand he held. “She’s warm, Nolan. I’m holding her hand. You can’t tell me this isn’t my little girl.” His eyes went blurry. When he closed them, tears dropped onto the hand he held. Not Ani’s hand. Not anymore.

Nolan felt detached from all of this, like he’d left when she had, and what was happening now was somebody else’s life, somebody else’s problem. “It’s your call, Donovan. I don’t know why you care what I think.”

“Because she loved you. These past months, her whole life was about you. Didn’t you love her at all? How can you be so ready to let her go? Why won’t you even
look
at her?”

Nolan gripped the bedrail until it shook in his hands. “Fuck you. I do love her. I wasn’t ready. But it doesn’t fucking matter. She’s gone. She already left. I was holding her, and then I was just holding the thing that held her. She didn’t want this. You fucking know she didn’t want this. She wanted to be remembered the way she was. That’s how I’m going to remember her. She was beautiful and tough. She had life in her eyes. And her hands.”

Donovan’s eyes narrowed. “You knew her for three and a half months. Don’t presume to tell me who she was.”

Nolan thought about telling him what he knew, what she’d planned if It had gotten into her brain, but before he could, Tristan, standing in the doorway, said, “He’s right, Dad. She’s already gone. You need to love her the way she deserved to be loved. Think of it as the last thing you can do for her.”

Donovan Winter turned and looked at his son. “Tris…”

“I know, Dad. But we have to.”

~oOo~

Her funeral was huge. Hundreds of people converged on the Unitarian Church, most of them Hollywood types that knew Analisa’s father and had known her mother. Nolan stood off to the side, inside the doorway, and watched the long line of limousines dispatch beautiful people into the rainy, early-December day.

A line of motorcycles and a row of SUVs were already parked in the church lot. The Night Horde SoCal was all accounted for.

Donovan and Tristan stood at the bottom of the steps, greeting attendees—Nolan couldn’t think of them as mourners. In the church behind him, Nolan’s brothers and their families sat. He himself stood between both worlds. Alone.

“Excuse me.”

Nolan turned to see the minister standing behind him. “Yeah?”

“I wanted to talk to Analisa’s father, make sure I have all the details correct. Would you let him know when he comes back up?”

The Winters weren’t churchgoers. The minister didn’t know them, except by Donovan’s fame. But as far as Nolan was concerned, that didn’t excuse the fact that he’d just mispronounced her name.

Fury charged through his arm, and he grabbed the man by the throat and slammed him into the nearest wall. “First detail,” he snarled, “It’s
Ah-
nalisa, and if you get it wrong again, I will break your goddamn nose.”

The man, his eyes round and bulging, nodded, straining to say, “I’m sorry.”

Nolan felt a hand on his arm and looked over his shoulder. Bart was there. “Easy, brother. Easy.”

He dropped his hand and let the minister go.

~oOo~

Her father gave her eulogy. Tristan spoke, too. Donovan had asked Nolan if he wanted to share anything. If he hadn’t asked if he wanted to ‘share,’ if he’d chosen a different word, maybe Nolan would have said yes. Probably not, but maybe. But Nolan didn’t want to share any part of his short life with Analisa. That was for no one but him and her. And now just him. So he’d said no, and he’d sat and stared at the pale blue casket. He’d listened to her father and brother, and he’d learned about a girl he’d only known a little bit—and yet had known completely.

The minister spoke his platitudes to finish the service. He got her name right.

The rain let up during the service, and the sun was shining by the time the procession arrived at the grave.

Again, the minister spoke, this time familiar words of ritual. Nolan stood at Donovan’s side and remembered the rituals that had bidden farewell to Havoc. The Horde’s private ritual, with its Viking prayer and its acts of commemoration, had seemed a more real and meaningful way to say goodbye than this formal, stilted, proper business. But he stood there and endured it because this was the last moment of his time in Analisa’s world.

When the words had been said, a woman in a somber blue suit handed a single white calla lily to each person at the grave.

Callas were Analisa’s favorite flower. Nolan hadn’t known that.

Then, in a quiet line, one by one, each person laid a lily on the casket and then walked away, congregating in small groups at a distance from the grave. Tristan, Nolan, and Donovan were last.

Donovan stood as if planted in the ground himself, clutching his lily. When it became clear that he wasn’t moving on his own, Tristan turned to Nolan. “I got him.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

With that, Nolan turned and walked to the group of the Horde family. Double A met him halfway.

“You sure about this, brother? You don’t want to stay for a while, say goodbye?”

There were no more goodbyes that could be said. Not here. “I’m sure. You bring my pack?”

“It’s in Riley’s car.”

“There’s a john inside. I’ll change and be ready. Are you sure?”

He smiled sadly. “Yeah. It’s time. And Coco’s goin’ home to North Dakota, anyway.”

“Okay, gimme five minutes.”

~oOo~

Once he was out of the suit he’d worn out of respect for Donovan and back in jeans, boots, a hoodie, and his kutte, Nolan repacked his pack, folding the suit and leaving it on the bathroom counter. Then he went back outside and let all the Horde women hug him goodbye.

He had mounted his bike and was preparing to kick the stand back when Donovan strode toward him. “Nolan!”

He settled his bike back on its stand and waited. Donovan and Tristan both had known he wouldn’t stay any longer.

Analisa’s father held his hand out. “Here. It was her mother’s. Stella never took it off. I’m not sure Analisa ever wore it, but she kept it in that little porcelain box on her nightstand. When she got that tattoo, I realized that it meant a lot to her.”

Nolan didn’t move to take whatever it was Donovan was offering, so Donovan added, “I’m telling you that I think she would be glad to know I gave it to you. I would like you to have it.”

He held out his hand, and Donovan dropped a silver chain into it. Dangling from the chain was a silver star.

“Stella called it her dancing star.”

Too overwhelmed with emotion to do anything else, Nolan closed his gloved hand around the necklace. He nodded once.

“Goodbye, Nolan. Thank you for loving her.” With that, Donovan Winter turned and walked toward his son.

Nolan tucked the necklace in the inside, zippered pocket of his kutte. Then he kicked the stand up and started his bike. He rode out of the cemetery with Double A at his side and all of the Night Horde SoCal behind him.

The SoCal club accompanied Nolan and Double A, the homeward-bound Missouri patches, all the way to the California border. With a wave, SoCal went off at the last California exit, and Nolan and Double A continued on, their backs to California and their faces toward home.

They would be home for Christmas after all.