Free Breaking It All: A Hellfire Riders MC Romance (The Motorcycle Clubs) by Kati Wilde

saying—he didn’t intend to come back.
    Red held on for as long as he could before he took that final ride. Not a single Rider questions what he did. Though it gutted Jenny, neither does she. By the time he found out about the cancer, there was nothing to do. He couldn’t have it removed. Chemo wouldn’t stop it. So these last couple of months, the cancer killed him slow until it started killing him fast. By the end, he could barely breathe. He could barely ride. Pretty soon he wouldn’t have been able to get on his motorcycle at all. So he went out before that happened—and went out on his own terms.
    I’ve been doing the same thing for more than a decade. Trying to go out on my own terms, cramming as much living into my life as I can. But in the past few months, I’ve realized I’m really just waiting for death to sneak up on me again and take what it didn’t take when I was a kid. I’ve been waiting for death to get down to business instead of just playing with me, like it did ten years ago, when I found a lump on my breast.
    It has to stop. No more waiting for death to catch up to me. I’m not good at quitting anything. But I need to quit living as if I’m about to start dying.
    And I need to let go of what’s killing me.
    So these tears aren’t going to dry up yet. There’s always more hurt to come. Today I’m crying for Red, and for Jenny—and because of the pain in my chest that threatens to explode every time I look at Gunner.
    I should just quit looking. But I can’t.
    And all those other women are stealing glances, too, but when Gunner looks up, it’s directly at me—as if he felt my gaze on him. My breath stops in my chest. If his face is beautiful, then his eyes are something beyond that. Something indescribable.
    Crystalline blue, those eyes should appear cold. Glacial. But they’re warm, instead. Intense, burning with concern—as if he’s silently asking whether I’m all right.
    I’m not. I don’t know when I will be again. I’ll try to get there, though. To ‘all right.’
    But I’ll settle for not hurting so damn much. This pain started out small. Just an ache. But it’s been growing for ten years.
    And I can’t bear the agony anymore.
    So I know what I have to do. When something is killing you—if you can, you have to cut it out. No matter how much it hurts. No matter how big the scar. You have to be brave, cut it out, and try to survive without it.
    It’s just a heart.

6
    Anna
    An hour after the funeral, I’m in Jenny’s kitchen A) working through a pile of dirty dishes and B) desperately trying to think of something I don’t like about Gunner, so I can make myself stop thinking about him.
    That’s the problem, though. I’ve tried to stop wanting him before. Of course I have. It just doesn’t work.
    I have to cut my heart out…but first I have to find some way to sharpen the knife. Because just getting over him?
    Been there. Tried that. Have the T-shirt that says, Anna failed spectacularly.
    Okay, and also C) I’m hiding a little, because I keep crying over Red, and I really don’t like showing my hurt to anyone outside my family.
    But I can’t pretend losing Red doesn’t leave a big, gaping hole in my chest—and my mom keeps touching my shoulder or my back every time she passes through the kitchen. I’m not sure if she’s comforting me or herself. I just know I had to tell her “No more hugs,” because every time she wrapped her arms around me I teared up again.
    As a therapist-turned-high school counselor, my mom’s a big fan of crying. It’s cathartic, cleansing. But she’s just as much a fan of respecting personal and emotional space.
    Her emotional space is usually thick. She lets a few of us in—my dad, my brother, me—but considering how often she slips quietly into other people’s heads and hearts, she doesn’t let many of them slip close in return.
    Today that space seems thinner, her emotions showing more easily. I don’t think it’s just