Ghosts ✔

108 • Juice

Juice knew he fucked it up. 

This time for real. 

He had seen the look in Dana's eyes when he spoke to her in the kitchen. She wasn't going to forgive him anytime soon. The friendship they had built the past weeks, was crushed in a few moments of indomitable rage.  

"You leave or I leave."

Kip's words kept racing through his head. 

It was probably what was best for her. A life without him. 

His body cramped up at the thought to live without her forever, but it had been his own decision. Sniveling he breathed in, rubbing his eyes. Those damn tears just refused to stop, while he didn't even have a right to cry, he was the cause of this mess. 

It felt like he was walking a glass bridge above an abyss, seeing the cracks appear underneath his feet. He could fall any moment, into the deadly dept. The handrails that had supported him all this time, broke down. Not only Dana, also Fye. 

He had seen the look in her eyes, before she grabbed Mikey's hand and dragged him out of the clubhouse. She was sick of him too. And with good reason. 

Therefore he hadn't gone home; instead he'd gone to his clubroom, tossing a bag on the bed and throwing his clothes in it. But now what? Where should he go? He didn't know. 

But he had no choice. He was so messed up, he was the one who had to give up on the few things he still had. As the door opened, he sat up straight. Like a silent ghost, Happy entered his room. 

For a long time he said nothing, he just stared at the clothes on the bed. 

"Goin' somewhere?" he asked mockingly. 

He shrugged his shoulders. "You heard what Kip said. He leaves or I'll leave. And since I'm the one fucking things up..."

"Where will you go?" Happy huffed. "You got a seven year old to take care of."

Juice bent his head. Part of him had hoped that Fye wanted to take care of the kid, even if she no longer wanted his uncle. 

A deep silence fell, persisting for such a long time that Juice looked up skittishly to see if the man was still in the room at all. Two alert eyes stared down on him. 

"You gotta tell her."

"Tell her what?" Juice frowned his eyebrows, not understanding the question. 

"That you killed Cherry." 

Juice's lips parted a few times, but he wasn't able to say anything. 

"I – I can't," he muttered eventually. 

"Why not?"

"You know why," he grunted. "Because it will destroy her."

"She'll forgive you." Happy sighed, his face becoming a little softer. "You're the one she loves, Juice. With who she wants to be. Not Kip. She's trying to keep up appearances and maybe she can convince herself now and then, but she never looks at him like she used to look at you."

"Her daughter was murdered in front of her eyes. Of course she can't love someone in the way she did before."

"You found the body of your newborn baby. You killed two women you once cared about. And still I see the same love in your eyes when you look at her. If you can feel that love, she will be able to feel it too."

Juice bent his head. He stared at the tattoo of the arrow. "I can't give her what she deserves."

"She deserves what she wants and what she wants is you," Happy answered. "She's strong. She forces herself to move on, to feel happy. But deep down she knows she's not happy. Because she's still in love with you and she doesn't get why you don't want to be with her. You break her heart, Juice. You break her heart, every time you wake up next to someone else. Yeah – she will be mad when she discovers the truth about Cherry. But it wasn't your call alone, Juice. It was a club decision, we all agreed. I agreed – hell, if I hadn't been in a fucking cell I would have slit her throat myself. Even knowing that Dana was still alive. She was a fucking rat and she deserved what she got."