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Chapter 32 - Atom

“You done with that one yet?” King asks as he comes over and kicks my foot from under the BMW I’m working on.

“Does it look like it?” I grunt.

He snorts. “Fuck no.”

“Fuck,” I say as the wrench slips and I smack my knuckles against the hard frame. Third time that’s happened today.

“Yo, watch it,” King yelps as I kick out and then roll out from under the car.

“Shouldn’t have been standing there.” I stand up and move to the far wall, pulling off tools I need and putting others back where they belong that someone, probably King, left out.

“Touchy today,” he grumbles.

“He’s been like that since he got back,” Walker adds as he continues to work on a carburetor across the garage.

I turn and glare at the back of his head. The man doesn’t speak much, and the fact that he took the time to say something right now makes me more pissed than I was this morning. And I was definitely pissed this morning.

I’m pissed every morning.

You’d be too if you woke up and saw the bed beside you was still empty except for your cats. A place that should be filled with your wife.

“Hmm,” King says, and I turn my glare on him.

“What?”

He shakes his head and his mouth twists as he purses his lips together.

“Spit it out,” I growl.

“Fine.” He shrugs and crosses his arms. “You going to keep sticking around here, or are you going to get your girl?”

“Already told you.” I turn around and face the wall of tools.

“You said you came back. Not a word about what your old lady is doing.”

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. Hearing others call her that makes it more real. That she isn’t mine. That she’s out of my reach. That I love the sun and can’t have it.

My Sunshine.

I let her go. I released her. I was selfish once, but not anymore. At least not in that way. I’m still selfish enough to call her mine in my head. But others can’t. It hurts too much.

I shake my head. “She ain’t mine. She doesn’t want that.”

“Don’t I?”

I whirl at the soft voice and see her, my girl, standing there in the most beautiful of ways.

Sure, her dress is skintight, dipping low in the front and with a slit high on the side, golden against her tanned skin. Her hair seems to have grown, not by much, but enough that I notice it. Gina and a guard are at her back, a smirk on the former’s face and a blank expression on the latter.

I take it all in.

But what I see, all that matters, is that she’s here.

On her own.

Not forced. Not kidnapped. No club call to bring her in. And I would know. Casper keeps me updated, in his usual matter-of-fact way, with all things Yakuza related. He was against me leaving her from the start. But I had to. I had to let her know I wasn’t her captor. Something I’m sure she still thought of me as.