Creed’s Honor by Simone Nicholls
Family dinners weren’t usually a thing during the week, especially on a Friday. Normally, Dad would be at the club, and Kobra was always at the club, apart from Sunday family dinner. However, tonight they were both eating with us girls.
It was the tense and quietness in the air I didn’t understand.
I glanced at Kobra, whose eyes were on Dad, then I looked at Dad, and he was looking at me—giving me a forced smile.
“Okay, what is going on?” I asked while Mum and Ivy were pretending like nothing was wrong with them. I opened my mouth, ready to apply pressure to get an answer when the doorbell rang. And no one moved to answer it. “Okay then, I’ll get the door.” I rolled my eyes, putting the napkin beside my plate and walking away from the table.
It was nearly nine at night. Who would be coming here? I opened the front door, and my eyes lit up when I saw the Chevy parked in the drive.
“Oh, my God, you finished it!” I said with excitement as I rushed down the steps towards Creed and the completed muscle car, which he had been working on since he arrived here.
Creed’s gaze ripped from the car and over to me.
“So you came to take me for a drive?” I moved towards the passenger door. “You are saving me from the twilight zone in there.” I was going to explain more about my brother’s and father’s weird mood when Creed didn’t move. My eyebrows knitted together. “You okay, Creed?”
It only occurred to me now that he hadn’t said one word to me.
I closed the passenger door and walked back towards him. It was dark, the lights of the Chevy had turned off automatically, and the streetlight was the only thing casting light on us.
“The Chevy’s yours,” he said and tossed me the keys. I caught them out of reflex and stared down at them. Slowly, an ice feeling went through my veins as I looked back up. “Wrench offered me a VP patch at his chapter.”
And that ice slowly got overpowered with pain as I continued to stare at him. I heard the roar of bikes coming from the clubhouse, up the side road. I turned to look up the driveway, seeing Creed’s bike at the end.
“So you’re leaving,” I said, and my grip on the car keys got tighter. I felt myself breaking. The walls I had around my heart weren’t there to protect me because I’d let them down, allowing him in. So the pain suffocated my heart with no shield around to defend it.
The bikes got louder now being in the street.
“With minutes to spare, I hear.” I couldn’t stop the bitterness coming out. My eyes were filling with tears. “Well, then go,”
“Holly—”
“Can’t you hear that, Creed? That’s your chapter, waiting for you to leave,” I snapped at him and pushed past him, to which he grabbed my arm. “Let go of me—”
But his lips were on mine, and his kiss was claiming me. As he pulled back, he looked me in the eyes, and I swear I saw tears in them, but it could have been the shadows of the night.
He didn’t say a word. He just let me go. I was forced to watch him walk away from me as I stood there, numb. That was until I heard his bike roar to life.
And just like that, Creed Winston rode out of my life on a steel horse.
It was as they pulled away that I walked back into the house.
I saw my family standing in the lounge room. My gaze found my dad, and I felt nothing but rage. Blood boiling rage. “You happy he’s gone,” I shouted at him, and instead of running upstairs and crying, I stormed towards him. “You did this, didn’t you?” I shoved him in the chest. “After all, the famous Hades couldn’t let someone be happy!” I shoved him again, rage consuming me and all directed at him.
I went to abuse him more, but he gripped my hands, pulling me into his chest. I couldn’t stop the flood of tears that overpowered me as I broke, and it was my father’s arms holding me up and keeping me together.