by A. J. Downey
“God, this winter is just fuckin’ brutal,” Dante said, and I nodded.
“Yeah.”
I turned onto the highway and crept along. It wasn’t quite dark yet – still just evening, the twilight just beginning to fall from the sky and creep up from the ground to meet in the middle.
“Eedee, watch out!” Dante cried, and I gritted my teeth and held steady and slow as the pickup in front of us coming the opposite direction slid across our lane almost kissing the front corner of my bumper on Dante’s side, and slid off into the ditch.
“You okay?” I asked my younger brother.
“Shit, yeah, just keep it steady. I’ll be glad when we get there.”
“Me too! Shouldn’t we stop to help, though?”
“Hell no! Just keep going. Dude was driving like an asshole, and the less time we gotta be out here, the better.”
“Okay…” I felt guilty, but the adrenaline and fear that coursed through me at the near miss kept me from feeling too guilty.
We made it to the club, laughing nervously and hearts still pounding.
“What do you think?” I asked. “Should I try the driveway?”
“Looks pretty good. Yeah, just low and slow.”
“K.”
I bit my bottom lip, and we went up and over the speed bump of packed snow left by the plows. The prospects had done a good job of making a cutout in the berm of snow so that we could get through the big iron gates, which had been left open.
“Drop it into first,” Dante said.
“Dante, we’re in an automatic! It’s already in first!”
“Yeah, but if you drop it into first, then it’ll stay in first and you’re less likely to spin out.”
“Oh, my God. We’re doing just fine!”
“You’re gonna spin your tires!”
“I am not!”
“Eedee, you’re gonna lose traction!”
“I am not!”
Of course, Dante had to be right. My tires spun and I started to slip. I panicked and braked and really started to slide back.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!”
“I told you!” Dante said laughing, and we managed to stop before sliding back out onto the highway.
I sat for a moment, chest heaving with my panic, the heater vents blowing, the windshield wipers shushing back and forth in the gentle snowfall. I jumped and yipped when a dark figure loomed outside my window.
“Uncle Reaver!” I shouted in admonishment as he doubled over laughing.
He tried the door handle, but it locked automatically when you started driving. I pulled on my door handle and the door popped open with a rush of wintry air.
“Come on, get out and get on up to the club. I’ll park it for you,” he said.
“Thanks,” I grumbled and heaved myself out of the car into knee-deep snow on the side, where the prospects hadn’t shoveled. It was less slick and easier to climb the driveway in the powder versus where it had been shoveled and deiced. I mean, with record snowfall like we’d been having, the deicer wasn’t really able to do a whole lot.
“Smoke, come help her,” Reaver called up before getting into my car. I looked up to Sage holding down a hand to me, his brown eyes guarded and unreadable. I put my hand in his and he frowned.
“Where the fuck are your gloves?” he demanded.
“In my pocket.”
“Should put ‘em on next time. No point now, we’ll be inside in the time it takes you to dig them out.”
I smiled and Dante got out of the car while Reaver situated himself behind the wheel.
“Go on, get up there! I’ll wait.”
Sage helped me struggle up through the heavy drifts of snow to the club’s front door and as soon as we were safely under the overhang, I heard my car’s engine rev.
“Get in here,” Sage ordered and ushered me ahead of him. I went into the club, Dante right behind me, and sighed in relief as Sage shut the front door against the cold.
“You good?” Dray demanded from where he leaned up against the bar. Data spun around in his chair, the curtains to his command center whisked back and his monitors displaying every part of the grounds outside the club.
“We’re good,” Dante answered.
“Alright then.” Dray nodded and turned his attention back to Uncle Disney behind the bar. I smiled.
“Hi, Uncle Disney.”
“Hey, peanut,” he called back. I grinned. I would never get tired of him calling me that, but Sage’s expression mollified me. His expression crushed down into a major frown and he swept past me and my brother into the depths of the club.
“Dad gave us the key to his room,” I said to Dray softly. “In case it’s too dangerous to make the drive back.” Dray nodded.
The lock and key thing had started when everybody started popping out kids since firearms were usually kept in club rooms and not every brother, like my dad, had a gun safe in their quarters.
“Thanks for the heads-up, Eedee.”
I smiled and gave a nod. “Welcome.”
Laughter emanated from back in the media room and I went that way, looking forward to seeing my bestie, disappointed when she wasn’t there, at least not yet.
“Hey, Eedee.” Noah tossed his dishwater blond hair out of his hazel eyes and I smiled faintly.
“Hey, Noah.”
“’Sup Eedee?” Chandler, Noah’s younger brother, asked. He was my age but barely. I was on the cusp of nineteen, but Chandler had just turned eighteen. He was all Archer with promising rugged good looks and the same medium brown hair. The only thing of Melody’s he got was her eyes.
“Hey, Chandler. Not much, just got here.”
Noah chuckled, but the smile was wiped right off his face when someone bellowed from the back, “Hey, Prospect!”
“Duty calls,” I said with a grin and Noah shot me a little salute before pushing off his perch on the arm of the couch and passing me on the way out.
“Anybody pick the movies?” I asked.
“Not yet, no,” Chandler answered.
“Woo hoo,” I said with a wink, and he pushed to his feet out of the recliner he’d claimed to wander the shelves along the walls with me and Dante to pick out the night’s offerings.
We had a neat little pile of DVD and Blu-Ray discs on the corner of the entertainment hutch at the back of the room by the time the rest of the kids started piling in.
“Eedee!” Harmony threw her arms around me with a squeal of delight and I hugged her back with just as much enthusiasm.
“I missed you!” I declared, and she grinned.
“Missed you too! You pick the movies?”
“Yup, we’re all ready to go.”
“Awesome!”
“Alright, alright! Settle down in here!” Dray boomed and his son, Stephen, ducked around him and went to post up on one end of the couch.
“What have we got over here?” he asked and with that, the fun got to begin.
5
Sage…
“You good, bro?” I looked up and over at Dray and nodded.
“Yeah, man. Why?”
“Rev said maybe I need to check in with you a little more. Holiday coming up and all.” His dark eyes like burning coals raked over my face, searching out my expression. I kept it pretty neutral.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“He shouldn’t have bothered you.” I gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I’m fine.”
He put a hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze, a frown crushing his brow and says, “Don’t ever think that any one of my guys coming to me and expressing concern over another is ever ‘bothering me.’ Don’t get it twisted, Smoke. We’re a fuckin’ family here.”
I nodded, feeling thoroughly chastened, the first stirrings of shame making me itch.
“My bad,” I said and nodded, unable to bring myself to look at my president.
“What about Eden?” he asked me and I did look up sharply at that.
“What abo
ut her?” I asked, brow wrinkling with a need to know just what he was getting at.
“Come sit down with me.” He jerked his head in the direction of the tables out in the common room. “The rest of you fuck off and mind your business,” he said with a grin.
Slice and Disney turned away and started talking bikes, and I shook my head but took my beer with me as Dray guided me over to a far table by the window. The lights out in the parking lot were shining through the stained-glass mosaic of the club’s logo and I got a big dose of nostalgia. Looking at that window made the room feel more like a chapel than anything else. I think that’s why we still held it in here. We had every opportunity to build a new meeting room out off the back, but instead, we’d expanded the media room for the kids and the women to keep them out of our business we continued to conduct in here.
“It’s time to stop pretending, Sage,” Dray said kindly once we’d sat down. The use of my legal name caught me off guard.
“Stop pretending about what?” I asked slowly.
“Eedee,” he said simply. “You know that girl’s been absolutely mad about you since she was something like six years old.”
I shook my head and looked at the bottle between my hands, peeling back the label.
“It’s not like that,” I said. “Eden’s just a kid.”
Dray snapped his fingers, and I looked up sharply.
“Time to stop pretending,” he said with a little more vehemence. “She’s not a little girl anymore. Just like Maren was no more a child when she got with Nox.”
I flinched at that and scowled. Dray leaned back in his seat.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” he asked.
“That’s what?” I demanded, knowing pretty much exactly what he was fuckin’ talking about but wanting to deny it anyway.
“Age gap is bugging you,” he said.
I shook my head. “It’s way more than that.”
“You sayin’ you don’t feel the same?” he asked.
It was partially that, I mean, I think it was… part of it was I’d watched Eden grow up. I mean, we were kids together in some ways but in others, there’d been some gaps, you know? She was eight when Connor and I had made the decision to serve.
We’d been lucky enough to do bootcamp together, but we’d been separated by job pool after that. Different units. We’d stayed in for four years, got out, then we’d still been kind of young and dumb with some shit to prove. Not to anybody here, but to ourselves. We agreed on Chicago, prospected with the Chicago chapter and man, the president and his boys out that way did not go easy on us.
When the time was right, Slice and I agreed that it was time to come home for more than just the holidays… mostly after that holiday.
“Looks like you got some shit to sort out, brother,” Dray said, and I looked up from my beer to my president. He gave me a smile that was somewhere between pride and encouragement and said, “Just figure it out quick. Women don’t wait around forever.”
He stood up and I felt kind of startled, I mean… what the fuck was that? Had he just given me some sort of fuckin’ permission?
I stared after him kind of shocked when Ghost’s kids burst through the club’s front doors – all six of ‘em, boisterously all talking at once as Harmony, the oldest, tried to wrangle them. All of ‘em loaded down with pillow, sleeping bags, and overnight bags. A real campout about to go down in the media room. I cracked a smile and thought, here we go…
“You got this?” Dray asked of me from back over at the bar and I nodded.
“Yeah, Slice and I will get ‘em started,” I replied and got up.
“I’m on popcorn duty already,” Slice said and lifted the leaf at the end of the bar to get behind it and head over to the industrial kitchen hiding behind it.
“Popcorn?” I heard Reaver ask from inside.
“Fire up the microwaves,” Slice answered. “The horde has arrived.”
I got up and before I could take any of the stuff Harmony carried off of her, Dante materialized to do it.
“Hey!” he said and smiled at her.
“Hey, Dante.” She smiled back. I shook my head grinning and turned to head past the fishbowl, my eyes finding Eden standing quiet and unobtrusive in the hall. She looked eager, but she wasn’t looking at me for once. She was looking at Harmony and I thought to myself, must’ve been a while since she’s seen her.
I went to edge past her, surprised when her attention didn’t waver off her best friend, Dray’s words coming back to haunt me… “Women don’t wait around forever…”
I found myself startled for a second time in a pretty short span of time when I realized that I was disappointed. That I missed how her face lit up when she saw me. The fact she had missed me brushing by her completely; well, it kind of hurt.
That had me fucked up. I mean, I wanted to be invisible. Didn’t I? Except now that I was, it damn sure didn’t feel good.
I went into the media room and over to the projector at the back. We’d overhauled the shit out of it when I was a teen and the brood of kids just kept growing. We knocked out the back wall, building risers, making it into a real movie theater experience with couches and recliners set in a tiered setup so you could see over the row in front of you. It was three rows down, the back wall painted white, black curtains hung to either side, track lighting along the tops and sides of the room, rope lights on a dimmer switch set into the floor marking out the aisle leading down.
It was pretty impressive, and it’d been fun to help Slice’s dad and the rest of the guys build it. It’d been the summer we’d fully learned the whole drywall trade. It was a useful skill to have, let me tell you.
Someone had already set a stack of movies back here by the projector and I went through ‘em. Looks like they’d already stacked them in order – good deal. Made my life easy. We were starting with The Nightmare Before Christmas. It was tradition, starting easy and progressively getting more fucked up as the younger kids knocked out.
Looked like this year went Nightmare, Gremlins, Die Hard, and finally ended on Krampus. That last one was both fucked up and hilarious. A sort of gore-fest horror movie that threw back to shit like the Evil Dead, only truly Christmas.
Underneath Krampus was Edward Scissor Hands and a couple of more kid-related backups in case the youngest ones were still up and at ‘em and we had to put the heavy shit off just a little bit longer.
Shelly would straight murder us if her little Miracle came home with nightmares.
Everybody knew when it came to her and Ghost, that Shelly was the one you had to worry about. Motherhood hadn’t done shit to calm her tits. If anything, she just diverted a lot of her fire to becoming an intolerable mamma bear. Especially where six-year-old Miracle was concerned.
She’d had more than a few miscarriages before Miracle was born six years ago, capping off her and Ghost’s brood at six.
They had Harmony, Eldritch, Cadence, Dalton, Ranger, and finally little Miracle. It got to the point that any time Ghost announced they were pregnant again, it’d been met with groans and the occasional ‘get off of her, man!’
None of us would trade any of the kids for the world, though. Even the ones who had their mother’s personality. Thirteen-year-old Dalton and twelve-year-old Ranger were seriously handfuls at school. Lucky that they hadn’t had their little asses whooped for turning into a pair of bullies. Club didn’t fuckin’ play that shit – we had a bad enough rep and a hard-enough time as it was, so it’d been a group effort to curb stomp that shit.
“Hey, Dice! What’s first?” Dalton asked.
“Nightmare Before Christmas,” I called down to him as he and Ranger got set up on the floor down in front.
“Aw, man!” Ranger complained. “Again?”
I counted to five silently in my head and said, “Can always have your pops come and get you, take you back home.” I knew it was harsh, but I wasn’t putting up with preteen or teenage bullshit tonight.
“I didn’t say that!�
� Ranger cried.
“Then quit your bitching,” I called down.
He mumbled something I didn’t catch and Eden barked out sharply, “Hey! Apologize!”
Her sharp tone made everybody jump.
“I’m sorry,” Ranger mumbled and ducked down in front, laying on his stomach and hugging his pillow.
I met Eden’s steady, warm brown gaze, and she gave me a nod as I slid the first disc in the tray. I gave her a nod back. Not sure what he said, and I was curious, but she’d shut it down. I didn’t want to make it a thing, so I let it go.
I got the movie going, and the kids settled down after that. Reaver brought in two big bowls of popcorn, and I mean big, giant metal mixing bowls that were capable of holding like three or four bags of the microwave stuff.
“Kettle corn,” he said, thrusting one of the bowls at Eden and her face lit up, which just seeing it made me smile. I felt a weird stirring in my chest as I tried to figure out what the fuck? I mean, seriously… what was up with me?
She slid into the back row and sat down on the end of the couch, Harmony and Dante sliding in past her. The oldest kids always took up the back couches. The middle row usually ended up being adults, while down front was the youngest kids’ territory.
“Where’s Ghost?” I asked.
“Fucked off back out there,” Slice said, about to head back out to grab more popcorn and drinks I imagine.
“Prime towing time,” Reaver agreed, and I nodded.
“Prospect!” Reaver crowed.
“Yeah! I’m comin’!” Noah called and appeared in the door handing over plastic bottles of Coke from the fridge, the outside hazy with condensation.
“Well pass ‘em out!” Slice frowned at him. “Don’t hand ‘em to me!”
“Shit, sorry!”
Reaver winked at me. “Hey! There are kids present! Watch your fuckin’ language!” He shoved Noah past him into the room and I chuckled.
“Sorry!” Noah said, harried, and Slice and I cracked grins along with Reave.
I mouthed the word, wow, and that just made Slice and Reave try to stifle their giggles. I caught Eden smiling up at me, biting her bottom lip to keep from laughing too. I smiled down at her and gave a nod.
