"Paint the flowers there. We'll hang it in the living room."
That was Thayer's solution to my clear sadness over the issue.
He never did stop being romantic... in his own way.
A way I had grown to love all the more over the years.
Especially when our four hellions decided it was their mission to test the strength of each of us and our bond together.
Archer, Axel, Arlo, and April.
We hadn't meant to do the same-first-letter thing, but by the third one, we felt we were kind of locked in.
Nine, seven, six, and four.
Even at those ages, they practically ran the joint.
Those beautiful blond-haired terrors.
They took more after Thayer in the looks department. His lighter hair, his sturdy frame, height.
The one thing they somehow got from both of us at the same time was our eyes. They had green eyes with golden starbursts from the pupils. They were the most stunning eyes I had ever seen in my life. I knew I was partial. I'd grown them all myself and all. But anyone who saw them actually took a step back, took a moment out of their day to tell us just how gorgeous they were.
They also had those thick-ass lashes I couldn't help but be somewhat envious of.
These weren't your typical social-media-ready kids in those perfectly lit pictures proud parents post all the time. Nope. My kids started out in fresh clothing in the morning, of course, but before we even hit noon, they were covered in various substances that were always wet, always sticky, and always all but impossible to get out come wash day. Their hair and faces often found themselves likewise afflicted.
And I didn't give one good goddamn.
I started out trying really hard. To be one of those amazing moms. The ones who did everything right. Who had babies on sleep schedules and freshly washed faces and halfway decent manners.
It lasted about three years.
Until I realized that I wasn't raising children.
Oh, no.
I was raising some wild beasts wearing the skin of human children. They were feral and impossible to tame. They'd bite and scratch if you tried. Sometimes literally.
So I had to learn to accept my role as a zookeeper.
The wild animals got dirty and bloody and threw shit - luckily, not literally in this case - and I just tossed food at them, made sure the gates were locked, treated any wounds that a little blood licking couldn't cure.
Did I occasionally look at other people's children and wonder what it must be like to have them actually get their foods in their mouths instead of their hair and laps? Sure. But I also understood that a lot of parents had a fuckton more patience than I did.
"Ma, Aunt Joey is here," Archer, our oldest, informed me, jerking his chin behind me in a move that was so much his father that my heart squeezed in my chest.
Turning my head over my shoulder, I felt the smile pulling at my lips at seeing her letting herself in the gate, hand-in-hand with her only child.
Joey, of course, had a well-mannered, sweet, quiet child.
Save for when she was at karate class.
Then she was a vicious little beast.
She made us all proud.
"I told you you didn't have to bring anything," I insisted, seeing a picnic basket in her hand. The fancy kind that had the actual glasses and plates and real silverware strapped to the lid. It was probably loaded down with glass storage containers wrapped in silicone sleeves to prevent breaking. And fresh-pressed juices.
Joey was the social media mommy everyone aspired to be.
Unlike many others, though, I knew her life simply was as beautiful as it looked in pictures. Her house was perfect. Her husband was perfect. Her child was perfect.
It was exactly what I had wanted for her all along.
She had the better life I had wanted to make sure she got.
I really never could have known that we could both have it simultaneously, that my happiness didn't need to be sacrificed for hers.
It was amazing what life could offer you when you took a step back, saw things for how they really were. I didn't need to handle everything. I didn't need to coddle Joey, take care of her, provide for her. She found her own way.
Me, I guess I found mine too.
Marriage.
Kids.
My tattoo shop that had franchised out, opening up in different locations all around the country. Just like Bea's clubs did.
I didn't need money.
I didn't need to bust my ass every day.
In fact, I had been semi-retired since our third baby was born. It was just too much to work even part-time with three monsters around.
I still did work. For regular clients. For special requests. And for every single Reckless Renegade prospect who was getting patched in. They came to me, gave me a spot, and they got the logo just like everyone else. It was a new rule, one that had never existed in Thayer's father's time, or even Thayer's first time running the club. And, honestly, I thought it had more to do with Thayer's need for permanence, for something more than a pledge from his men than anything else.
It hadn't been easy for him.
To eventually open the doors back up, invite people in. Even knowing all the traitors were dead, that it was highly unlikely to have all his men mutiny against him again, he was understandably anxious about it. To be perfectly honest, I looked at the prospects with suspicion for a long time myself.
I warmed to them when I realized I would never again have to sweep or mop a floor, scrub a toilet, clean the oven, or go to the grocery store.
I would never imagine hiring someone to clean my house or shop for me. Yet I somehow had no qualms about letting the Reckless Renegades prospects do it all for me. Thayer had once sent one of them on a midnight tampon run, and I had absolutely no problem with that. You know... to prove their loyalty to the club. Not for my own comfort when it was snowing out, and my bed was warm and snuggly. Nope.
"Guess what we brought?" Joey asked, dropping down beside me, pulling open the picnic basket, reaching inside for plastic tray. "Blackberries," she supplied, showing me the overflowing container. "We have to uphold tradition even if the bushes aren't ready for us yet."
The bushes were insane. They were these wild things that we never tried to tame. We wanted them just like the bushes at the park. In return, they gave enough fruit to offer us all bellies full of blackberries all summer long.
It was the only edible thing on my property.
As for Joey, though, she had those sprawling gardens she used to talk about. Full of flowers, yeah, but also berries and vegetables, fruit trees. The end of the world could come, and Joey and her family would never even notice. They could just live wholly off their land.
The kids ran off, squealing, laughing, smiling, and in the case of my creatures - taunting one another - leaving us alone on the blanket, making the past come crashing back to me.
Joey and me at the park.
"So much has changed," Joey said, reading my thoughts as we both placed our hands behind us, leaning back.
"And yet, it is you and me at the park with blackberries."
"It's funny how life works," she added, shaking her head. "How twisty things need to get before everything gets straightened out again."
That might have been my favorite observation of life.
Life had certainly gotten twisty.
For both of us.
In so many ways.
It had taken actual work - for all of us - to get the knots out, to recover from the pain of them being there. Even with it all straightened, there were still lingering aches, there were still thoughts and feelings and habits that proved hard to shake, that might always be with us.
But I wasn't worried about the bad.
Because it was clear that the good far outweighed it.
For all of us.
It had taken time, care, consideration, acceptance, patience, and love.
I wasn't good at any of those, so the
learning curve for me was steep.
Yet we all ended up there eventually.
"Oh, no," Joey gasped, shooting upward as her daughter faced up two of her cousins, arms in a fight stance.
"Let her whoop their asses. They probably deserve it. Yeah, I know," I said when I felt her gaze on my profile. "But what can I say, they're beasts."
"You've got to be talking about my kids," Thayer said from behind us, making me turn my head upside down, watching him approach us.
"They have a bit too much of their father in them," I reminded him.
But the comment only made his lips curve up. "Yeah, that's probably true."
"You better keep your hands to yourself, Arch, Axel," he yelled across the field as Joey's daughter made a lunging motion toward them.
"They have absolutely no manners," I reminded him. "But they know not to hit girls."
"Just making sure," Thayer agreed with a nod as he sat down behind me.
I don't think I had ever had any doubts about Thayer's abilities to be a good father. He was a good man. He was a good leader, a good brother, an amazing husband. It just seemed to follow that he would be a good father.
Yet he even managed to surprise me.
He was his usual laid-back self, letting most of the stress of parenthood roll off his back. He didn't mind the sleepless nights. He handled the gorier of scrapes and guts, so I didn't have to stomach it. He taught them things.
He was generous with his time, with himself. He read them bedtime stories. Even if they wanted ten of them. He kissed their heads when he came home late, and they were brushing their teeth at the sink. He gave them snuggles when they wanted or needed them. He kissed ouchies. He held them when they cried things out.
But he wasn't all soft.
No one would ever accuse Thayer of that.
He was the rule setter, the one who could make them follow through even when I failed. He was the one who made them learn young that life involved work, that everyone had to do it. So they always had tasks that needed to be completed before they could play or before bed. Archer taking out the trash, Axel running the cordless vacuum around the main floor, Arlo brought the dishes from the table to the dishwasher, April made sure the dog was fed and watered. They all had to clean their toy room once a day. And they were never allowed to back talk in an aggressive way. We allowed some leeway for sarcasm since, well, there was no way our kids weren't going to come out sarcastic as hell.
As the boys got older, they could be found in the garage with their father, learning the names of tools, the parts of bikes. You could practically see their desire to have one themselves.
And, in Archer, you could find him mimicking his father, standing like he stood, using turns of phrases like Thayer did, being strong and stoic, protecting his little brothers.
I could practically see him as a man, one day taking over the club Thayer would give to him like his father had done.
"Oh, Christ, babe, with the waterworks," Thayer said, rolling his eyes as my eyes stung.
Thayer - and motherhood - had changed me in a lot of ways. And I didn't just mean the stretch marks across my entire freaking stomach. They had softened me a bit, made me sappier, more prone to wistfulness and tears. Much to my mortification at times.
I'd cried over a TV commercial the week before.
A TV commercial.
My children had made fun of me for it.
And my husband had allowed it.
I had totally deserved it too.
"She cried over a commercial last week, you know," Thayer told Joey, who gave me a sympathetic look.
"That ASPCA one?" she asked, nodding.
"No, sweets, a fucking margarine commercial," he told her, making Joey throw her head back and laugh.
"I'm sorry, Sera. That is pretty bad."
"Yeah yeah yeah I know," I agreed.
Maybe our conversation would have continued on the nostalgic, light, happy track it had been on.
But then April and her only other female comrade let out fucking war cries and charged the boys.
"I got it. I got it," Joey insisted, hopping up, running across the field toward them.
"Oh!" Thayer said, wincing, as Axel took a slap to the cheek. We could practically hear the sound of flesh on flesh. His skin was going to be red.
"That was a good one," I nodded as Axel sent small eyes to his baby sister.
"He probably had it coming."
"That's what I said," I agreed, nodding.
April took a lot of shit from her older brothers so that they would let her play with them. Occasionally, she got to the point where she'd had enough. It was hard to even fault her for it. I wasn't sure if I wanted to. Though maybe we'd have to have a talk about smacking people in the face.
"What happened, girls?" Thayer asked when the girls ran up our way while Joey stayed behind to listen to the boys explanations.
"They... they... they..." April started, face bright red with indignation. "They said girls always lose fights."
"What?" I asked.
"Well, you sure showed them," Thayer said at the exact same time.
"They're mean," April insisted while her cousin hung her head a little, likely remembering how her martial arts teachers told her that she was not supposed to fight unless she had to.
"They're gross too," Thayer agreed, jerking his chin over toward them, done talking to Joey who looked a little exasperated, standing in a circle. We couldn't hear, but I was pretty sure Archer and Axel were talking Arlo into eating some sort of creepy crawler.
"Don't you..."
"Let it happen," Thayer cut me off, shrugging. "Choose your battles. A beetle isn't going to kill him."
So this was what our life had come to.
Bikes. Brotherhood. Sisterhood. Love. Legacy.
And bugs.
I wouldn't have had it any other way.
XX
DON'T FORGET!
Dear Reader,
Thank you for taking time out of your life to read this book. If you loved this book, I would really appreciate it if you could hop onto Goodreads or Amazon and tell me your favorite parts. You can also spread the word by recommending the book to friends or sending digital copies that can be received via kindle or kindle app on any device.
ALSO BY JESSICA GADZIALA
If you liked this book, check out these other series and titles in the NAVESINK BANK UNIVERSE:
The Henchmen MC
Reign
Cash
Wolf
Repo
Duke
Renny
Lazarus
Pagan
Cyrus
Edison
Reeve
Sugar
The Fall of V
Adler
Roderick
Virgin
Roan
The Savages
Monster
Killer
Savior
Mallick Brothers
For A Good Time, Call
Shane
Ryan
Mark
Eli
Charlie & Helen: Back to the Beginning
Investigators
367 Days
14 Weeks
4 Months
Dark
Dark Mysteries
Dark Secrets
Dark Horse
Professionals
The Fixer
The Ghost
The Messenger
The General
The Babysitter
Rivers Brothers
Lift You Up
STANDALONES WITHIN NAVESINK BANK:
Vigilante
Grudge Match
OTHER SERIES AND STANDALONES:
Stars Landing
What The Heart Needs
What The Heart Wants
What The Heart Finds
What The Heart Knows
The Stars Landing Deviant
What The Heart Learns
Surrogate
The Sex Surrogate
Dr. Chase Hudson
The Green Series (paranormal romance)
Into the Green
Escape from the Green
DEBT
Dissent
Stuffed: A Thanksgiving Romance
Unwrapped
Peace, Love, & Macarons
A Navesink Bank Christmas
Don't Come
Fix It Up
N.Y.E.
faire l'amour
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jessica Gadziala is a full-time writer, parrot enthusiast, and coffee drinker from New Jersey. She enjoys short rides to the book store, sad songs, and cold weather.
She is very active on Goodreads, Facebook, as well as her personal groups on those sites. Join in. She's friendly.
STALK HER!
Connect with Jessica:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JessicaGadziala/
Reader Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/314540025563403/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13800950.Jessica_Gadziala
Goodreads Group: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/177944-jessica-gadziala-books-and-bullsh
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<3/ Jessica
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