Some and the Flame

by Michelle, Christine

  I turned to see Hopper in a chair outside of the door. “You mind sitting a bit longer? I need to go grab some food, and I don’t want to leave the two of them…”

  “You don’t even have to ask, brother. That’s why I’m here. If it ain’t me, another brother will be along to take a shift as long as your boy’s here.”

  My boy. Jesus, fuck! It hit me right in the gut all over again, because with my sister and Bender gone, that’s exactly what Brantley had just become. My boy. Not just my nephew, but mine to raise from now until he reached manhood. I wasn’t scared to take it on. Hell, I’d already been down this road before after my mom got sick and then passed. My siblings became my kids to worry about in a weird way. Now, my nephew had stepped into that same role. Would the cycle ever end? I would never turn away family, but I was tired of losing pieces of it at the same time.

  We didn’t manage to even make it to the cafeteria before both of our phones pinged with incoming texts.

  Poppy – Brant is awake. He asked why the big truck crunched them. He’s asking for his momma, and I don’t know what to tell him.

  “I guess food will have to wait.” I turned on my heel to go back the way we’d come and had taken a few steps before I realized Chief wasn’t with me. He was still reading his message.

  “I’ll come up too, in case either of you needs me, and then head back down to grab food for everyone once we make sure Brant’s okay. They’ll probably both need a rescue by the time we get back.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means that little boy is going to break my sister’s heart wide open, and in response she’ll smother the poor guy in goopy girly lovin’. I’m sure they’ll both need a reprieve by the time you get there.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Figured you could handle one, while I take the other out in the hallway and let her get it all out where he can’t see.”

  It was the first thing that brought a smile to my face in two days. I could picture that happening. Though, if I knew my nephew at all, he would just eat up all the pretty girl lovin. “Thanks man,” I called out as I jogged off in the direction of the room Brant was currently staying in with Chief following close at my heels.

  When I got back to the room, a nurse was doing something off to the side and writing in a tablet. Poppy looked to me with desperation in her eyes. We hadn’t been able to talk, and that was my fault. I should have filled her in on what I told Brantley before I left her alone with him.

  “Hey, little man, you hangin’ in there?”

  “Unc Moke,” he slurred a bit. “My gots owies.”

  “I know you have owies, Brant. The doctors are fixing you up as quick as they can so you can be even stronger when you leave here.”

  “Me Batman?” His sleepy question made me smile again for the second time today.

  “Yeah, Bud, just like Batman.” I could see he was having a hard time keeping his eyes open at that point, and I glanced over to the nurse, concerned since he’d just woken up. Why the hell would he still be sleepy. I didn’t know if he had head trauma that was worse than just the bruising or what. Shit, the explanations we had gotten from the doctor seemed to blend together almost as if Charlie Brown’s teacher had been giving his diagnosis. I knew it happened to people who were in shock, but I’d never experienced it before. When it was my mom going through stuff, she was the one to explain things to me, and she made sure I was really hearing all of it.

  “I gave him a little something for the pain, but unfortunately it will make him super sleepy,” the nurse finally told me after realizing I wasn’t entirely sure what was happening. Her eyes softened as she glanced down at my nephew and patted his little head gently with her hand. “Probably for the best, considering.” She turned her attention to Poppy again before speaking. “Just hit the button and call again if you need anything. I’m not sure if they’ll be moving him upstairs to the pediatric wing or not. I do know they want to keep him here for at least 48 hours to watch and make sure there weren’t any internal injuries that didn’t present right away.”

  “Thank you,” Poppy told her, and then the nurse took off out of the room like the hounds of hell were chasing after her. I caught Chief’s grin and wondered if the bastard had been giving her ‘fuck me’ eyes the whole time or what. She had been cute. Not cute enough for me to really pay much attention to, but then again, no one could compare to the woman watching us with worried eyes.

  “What exactly did he say?” I asked her now that we were alone in the room again.

  She seemed to hesitate at first, and I wasn’t sure why until she began telling me. Poppy probably wanted to spare me the details that my nephew had shared with her, but no matter how much they hurt we needed to know everything. “He told me his momma was screaming and then she wasn’t. Then he asked why the big truck crunched them. He was in a lot of pain. That’s really all he said other than to tell me he hurt.”

  I had to take a seat to absorb that information. We already knew that they’d been run off the road purposely, but to hear that my nephew knew it too, and that my sister had… Shit. I just couldn’t think about it right now. I took a seat in the chair beside Brant’s bed and pulled Poppy down on my lap needing to feel close to her. I needed something that could ground me and hold me together, because I had a little boy counting on me not to lose my shit.

  We sat there quietly, just breathing each other in for a while. I didn’t even notice when Chief left the room. Only that sometime later, it became apparent that we were alone. “Thank you for being here with him.”

  “You don’t have to thank me for that. I know what it’s like to lose almost your entire family. He’s so young though.”

  “He is. I’m going to need you, and I don’t think it’s fair to ask this of you, considering.”

  She stopped me there. “You don’t even have to ask, Love. I’m here for whatever you both need. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Thank you,” I whispered into her hair, feeling an immediate sense of relief. Things were still so new for us that I hated making demands on her time. Maybe I’d never have the words to convey what it meant to me, but I held her tighter and just breathed her in, hoping that somehow the feelings would convey through osmosis or some shit.

  I’m not sure how long we sat we sat vigil at Brant’s side, me in the hospital chair and Poppy in my lap, but a while later Shep, Ghost, and Leanne came bounding through the door. Ghost and Leanne seemed to be trying to hold Shep back, but he shrugged them off and looked completely devastated as he took in my little black and blue nephew lying there on the bed.

  “No!” Shep choked out on a sob. “Tell me this isn’t my doing.” Fucking hell. I knew this would hit him hard since he got us involved in his family’s business, but I wasn’t sure I was ready for the reality of his reaction right now. Not here, in front of my nephew’s hospital bed. I turned all my attention to him as he stood there, shoulders shaking and diving deep in that pit of despair and self-loathing. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He kept mumbling.

  “This isn’t on you,” I managed to get out in between his ‘I’m sorry’ litany. “This is not on you. This is on the fuckers who thought it was okay to run my sister and her family off the road. We will get them. They will die for this. All I need you to do is make sure your mom and sister are somewhere safe until we do. Send them away if you can. If you can’t, let us know, and we’ll see if one of the other chapters can house them for a while.”

  Shep’s head shook back and forth almost violently. “No, look what happened when I got your guys involved before. I can’t. I won’t let you take on anything else.”

  “They killed my sister,” I hissed back at him. “This is out of your hands now. Take care of your family so they don’t end up dead too. We will get the bastards who did it.”

  “Jesus, I can’t believe I did this.”

  “You did not do this!” I whisper-yelled, trying not to disturb Brantley while getting my point across. “No one in this damn room is
responsible for this happening. You hear me? Any one of us would choose to help you out all over again if you called, even knowing what might happen. It’s the life we live, man. We don’t let family down, and you are my family too. So, let go of the guilt, and just worry about getting the women out of town.”

  “What about your woman?” Shep finally asked as he took in Poppy sitting there watching everything go down.

  “We’ve got her, and all the rest handled. Everyone’s on lockdown for now. They’ll be plenty safe. Don’t worry about us. Worry about your family, and if we need to get them out of town we will. The Dakotas will take them for sure, probably Sierra High too, maybe they can even stay with the girls of S.H.E. down there?” I turned my attention to Ghost, silently asking him if that was okay, or if I was stepping over a line.

  “Already put in a call. Angel Girl said they’d take them in, no problem. They also volunteered some people if we need them. Keys and Quickshot are working their collective magic as we speak to get us the information we need to find these bastards.”

  “See, we have this covered,” I offered up as reassurance.

  Shep didn’t say anything else for a long time, he simply stood there watching Brant as his chest rose and fell peacefully. “What’s going to happen to little man now?”

  “He’s going to stay with me,” I explained with no hesitation.

  “Does he know?”

  “Not yet.” I told him. I’d talked to Brant about the fact that I wasn’t going to leave him, but I didn’t think he understood what that meant just yet. Hell, I wasn’t so sure he’d even remember the conversation we had since I hadn’t realized they’d been giving him some pretty strong medications for the pain. “How the hell is a someone so small supposed to comprehend that his family is gone?”

  I must have spoken the question aloud because Poppy answered me. “He’ll get through, because not all of his family is gone. He has you, Kent, and the club at his back. He won’t want for anything.”

  “Except his parents,” I muttered, hoping she was the only one who would hear that part.

  “There’s no helping that part, but we’ll get him through it.”

  Chapter 9

  Arranging the funeral of my little sister is not something I ever thought I would have to do in my lifetime. I always figured as the oldest sibling; I would be the one going out first. Arguing with my little brother over every detail was also something I didn’t think I’d have to do. Kent had taken the bad news and immediately put it off on the club, as if we had all caused this shit to happen personally.

  “They don’t have any right to be involved!” His voice rose as we stood there looking at caskets that would hold our sister and her husband. Bender didn’t have family outside of the club, so his arrangements fell on our shoulders too. Ghost had already tried to take that burden from me, but I wouldn’t hear of it. Bender and Soph would want to go out together in every way. I was going to see to it that they did. I sighed at the thought before turning to my brother.

  “Bender was a member of the club. Soph was heavily involved. The club was their family just as much as we are. They would both be extremely disappointed if the rest of their family were banned from coming to say their farewells, little brother.”

  “The club got them both killed and took them away from their son. I don’t think they’d care about that right now.”

  “The club didn’t get them killed.”

  “You’re saying this wasn’t the result of something the club did?”

  “I’m saying the club got involved in the business of a private family with no affiliation, because they were in danger. We saved their lives. Bender would do it all over again if he were here to make that decision. No one knew what the fallout from helping other people would be, but you know what? I fuckin’ do it every day. If not for the club, I do it for the department. You gonna shun the men from my firehouse if I die in a fire?”

  I could see his anger burning underneath the surface, but I didn’t stop there. “If you were to die on the ice in some freak accident, or because some punk-ass fucker from another team took a pot shot that went wrong, am I supposed to blame your whole team and tell them they can’t show up to pay their respects?”

  “It’s not the same!” He yelled out, face red with the frustration I knew he was feeling. He wanted something tangible to blame, and the club fit the bill, even if he knew deep down that they weren’t really responsible.

  “It’s exactly the same, and as soon as you pull your head out of your ass and realize that you’re going to feel like a jackass for shitting on your sister’s family when they’re all devastated at her death just as we are.”

  “You’re comparing them to our blood bond?”

  “No, I’m fucking not. The difference is, we are blood bonded. They chose to be in her life, and they want to be there to celebrate it and say goodbye. It’s not a choice for us because we are blood. They took her in and loved her just because they wanted to. That’s the difference. The only difference, Kent. My club will be the ones taking care of Brantley when I’m on shift, or if something comes up. They are the family that Brant knows more so than you since your schedule keeps you away so often. They will be there for him. If for no fucking other reason, they will be there because that little boy can’t take losing any more family right now and those men are his uncles. The women are his aunts. He needs them. He expects them to be there, and saying goodbye is something that is more important for him than any of the rest of us so we’re going to honor that, whether you like it or not.”

  “Fuck you, man!” Kent shouted before storming away. I knew he’d put it all together and get with the program. He just needed time to grieve and work through the anger over losing our sister so pointlessly.

  The funeral director approached me wearily for my choice of caskets. “We’ll take two. One in black and the other white,” I told him. Black for Granger and the white for Sophie.”

  “Yes sir, I will make sure everything is set. We have all of your other choices?”

  “You do,” I told him. Even though every other choice we had made was like pulling teeth from Kent, we managed to agree on all of the little stuff aside from the guestlist. There was no way I was keeping the club away from their funeral though. It didn’t matter how big a fit Kent threw. If he even thought to cause a scene at the funeral, I would toss him in the goddamn hole waiting to hold my sister and club brother. Someone else could fish his cantankerous ass out of it.

  My phone pinged and when I glanced down, it was a text from Quickshot.

  Quickshot: Think we found something. Tracking real estate. There’s a couple places not too far away.

  Me: Send the addresses, and we’ll run them down.’

  Quickshot: I’ll send them after the funeral.

  Me: Send now, or there will be another funeral you won’t have a choice in attending.

  Quickshot: Damn it, Smoke. You have too much going on right now.

  Me: Right. So don’t fuck with me.

  Quickshot: Sent.

  Me: Did not receive.

  Quickshot: Sent to Ghost. You can get the info from him.

  That fucker. I’d always respected the man especially since he went to go help start one of our new chapters about a decade ago. You had to respect a man who would move away from everything he knows in order to get out from under the shadow of his father and the other men who had raised him. On second thought, maybe he took the easy way out by doing it. Who knew? The only thing I knew in that moment was that when I saw Quickshot again, he had an ass whooping coming to him.

  I wondered briefly if I had been able to go with them to Georgia back then, would I have met Poppy sooner? I let the fleeting thought go just as quickly as it had come. While I’d felt abandoned by the younger generation of Aces High Cedar Falls at the time, there was no way I could have up and moved states away when I was taking care of my siblings. They had already been through enough.

  Still, back then, there wa
s something calling me to join them, if only my circumstances had been different. Maybe we weren’t ready for one another then. The way Chief talks about how in love his sister and Walker were in the beginning, I probably wouldn’t have stood a chance. Then I would have been just another Snake pining over another man’s woman. Yeah, I knew about him. I also knew that Poppy never gave a single thought as to what it would be like to jump from her man to him. Part of that was probably because she knew Snake was well aware of the shady business her ex had been getting up to and he stuck by the code and never told her.

  I shook off all my wandering thoughts when I realized I was standing in the fucking funeral home looking at caskets. Moments like these made me question if I was losing my goddamn mind. My fingers slid along the showroom casket I had chosen for my sister and brother-in-law. They would be buried side-by-side, just the way they had lived their lives since meeting one another. It was a fitting tribute, the last I could give them besides making sure their son was taken care of and raised up to be the man they’d both be proud of. Another incoming text pulled me out of the morose thoughts that were starting to swarm.

  Chief – Is little man with Poppy?

  Me – yeah

  Chief – Kent is asking to see him.

  Me – supervised only. He doesn’t have to know that. Kent’s not taking shit well, and he’s blaming the club.

  Chief – I figured that when he demanded I bring his nephew to him away from the shithole den of evil.

  Me – Fuck me. He walks his ass into the den and deals with the devil in order to see his nephew. Not gonna have him saying vile shit to the kid. Club is his family. This ain’t the time.