He laid his forehead on her shoulder and rocked inside her, gently, slowly, and she held him as he held her. The love they made was quiet and unhurried. Eventually, though Bibi hadn’t come, Hoosier could no longer control his body’s demand. When he reached his finish, he let his body rest on hers, and they stayed like that, cheek to cheek, their tears mingling.
At his ear, Bibi whispered, “I love you, Hooj.”
“Love you better, Cheeks.”
~oOo~
Hoosier parked the wrecker in the Emergency Room parking lot, and before he could kill the engine, Blue was out the passenger door and running toward the ER entrance.
“Blue! Easy, brother,” Hoosier called, hurrying after him. Blue in a frenzy could easily lead to property damage at least.
He caught up with him at the reception desk, where Blue was already shouting at the poor man behind it. “JUST LET ME FUCKIN’ SEE MY WIFE!”
Hoosier went to his friend’s side and pushed him a step back. To the receptionist, he said, “Margot Fordham. This is Alan, her husband.”
The receptionist looked warily at Blue and said, “I just need ID, and I can direct you back.”
Blue snarled incoherently, and Hoosier turned to him and slammed his hand down on his friend’s shoulder. “Blue, get a lid on. You’re gonna get yourself thrown out before you get back there.”
As Blue swore and fumbled for his wallet, his fingers tangling in its chain, Hoosier felt an awkward hand on his back. He turned and found Bibi, holding Connor’s hand and cradling a sleeping, four-month-old Serenity in her other arm. She’d pulled on his work shirt with the Serenity hand.
He hugged her around the kids. “God, baby. You’re okay?”
“I told you on the phone, Hooj. Yeah. We’re okay.” She met Blue’s eyes. “Margot’s okay, too, Blue. She’s just gettin’ a few stitches.”
“Motherfucker put hands on her. I’m gonna mount those hands on a plaque and hang ‘em over the fireplace.”
Hoosier looked down to see Connor goggling at his Uncle Blue. “Jesus, Blue. Watch your mouth.”
Before Blue could respond, the receptionist said, “Treatment room 4. Just through the doors and straight ahead, on your right.” He hit a button or something behind the desk, and the double doors swung open.
Blue brushed his hand over his daughter’s small head, nodded at Hoosier and Bibi, and went back to find his wife.
Hoosier took Connor’s hand from Bibi, and then he led his family to an unpopulated corner of the waiting room. Once they were seated, and Bibi had handed Connor his Game Boy, Hoosier took her chin between his thumb and forefinger. She looked pale and freaked, but in control. Strong. She’d come so far in the past six months. He had his Bibi back, and even this hadn’t rocked her. “Tell me everything. From the beginning.”
“We took the kids to that indoor playground that just opened up. The one over on La Brea?” She smiled at Connor, who was ignoring her, completely engrossed in catching Pokémon or something. “He had a great time, and there’s even a little infant and toddler area, so the baby was entertained, too. It was fun.”
Rubbing the baby’s back, Bibi took a deep breath. So did Hoosier; he was feeling impatient, but he’d asked for everything from the beginning, and Bibi needed to frame the story. “On the way home, Serenity had a poop explosion. Even Connor was complainin’ about the stench. Margot needed gas, so we pulled into the Chevron. I took the kids back to the ladies’ while she filled up. When I got back, Margot was kneelin’ on the ground by the pumps, holdin’ her face, and the van was gone.”
All the ways this could have gone so much worse spiraled in his head. Carjacking had become some kind of twisted fad in the past couple of years, and they were often a lot more violent than a punch to the face. Cars had been jacked with kids strapped in the back. Drivers had been killed. Passengers had been abducted.
He wiped his hands up and down over his face. “Thank God you’re okay. You are okay?”
“Hooj, I said. I’m okay. The kids are okay. And Margot’s just rattled and a little sore. We were lucky.”
He smiled and picked up his son, setting him on his lap. “Yeah. We were.”
~oOo~
The Chevron station had security cameras. Blue went to Vulture and asked for help, and while the LAPD was still twiddling its thumbs, gathering evidence and tossing it in a heap with the rest of the cases they didn’t give a shit about, the club found Margot’s van and the carjacker.
When the intel came in verified, Hoosier stood at his workstation and watched as most of the men working shrugged on their kuttes and followed Blue and Vulture out to right the wrong done to Blue’s old lady.
Every couple of months, Vulture offered Hoosier a patch. The offer was always the same: no prospect period. Full membership from day one, a simple patch-over. He had been VP of the Desert Blades, and Vulture respected his experience. And Hoosier respected Vulture more than he ever had Chuck. Chuck was smart, but he was short-sighted and self-interested. He’d never had a woman or a family, and he had no regard at all for club members who did.
That was, Hoosier thought, why, of all the Blades, only he and Blue had had old ladies or children. Chuck actively discouraged patches from becoming family men. The club was family, period, and only patches were club.
Vulture, on the other hand, was a widower with four daughters. Though his club were true outlaws, knee-deep in violence, they also understood family in a way Hoosier respected. Working for more than a year at Cali Classics, he’d seen the bond and brotherhood of the patches, and he’d known deep envy.
Watching them all drop everything to avenge a harm done to an old lady, Hoosier’s envy was literally painful. It was more than envy. It was loss.
But he’d never risk losing Bibi’s trust by going back to the world that had taken so much from her. Blue insisted—and Vulture did, too—that a legit life was not any safer for family than an outlaw life, that, in fact, they were safer in the bosom of the club, under the protection of their reputation. Their infamy, even. He knew it was true. As the patches rolled out on their mission of retaliation, he remembered that justice was swifter and clearer in the outlaw world, too.
But he couldn’t even bring it up to Bibi. How could she ever understand those truths, when the Blades had brought danger into her house and then left her to suffer for days?
Alone in the shop, he turned back to the bike and to the work he could do.
~oOo~
He didn’t have to bring it up. Bibi did.
A week after the club had exacted vengeance on the carjacker, late in the evening, Hoosier came into the living room and sat down next to Bibi on the piano bench. She was moving her fingers over the keys without striking them, making a silent song. He put his hand on her thigh and squeezed.
“You okay, Cheeks?” Usually when she sat at the piano like this, she was feeling pensive.
“Do you want to take a patch, Hooj?” She didn’t look away from the keys, didn’t stop the rhythmic dance of her fingers.
His heart stopped, then thudded in his chest. “What?”
“Blue says you do. He says the club wants you, and you want it, and I’m holdin’ you back. Am I?”
He was going to beat Blue into an oozing blob. “Blue’s got no business sayin’ shit to you.”
“That’s no answer, baby.”
“I’d never ask you to go back into that life.”
Still playing over the keys, she shook her head. “Not an answer, either. Do you want it? Is it me keepin’ you from it?”
“Beebs, how’m I supposed to answer that? After everything that happened?”
She dropped her hands from the piano and turned to him. “With the truth.”
“Jesus, baby.” He dropped his head and closed his eyes, trying to make sense through the clamor of warning bells going off in his mind. Blue would pay for this meddling. He’d pay dear.
But he wasn’t wrong.
Hoosier looked up and met his wife’s
eyes. “Yeah, I want it. I don’t feel like myself without that leather on my back.”
A deep sigh and a nod of her head. “Blue says this club will look after us like the Blades didn’t. Is that true?”
“I’m gonna kill Blue.”
“No, you’re not. He’s just tryin’ to help.”
“No, Beebs. He’s trying to get his way.”
She shrugged that off. “Is he right? Would we be safer with this club than we were with the Blades?”
“Yeah, I think so. Vulture’s a family man. He thinks like I do, that family is what makes men like us human. They protect their people. But it’s full outlaw, Beebs. Real dark work. You know that.”
“But you want it. And we’ll be safe. Safer, at least. Right?”
The answer was yes, but he was still afraid he’d hurt her to say it, so all he did was sigh.
She looked back at the piano and started to play, this time striking the keys enough to make notes ring. She was playing ‘Born to Run.’ Beginning quietly, so slowly the song was at first almost unrecognizable, she played the intro over a couple of times. Then, moving into the song, she picked up the pace, still not the upbeat tempo of the original. The effect was haunting and sweet.
Hoosier loved Springsteen, everything he’d done. He sat quietly, listening and watching, unable to resist mouthing the words, and he waited for Bibi to arrive at the moment where she could say whatever she needed to say next.
He’d just mouthed the words I want to guard your dreams and visions when she spoke. “Take the patch, Hooj.”
“Baby, I don’t need it.”
She stopped playing and looked at him. “You do. I saw it even without Blue gettin’ in my face. You’re missin’ somethin’ you need. And maybe we need it, too. I want you to take the patch.”
He was still going to beat Blue into the ground, but for now, he wrapped his beautiful, strong old lady in his arms.
“Thank you. Thank you. I love you.”
“I love you better.”
“Yeah, you do.”
THIRTEEN
“Demon’s been workin’ hard to finish the last bedroom at their place, so we’ll have plenty of room. The little one I’ve been stayin’ in don’t have much space for two people.”
Hoosier was being released from the Center soon, maybe in as little as a week. His body was strong enough, and he had enough language and memory, that he didn’t need enough therapy to require in-patient care. Bibi could drive him in a few days a week for appointments.
But they were still homeless, and he was moving in with her to Demon and Faith’s house. He loved those kids. They might as well have had his and Bibi’s blood. But he hated the thought of living off their kindness. He hated it so much it made his stomach sour.
“I…want…our h-h-house.”
“There’s nothin’ left of ours, baby.” Bibi laid her hand on his. “We gotta start over. The insurance paid out, so we can find someplace new when you’re ready. But let’s get you all the way back first. You can’t sign a contract you can’t read, Hooj.”
The doctors and therapists kept telling him how lucky he was. The word ‘miracle’ had been thrown out a few times. He was an old man, but he hadn’t been rendered senseless by the trauma he’d experienced. By all rights, he should have been taking up residence across the Center, in the dementia wing with the much-younger Margot. Instead, he had a lot of his cognitive capacity and memory back, and he was still making progress toward more. His mind had rebounded, and though his body was weaker, it was not weak.
It wasn’t enough. The life he and Bibi had built over four decades had been flattened. Nothing left. Not a scrap of fabric, not a stick of furniture. At seventy-three, he would be leaving the Center homeless, not yet strong enough even to begin to build a new life. Living off of people he’d taken care of most of his life. He didn’t like the way tables had turned.
He huffed and leaned back in his seat.
They were sitting on the café’s little patio, eating lunch with Connor and his girlfr—no, not his girlfriend; they were getting married soon. New memories were still difficult to keep hold of. People he hadn’t known well before weren’t sticking in his mind as well as they should. They kept saying it would improve, and he guessed it was improving. Not quickly enough.
Hoosier and Bibi were eating lunch with Connor and his fiancée, Pilar. The wedding was coming up…in the summer? And, knowing that he had trouble remembering her, Connor and Pilar had been coming to visit him together. Before, Connor mostly had mostly come on his own or with his mother. Since Hoosier had begun to speak, though, he’d seen more of the pretty Latina his son couldn’t keep his eyes or his hands off of.
Pilar had saved him and Bibi. He knew that. It was new knowledge that had stuck, and whenever he saw her, if he could get to that memory, then he could connect why she was important. She was important to his son. His son, who’d been a family man since the day Blue’s oldest daughter was set in his young lap, was finally getting a family of his own.
Pilar was describing something wedding-related. About the dress. She was going to wear her grandmother’s dress. Hoosier could not have cared less about wedding plans, or dresses, but he tried to pay attention anyway. He wanted to remember the girl his son loved.
Had he ever met her grandmother? He didn’t think so. There was something…he remembered something about Pilar. Had she gotten help from the club? Was that how they met? He felt sure that was it, but he couldn’t remember what.
He was still the President of the Night Horde SoCal, but he shouldn’t have been. Bart should have taken the President’s patch, if not while Hoosier was in a coma, then certainly when he’d woken and had still been all but a vegetable. He would have, if he’d been in the VP chair. In fact, that decision had once almost lain before him. But Bart had not. They were all acting in interim, waiting for his return.
Could he return? Could he ever lead again? Hell, could he even do his miles? He’d known long before the fire that he was a lucky son of a bitch to be able to ride hard at his age. He’d been President of his club, whatever its patch, for twenty-five years. That was a long damn tenure in a hard life. Now that he was on the bench, unable to drive, let alone ride, maybe the bench was where he belonged.
But he looked across the table at his son, who was smiling at the woman he loved, listening as though her talk of lace and flowers were actually interesting. Connor was wearing his kutte, his sunglasses tucked in the pocket. Sergeant at Arms, he knew one of the patches on the right side of his chest read—he couldn’t read it, but he knew anyway. Damn, Hoosier was proud of his boy. Not a boy, not for a long time—a man. And a good one. A warrior. A protector. Strong and caring. Warm and loving. The best of father and mother.
Hoosier wasn’t yet ready to walk away from that life. His recent memories might still be shaky, but he had his past firmly in hand. He was proud to wear a kutte, and he was prouder still that he shared that with his son.
Bibi and he hadn’t been able to make more than just that one child, but they’d done it right. And their life had been filled, after all, with young souls who’d needed their care. Bibi had turned her mothering light outward and shone it over everyone she knew.
~oOo~
Hoosier walked into the shop at Cali Classics. It was the middle of the afternoon, so the place was abuzz with projects. But his eyes first went to Blue’s station. He was doing a simple maintenance job, and Connor and Faith were messing around at his worktable.
He went over. Blue stood up, giving his full attention over, and Hoosier could feel the whole shop take notice. They knew he had news. But first he needed to deal with the kids. So he focused on Connor. “What’re you up to, boy?”
“Hi, Uncle Hooj.” Faith came over for a hug, her hands greasy, grease streaked even through her ponytails.
He picked up the five-year-old and gave her a squeeze. “Hey, Faithygirl. What’s the news?”
“We’re looking for things that match.”
Hoosier scanned the table, which was strewn with random nuts, bolts, washers, and other little metal parts that tended to accrue in loose lots around the shop. “That match what?”
She laughed. “I don’t know yet.”
Connor stood up straight. At twelve, he was starting to want to be a man, and Hoosier often saw him emulating the men around him. Luckily, in this club, most of the men around him were worth emulating. “Uncle Blue said it was okay. We weren’t in his way, Dad. I swear.”
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