***
Silas
“Your girls’ are doing great,” I told Tunnel. “Your little one is starting school soon. Only daycare, but school nonetheless.”
I took another sip of my beer, aware of the eyes that were on me from the top of the hill.
She hadn’t been very inconspicuous as she followed me.
She was good, yes. But not trained. And not good enough to fool my seasoned eyes.
But she stayed far away, and for that I was thankful.
This was the time I used to chill out.
I tried to come out here every Friday night, rain or shine, and share a beer with Tunnel Morrison, the man that I couldn’t prevent from dying.
That marked eight brothers that I’d lost since I’d come in as the president of The Dixie Wardens MC, and this one hurt ten times more than all the rest.
Tunnel had been young.
Too young.
And he’d left a wife and small child behind.
Although it’d been a little over two years since it’d happened, it still felt just as raw now as it did then.
Mostly because it was my fault.
I should’ve done something…figured out that little shit head of a girl had had a hand in it all.
But I hadn’t…and it’d cost me.
It’d cost me a very good friend and a hole in my heart.
It hurt every single time to see Tunnel’s wife and kid without him.
To see how badly they were struggling.
When I’d started to come here, it’d been because I needed the solace and peace that this certain piece of history gave me.
To have a beer with a friend.
But then I’d kept coming.
And nobody knew.
Well, nobody had known.
Now, that silly woman who didn’t know how to leave well enough alone had followed me, and I knew it was only a matter of time before the rest of them caught on.
Hearing the telltale scream of Sawyer’s car starting up, and the belts screeching all the way down the road, I finally took a deep breath, thankful that she’d left me to my demons.
I had a lot of fuckin’ demons.
So many that it was hard to breathe sometimes.
Sawyer was slowly helping me defeat them.
One by one, until I could breathe deeply once again…and sleep all the way through the night.
Grass crunching had me turning around to see Kettle, Sebastian, Loki, Trance, Torren, and Cleo walking towards me. I heard them pull up, but I wasn’t sure that they would come down here with me.
I sighed in annoyance.
“You know, I’ve been doing this for months now, and one call from my woman has all of y’all running out here like you have a right to be here…and drinking my beer. Perfect.”
The men took their seats on the grass beside me, each taking a beer from my cooler without asking.
“If we’d known there was a party, we would’ve been here to join you,” Cleo muttered darkly.
I glanced over at the silent man, surprised he was the first to say anything.
Cleo was an observer.
He waited until he had all the facts before he acted and usually was one of the last to butt his nose into where he didn’t belong.
“If I’d wanted y’all to join me, I would’ve called y’all,” I told them honestly.
I wasn’t one to beat around the bush. I told it like it was, always had, and always would.
“So…she’s your woman?” My nosy bastard of a son asked.
I looked at him sitting directly across from Tunnel’s grave, and nodded. “Yeah, she’s mine.”
“You gonna marry her…make babies with her? You realize she’s only thirty right? She’s gonna want kids,” he said defensively.
And not in my defense either. In Sawyer’s.
“I’m going to marry her, yes. But I’m not so sure about the kid part. I’m an old man, after all,” I admitted. “But that’s something she and I will discuss.”
“Sam and Shiloh were pretty shitty to her last night,” Sebastian said.
The others stayed quiet as I digested that.
“What’d they say…and do?” I asked.
“Just being their usual shitty selves. Putting their noses in where they don’t belong. Asking her questions about the past that upset her,” Sebastian informed me.
My hand clenched around my beer.
“I’ll talk to them,” I said. “Inform them that they’re about to have a new stepmother that’s younger than them.”
They all laughed. “You gonna make her your old lady?” Torren asked cheekily.
I raised the beer to my lips. “Sure am.”
“After you catch Shovel?” Sebastian asked.
“Yeah, on the off chance that he finds out about her, he’ll think she doesn’t mean as much to me since she doesn’t have my name covering her back. Or, at least, that’s my hope,” I said.
“We’ve been looking for him high and low for the last four weeks. You can’t put your life on hold while you attempt to find him,” Kettle said.
Kettle sounded sad for a moment there, and I looked over at him to gauge his words.
Kettle had lost his child when he was deployed and he hadn’t been the same man until he married his woman, Adeline.
Adeline had changed Kettle for the better, giving him a new lease on life in the process.
“I know,” I said. “I just need a few more weeks.”
“Why just a few more weeks?” Trance asked curiously.
I smiled.
“Because I have a plan,” I informed them.
“And does your plan have anything to do with the dog you just bought from me?” Trance continued.
I grinned. “No, that was all for Sawyer. She liked him and hasn’t really stopped talking about getting one of her own someday.”
“Ahh,” Trance said. “Well, I can drop yours off when I drop Cleo’s police academy drop out off tomorrow. It sure is nice knowing he is going to a good home.”
“What do you mean, mine?” Cleo barked.
The group started to laugh at the note of panic on Cleo’s face.
“I’ve already got a dog!”
“Yeah, and according to your wife, you’re about to have one more!”