EIGHTEEN
Pagan
It wasn't that I was keeping it a secret.
Not really.
I guess it was more that I wanted to be able to go into it without a bunch of noise in my head, a bunch of other peoples' opinions coming in and pushing out my own.
Well, I didn't really have much of an opinion on it to be honest.
All I knew was a couple days after I took that money out of my trust, I got a letter to the beach house. Will, my house sitter, found it and thought it looked important, so he called me.
Of course it looked important; it was on stationary that cost more per sheet than a latte at Starbucks. I didn't even have to open it to know who sent it... or why.
To "Pagan" Richard Scott,
I was starting to think you would never touch that money again, until the accountant called me to tell me you acquired, and then sold, a building which was half-abandoned and the other half a beauty salon.
It doesn't take much thought to come to the conclusion that a woman was involved. Especially after hearing it was sold to a lovely young lady named Kennedy for five dollars.
Also, I hear you are a Henchmen now.
When you aimed to fall far from the tree, you didn't seem to mind rolling all the way into a minefield.
I wish you nothing but the best.
With regards,
Richard Scott, Sr.
If you asked, and when I finally came clean to Reign, Cash, Wolf, Repo, Duke, and Renny about my past, they had, I couldn't really tell you what my sudden compulsion was to visit him.
Maybe it was as simple as growing the fuck up, losing some of the resentment which, while not unfounded, certainly got blown out of proportion thanks to too much testosterone and not enough good sense.
And, to be perfectly fucking honest, maybe it all had something to do with Kennedy. Maybe she had, whether I realized it at first or not, whether I even wanted it or not, started to put ideas in my head. Ideas about futures and families and traditions.
We never talked about it of course. It was too soon. Things were too new. But that didn't stop my brain from wondering since she was the only woman I didn't feel 'done' with after one fuck. She was the only woman who had ever managed to pop into my head in quiet moments with enough of an impact for me to realize I was smiling like some fucking sap.
My first impression about her in the coffeeshop had been right; she looked like possibilities.
I just didn't realize at the time that those possibilities could mean a future for me. With her.
Then, as it often happened, when I thought enough about the future, it had me mulling on the past.
Once I did that for long enough, I felt something sneak in that was so foreign that I almost didn't recognize it at first. It was a swirling sensation in my stomach, a bitter taste in my mouth.
Guilt. Or regret. Or a cocktail of the two.
Because, at the end of the day, my Gramps sending letters, that was his very old school way of trying to reach out, trying to tell me I was still important to him. The poor fuck had no one left- a smattering of great-nieces and great-nephews and a full staff of people to cater to him. But no one close. No one who gave a shit.
Maybe being with The Henchmen, being surrounded by people who gave a shit, often whether they wanted to or not, had created a shift in my mindset. I saw for perhaps the first time how fucking nice that was. Didn't matter what I needed, someone always had my back.
Gramps probably only had that because he paid for people to give that to him.
It had to have been a lonely goddamn life.
His wife was long dead; his son was gone. I was all he had left.
Fact of the matter was, the guy was knocking at death's door. I was pretty sure there was a part of me that wouldn't ever feel right about letting him meet his maker without having cleared the air with me first.
Not necessarily for my peace of mind, but his own.
All things said and done, you had to understand the man came from a different generation. Men were supposed to go out and work, provide for their families. The wives, in turn, took care of the house and children. He, for all intents and purposes, did his job and did it phenomenally in his lifetime. I couldn't blame him for the lack of interest my father took in me. I couldn't even blame him for the estrangement of my mother who was pushed away, I was sure, by my grandmother. Just like my own father, Gramps was never home enough even to know what his wife was up to.
I couldn't put everyone else's faults on his back.
It was time for us to get together.
His house was the same one I had known as a child, a massive red brick building on too many acres of land. I knew from running up and down those halls as a kid that there were six bedrooms on the second floor and three on the third. Each had a bath because, well, money. The dining room was grand enough to fit twenty at the table. I parked out front, rolling my neck. And maybe, for the first time since I left my family behind, I actually fucking fretted over my goddamn clothes.
I could have dressed up. I even considered it. I had a suit somewhere. But in the end, I had chosen to go as myself- jeans, boots, a black tee, and my Henchmen cut. He would take me, cheap clothes, scabs, and all, I had decided at the compound.
But standing beside that building I had never walked into without at least a dress shirt and slacks on, even as a toddler, I was starting to feel weird about it.
Then, being pissed that I felt weird, I charged up the drive, pounding my fist into the door.
Take me or fucking leave me, Gramps.
"No fucking shit," I said with a grin as the door opened to reveal a very familiar face. One I had first learned how to put an O-face on. She had been twenty-three when I lost my virginity to her in a bathroom. So she was somewhere around middle age now, body a bit rounder, with a few crows feet next to her brown eyes, but still a good looking woman.
She looked at me for a long second before her mouth opened, her eyes going big. "Robby?"
"Oh, fuck no," I said with a laugh. "Pagan. I changed that name ages ago. Looking good, Sheila. Weird that they move you guys around like chess pieces, but I figure Gramps is easier to work for than Pops was, so congrats on the promotion."
"Rob... Pagan," she corrected, brows drawing together. "What are you doing here?"
"Impromptu meeting with the old man," I said, shrugging, tucking my hands into my back pockets because I was itching for a cigarette, but I knew smoking wouldn't be allowed inside. Unless they were cigars. "He's home. He's the only one here who would be driving that Rolls," I said, jerking my head toward the car in the drive.
"Oh, um, okay. Let me just..." she said as she backed in slightly to tell me she was going to ask if it was alright.
And me, well, no one could say I was a fucking patient man. Or one who gave a shit about manners. "No need, Sheila, I remember my way to the office," I said, squeezing past her and moving into the foyer.
Whatever you might be thinking the house looked like, add five million in ridiculous upgrades, and then you would be getting closer to what it was actually like.
But I wasn't sightseeing.
So I turned down the hall and went toward the back of the house, passing faces who eyed me like I was there to rob the joint, before I came to the slightly open door to his office.
I stopped to take a breath before pushing it open.
It was like stepping back in time. Everything was exactly as it had been fifteen some-odd years before. The walls were lined with dark wood built-in bookshelves. The ceiling was coffered, dark like the shelves and floor.
The center point was a massive executive desk that cost a small fortune and Gramps had always been sentimental about.
There, sitting at it, was Richard Scott, Sr. himself.
He'd aged. Of course he had. But money made it so it was done regally, allowing him to keep his stature, his hair, and his air of importance, instead of the frailty most men his age would allow themselves to experience.
His head jerked up at the sound of my boots, likely dragging him away from the mounds of paperwork he always seemed to have to work on, no matter how many hours he put in at the office.
Recognition was fast for him; I guess I was the only biker he was acquainted with.
"I didn't expect this," he admitted, moving to stand, buttoning his coat as he did so, the move so smooth from years of practice that it was practically easy to miss.
"Figured it was time," I said, moving in a few feet.
"You still drink whiskey like a fish?" he asked as he moved toward the sidebar. "Don't give me that look," he said with a smirk, one that looked very familiar because it was the same one that was perpetually on my face. "You might have thought you got away with something, Robert, but your father knew exactly how much of his hundred-dollar whiskey was missing each month."
"And yet he didn't seem to have a problem with a fifteen-year-old drinking it all," I said, accepting my glass, tipping it at him, then taking a sip.
"Well, he learned from experience that boys do that."
"No shit," I said, brows drawing low. "Pops was drinking all your liquor?"
"He didn't get away with it quite so easily with your grandmother around, but he did his best to keep the local liquor store in business."
"Interesting."
"Your father wasn't always the man you knew him as. He, at fifteen, could have given a fifteen-year-old you a run for your money. Though, he eventually did what was expected of him. Not exactly what he wanted, per se. Which might have explained how he turned out. Maybe if he had gone off to tour the world as some reporter like he had been interested in, he might have been a better father to you."
"His choice," I said, shrugging.
"And not yours," he agreed, giving me a look that seemed to have a lot of respect in it. "A man should know his own mind and follow it," he offered, reading me. "So, this Kennedy woman," he said, moving to sit behind his desk, gesturing toward the Captain's chairs for me to sit, so I did.
"Needed a leg-up in life," I said with a shrug.
"So you gave her a building," he said, nodding. "When did you realize you loved her?"
Surprised by even the turn of phrase in reference to something involving me, I straightened in my chair, brows moving together, looking at him, I was sure, like he had sprouted another head.
"Just now, it seems," he said with a smile full of knowledge.
"We just started dating a few weeks ago," I hedged. Hell, we hadn't even really agreed that we were officially dating, though I felt it was painfully obvious that we were.
"And?"
"And it's a little soon to use that word."
"Is it? I used that word on my first date with my love."
Alright, I only had so much bullshit tolerance. Well, none, if I were being honest. There was no fucking way that man told my grandmother he loved her on their first date. In fact, I was sure I never heard him utter those words.
"Not your grandmother," he said, again able to somehow read me. "Your grandmother I married when I was twenty-six, two years after Rosemary died in a car wreck. She was the love of my life, you see. I knew it the moment I met her. I read somewhere once that a soulmate is the stranger that you recognize. I recognized her when I laid eyes on her. It was as simple, and disorienting, as that. Though, in my day, men weren't quite as terrified of love as you men today are."
Well, fucking knock me upside the head.
Who'd have thought there was some long-buried love secret in his life? It was certainly not something anyone else ever said.
"We married on our fourth date," he added. "I had taken my car and sold it for ring money since my own parents didn't approve the match. Two years was an eternity, yet nowhere near enough time. When she passed, I was welcomed back into the family with open arms, them all figuring I had gotten my rebellious urges out of me. And, I guess, they were right. When they presented your grandmother to me, an acceptable choice for marriage, I had done what was expected of me and married her."
Shit.
All the skeletons were getting dragged out and dusted off.
"What happened to my mother?" I asked, feeling that if he was in a forthcoming mood, I was going to use it to my advantage.
"She lives in Florida with a thriving career and with her... third husband. No other children. She wasn't the maternal type to begin with. Cats make better mothers."
"She was paid to leave."
"More or less. She was unhappy. She took that unhappiness out on the family name by sleeping around openly and often. Your grandmother put an end to it, our name being so important to her. If you think there was love lost there, son, she didn't even try to fight for you. Not trying to hurt you here, just giving you the facts."
"I appreciate that. Fuck her. I turned out alright thanks to all the disinterest in those around me."
"I've kept tabs on you," he said, shrugging it off like it was totally normal. "You seem... happy with your life."
"I am," I said, nodding. I was. It wasn't lavish like my childhood had been, but I made good money. I did so by doing things I found enjoyable, even if that didn't make sense to others.
"That's all that matters, son. Trust me," he said with a tired smile. "All this is nice. It makes life... easier. But it isn't happiness. I'm glad you found yours." He reached downward, a slide indicating he had opened a drawer. Then he lifted his hand, reaching across the desk to hand me something.
I put my hand out instinctively, feeling a small, round, metal object fall there.
"What's this?" I asked, even as my eyes registered what I was seeing. An engagement ring.
"That is a symbol of real love, son. I think you have found it, so I want you to have it. I know," he said, holding up a hand when my mouth opened, "that you men these days need to pretend this decision takes months or years. Though I think we both know that is bull. It takes a second, a single second to know, to see that the choice was made. But keep it for when you get your head out of your ass and give it to your Kennedy woman."
I, for maybe the first time in my fucking life, was utterly at a lack of words.
"Gramps..."
"I would prefer you don't take this and run and never see me again, as I would like to rebuild a relationship here, but that ring does not come with conditions. You're free to leave here and never look back if that is what you choose."
It wasn't what I ended up choosing.
Because my grandfather was either a different man than he had once been, or I had only ever seen him through tainted glasses before. I wanted to get to know him again. I wanted him in my life. I wanted, incredibly, for him to meet Kennedy.
Quite frankly, as much as a large part of me was objecting to the very notion, he was right.
It took one moment.
One look.
And the choice had already been made.
I saw possibilities.
And maybe a part of me didn't feel worthy of them.
But she thought I was.
And those possibilities were mine.
I wasn't letting them go.
So I pocketed that ring, knowing that one day, I would give it to her.
Because, by some fucked up twist of fate, I loved the woman.