ISAAC
X
The 720th Day
For most of Isaac’s life, Christmas had never been a thing. Not until Lilli. But she had filled his life with love and light and warmth he hadn’t known was missing, and since Gia’s very first Christmas, when she was only five months old, it had been one of his favorite days of the year. Hell—more than one day. Lilli had made Christmas a month-long affair. Their home smelled of evergreen and cinnamon, and cookies and pie, for weeks. Lights shimmered all over the main rooms of the house. And the kids—fuck, they loved it.
Sitting in the prison rec room on their second Christmas inside, watching ESPN and playing a halfhearted game of backgammon with Len on a cardboard game board with plastic pieces, Isaac let himself think about sitting up with Lilli until early on Christmas morning, building some confounded contraption or another, swearing under his breath that from now on, he was going to build all of the kids’ gifts his damn self and not fight to assemble plastic bullshit from Taiwan or wherever. She’d laugh at him and bring him another beer.
Then she’d distract him from his temper in the way only she could.
He closed his eyes and tried to remember the feel of her lips on his neck. Her tongue. Her hands on his bare chest. The way her body closed tightly around him when he pushed deep inside her.
Already his memory was fading. Four more years. If they were lucky.
“Boss? You good?”
Isaac shook it off and opened his eyes. “Yeah. One of these days, you gotta stop callin’ me that, brother.”
“Nah. You know my position. Long as we’re here, it applies.” Len sighed and looked at the clock on the wall, adjusting his eyepatch. “I’m not feelin’ this game. Think I’ll do some time in the gym until next count. You in?”
His back had been acting up like crazy the past few weeks, since he’d had a run-in with an especially and habitually nasty guard. “No. I’m gonna read in my bunk. Got all those new books Lilli ordered me.” They couldn’t receive packages or gifts from family, but Lilli kept his commissary account full, and, via an online distributor, she’d shipped him about six months’ worth—even by his accelerated pace—of reading material for Christmas.
“Is it me, or is it gettin’ harder, not easier?”
Isaac had turned and sort of half-focused on the television; now, he turned back to his friend. From day one, Len had dealt with their incarceration with a kind of dark, stubborn good humor—in perfect keeping with his personality. On bad days, Isaac got broody and quiet. Len got acerbic. Rarely did he voice any kind of real impatience with their lot.
“I think today’s the wrong day to think about it. Today is hard.”
“Yeah. I keep thinkin’ about the clubhouse party. And then spending the day at yours. Damn, Lilli does it up.”—Isaac swallowed hard at the slash of pain he felt, but he didn’t interrupt his friend’s reverie—“Tasha wanted all that, too. You know, one of the things Tash was most excited about in the house I built her was that big wall of windows up front—she planned for months how she’d light it up like crazy for the holidays. Remember that big fuckin’ tree she made me wrestle into the house? And she had me doing some kind of circus stunts gettin’ lights across the top of the windows. And we don’t even have kids—fuck, we didn’t even have Christmas at our house!” He chuckled softly.
“We’ll get home, brother. We’ll get it back.”
“Yeah.” He sighed again, deeper this time. “Sorry. Got the holiday blues. I’m gonna sweat ‘em out.” He stood and left. Knowing he was headed to the cell to change into the approved sweats for the weight room, Isaac put the game away and made some aimless chat with some other inmates in the room before he went back himself. He and Len were lucky to be able to share a cell together. But the quarters were close, and they gave each other the space they could.
~oOo~
“COUNT!”
Stretched out to the extent he could be in a bunk that was not as long as he was, Isaac looked up from the new Patrick Rothfuss novel that had been part of Lilli’s Christmas gift to him. He tucked her most recent letter into the book as a bookmark and rolled to his feet, just as Len came through the open cell door. He was running sweat; his short, grey hair—he’d let it grow a little after bitching the first few weeks about the impossibility of a satisfyingly close prison shave—glistened with it. His prison-issued sweatshirt was sodden.
“You reek.”
“Yeah. Had some shit to work out, I guess. I’ll hose off fast before meal time.”
The guards walked by and peered in. One of them had become Isaac’s nemesis. At least eight inches shorter and probably a hundred pounds lighter than he, Walker had some kind of hornet up his ass over him. So far, it just seemed random hostility. His last volley had been a baton shoved hard into Isaac’s spine, out of fucking nowhere. It had driven him to his knees in the lunch line—three weeks ago, and his lower back and right leg still tingled in a hauntingly familiar way. Both Len and he had considered whether this was another move on him in retaliation for Santaveria.
There had been two so far. Both thwarted—in one case, by Len, and in the other, by some men who’d become friends because Santaveria had been their enemy. Not the kind of friends who made Isaac comfortable, but they were useful. They’d sure been useful that day.
Lilli didn’t know. Hopefully, she would never know. Nobody in Signal Bend knew. Len and he had fought that out—Len thought the Horde should know. He thought so vehemently. And he was right. But Isaac didn’t want the club to feel the need to retaliate outside. They were legit now, free and clear of cartels, and Feds, and Sheriffs, and he wanted them to stay that way. That was why the fuck he was in here. He wanted his family safe.
Moreover, he simply didn’t want Show to know. Because Show had a very hard time not telling Lilli things, even when Isaac told him not to. Lilli had a way about her, a way of seeing the truth or at least knowing there was one being hidden, and Show was a fucking awful liar when he had to lie to somebody he cared about. Lilli would see that something was being kept from her, and she would dig, and Show would fold like a cheap suit.
So nobody outside the prison walls knew that there had been attempts made on Isaac’s life. Whether Walker’s little-man games were part of another or just an asshole with a God complex, Isaac didn’t know yet. But when the guards paused at their cell and did the count, Walker smirked in a way that made Isaac’s hands twitch with the longing to become fists.
They walked on, and Len muttered, “That son of a bitch is bad news, boss. Bad news.”
“Yeah.”
~oOo~
After the sad thing the prison cook called a Christmas dinner, Isaac skipped the sad thing that they were calling a Christmas party in the rec room and went back to his bunk. Len, knowing that Isaac needed some space, and also needing some alone time, went off and found it who knew where. Very rarely, during the precious times in which their hours were their own, Len would seem to disappear. He was always back for the count, and Isaac had never asked where he went off to. For as long as he known him, Len had been a loner.
Isaac was sure, too, that Len had his back even during times like this, when he went off somewhere. The first attack had happened during such a time, and still Len had been right there, pulling the guy off Isaac and breaking the shank in two right in the guy’s hand. He was like Batman or something. They’d never seen the attacker in their block before, and, though they’d left him breathing, they had not seen him since.
It had been more than a year since an attack, though. Unless they counted Wee Willy Walker and his baton.
Shoving all that noise in his head to the side, Isaac lay in his bunk with his new book. He didn’t open it right away. Instead, he took in the photos and drawings that filled the wall space between his bunk and Len’s. Drawings from his kids—horses and flowers and dogs and bikes and people from Gia, mostly mazes and patterns from Bo. Handmade cards. Photos of his family. Gia, seven years old now, riding horses and taking archery lessons. Bo, now five, struggling a already in school, even though he was only in kindergarten. He wasn’t much of a talker, his boy, and apparently his teacher thought there was some cause for concern. Lilli didn’t agree. He would hate to be the teacher in that disagreement. But he’d love to be able to watch the fireworks.
He smiled at a photo of Gia on Matilda, her Welsh pony—a new addition since he’d been inside. Lilli sat astride Flash, horse and pony side by side. His girls were wearing matching cowboy hats and wide smiles. That photo made his heart ache ferociously. It was good to see his Sport smile like that. He never saw that smile when she came here. The smile he got was tinged with loss.
A photo of Bo, his eyes wide, holding a little goldtone trophy and a certificate for a ‘Young Writers Program’. With his mamma’s help, he’d written a story and drawn pictures for it: If I Had a Lion for a Pet. Lilli had sent him the book as a series of photos. At the bottom of each page, in Lilli’s precise handwriting, Bo had dictated such creative insights as If I had a lion for a pet…his litter box would fill a WHOLE ROOM. For that page, he had drawn a room full of sand, with a giant turd smack in the middle. He was a sharp little artist, even when he wasn’t making fractals. And the awards committee clearly had a sense of humor.
A photo of Lilli. He had no idea who’d taken it. He hoped it was Adrienne. Because if it was a man, any man, then he’d have to kill that fucker with his bare hands. Not because she was physically exposed in any way—no such picture would have gotten through to him—but because the camera had caught her in such a nakedly unguarded moment he felt like he was seeing right down into her heart, and he was the only man on Earth entitled to that view. She was sitting in their yard, folded up in one of the ancient metal lawn chairs she’d painted vivid hues a few years back. Wearing a white t-shirt and jeans, her most common attire, her bare feet on the chair and her arms around her legs. One hand was wrapped around her other wrist; that hand held a beer. Her gorgeous, chestnut hair was loose rather than caught back in its customary ponytail, and a light breeze had caught her soft waves. Sunlight glinted and made reddish-gold threads through the dark mass. The photo had her in profile. She was staring at her knees, her head tipped down slightly.
Obviously, Lilli had not taken the photo herself. Isaac didn’t know who had, or why they’d given it to her, or why she’d sent it to him. It was a sad fucking photo, and Lilli was nearly always positive with him since he’d been inside. Suspiciously so, considering how well acquainted he was with her impatience, pragmatism, and dark wit. Yet he treasured this photo above all others. This was his woman. He was seeing her, how she really was, while he was away. He could see her miss him. As truly glad as he was that she and their children were living a life and not merely hibernating until he was back with them, a part of him needed this, too. He needed to see her miss him. Not because he was afraid that she didn’t. He knew for a certainty that she did. But he looked at this photo and almost felt like he could touch her, like their shared yearning stretched through time and space and coiled together.
Lifting his right arm, he stared at the ink there, done a couple of weeks before he’d gone in. A quote in Italian, circling the names of his wife and children. L’amor che muove il sole e l’altre stelle. The love that moves the sun and the other stars. The same words made up a tattoo Lilli had gotten long before he’d met her as a memorial to her father. But to Isaac, those words, and the love they described, meant his love for Lilli, her love for him, and the life they’d made together in it.
He set his book aside and got out his notebook and a pen, deciding to write Lilli instead. She wrote him every day. He wrote almost as often, to the extent that it was possible. She always wrote on light purple paper, scented like the scent of her soap. She’d never worn perfume in all the years they’d been together, and her natural scent was his favorite smell on the planet. When he’d convinced her that letters were better than the shitty pseudo-email system he could pay for access to, she’d begun sending him letters on this purple paper that smelled of lavender. He guessed she’d figured the next best thing to figuring out how to send him her own smell was to send him the scent of her soap. She’d guessed right. The smell of lavender would now probably get him hard until his dying day.
His letters went out to her on plain prison commissary paper, but he didn’t think she minded. They had a joke going about their Austenian correspondence; he wasn’t sure when it had started. When they were in the mood to be funny, they’d taken to writing in Victorian diction. He wasn’t in that mood tonight.
Hey, baby.
I hope Christmas was good. Did B. like his electric Harley? And did G.’s new bow come in on time? I’ve been thinking all day about sitting with you on Christmas Eve, putting toys together and giving Santa the credit. Sharing a beer. Fucking on the rug in front of the tree.
He stopped and wadded up the paper. That wouldn’t get through. And even if it would, he didn’t need some BOP fuck getting off thinking about him and Lilli. On a new sheet, he rewrote the lines up to the last sentence.
Today was just a day here. They try to pretend it’s special, but the only special thing about it is a day off. I miss you. I miss you so fucking much it’s killing me. I’m dying off a little bit every day.
“COUNT!”
Damn. Isaac hadn’t realized that it had gotten so late. He’d have to finish the letter tomorrow. Or start a new one in a different mood—that would probably be for the best.
Len swung in just as Isaac stood.
“You good, boss?”
“I’m okay, brother. You?”
His friend shrugged. “Merry fucking Christmas, you know?”
“Yeah.”
X
The 1,070th Day
“Daddy!” After nearly three years, Gia knew to wait, but she stood there, bouncing, waiting for Isaac to be let all the way into the Visitors Center. Bo stood at her side. He still didn’t talk much. He could—Lilli said he did, and that his vocabulary, if not his diction, was developmentally on target, but only when he was comfortable where he was. She’d finally relented and put him in speech and behavioral therapy and was getting him tested, because he would not speak at school. Or anywhere he was uncomfortable.
Isaac hadn’t heard his son’s voice in almost a year.
He squatted down before his children, ignoring the brief but vicious clench in his back and right hip, and pulled them in close. “Hey, you two. I love you.” Taking in their scent and touch and sound, he held on until they both squirmed, and then he let them go. This one day, twice a month thing was just not fucking enough. Sometimes he wanted to tell everyone else he knew to fuck off and leave him with all of his visitation points for his wife and kids. But he couldn’t do that. He and Len had retained their voting rights, and the club had business.
As always, Lilli stood back a little and waited for him to greet their children. He hated the school year, too, when she couldn’t get to Marion fast enough to see him on Friday nights. During the summer, she’d come to see him alone on Friday, leaving the kids in the motel with whomever she’d brought along—sometimes it was Show, sometimes it was Lori, their usual babysitter. He’d have her all to himself for three hours or so, and they’d sit and hold hands and really talk. They almost always fought at least once during that time, but that was how they talked things through.
He went to her now. So fucking beautiful. Almost ten years, they’d been together. She looked the same. A line or two at the corners of her grey eyes, but otherwise, she was the Amazonian stranger he’d shared a burger with one summer night long ago. Since he’d been away, she’d been working out a lot, more than she had since Gia was born. Show said she was back to her old ways, causing a stir, running around town in tiny clothes. And she was working out at the clubhouse, too. His warrior woman.
He’d put more muscle on, too. Not much else to do but work, read, eat, work out, jack off, and sleep. But he could feel the old damage in his back aging him fast. He was beginning to wonder if he’d still be able to ride when he finally got quit of this place.
“Hey, baby.” She smiled, and he wrapped her up in his arms. Fuck. Halfway through. Almost halfway through. He could get through and have this woman, these children again. He had to. Just had to do what he’d already done. Halfway through.
He turned his face and nuzzled her neck, breathing her in. Hard since his skin had touched hers, he couldn’t stop his body from pressing to hers, and she moaned and responded in kind.
“LUNDEN!”
He pushed back fast. Dammit. No kiss. But he wouldn’t risk it. He needed these precious hours.
Breathless and flushed, she let him lead her to a chair, and they sat. He pulled Gia onto his lap—at eight, she was getting too old to sit on Daddy’s lap, really, but the guards allowed it, and Bo no longer would. And she was happy to be there. Lilli sat next to him; Bo sat at her other side, looking at his hands in his lap.
He was losing his boy.
“How’s Len doing?” Lilli’s voice saved him from the pitch-black trail that thought would have sent him down.
“Word is, he’s better. He should be back in gen pop within a week, I guess.” Len was in the prison infirmary with a nasty internal infection. The meds they got—Len to compensate for his missing spleen, Isaac for his back—were not of the quality they’d become used to on the outside. Tasha had had no luck getting them prescribed the better stuff, and it was driving her batshit, he knew. They’d sat in this room and gone quietly ‘round about her smuggling better stuff in. Neither Len nor Isaac wanted her to expose herself like that. But maybe she was right. Maybe, before Len kicked from a fucking infection, or Isaac lost his legs again, they needed it.
“Thank God. It’s killing Tash not to be able to do anything. They wouldn’t even let her see him.”
“Nah. They wouldn’t. Not in the infirmary. Maybe if they’d thought he was bad enough to send him to an outside hospital. But he’s okay.” He’d almost died, actually, but the bar for ‘bad enough’ around here was high.
“Isaac, you’ve got to let her.”
She didn’t say more, because she knew better than to say anything here, and she knew she’d said enough for him to understand.
“Yeah. I know.” He looked past her at their son. “Hey, Bo. How’s Kodi?”
Bo gave him a little wave and then shrugged. He’d never looked up.
“He’s good, Daddy.” Gia answered. She always answered when Bo would not. Lilli had told him that she was fiercely protective of her quiet little brother and was getting into fights at school with kids who teased him. “Mamma says he’s trying to fill your shoes.”
“He is?” Isaac cocked a sardonic eyebrow at Lilli, his brain going to an amusingly twisted place. She laughed. “No, you weirdo,” she muttered under her breath, “I’ve got my Rabbit for that.”
He winked, but his cock was going to sprain something. He was having trouble keeping that under control today.
More loudly, she said, “She means he sleeps every night on the rug in the front hall. He has since you left.”
“Not on that expensive damn bed you bought him?”
“Not since you left. He sleeps at the front door, between us and the world. Taking care of your people.”
That made his eyes burn and itch. Needing to change the subject, he gave Gia a little squeeze. “So Christmas is coming up. What did you guys ask Santa for?”
He and his family passed the hours of their visit like that, Gia speaking for herself and her brother, Isaac and Lilli speaking in half sentences and code. When it was time for them to go, he took a risk for a kiss worth the one they’d lost, and he pushed his tongue between her lips. Her tongue was there, ready to dance. Before he broke away, she pulled his braid, and he thought he’d just die.
Halfway. He could do the rest. He could. He had to.
X
The 1,642nd Day
Show, Badge, Isaac, and Len sat in the Visitor Center. They only had about forty-five minutes. The place was packed today, and visits were being doled out in increments. Without immediate family as visitors this week, Isaac and Len had been relegated to the bottom of the pile.
They weren’t allowed to meet in a group like this. They never were. Show was on Isaac’s visitation list, not Len’s. Badge was on Len’s, not Isaac’s. And Isaac and Len didn’t always get visitation at the same time. They’d pulled some strings and greased some palms to make this work. They did the same thing whenever they had serious business and needed Isaac and Len’s input. Still, they had to be discreet.
When Tasha and Lilli were here together, the guards looked the other way, also for some consideration. But this was men talking business, and the guards were taking a bigger risk, too. So palms had to get very greasy.
Today’s serious business: reestablishing Signal Bend Construction. Legitimate business, not criminal conduct, but the BOP wouldn’t see it that way.
Show was describing the plan. “We got the logistics worked out—a lot of the clubhouse now is vacant space, easily converted. We just need to build out a little, and we can keep the important parts of the clubhouse—the Hall, the Keep, the dorm, weight room, office, kitchen—intact. We don’t need the Room the way we did—that can go over to the business. We’re thinking twenty grand to overhaul the building.”
“And equipment?” Isaac did not see how the plan could work. Signal Bend Construction had barely made its nut in its heyday, and they would need to start almost from scratch to get it up again.
“Got a partner wants in, will front for that.”
“Who’s that?” Len looked as skeptical as Isaac felt.
Badge answered. “June Mariano. Hav’s mom.”
“I know who she is.” Isaac leaned back. “You’re honestly talking about taking money from a widow for this? That’s bullshit.”
“She’s got a sharper head on her than Don would’ve let anybody know. He left her a pile, I guess, and she wants to do right by Hav and his family. It’s an investment, Isaac.” Isaac could see in Show’s eyes that his vote would count no more than any other member’s. That had not always been the case. At first, Show and Isaac had led as the team they’d always been, just with Show taking point. But Show and Badger were the team now, and Show had found the fit of the President’s patch.
Isaac shook his head, and Show’s face darkened.
“This vote is already locked in, Isaac. I want you in on this, both of you. But we don’t need it. There are three more seats filled at the table now. And the Horde at home are in. We all worked this together. I want you part of this plan. But mainly I just want to know how you feel about us keeping the name. SBC was your old man’s company.”
Feeling angry and hurt, Isaac snarled, “I don’t give a rat’s ass about the name. You’ve got my proxy. Do with it what you want.” And he got up and left, ignoring Show calling out his name.
He was halfway back to the cell, still fuming and paying attention to little else than his raging, furious thoughts. He passed a dark inset, where double doors led to a large equipment closet. Normally, of habit, his eyes made a quick check there. But he was lost in a sea of change, suddenly, after so long away, understanding how very much about his home would always now be lost to him. How many changes would have happened and become old news by the time he got back. All the things he was missing, and the ways his people and his home would be unfamiliar because of it.
He was lost, and he didn’t look.
The next thing he new, he was being tackled to the ground, his back screaming at the way it was forced to twist, then a line of hot, new pain fired across his throat, and he felt his chest soaking with thick heat. From a distance, he heard Len shouting his name. He turned to his back and tried to answer, but nothing came out but a wet gurgle.
The last thing he saw was Len’s frightened face looming over him.
~oOo~
He came awake and knew four things: one, he was alive; two, he was cuffed to a bed in a public hospital; three, there was no way Lilli wasn’t going to find out about this attack; and four, he wasn’t going to get parole in eighteen months. Because he had to retaliate this time. This was the fifth attempt in four and a half years. They’d almost gotten him this time. They would next time, unless he made a stand. His days of trying to stay off the radar and just get the fuck home were over. Badger had been right about the constantly turning cycle of violence that came from vengeance. But if they didn’t retaliate, Isaac would be killed. That simple.
About fifteen minutes after he’d woken, a nurse came in and checked on him. She’d asked him how he was feeling, but he couldn’t get more than a weird kind of growl past his sutured throat. A doctor came in and checked on him, described how long he’d been unconscious (eighteen hours), the procedure to sew him back together, how many pints of blood he’d needed (five), and other bullshit he didn’t care about. They’d have him in the infirmary in two days and probably back in his cell in four. Fine. Whatever.
When the doctor left, he saw the legs of the guard stationed outside his door. He wondered if they’d already notified Lilli. If so, she’d be out of her head.
Before the door could latch, though, it opened again, and there she was. She looked like she hadn’t slept or eaten in, oh, about a year. Damn. He must have been pretty close to kicking, then, if she was here, and if they were letting her through that door. He noticed that the guard wedged the door open as she came in.
“You asshole.” She said it sadly, with a twist of a smile, her eyes shiny and wet, and he knew what she meant.
Sorry, he mouthed.
She nodded.
“They’re only giving me fifteen minutes, and then I have to wait until the next visiting day to see you again. I swear on all that is holy, Isaac Lunden, if you die, I will dig you back up and cut your throat again.”
He laughed with his breath and nodded. Ow.
Then she pulled up a chair as close to the bed as it would go, wrapped her arms around his one free arm, linked fingers with him, and laid her head on his chest. For fifteen minutes, until the guard turned and waved her out, she did not speak. They did not move. He lay there with his throat cut, Lilli’s head on his chest, and thought that, for a shot at fifteen more minutes like this, he might well put a hit on himself.
X
The 1,681st Day
It didn’t take much to find out who’d done it. Len had seen enough of the guys to narrow down the field, and they had enough friends who had enough friends. It had to be him and Len. They couldn’t hire it out. And it had to be visible. It had to be known, or the hits on Isaac would never fucking stop. They were going down for this retaliation.
It didn’t take much to get a couple of actual blades, either. No piece of shit shank was going to do here. But the black market was robust in prison, and their needs were within their means.
They waited until Isaac had regained his strength. And then they took out the two contract killers from the Hermanos de los Muertos crew out of Texas. They did it at breakfast, driving the blades deep into their hearts, and they didn’t run.
As he lay on the bare slab in the hole later, bruised and bleeding in the pitch dark, Isaac wondered if they’d ever see home again.
X
The 2,008th Day
In the end, with the usual plea bullshitting, and because no guard had seen them do it, and no inmate had ratted, they’d added only a new eighteen-month bid, for intent to incite, to their standing sentence. If they could find a way to stay both safe and out of trouble, they could still get home.
But Isaac and Len were separated and transferred to high-security facilities, Len in Colorado and Isaac in Pennsylvania. Far from home. Hopefully, the message they’d sent by taking down Isaac’s attackers had gone over the national wire, because Isaac was on his own, and Len was, too.
For the three months between the retaliation and the sentence, while they’d still been fairly close to home, they’d been locked down in the Special Housing Unit and denied visitation entirely. For nearly three months after the transfer, for Isaac, it was the same. Locked down, full restriction. Then, for two more months, he’d only been able to see Lilli and the kids via video.
The eight months he’d spent without feeling the touch of Lilli’s skin had made him wish with all he had that the Hermanos had just fucking killed him.
When he finally got to hold her again, even for a precious few seconds, he about came in his pants and wept like a baby both at the same time. But he’d held his shit together. That was all he was doing anymore. Holding his shit together.
He’d had to fight for his place among a nastier bunch of hardened men. He’d done so—he had size, strength, skill, will, and an increasingly fragile sense of self-preservation, and that had held him in good stead in the stalls. But his victories had not come without their physical price.
He could not catch a break. He could not.
Now, he saw his family once a month, if he was lucky. Lilli was tired. She tried not to show it, but he knew her. He saw. The way his life in the Horde had constantly fucked with their life together was beating her down. He could see it happening, even as she continued to fight like the warrior she was.
She understood why he’d done what he’d done. She’d agreed. But she was angry nonetheless. Not at him, but at the cosmos or something. Just angry and tired, and he could offer her no ease.
Bo continued to be quiet and pulled further away with every visit. He’d sit on his hands and stare around the room, wide-eyed and silent, or he’d stare at his lap, and be perfectly still for the entire visit. Lilli would try to make him engage, but he would not. Isaac never let her push him much. He didn’t want his son to feel forced to love him. Bo just wasn’t wired right to be able to cope with his father’s situation.
Isaac could look around that room, bleaker than the last, filled with even scarier people, men who made the Horde look like the Vienna Boys Choir—okay, not that, but still, not as scary as these guys—and understand. This was no place for children to spend any of their lives. He knew he should tell Lilli to keep them home. He’d tried to talk to her about it in letters, but she wouldn’t discuss it. He was their father. He was here. This is the only place they could be with him. End of story, as far as she was concerned. And honestly, he hadn’t fought as hard as he could have. He needed to see them.
Gia seemed to adapt. She was his girl, and she didn’t seem to care one way or the other where she saw him, as long as she was with him. She’d grown too big to sit on his lap, but she held his hand and talked to him. She wrote him letters of her own, sending him pictures of her horse and their new kittens, and Kodi, who had taken on care of the kittens as well. Pip had died; Lilli had found him curled in his basket one day, stiff and cold.
Isaac’s life was changing while he wasn’t living it.
From the day he’d arrived in Pennsylvania, he’d ended every letter to Lilli with two words:
I’m sorry.
The 2,736th Day
Isaac came out of the Springfield Greyhound station on a hot, muggy, brilliantly sunny July afternoon and met a long line of Harleys parked at the curb. His feet were on Missouri soil. Missouri concrete, actually. But Missouri. Seven years, six months, and four days since he had last been in his home state. His homeland.
He had been assigned a parole officer in Springfield, and he’d need to check in soon, but he had a couple of days before he had to think about that. Right now, Show was walking toward him, and his brothers were all standing in a line. He realized he didn’t know them all, but he didn’t let himself think about that, either. He’d get to know them. He embraced every fucking one of them, even the strangers. Len was there; he’d been released a couple of weeks earlier. He embraced Len first.
They were both home. They were both whole. As whole as they ever could be.
When he’d greeted and hugged the line of men in Horde leather, Show turned to the curb, and the men separated so the Isaac could see his old Fat Bob, with his kutte lying over the saddle. Show lifted the leather and held it up, and Isaac turned and slid his arms in. He remembered a day once before that he’d reclaimed this leather after he’d despaired of ever wearing it again. He wasn’t supposed to wear it now, not while he was on parole. Neither was Len. But for this ride, right now, fuck it.
Show put his meaty hand on Isaac’s shoulder. “Can you ride, brother?”
Isaac smiled. “One way to find out.” He walked around his big, beautiful bike and stared down at it, wondering. Could he? Had the years of hard prison life—the fighting, the attacks, the brutal guards, the bad meds, just his fucking age, past fifty now—had that life left him this thing? But then, looking at his beautiful, badass bike, feeling Missouri under his boots, standing with his brothers, he knew. Yes, it had. He could. He swung his leg over the saddle, ignoring the twinge in his back. It wasn’t nearly as bad as he’d feared.
He strapped on his helmet and then slid on his Ray-Bans. The world looked suddenly brighter.
“You good?” Show asked, strapping on his own helmet.
Isaac grinned like he hadn’t grinned in seven and a half years. “Let’s ride, brothers. Let’s ride.”
As they flew down the interstate toward home, he could feel the scales on his heart and soul loosen and begin to break away. Somewhere under there, deep down below the crust of loss and bitterness and despair that was his prison life, he felt a small flutter of something still alive. The buffet and roar of the wind in his face, the tang and the grit of the road, all of it brought his senses to life. When they took the off-ramp that would bring him home, his heart began to beat with real vigor. And when he saw the sign that bid him a cheery Welcome to Signal Bend, he laughed, loud, shaking his head with it.
Lilli was just around the corner. Gia and Bo. His wife. His children. His family. His life.
Home.
Just around the corner.