“Yeah. But I’m yours.” That stops her for a breath. The air between us tightens like wire.
Dad slams the truck door and walks ahead without comment, but I catch the flicker in his expression. Approval? Maybe. Suspicion? Always.
Inside, it’s barely controlled chaos. The main room is exactly as I remember from the last walkthrough. Couches like leather carcasses, cluttered walls breathing with old road maps and ghosts. The air smells like tobacco, oil, and stubbornness. Someone’s blasting Sabbath in the back. A fight’s either just ended or about to begin.
“This place is a mess,” she murmurs.
“It’s also sacred.”
She nods slowly, eyes scanning each room, the patched brothers, the sweat and loyalty worked into every beam. “I get it. I think.”
I touch her lower back. “You don’t have to understand it to belong in it.”
She looks up at me. “But I do understand it. That’s the problem.”
This place isn’t pretending to be anything. It’s not clean. It’s not neat. It’sreal.
Dad walks ahead, hand braced on the wall like he’s grounding himself. I follow in his wake, eyes drinking it in. A flat screen flickers with a paused football game. The Saints flag above it isn’t folded or honored. It’s justthere, like a warning.
“You hate it?” he asks over his shoulder, lips twitching.
“I think it’s perfect,” I say.
He chuckles. “Yeah. That’s the problem.”
We pass the bar. Scratched wood, liquor lined up like ammo, and Sharpie graffiti so thick it’s a language all its own.
“Who writes that shit?” I ask.
“Everyone who matters,” he says. “That wall remembers.”
I trail a finger over one message:
God rides on the back.
Whoever wrote it they meant it.
We keep walking down the narrow hall.Prospects. Patches. Guests.No frills. No lies.
“You’ll get a room when you stop sleeping at your damn desk,” he mutters.
I laugh. “I like my books. They don’t throw punches.”
“They don’t cover your back either.”
He stops at a door and slaps it. “This one’s yours. If you’re serious.”
“I’m serious.”
He nods. No ceremony. No congratulations. Justdon’t screw it up.
The garage’s out back, through a reinforced door. It smells like oil, steel, and testosterone. I’ve heard music blasting from there at night, along with grinding metal, maybe welding, maybe rage.
Then there’s the basement. It’s where we keep our ghosts.
The whole place hums with unfinished business.
Later, Aria and I are in the legal den, reviewing a zoning permit that smells like fire hazards and bullshit. Aria’s pacing,glasses perched on her nose, flipping through paperwork I scanned in a hurry.
