I knelt at her feet and cupped her soft face in my rough hands, kissing both cheeks. “How are you doing, Madam Raver? Miss me?”
Cos that’s what my nanna was—a fucking raver. Bit of Motown or soul and a glass of sherry, and she was anyone’s. I was just lucky she was mine.
Jean ran a hand along my jaw, feeling me out the way she had to now she could no longer see me. “It’s been cold.” Her thick northern accent wrapped around the words. “I’ve missed you like I’ve missed the sun.”
“It’s spring now, nanna.”
“That’s what your friend said when he brought the flowers.”
“Locke?”
“No, the one with the bad leg.”
Nash, then. As off-grid as I’d been over the past few months, it had been impossible to escape word that the vice president of the Rebel Kings’ founding chapter had come off his hog so bad he’d nearly lost his leg beneath a runaway HGV. News that had almost yanked me back into the vortex of friendship and brotherhood that drove me so fucking crazy.
Stubborn twat I was, I’d stayed away. If I couldn’t stick around for Locke, I wasn’t going back for Nash, but I’d kept my ear to the ground enough to know they were both doing good now.
Good enough to charm my grandma, apparently. “The one with the bad leg is Nash,” I told her. “Pretty boy, plays the guitar. He come by a lot?”
“Every week with that girl who smells like a dream. They bring music and lardy cake.”
Jean gestured vaguely to the unit by the window. A record player I hadn’t noticed sat on the wooden top, a vintage seventies vinyl already locked and loaded.Fucking Billy Ocean. I knew that album back to front. It was the soundtrack to my childhood, and I couldn’t look at it without seeing coppers on the doorstep telling Jean that my dad was never coming home. Still, it made her happy, and I was here for that.
Finally.
Guilt reared its ugly head, but it was short-lived as Jean filled me in on what I’d missed. Her six new hobbies and the parade of visitors Locke had recruited to pick up my slack. Nash and Orla. Folk and Ivy. Even Rubi had dropped by with a tin of sweet and soft bread buns that were still going.
I ate two while Jean talked. Rubi was annoying cos that fucker never let anything go, but the buns were good and I couldn’t remember the last time I ate anything that didn’t come in a paper bag or a soggy cardboard box. I was a shameless junk food stan, but even McNuggets were starting to piss me off.
The morning ebbed by in a haze of taking my nanna to breakfast and slouching against the wall as she shaped clay with her deft hands. I took her to lunch too, and as time passed in a flash of her fluctuating between patting my cheek and taking the royal piss out of me, it was hard to accept that I’d been gone so long.
That I’d wanted to be.
Then teatime rolled around and Jean shooed me out. “Go on with you. I don’t need you sitting around watching me get old. I’m busy.”
“With Mr Gregory three rooms down?”
“Sod off, you little shit.”
Rolling my eyes, I kissed both her cheeks again.
Then she shut the door in my face.
I took the hint and made my escape, desperate to be gone the second I wasn’t with her. Spending time with my nanna was like that. She was my happy drug. The only other person who’d ever made me feel content to justbewas...
Fuck no.
I wasn’t thinking about him. I fucking couldn’t, my tolerance for the day already used up.
Find something to do. Keep busy.
If I swung by the MC compound, some fucker would grant my wish, but I had zero intention of visiting my biker brethren. Maybe I’d head east and see Finch. She had a place down the road from her parents’ farm. We didn’t fuck anymore—that ship had sailed into the sunset and sunk to the earth’s core, but I still liked being around her. Who wouldn’t? She was a funner, hotter version of Folk.
Don’t think about Folk.
Too late. The idea of riding away without seeing him or Locke hooked its claws in me and I resented it. I wanted togo. But I missed my friends, and the back and forth got under my skin. Indecision wasn’t my normal MO. I made choices, good or bad—mostly bad—and I stuck to them. Stewing in my feelings in a care home car park was fucked up.
But then, I was fucked up. Life I’d led, how could I not be?
