If I’m to die when this van stops, my biggest regret is not kissing Harper goodbye. I didn’t call when morning came around. She would have noticed I’ve left by now and there’s so much unsaid between us.
I can’t die like this. My wife and kid need me, the club needs us to survive.
“Go to sleep, Jay,” Leo orders. “I can see you thinking.”
Keeping my eyes closed, I grin. “You fuckin’ lie. You can’t see that.”
“Can too.”
I laugh. I haven’t heard him say that since we were kids. Anything I said I could do and he couldn’t, he’d say “Can too.” And I would say the same if the situation was reversed.
“Do you remember the time when we got caught stealing beers from the bar and Pope took us by our collars to our dads?”
I don’t know why the memory is resurfacing but it still makes me laugh to this day.
He chuckles. “I think I was more scared of Pope than I was about my dad.”
“No thinking about it. We both were. Do you know that Pope was just fuckin’ around with us. Dad told me a few years ago.”
“It doesn’t surprise me. The old guy got his kicks in the weirdest ways.”
“We only managed to drink a couple each, thought we were drunk.”
He laughs and I smile. “I loved how we grew up, I wouldn’t change anything,” he tells me.
“I wouldn’t either.”
“Brothers till we die,” he vows.
“You fuckin’ know it,” I swear.
21
Alannah
Idon’t know why I bother trying to call Cas’s phone again, but I’m compelled to, the same as Bonnie trying to get a hold of Sparky. Zach has been on his laptop for hours and hasn’t been able to track down a single brother. I go to call Cas again when Zach slams his laptop shut and snatches his phone from the table. Flashes of Slade doing the same come back to me and I want to cry. Zach is so like him, and I manage a small smile.
Whoever he’s calling answers fast.
“I need you riding, bring everyone.”
He hangs up and finds me watching him. “Luca’s on his way.”
Instant relief surges through me knowing Luca will be here shortly. He's proved himself more than capable over the last couple of years.
Clearing my throat, I let Holly and Harper know, “Once Luca is here, you can all go home.”
Nina, Kyla, and Kristen aren’t here. Kyla hasn’t been around since Ricky and Pope’s funerals. I don’t blame her all that much, the volume of memories here can scream at you no matter how hard you try to fight them off.
Murmurs of relief float around the bar and instantly it feels like life is getting back to normal, though we’re still a far way off from complete normalcy.
Needing a distraction, I lock myself in Leo’s office and sit in the chair behind his desk. I let my memories flood back. When Cas was president. When Michael held the gavel and the times I’d come to find him in this very chair to ask for whatever it was I needed. I only have two memories of my father in this office but over the years they have become a little blurry. I cling to them, needing to keep them alive because they are the closest thing I have to his voice.
I drift off, dreaming of the past. All the happy times. Micky and Flo cooking my dinner after my dad died. Showing up at my school, cheering me on. Pope never going out of his way loudly but always making sure I was protected and safe. And Oak, the guy who would make me laugh until my belly hurt. He was a father to me even when my father was still alive, and especially after he died. I wake with a start, and it’s dark out.
Standing, I run my hand through my hair and wipe under my eyes. I pull myself together and leave the ghosts of the past where they belong and rejoin the here and now.
Before I turn the corner into the bar, it’s almost like everything is back to how it should be, music playing and the sound of talking and laughing. But as I step around the corner, Zach is the only brother at the bar. It's Harper dancing with Rayna and Gunner.
