“Hey, Jimmy.”
“You got something to tell me, kid?” he asks.
He’s pissed. Sometimes Jimmy talks to me like he’s my father. Other times, like now, he talks to me like he’s still in charge of the biggest, baddest outlaw motorcycle club in the country.
“I’m not sure,” I say steadily. “Is there something specific you wanted to know?”
“Don’t be cute,” he snaps. “Why is some lawyer woman asking me to sign a request for release from an impound lot in South Bay? For a bike they can’t possibly have. Since it’s with you. Three provinces over.”
My stomach twists painfully. Shit. I should have been ready for this. “Um. Well?—”
“I had one damn rule.”
That phrase dampens my fear enough to make me roll my eyes. “Actually, you have a lot of rules.”
“Cut the attitude. I told you there’s no going back there. We agreed.”
With a sigh, I wander away from the crowd, past a long row of gleaming bikes and around the side of the clubhouse. “I didn’t agree to anything.Youdecided. It’s not fair?—”
“Life isn’t fair,” he grunts. “When I lay out an order, I expect you to follow it. I want you out of South Bay the second that bike is released.”
“Jimmy—”
“After everything that happened to your mother? You being back there is straight disrespect.”
“Can you just let me explain? I?—”
“I want you home, Grace. I should have shut this traveling bullshit down years ago. When you get that bike, the only place I want you riding it is to my front door.”
“Dad!”
Finally, he falls silent.
I don’t call him that.Dad. Not often, at least. Most of my life, I knew Jimmy was my real father. But only when I was fourteen, when he took my mom as his old lady, did he claim me as his kid. We’ve worked through my resentment around that, but I still never got into the habit of calling him what I know he wants me to. Sometimes it slips out, and when it does, Jimmy… softens.
With another deep sigh, I say, “I’m not going back there. I don’t know where home is, but it’s definitely not that place.”
He clears his throat. “Home is where your family is, kid.”
“Half my family is here. You and Mom decided what was best when I was a teenager, I get that. But I’m not a kid anymore. You have to let me make my own decisions.”
The line falls silent. He’s thinking. Axe does the same thing. If I were in front of Jimmy right now rather than two-thousand kilometres away, he’d be staring, subjecting me to that harsh Donovan glare as he worked out whatever’s going on in his head.
“There’s nothing for me out there,” I say. “I won’t get into any trouble, all right? I promise.”
The lie comes easy. Jimmy wouldn’t understand. His decision to cut ties with the only family I’d ever known sentenced me to years of loneliness, of feeling… out of place. Home is where family is, but my family was in the one place I wasn’t allowed to go. So I had to make a new family. And unfortunately, I chose the wrong one. There’s no scenario where Jimmy forgives that. No scenario I don’t come out of this dead and labelled a traitor.
Another long pause, and then he says, “My son giving you trouble?”
I close my eyes and exhale. “What do you think?”
“He’ll warm up, Gracie.”
With a smile, I say, “You let ’em rattle you, you let ’em win.”
He chuckles. “Attagirl. Just don’t work too hard to piss him off, all right? You know how he is.”
I snort. “You mean like his father?”
