“Leah!” I leap up, too fast, and wince, steadying myself against the table’s edge.
Thankfully, Leah looks to my arm first, and her eyes fill with compassion. She takes a few steps and embraces me, wrapping me up in her tight arms. I’m taller than she is, just by a little, and my face rests against her hair. I breathe in the flowery scent of her shampoo, a scent that is instantly comforting because it’s her, this woman who is like a sister to me.
“I’m not here to talk about our men,” she says when she pulls away.
I can see the guilt in her eyes I shake my head hard. “Don’t worry. I know you don’t have anything to do with my dad acting like an ass.”
She huffs. “Yes, well, I’ve been trying to work on that, but he’s usually preoccupied when we’re together.”
The realization of what she’s talking about sinks in fully and I shudder. “Gross,” I breathe. “I don’t ever want to think about that.”
“We lived in the same house,” she giggles.
“Yeah, and I’m deaf so I never had to hear anything, thank god. I just imagined that you guys were in there, sleeping beside each other like chaste little angels.”
She giggles again, her delicate shoulders rising and falling beneath the flowered sundress she has on. Leah might be my dad’s old lady, but she doesn’t dress like one, favoring floral dresses and color.
“I’m not here to talk about Steel or Edge,” she says slowly, so that I understand every word. She always does that, slows down her talking a little when she has something important to say, like she’s afraid I’ll miss it. I’ve never told her not to do it, because I love that about her, her kindness and consideration for everyone. “I’m here because I’ve got a surprise for you.”
“If you brought groceries, I think I’d bow down and kiss your feet,” I joke, and she smiles that pretty smile she has, and I can definitely see why my dad fell in love with her. We all have.
“It’s better than that.” She takes my hand gently in hers, which is even smaller and softer than mine, and leads me gently to the front door.
My jaw nearly hits the ground when I look outside. Tears sting my eyes and I don’t bother blinking them away, because I know they’re going to come whether I want them to or not. Because there… filling up the front yard, are all the women from the club. Almost all the old ladies are there and even some of the kids, the ones not in school, because I’m reminded that it’s a Monday morning.
They’re all assembled, already unloading their cars and making piles on the front lawn. Ginger even borrowed a truck and on the trailer is a tiller and shovels and bags of grass seed. The others are filling up their arms with things I can’t even process. And yes, there are groceries. Bags and bags of them that Christine, cast on her arm and all, is unloading from the back of her car.
I turn to Leah, unable to even form words.
She gives me a watery smile back, because she’s crying too. “We all got together. We know you’re starting out fresh and that’s hard for everyone, but it’s been extra hard for you. We’re sisters. We want you to have the best start and while it hasn’t been very welcoming on the men’s front, it’s different with us.”
“But…”
I glance over the yard, at all the women gathered there, ready to make this house truly mine, a place that I can now call home. I’d mentioned my plans for the backyard, but I can’t believe they’d do this for me with everything else that’s going on.
“No buts.” Leah’s fingers twine through mine and she squeezes gently. “We love you, Harley. You’re our princess, but more than that, more than you being Edge’s old lady now, you’ll always be our sister and my best friend. Let us do this for you. We each brought something as a housewarming gift. I know it’s really old fashioned—”
I shake my head again, in utter amazement. “No,” I whisper. “This is perfect. Thank you. You didn’t have to do any of this.”
Leah’s eyes glisten. “I know, but we’re here now, so you better tell us where you want everything.”
“Me?”
Leah grins. “Yes. You. This is your house.”
Her words finally sink in, along with my new reality. My house. This really is my house. Edge is truly mine. Everything I’ve waited so very long for, hoped and dreamed for, it’s finally here. Words like happiness or joy don’t even begin to describe what I feel at the moment.
My chest is a mix of incredible pride and gratitude for and to these women. Love. It’s the only word that can even come close to being enough. I know that we have a long way to go yet, Edge and I, the club, my dad, and that there’s still a threat out there, but in this moment, this beautiful, incredible, heart wrenching moment, all I feel is love and it’s far more than enough.
Chapter Twenty
Edge
Here we fucking go again.
Steel sits at the head of the table and I sit off to the side. As usual, he refuses to look at me. The men gathered around shift uncomfortably in their seats or where they stand, sensing the usual tension that never used to be there. We don’t feel like a solidified unit, and at the moment, we need it more than anything, because Wraith and Tracker just said that they could find out almost nothing about the new club in Jacksonville, except that they’re just that. New. Not formerly established. A band of rough men running drugs and women as per usual. Their Prez, an older guy who should know better with a few daughters of his own, owns a strip club in Jacksonville and one down in Miami, which they use to funnel the cash through and most of the girls.
Why he decided to take shots at us, I have no fucking idea and neither does anyone else.
