"I'll brace myself."
"Grace is bringing Waylon if his face isn't a ruined thing."
"Got it."
There’s a moment of silence. "Your uncles want to see you."
I almost laugh.
Your uncles.
He means all of the patched Shotgun Saints, half of whom taught me how to throw a punch by the time I was ten, and Pops still calls them my uncles like he's protecting my innocence from his own club.
"I want to see them too, Pops."
"Spur's around."
It's just a fact, dropped into the middle of a conversation like a rock into a still pond.
My hand tightens on the wheel. "Yeah?"
"Yeah."
Silence.
He knows. He’salwaysknown.
He has known since I was a young woman and he caught Spur looking at me across the clubhouse on a July night.
The first time I ever met that sexy bastard.
"Okay, Pops."
"Okay, baby girl."
"See you in a bit."
"Drive safe."
I hang up and look right at Presley’s text.
Can't wait to see you. No pressure to hang. Just glad you're coming home.
No pressure to hang.
That's Presley’s way of being a sister.
She won’t ask me for anything. Hell, she won’t pressure me to include her in my life.
What she will do is be sweet about it, forever, even though she is also Pops's blood and has as much right to be there as I do.
She’s twenty-one years old.
She has Marlena's red hair instead of my mother's blonde, and Pops's blue eyes, and a softness none of us inherited from either of them.
She is what Pops got when he didn't know he had her—a second daughter carrying his jaw, his stubbornness, and none of my mom’s teeth. At least she got to miss out on having braces.
Ihatehow much I like her.
