Page 117 of York

“I wasn’t gonna say shit. It’s nice that you’re teaching her to knit.”

“She’s good. She could probably use real needles in another year or so.”

“How’s Calvin doing?”

“Good. He should be coming home tomorrow. He’s going to need a lot of therapy to get his mobility back, but I’ll be happy to have him home. This is the longest I’ve gone without him in bed with me at night.”

“You might want to remind him that doing tricks on motorcycles is a young man’s game. Or a dumb man’s game.”

“They tend to go hand-in-hand,” Maud said with a smirk. “He has been properly lectured. We both want to really live these last years of our lives, but we have to have some guardrails so we can have as many of them as possible.”

“I like the sound of that. Denali needs you around as long as possible. So long as you promise to keep the sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll away from her for a few more years.”

“Did I hear something about sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll?” Spiro asked, walking around the side of the house. “Maud, you sexy thing, you. See that husband of yours is still laid up, you wanna consider running away with me?”

Maud cackled at that and waved a hand at Spiro.

“How’d punishment go today?” I asked as he shucked off his shirt and toed out of his shoes.

He was covered in sweat and dirt from spending the day working on the grounds at the women’s shelter.

It wasn’t open yet. But they’d been making big progress on the interior, and Runa wanted the grounds in tip-top shape by the time they were done with construction.

“I got bit by an iguana,” he said, flashing his bloody finger before undoing his pants, stepping out of them, then diving in the pool.

“I really like that boy,” Maud said with a saucy little smile.

“Oh,” Spiro said, surfacing. “I’m supposed to give you a message from your woman.”

“What’s that?”

“She wanted me to remind you that you have to be at the airstrip by three.”

“If I can peel Denali away from Eddie’s tacos,” I said.

We were heading back to Wyoming for the first time in two years. We’d always been talking about going but never made it back, relying on information that was fed to us from other members of the club on how the house, grounds, and operation was going.

It just hadn’t felt like the right time. There was always something going on with Denali’s school or extracurricular activities, the construction of the shelter, the club, or with our house.

We’d hemmed and hawed the process for many long months, nothing ever feeling quite… right. Despite the ability to afford just about anything.

Then, out of nowhere, a house hit the market not far from the club. It was smaller than all the other houses we’d been looking at, older, needing work. But when we stepped across the threshold, it just felt like home.

So we bought it.

Worked on it.

Made it ours.

And we loved being close to the club.

But because it was old, something new was always popping up that needed work.

Still, it was time to go back, to check on everything, to show it to an older Denali who only had vague memories of being there.

At twenty to three, with Denali stuffed to the gills with tacos, we met up with Runa at the airstrip, once again borrowing Teddy’s plane for our travels.

“There’s my girl,” she said, rubbing Denali’s head as she rushed up the steps of the plane. “And my man,” she said, wrapping her arms around me and angling her head up for a kiss.