Page 62 of Resilience

It was his tears themselves that fed the thought. Fitz, Cooper, his father, they were all so stoic. In the midst of what had to be really fucking serious trouble—a traitor, a theft, several men badly hurt, a man lost, heat from law, maybe heat from the Volkovs or the Mexicans or both, and who knew what else, the Bulls he’d seen were calm. They were even smiling occasionally. And here he was, bawling his eyes out at the sight of his mommy.

What if he wasn’t cut out to be a Bull? What if he just ... didn’t have it in him?

He’d spent a year working for a patch. He didn’t want to give up. Everything that had decided him on prospecting was still true. And the violence was no surprise; he’d been to enough funerals in his life to know exactly how dangerous life as a Bull could be. Not only dangerous to life and limb, either—they’d lost Dad for five years because of the club.

None of it was a surprise. But he was in this hospital bed feeling scared and unstable in ways he hadn’t felt when he’d seen those headlights. Now he was halfway to completely falling apart.

What if he couldn’t hack it?

The door swung open again, and Maverick came in. He, too, looked weary, but he smiled at Sam. “Hey, Sam. I’m glad to see you looking better.”

“Thanks, Uncle Mav. Dad said I look like shit.”

Both Mav and Dad chuckled at that. Then Maverick turned to Dad. “Si.” He tilted his head at the door.

Dad took hold of Sam’s hand. “I gotta go. There’s a lot to talk out.”

“Okay,” Sam said.

Before his father left with Mav, he came around and kissed Mom. A look passed between them that Sam was too fried to try to understand.

When Mom was the only one left in the room with him, she got serious about looking him over. As if she were a doctor or nurse, she checked his neck, his shoulder and chest, the small wounds on his arm, where they’d dug out a couple of pellets.

When she started to lift the covers, he held them down. “My legs are fine, Mom.”

“Jesus, Samuel,” she muttered as she moved his hand and lifted the covers anyway, verifying for herself that his legs were fine. “You scared the sense straight out of me.”

“I’m sorry.”

She made a strange, strangled sound that might have been a laugh in a past life. “This life is fucking exhausting sometimes.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

She scooted her butt onto the bed near his hip and picked up his hand. “Don’t apologize, Sam. I signed up for this just like everybody else. But sometimes I feel like that mom in Saving Private Ryan, with my whole family at risk.”

He didn’t know the reference, but he got her meaning. It made him want to apologize again—and it gave him another reason to wonder if he was making a mistake, wanting a patch.

Was he the man he thought he was? Was he even a man at all, or was he just a scared kid in way above his head?

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~oOo~

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Awhile later, when Sam was having trouble keeping his eyes open, Mom kissed his head and told him to sleep, and she’d go check on her brother and Aunt Leah. She waited until he was asleep before she left, so he wouldn’t be lonely.

He didn’t know how long he’d slept, but he woke with someone shaking his good shoulder, and he opened his eyes to see his father at his side.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Hey, son.” Dad smiled a genuine, unconflicted smile, which cleared Sam’s sleep fog up at once, and he saw that the entire Tulsa charter, everyone but Gunner, and Duncan and Christian—he figured they’d stayed back to cover the lockdown—were packed into his small room.

“Hey, everybody,” he muttered, wondering what the hell was going on.

Eight Ball, leaning against the wall by the window, came to the foot of his bed. “Hey, kid.”

“What’s goin’ on? More trouble?”

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