Page 93 of Resilience

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Athena didn’t want to go home, and she couldn’t give him an idea where she’d rather go, so Sam took her to his place. It was a lot closer than hers, anyway.

He was worried. That scene in the barn had been intense. It wasn’t the grossest thing he’d been part of since he’d first pulled on a blank kutte, or the bloodiest, or the scariest, but it was the hardest.

The bloodiest and scariest was the fight in Laughlin, obviously. The grossest—well, the list was longer there, but at the top was that tow job with the dead dogs. That had been really horrible and upsetting. But tonight was the first time he’d seen club justice played out so coolly. In Laughlin, he’d shot Jordan, and maybe that shot had ultimately been fatal, but Jordan had been aiming to kill him. In that very moment. It was hot and fast and do or die. That wasn’t justice, it was self-defense.

He'd been in the hospital for the justice part.

Tonight, the cause, in his mind, was even more just, but the cold-blooded nature of the whole thing had kind of freaked him out. Even Apollo, obviously furious, swinging that sack of rocks as if with the force of each blow he could reverse time itself and save his daughter, had chosen his weapon carefully, for greatest damage consistent with their plan to get rid of Hunter without risk to the club.

There had been a mundanity to the scene, a sense that this was just part of the job, and that was what freaked Sam out. Hunter being dead? Not a worry. Sam would have happily killed him with his bare hands. But the workaday attitude of the Bulls as they did it, that was going to take some getting used to. Now that he was one of them.

None of that had him worried, however. Athena was the focus of his worries. She’d been extremely calm and purposeful through the whole thing, taking her piece of Hunter and then watching her family finish the job. Sam had thought she was being her usual tougher-than-she-looked self and he’d been deeply proud and impressed by her.

But that rigid calm continued after the barn. She’d been barely responsive, almost robotic, since. Her signing was the ASL equivalent of monosyllabic, her expression flat and her movements stiff and mechanical.

He was no shrink, but he knew his girl, and he was sure she was traumatized by every part of this mess. She absolutely refused to see that, however, and he knew he couldn’t suggest it to her himself. She needed him to be steady, she needed to feel sure he was on her side, and telling her she had trauma to deal with, while she was in active denial, would put a dent in that trust.

So he rode toward home with Athena wrapped stiffly around him, and he fretted. How could he help her? What help did she need? Was it enough just to be there and let her work through it in her own way?

Those questions tormented him all the way home. Rain was in the forecast for the night, so he stopped just outside the garage and helped Athena dismount, then walked his bike inside. When he heard Tank thundering toward the garage, he grinned.

His boy saw Athena first and charged at her. She saw him coming and got down low with her back to the garage wall; when Tank reached her, the odds were even that she’d end up flat on her back with a huge mastiff on her chest, and Tank outweighed her by almost double.

Instead, he slammed into her and was immediately hugged. As excited as he was, he seemed to understand how much she needed that hug, so he settled at once with his head on her shoulder and let her hold on.

Sam wished he’d brought his truck tonight; if he had, they could have stopped by her house and collected Blanche. For a service dog, she got left behind a lot. And Blanche was trained to do more than hear what Athena couldn’t. She was also trained to keep Athena out of danger and be a steady presence when she needed one. Athena could have had that hug a lot sooner.

She could have gotten it from Sam, too. But he understood how a dog was sometimes the only comfort that mattered.

When she had what she needed and let him go, Tank bathed her face with his tongue for a few seconds and then barreled at Sam for one of their special hugs. Sam had been only a few feet from Athena, so Tank didn’t have a lot of runway to leap up. Not enough runway, in fact. He ended up driving his big boulder of a head into Sam’s solar plexus and bouncing off. Neither of them came out of that completely unscathed.

But it made Athena laugh, and her laughter gave her some ease. She was still smiling as she stood.

“Are you okay?” he asked as he went to her.

“Stop asking that question. I’ve answered it.”

Yes, but I’m not sure I believe your answer, he thought. “Sorry,” he signed. “Want to go in?”

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