Page 69 of A Love So Hard

(Lucy – age 44, Double-D – age 47)

I heard the rumble of pipes long before the motorcycle pulled into my driveway, and at first I nearly lost my mind to see someone on the back of Double-D’s bike. Once she dismounted and removed the helmet I realized that someone was our daughter Anna, which puzzled me because she was supposed to be down the hall in her bed right now. I tossed a robe on over my ratty sweats and tied it tight so that he wouldn’t see I’d been wearing his shirts to sleep in. It may have been six months, but some of his things still left in his closet smelled like him.

A glance at the clock before I barreled out of the room told me it was half past four in the morning. What in the hell had Anna been up to at this hour? It didn’t surprise me that she’d call her dad instead of me though. She was angry with me for not letting her father move back into the house. She didn’t understand though. My baby was gone. My first born. I loved my other children more than anything, but Toby and I had a special bond because for the first few years of his life it was him and me. I was his world and he was mine. Now, he was gone, and even when I wanted to I couldn’t stop blaming the club for that. My husband being the club too made that difficult to even look at him most days, but especially days like today when he roared up to my house on his bike, wearing his kutte that represented them.

My front door burst open just as I hit the bottom step. Double-D was the first through the door followed slowly by a sulking Anna. “What is going on?” I asked.

“Funny,” Double-D snapped out acidly. “I was about to ask you the same fuckin’ thing. Let me guess, you had no clue where our daughter was tonight?”

“I,” I glanced at Anna who looked beside herself with guilt for what was about to go down and I didn’t think she felt badly because she had been caught, but because she was about to be the cause of another fight between her dad and me. “Maybe we should talk about this privately?”

“Oh, no fuckin’ way. Not after how I found her this morning.”

I glanced back from the furious face of the man to the now weeping face of the girl. “You were supposed to be upstairs in bed,” I told her. Then I felt the weight of everything bend my back and sag my shoulders. I was just depleted. I moved over to the small chair in the entryway where I used to make the men take off their boots before coming inside the house any further. “I actually managed to fall asleep for a little while tonight and you’re telling me that you took advantage of that and snuck out?” My voice was low and tired. I watched as my daughter’s shoulders shrunk in on themselves.

“I’m sorry, momma. I just… I um,”

“She was at the clubhouse fucking one of my brothers when I found her,” Double-D spat out and those words shook me to the core.

“You were where?” I asked Anna in complete surprise then turned my eyes back to Double-D, because there was no way Anna was with a brother in his club and something wasn’t going to be done about it. She might have been legal to consent in South Carolina now since she was 17, but she definitely was not legal in the eyes of the club. Who knew that better than me? It was the reason I couldn’t be with Double-D the first time we met.

“I know you don’t want me there, but Momma, they’re family. I missed everyone. So, I was still going to the club parties. Most of the time daddy wasn’t there, so no one told me I had to leave.” I shook my head. “Then I met him, and,” my daughter stopped there, her eyes glazed over in dreamy satisfaction. Then she met him? He had to be someone new then. At least that might save his damn life.

“Annalise!” I snapped, because this wasn’t the time for one of her daydreaming trips. She startled then glanced between her father and me.

“Sorry,” she huffed. “I went to meet him tonight. He wanted me to come to the party. Dad’s been staying at Merc’s most nights, so I figured it would be cool for me to swing by.”

“Your daughter’s been going to club parties, and no one bothered to tell either of us?”

“Why would they tell you?” His words were clipped. “You made it clear you wanted nothing to do with any of them, myself included.”

“And you?”

“They won’t tell me dick about it, because they don’t want me know they’re having parties and some of the rules are being bent about the women they bring around there when Merc isn’t there to babysit them. Technically, there aren’t anymore club whores. Don’t mean they can’t bring them in on a night to night basis as “their date” for an event or for the night.”

I knew about that little loophole they’d thrown in for the men, even understood it. The single men still needed to be able to bring their dates back to their bed at night. I never thought that would include my daughter in the scenario though. “This is a new man?”

“Yes and no,” Double-D answered. “We took him on shortly after,” he hesitated then. I knew what he meant. Shortly after our son died. They lost brothers and prospects in the aftermath. I knew this. “Still a fuckin’ prospect, though he’s about to be patched in. One of Deck’s Army buddies.”

“Deck’s?” I asked glancing between my daughter and Double-D. “How old is he? Deck’s 26.”

“He’s twenty-fuckin-five,” Double-D spit out.

“Why the hell would a prospect risk being with a princess who is underage by club standards?”

“Gee, thanks mom. I guess I’m not worth it, huh?” Anna snapped back at me for the first time ever.

“Anna!” I warned.

“Maybe because he was calling her ‘Lis and informed me that she was 20 years old.”

“What?” My eyes bugged out as I turned back to my daughter. The guilt was there on her face again.

“I never told him I was 20. I just told him I wasn’t quite legal to drink and he asked when my birthday was. I told him it was in a few weeks. I guess he assumed I meant I’d be 21 then.”

“You let him believe it though.” It wasn’t a question. She knew damn well what she did. “And your name? You have never gone by ‘Lis.”

“How would you know?” She asked, voice rising. “How would either of y’all know? Nobody’s paid much attention to me for years. Toby was the first born. He was the boy. He was the club prospect. Ever was all moody and emo with her drama bullshit. The only person who paid me much attention was dad, and he stopped when he finally made up with Ever, because he had to be up her ass all the time. Now Toby’s gone and you,” she spat looking directly at me, “are too busy with his ghost and refusing to let our family be a family to even notice if I’m here or not.”

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