Page 3 of Revived

Her shoulders rocked up and down. “You loved that car. I figured,” she stopped and sighed. “I don’t know, I gave him a piece of you that I wasn’t sure he would ever have otherwise.” I chuckled at the thought that this woman, who I had been so in love with, had raised my son all alone for nineteen years and she named him after my prized possession back then. A goddamn, shit-condition, Chevy Camaro.

“Chevy though?”

“Would you rather a son named Camaro?”

“No,” I laughed. “I guess not.” I thought about it a moment and then without thinking, I tested my son’s name on my lips. “Chevy Northman.” It was only a whisper, but Kendra’s gasp shifted my attention quickly. The sadness in her eyes was palpable.

“It’s Chevy Kendrick.”

“You named him after my car, but wouldn’t give him my last name?”

“You weren’t there, and your mom, um…”

“Spit it out, Ken.”

“They required the father sign off on the birth certificate, or that I had a DNA test done previously, in order to put your name on the birth certificate. He could change it,” she mentioned, but then dashed my hopes all over again. “Only if he wanted to, though.”

I took a moment to breathe in and blow the frustration I was feeling back out. None of this was her fault. If I hadn’t taken that stupid opportunity her father taunted me with, then I would have been around for my kid. My dreams of becoming a famous musician would have probably died, but there was a part of me – most of me – that knew that was the far better option. Fame wasn’t everything I had always dreamed of. It was actually a damn lonely existence. “You know what?” I finally managed to say. Her eyes were misted over again with unshed tears as I came to terms with the reality I was now facing. “It’s probably for the best. This way the press had no reason to come snooping into his life and turning everything into a circus.”

“Yeah,” she replied with a weak smile, taking my words for what they were. “You should know,” she said as I watched her fidget and wring her hands together nervously. That was odd, because Kendra – the girl I once knew – never got nervous. “He’s a musician too.”

I couldn’t contain the grin that spread across my face even if I wanted to. “Yeah? Does he play an instrument?”

“Several. Actually, he can pick up anything and play it. He’s a musical genius, but he favors the guitar and sings too.”

“Does he write?” I asked as pride filled me to the fucking brim inside to know that my son was following in my footsteps even though I wasn’t around to influence him.

“He does. Gabe, I don’t know how he’s going to take this news.”

Dread filled me with her words, pushing back the pride that had filled me up moments ago. “Why is that?”

Kendra chewed on her full bottom lip before looking me in the eye again and giving me a sheepish grin. “He’s a huge fan,” she explained. “I didn’t tell him about you, but I always made sure he had you in his life. I played your music for him all the time, and…”

I didn’t need to hear anything else. She had done right by me and by my son with what she was given, and I couldn’t thank her enough for that. I leaned over and picked her up into my arms, wrapping her in a hug that was probably a tad too tight. “Thank you for being there for him, and for giving him that part of me.”

“You wanna put my woman down and move the fuck back?” A giant of a man growled down at me as he moved from behind a tree nearby. I’m sure he wasn’t simply lurking there. He just happened to walk up from that direction. It was then, when I glanced past him, that I saw the motorcycle I’d passed when I came in. He had been sitting on it alone then. Apparently, he’d been giving Kendra time to come pay her last respects to a woman who never deserved them. I gently set Kendra back down on the grass beside me.

“It’s not like that,” she quickly explained to her man while rolling her eyes at him. “He just got excited when I told him about Chevy and his music.”

“Yeah?” The man asked. He must have stood about six feet, three inches tall but was built like he owned his own gym. Long, dark brown hair fell down his back in a tight braid and there was a braided beard hanging to mid-chest to match. The man looked every bit the badass he was trying to show me he was. “Where the fuck was he when Chev was first learning any of it?” His nearly black eyes were narrowed on me with menace dripping from every fucking pore. He was obviously a biker. If the Harley hadn’t clued me in, the leather vest shit he was wearing sure did. He was a member of a motorcycle club. Suddenly, I was a little more concerned about what kind of life my son had been living. I shook it off as Kendra corrected him.

“He didn’t know.”

“What?” The man asked. The disbelief was loud and clear in that one word.

“She lied,” Kendra told him while pointing to my mother’s grave. “The manager lied. My parents lied to him when he came back for me. It’s a big mess, Josh, and Chevy is the one who lost out because our parents were too damn narrow-minded to do the right thing.” The man grunted in response, but never took his narrowed, assessing eyes off of me. He didn’t believe what she was saying and that was fine. She may have called him Josh, but his leathers told a different story of a hardened man named Hex. That still had me wondering what type of environment my kid was growing up in.

“Take my number,” I finally said, having enough of the epic war being waged against me in the dude’s eyes. “Let me know when and where. I’ll be there.”

“When are you leaving town?” Kendra asked me as she used my cell phone to insert her information.

“I’m not. Not until I get to meet my son. Already lost a lifetime,” I muttered, choking on the emotion clogging my throat at the reality of what I’d just said. “Don’t want to lose anything else.” I’d lost her too along the way, but it didn’t seem right to say it with her current man standing there.

I had so many questions. How long had they been together? Had this man been raising my son all along? Were they married? I hadn’t seen a ring on her finger. Not that it mattered to a lot of people. Did they have other kids together? Shit. That was a hard pill to swallow.

“You know Ford and Dakota are going to flip their shit when they find out too,” the man – who I still hadn’t been properly introduced to – said.

“Oh, don’t I know it.”

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