Page 11 of Walker

“Yeah. She only had to check out, but she looked like she needed a fucking miracle. The least I could do was keep an eye on the little guy for a few minutes.” Snake nodded his head, but didn’t say anything else, so I continued putting it all down for him.

“So, now it’s on you to go tell this woman, a single mom with a teenage daughter and a preschool son, that her late husband was not only a gambling addict – which she already knows – but was possibly cheating on her and maybe even had a baby with another woman?”

I nodded, took a sip of my water, and listened to Snake as he threw his head back and laughed. “Holy shit, brother! When you land in it, you really land yourself in deep.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

Snake shook his head back and forth, took a sip of his beer, and all the while never dropped eye contact with me. He was getting on my damn nerves. No wonder we weren’t close anymore. I stood, ready to get the fuck out of there before I punched him in his smug face for laughing at me, at a situation that was anything but funny.

“Calm your tits, man.” He tapped the bar again, in a gesture meant to tell me to sit my ass back down. I crossed my arms over my chest and stood there with my feet shoulder width apart while we stared one another down. “Didn’t mean shit by it.”

“Funny, the laughter and whatnot kind of proves you wrong.”

He shook his head again as if I was missing something. “Been waiting years to get my buddy back.” He threw me for a loop with that admission, especially since he had been the one to stop talking to me first. Sure, I was angry with him for wanting to go after my wife at the time, but I couldn’t blame the guy either. Even he would have been a better choice for Poppy than I had been.

“Been here this whole time,” I finally said.

“Nah. You haven’t. First, there was the idiot who threw the best thing in his life away because he was angry with himself.” I didn’t bother interrupting him because he wasn’t wrong. “Then there was the asshole who went around throwing himself a pity party after stupidly ruining things for himself.”

I rolled my eyes that time. Maybe he had been the wrong person to ask for help.

“But after you lost your patch, there was the man who only had one thing on his mind. I worried that you would fucking off yourself for a while, especially when you saw how happy she was without you. The only thing that kept you hanging on was proving that you belonged in that kutte, with a real patch on again. That man remade himself. Watched you go from a boozing, whoring pity-partying asshole to a serious brother in the making again. Then you gave up the booze, told the women here to piss off, had Spike teach you some new skills and the student surpassed the teacher in that regard too. Then there was the fact that you’ve been working your ass off for a club who hasn’t had much to do with you outside of official business.”

That last part hurt because it was true. Up until the party where I met Reesa, no one bothered to really talk to me much. That was the first time I’d talked to Quickshot about anything outside of club business in years. This was my first time speaking to Snake in years too and we shared the same space on a damn near daily basis.

The only club member who really bothered with me was Spike and that had more to do with the fact that his woman, Tash, didn’t see things like the other old ladies who ran with the S.H.E. MC. She felt their anger at me was misdirected. I agreed with her, not that it mattered one bit. So, they were the only ones to invite me to club shit that took place outside of the compound.

When Griff came around, Spike introduced us, and I liked the kid. Took him under my wing because Spike had his hands full with Tash and Diesel. Not that he didn’t love his older son, who he had just found out about, but it had been a rough transition at first.

“Not sure where your mind just wandered, but I can take a guess,” Snake stated before sipping on his beer again. “You got your patch back and then probably questioned the fuck out of why you bothered. Didn’t feel like a brotherhood to you anymore, am I right?”

I nodded in answer and Snake tipped his head in agreement as well.

“Everyone was still waiting on you to decide what kind of man you wanted to be. We were all waiting for the day you either started joining in again or took off for a new fucking adventure.”

It was my turn to laugh. “Yeah, you fucks really made me want to join in.”

“You did though. Been helping Spike out with his boy. Shocked every motherfucker in here the way you took Griffon on and became the kid’s mentor. Wouldn’t surprise a single fucking one of us if that kid asked you to sponsor his patch instead of his own old man.”

“Griff wouldn’t do that to Spike.”

“Because you wouldn’t let him. You have both of their backs, and every fucking brother here knows that.” The way he acknowledged it as a fact, and did so adamantly, made me take a step back. Had I been wrong about my club brothers for all this time? There were always doubts in my mind about them, more to the point about them wanting me here in the club, but the doubts had become my reality for a time. It was why I’d considered giving up my kutte and moving on more than a few times.

Snake sighed and dropped his empty bottle onto the bar before turning so that he was facing me fully. “Man, we’ve just been waiting on you to decide what you wanted out of life. You were lost for a good long while. Hell, brother, you were lost before everything went south with Poppy. You had the image of your old man, and the way things used to run in Tallahassee, holding you back. That mingled with all the shit going on your head about how you weren’t worthy… I didn’t really put it all together until far too recently when I saw the man you were growing into. Sucks that Griff’s mom got sick, but honestly, him being sent to live here was the best thing that could have ever happened.”

“You lost me.”

“That kid gave you another purpose, a closeness with a brother that wasn’t there anymore. He brought you back into the fold you didn’t think you belonged in. It wasn’t on us to pull you back in. You had to want to be here.”

“I see.” I did, but at the same time, I didn’t. There was something broken between the club and me. We both failed each other in different ways.

“Anyway, my laughter earlier was just because irony, much like karma, is a bitch.”

“Not following.”

“The first woman I’ve seen you take a genuine interest in, since Poppy, happens to be a single mom. You’re damn near a single dad yourself with the amount of effort you put into Spike’s kids. Dude, you turned out to be the most family-oriented man of all of us and your biggest fear – the one that almost cost you everything – was that you couldn’t be a family man. I think you had to lose Poppy to see that family can be created in a lot of different ways. You’ve always had it in you. Even Poppy used to always say that you’d make a great dad someday if you got out of your own way about it.”

“She did?”

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