Page 15 of Walker

“I’ll cry later. There’s a lot to unpack in what you told me, and my biggest concern is for my daughter and what she’s been hanging onto all this time. I can’t thank you enough for filling in the blank pages for me, Walker. I mean that. You tell Griffon that she will never know how I found out, but that I owe him for being courageous enough to get my baby girl some help.”

I glanced down at my cell phone and winced. It was going on two in the morning, and we closed at midnight during the week. “I best be getting home. My sister will no doubt have a shit fit when I get there about why I’m late.” As if on cue, my phone started to ring.

“You have my number, if you need someone to listen, a shoulder, punching bag, whatever – call me.”

“Never a punching bag, Walker. You’ve had enough of that.”

He shrugged and then maneuvered his gorgeous self out of my vehicle. Before he closed the door, he leaned in and smiled sweetly at me. “Whenever you’re ready, we’ll make plans to go on that date. Know you have shit to handle now. If you ever want to drop me the names of those friends of your husband’s, the ones he used to go gamble with, you let me know. I’ll go have a chat with them and see if I can get a few more pages for your story, so you can piece it together properly and make sure no more unexpected surprises come your way.”

I nodded my head but couldn’t speak because the burn of tears threatening to fall. I needed to get home before I allowed that to happen. As soon as he shut my door, I cranked the engine and didn’t bother to wait another second before I pulled out and made my way back to my house.

6 - Silence Speaks

The next day, after school, Griff came tearing into the clubhouse, as his eyes sought me out. “Did you tell her?” He yelled across the room once he found me.

“Whoa, what the hell is that all about?” Spike asked as he intervened and pulled his son up short from getting to me.

“She didn’t come to school today!” Griff yelled. I put the pool stick down and walked over to him.

“Let’s take a seat and lower our voices before we talk about this, okay? Seems like some shit that a couple women we know wouldn’t want plastered all over the clubhouse walls for certain folks to hear.”

Griff’s panicked face finally took a glance around and realized there were club members but also a few women hanging around. Those women, and maybe even some club brothers, would take gossip back to town in a heartbeat.

“Everything good?” Spike asked.

I gave him a chin lift in the affirmative. “Your boy and me need to talk about some shit. You mind?”

“You sure everything is okay?” Spike finally looked nervous about something concerning his newest, though not youngest, kid.

“Swear on my life, and the brotherhood if that means more, that your kid is the best of the fucking best, man. His concern is for someone else. We’ll fill you in after we chat, if that’s alright?”

“I trust you, Walker. Just needed to know if this is where he needed me as a dad, or if…” Spike cut off whatever he’d been about to say and looked nervously toward his son.

“We’ll talk to you about everything in a few minutes, okay?” Griff asked him. Spike nodded and moved back over toward the bar where he’d been talking to Van, one of the visiting members from the Tallahassee Chapter.

“Aren’t you too old to be spawning more kids?” He asked Van as he sat down.

The Tallahassee Chapter’s VP laughed. “No more so than you, fucker. This one wasn’t planned.”

“Pretty sure none of them were,” Spike teased him as Griff and I walked away.

“You told her, didn’t you?”

“That’s what you wanted me to do, remember?”

“Yeah, but…” He blew out a frustrated breath. “She wasn’t at school today, so I don’t know how that shit went down. What if she ran away? What if she tried to hurt herself?”

“That something you think she’d do?”

He shook his head slowly. “Don’t think so, but my mind has been racing with possibilities all day.”

“I get that. Her momma handled the news well.”

“So, she really did know already?”

“Nope. Had no clue. I said she handled it well, not that she wasn’t shocked. We talked through a few things, none of which are your business. What Reesa and I talked about stays between us; you hear?”

“Yeah, I get that. Your loyalty is to her.”

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