Page 40 of Savior

Saying Comedian’s name aloud no longer made my skin crawl. I’d been convinced that he was behind Grey’s disappearance, and now… now, I wasn’t sure what to think. I still didn’t have any answers, but Comedian was the one who’d shown up and helped me put my house back together when the club had turned their backs on me.

He’d known how important it was for me to have a safe place for Lauren if she ever decided to come back.

In the beginning, I’d called her almost every day.

Calls that she’d wisely ignored.

It wasn’t until I detoxed that I realized I was little more than a ticking time bomb. I could’ve convinced her to come back home, both of us knowing that my sobriety would last only until the next crisis.

I knew then that if I truly loved her, I’d either find a way to stay clean for her and our unborn children, or I’d let her go for good.

George had just laid a hot towel over my face when Angel replied. “I meant Jamie. His old man was a piece of shit, and he was always convinced that he was going to turn out the exact same way. Said it was in his blood… course, he only seemed to get like that when he was usin’ or lost in the bottle.”

Alcoholism and addiction run in your family.

Had I known then that he was talking about himself?

“He was… he was like me?” I mumbled from beneath the towel.

“Yeah, kid. You two are cut from the same cloth—hell, even your drugs of choice are identical.”

George applied oil to my face and began lathering soap against my jawline. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d shaved or done anything with as much care as the barber above me was.

Angel’s boots squeaked against the linoleum floor as he moved closer. “I know you wanna believe that it won’t get better, but you’re wrong. If your stubborn ass daddy got clean, so can you.”

“How’d he do it?” I asked, doing my best not to move my mouth, ruining George’s hard work.

“He hit rock bottom,” Angel admitted. “You’d gotten into some trouble down in Galveston, and Celia had gotten hurt. It just seemed like everything was stacked against him.”

Angel made it sound as if I’d had a failing grade on my report card, but I knew the ‘trouble’ was Grey finding out his son was a murderer. The thing with Celia wasn’t as easy to figure out. The day we tracked down Hawk, she’d known how to identify him based on a tattoo. That, along with Comedian’s cryptic message to Kate about asking Celia for the truth only added to the mystery.

“And?” I pushed when he stayed silent.

“Don’t feel right, you hearin’ it from me instead of him, but as he ain’t here, it’s gotta fall to me. He was gonna end it all… even called me up on the phone, sayin’ he was sorry he’d let me down. I called Slim, and by the grace of the good Lord above, he was able to get to him in time—”

The straight razor passed over my skin, taking with it, not only the overgrown coarse hairs of my beard but the little boy I’d been only moments before. I’d always seen Grey as this invincible force, some superhero who never let anything get him down.

Angel’s revelation was the equivalent of pulling back the curtain, destroying what remained of my childhood ideals. Worse than discovering that Santa wasn’t real was the discovery that my hero was human.

“He was going to kill himself? Who’s Slim? Was he another biker?” I asked through clenched teeth, praying George’s hand stayed steady in spite of my yapping.

“He was,” Angel replied. “And Slim had been by Jamie’s side since they were kids. Well, hell, you knew him.”

I did?

I ran through the list of bikers in Silent Phoenix twice as George worked diligently on my face but couldn’t recall ever having met someone by the name of Slim.

“You might be confusing me with someone else, Angel,” I finally said as the straight razor began moving against the grain under my chin.

“Hold still,” the old man directed. “These hands ain’t what they used to be. You wanna get cut?”

I held my breath and tried communicating with my eyes so he didn’t slice my throat open.

“Let’s see, I guess you wouldn’t have known him as Slim, but John.”

“David’s dad was a biker?” I asked, completely forgetting my plan to remain still.

George muttered a curse, and stepped back with his arms crossed over his chest. “You two can gab all you want in a goddamn minute. Just let me finish.”

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