Page 50 of Patching Over

He chuckles then, his face losing its tightness. “Yeah, I always called you either RyRy or Squirt.”

“I’ve… I don’t know what to say,” I quietly murmur. “I’ve never had a nickname before coming here.”

“Well, get used to it, sis, because I heard Brew calling you princess and I know Brick calls you Sprite sometimes. I suspect you’re going to have quite a few of them from this point moving forward.”

Brick

As I pull up to Banshee’s house, I see his bike parked in front on the stoned driveway and know he’s already there with Rayleigh.

While I’d normally object to her being on the back of someone else’s bike, he’s her brother, and there’s nobody else I trust to care for her the way I do than him. Gathering the bags of takeout food from the local diner out of my saddlebags, I make my way up to the screen door that covers the front porch.

The house itself is a cozy, two-story Victorian, complete with a deep wraparound porch. The front part of it is enclosed and I have vague memories of Lorelei and some of the other ol’ ladies sitting on the porch in rockers, watching the kids play out in the front yard while talking, and drinking lemonade.

Although, looking back at how loud they were, it was probably spiked lemonade, which has me grinning as I head inside the house.

I immediately spot Banshee, standing there with his hands shoved into the depths of his pockets while Rayleigh meanders around the room, lightly touching old photographs as she absorbs just how much her family loved and adored her.

The wall she’s standing at is covered with hundreds of pictures, some of them professionally done, others just snapshots taken by various club members. From their first meeting to the ceremony where Lorelei accepted Bonzai’s claim, then their wedding followed by the announcement and arrival of Banshee. Then, Lorelei’s pregnancy with Rayleigh plays out in chronologically ordered pictures, with the first one being of her and Bonzai; he’s clutching her high in the air in one arm while waving the pregnancy test, both of them with smiles so wide it makes my own cheeks ache.

Pictures of Ban touching his mother’s expanding stomach, reading to it, kissing it; my ol’ lady lovingly touches and caresses them all, as tears silently streak down her blotchy cheeks. She continues on, now seeing when she’s actually part of the family, the looks of adoration on her parents’ faces as well as her brothers, causing her to sob.

Unable to handle her distress a second longer, I thrust the food toward Banshee, uncaring if he drops it or not, then stride toward her before I pull her against my chest and wrap my arms around her. “Shhhh, I’m here, sweetheart,” I croon.

“This… this is what I always dreamed of having, Brick,” she stammers, her eyes still roaming over the photographs. “And I had it, too. Loving parents, a big brother. A huge extended family.” She points to the next section of pictures where she’s being held by various club members. “You even carried me around!” she exclaims, looking back at me.

“Yeah, sweetheart. Me and Ban were your protectors. We were emulating the brothers and how protective they were with their families, trying to be like our dads,” I quietly reply, chuckling at the memory.

I move with her as she continues to examine each and every one of the celluloid memories, embedding them into her memory. Right now, I’m grateful as fuck that Lorelei was the type of mom and woman who liked to document memories with pictures and mementos because even though Rayleigh doesn’t actually remember any of this time in her life, she can see itdidhappen and hopefully, it’ll continue to heal the heartache of the past for her.

“You want to eat while we watch some of the home movies?” Ban asks once we’ve made our way to the end of the wall. Sadly, there weren’t a lot of pictures taken after that fateful day. Partially because Lorelei threw herself into making flyers and plastering them everywhere in an effort to find information about Rayleigh, but also the fact is Bonzai and Lorelei were gone mere months later.

“Yeah, I think I’d like that,” she agrees. “I’m… I know I want to see more of the house, too, but maybe I’ll wait on taking that tour because I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed right now.”

“It’s not going anywhere, sweetheart,” I tell her. “You can wait to see the movies too, if you need to.”

“No, I want to see them. I feel like I need to for some reason,” she insists.

“Then that’s what we’ll do, we’ll watch some movies,” I say, caving in and giving her what she needs, what she wants.

I’ll always do what’s best for her within reason.

CHAPTER

FIVE

Rayleigh

“You two really did watch over me, didn’t you?” I murmur as I watch myself on the screen crawling on the floor, two little boys following along behind me.

“It was our job,” Banshee fiercely stresses, his tone serious and unquestionable. “I screwed up, though.”

Reaching over, I grab his hand and squeeze. “No, you didn’t, Ban. You were no match for a grown adult who coldcocked you. Please stop feeling guilty for something that was out of your control.”

“If I had ordered one of the younger kids to get help instead of shooing them inside without any directive, it might have saved you sooner,” he cries out, his pain palpable.

“Or you could’ve gotten more people hurt or killed,” I return. “You have no clue if he had a gun, you really didn’t know if there was anyone else hiding in the vehicle he came in, so you did what y’all were trained to do, right?”

“She’s right, Ban. Our dads always impressed upon us to send the little kids inside if we felt there was an immediate threatto their safety of some kind. You did what you were schooled and were told you weresupposedto do in that exact set of circumstances.”

---