Page 40 of Bullet

I dig the toe of my boot into the lush grass, creating a divot since it rained last night and it’s still soggy, refusing to be embarrassed. “There are ways around that, aren’t there?”

Atlas sniffles, then swallows it all back like he’s going to spit it out, but he doesn’t. “IVF. She doesn’t want to do it, even though I obviously have the money.”

Tyrant has this thing he does where he claps one meaty fist onto a man’s shoulder and squeezes, or forms a fist and knocks it into the meaty of the arm. He saves his bro hugs for Raiden, because they’re like real brothers and have been doing the best friend shit since kindergarten, but that shoulder stuff is like a man hug.

I reach out, trying to do that, but my hand stops, hanging in the air. Atlas stares at my face, so fucking guileless it’s tragic. Guys who look like him, who grew up popular, jocks, so damn beautiful he could have been a model, aren’t supposed to be this sweet. They’re supposed to be pricks. The kind of guys who don’t know how to treat a woman and won’t ever have to learn because they don’t have to actually be nice or kind or genuine in order to get them into bed.

Somehow, Atlas never turned out that way.

I let my hand land at last, resting it lightly on his leather-clad shoulder.

“I know it’s not my place, but I feel like that’s a little bit unfair. You’re my brother through the club and she hurt you. That doesn’t sit well with me.”

“She’s just young.” A person’s age has nothing to do with their life experience, and Atlas just aged years in the past few minutes. “She wants things I can’t give her. It’s not really even about kids.”

“Like freedom.”

He shakes his head, but then he nods fiercely, streaky blond hair flying around his face. He always wears it loose. It’s shoulder length, and it’s always a wind-tossed mess that manages to still look styled.

“Yeah. I feel like maybe we wanted kids because it was the thing that would tie us together when all the other strings were coming undone.”

He’s being incredibly mature about this. Why am I the one who wants to kick a hole through the fence and then apologize about it and go get the shit to fix it immediately?

“Are you gonna be okay?” Okay is the shittiest word, but he gets me.

“I don’t know. Fuck.” He digs his fingers into his eyes. “I don’t want to think about it now.”

At least he’s honest, but his bleak tone is still alarming. “That’s fair enough, but you’re not gonna let that hurt tell your brain something that isn’t true, right?

He drops his hand, his lips curling into a wry, sorrow-soaked smile. “You’re like a big brother, Bullet. You’re a good man. I’m not gonna do anything other than get wasted and make sure I’m shit faced at every opportunity I have over the next while. Sometimes, things just aren’t right, and you have to move on.”

I still have my hand on his shoulder, and he takes his and claps it on mine. We stand there for a second, doing the whole arms’ length, bro hug deal, before he breaks free. He tears out the side gate and a few minutes later, a bike roars to life and goes ripping down the street.

I don’t feel like it’s right to share the intimate details of this conversation, but I do find Tyrant inside, helping Lark and Raiden put together a bookcase. They’ve already done two and they’re starting on a third. I’m not sure how many books they expected Lynette to have brought. It’s not like she’s moving in here for good. This is temporary.

She hasn’t said whether she’s taking the job with the club or not, but after this experience, I don’t know how likely she’ll be to consider it. I still don’t know what the decision was from the meeting late last night.

There’s a lot I don’t fucking know.

But I do know that I need to take Tyrant aside. We find a corner in the hallway where no one is standing or within hearing distance. The house is old, a character home with two stories, three small bedrooms, and the most closed off floorplan I’ve ever seen.

The hallway is just as closed off, lending to an aura of secrecy.

“The place looks good,” I say, starting off with something positive. “Incredible, actually. It’s amazing how everything came together so fast.”

“Just like we did for Lark and Raiden’s parents when her mom was sick.” A shadow passes over his face, his emotions still strong about having the woman he loved come back to Hart to care for her terminally ill mother, and finding out he had a daughter.

Penny’s at school right now, so she’s not helping this time, but that first day at the Gardiner household, it was obvious she washis daughter. As she’s grown, her eyes and a few of her features are even more like her dad’s.

“I think Jodie and Atlas just broke up.” I meant to soften it, but there it is. I’m no good at stuff like this, and my voice is a little extra rough around the edges because I’m thinking about the hours I sat in palliative care with my own mom at the end.

That’s something I’d never want to have in common with anyone, because I’d never wish for a single person to experience that pain. I haven’t asked Lynette, but I don’t think she knows who her father is. We have that in common as well. We’re basically both orphans.

“I’ll admit that I’ve known they’ve been having some problems for a while. Not that Atlas has ever said anything, but I’ve seen them arguing a few times.”

“Ella and Raiden argue all the time.”

“Not like that. And they don’t argue. They spar. There’s a difference.’

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