Page 25 of Brother to Brother

“Of course,” I said, surprised he would ask.

“Okay then, you good to ride? I don’t do cages.”

“Sure,” I agreed.

We went back to check on Noah, and to tell Archer, Rush, and Nox where we were going. They wanted to go too, but Dragon vetoed that.

“You know where he’s at, you can go anytime, let the lady mourn the father of her child in peace. She don’t need an audience for this,” he’d told them. I don’t think he cared that I was standing right there, and I wasn’t about to try and correct the president of the mother chapter.

“I need to go by the apartment,” I murmured and Archer fixed me with his cold, gold-green gaze.

“You have a key,” he drawled.

Dragon turned to leave the room and looked over his shoulder, “One of you knuckleheads should have brought her out to see ‘im by now,” he shook his head and muttered “Jesus Christmas,” and with that parting shot, he left the room. I felt my cheeks burn hotly and quickly gave Noah a kiss. I ducked my head, following him out and back across the grass to the club’s main building, trotting to catch up to him.

“I wish you hadn’t said that,” I murmured, and he arched an eyebrow and looked sideways at me.

“Any of ‘em ever lay a hand on you?” he asked.

“No, why?” I asked.

“I don’t just mean here, but back in Arizona either,” he said.

“No, I mean, Grind once or twice but they were mistakes and we kept them just between us. I mean, it was my fault really. I got him too worked up and…”

I fell silent when he stopped and eyed me, “If he weren’t dead I’d have Reave cut his balls off. That’s not what this club is about, Honey. Never has been, never will be. I got some questions for sure about the happenings back in Arizona, but they can wait. Come on.”

I felt my heart sink, and was afraid of what questions he’d ask me. Not that I’d lie, just… what if they found out?Dom would probably kill you.I thought to myself and sighed softly in resignation.How did I always end up in these damn situations?

We rode back to Archer’s and it felt good to be on the back of a bike again. Dragon waited, looking around the parking lot while he sat on the front of his bike smoking a cigarette while I ran upstairs to get what I came for.

I found them quickly and went back downstairs, the neighbors out there with their Charger, music pounding like always. I got onto the back of the bike behind Dragon and he fired it up, drowning out the thumping bass from the cage with the angry growl from his engine. He turned us out of the parking lot and turned us towards the cemetery, making a quick stop at a flower shop on the way.

It was a slow, respectful ride through the old, wrought iron gates and along the sweeping paved pathways only wide enough for a car. We stopped and he tapped me. I got off the bike and he heeled down the kickstand, shutting her off.

“He’s up that way,” he said with a solemn sigh and I held out the deep red rose he’d bought out to him. He took it with a nod of thanks and got off his Harley himself.

“Thank you,” I murmured and I went up to the little fenced in area he’d indicated. There was no gate, and it was actually a pretty big expanse in the new spring grass. There weren’t too many headstones inside the spindly, decorative fence, and it was easy to spot Grinder’s grave as it was the newest. I went over to it and felt my eyes well.

David ‘Grinder’ Chandler

Riding Free

That was it. No birth and death dates, just ‘riding free’ and a little oval set into the stone with a picture of him leaning against his bike, proud in his cut. I remembered that day. I’d taken the photo outside the club in Arizona. I knelt down carefully and took the photographs of Noah I’d brought out of my jacket pocket.

“I never expected to find you like this,” I whispered and had to clear my throat; it was closing up, I was choking up from the rising tide of hot tears. “We had a boy, I named him Noah. I know you hated your middle name and I think part of why I named him that was because I wanted him to have a part of you and to piss you off… because let’s face it, you leaving us pissedmeoff, but not as much as ithurt.”

I sniffed and wiped at the moisture under my eyes, and leaned the two pictures up against the main part of the black stone, along the little ledge where it attached to the carved, thicker base.

“He’s so beautiful, and such a sweet boy. It was hard, being all alone when I had him. I didn’t know what to do and things didn’t go… well. Not to say he didn’t come out perfect! He did, I just… I just wish you’d been there. I wishanyonehad been there. I wish you were here now to see your beautiful son and I wish I had a chance to fix things. I wish a lot of things, but I guess… I guess I don’t want you to worry about us. I’m trying really hard and Noah is healthy and happy and Archer is letting us stay with him. Who’d have thought, right?” I laughed but it came out forced and broken.

“Why did this have to happen to us?” I whispered brokenly, and it was the sixty-four thousand dollar question. One with no answer except a cold slab of silent marble set in new spring grass under an endless blue sky full of fluffy, fat white clouds.

I let my gaze stray from that endless sky to a stone set about forty paces outside the fence, further along on the hilltop where Dragon’s lumbering frame knelt, head bowed, hand on a white marble stone. The lone, deep crimson rose he’d purchased sitting in a bronze fluted vase with a lovely green patina that was attached to the headstone. His shoulders shook as he wept openly and I didn’t feel nearly so alone in my grief. It’d been so long since I hadn’t felt alone, like it was simply me against the world, standing between it and my son…

I looked back down at Grinder’s name carved into the black marble, my gaze riveting to the picture I’d taken, so long ago with his phone. I missed him with a fierce burning ache, deep in the center of my chest where my heart still beat, battered and bruised. I lay down on the grass and stared into the sky like we used to do a thousand times back home, picking shapes out of the clouds.

I tried to think of every question he would possibly ask me about Noah, and I answered every single one. Telling him everything about his son, and how we came to be here and I have to say… I felt better. Much lighter than I had before. When I finished, Dragon was waiting back at his Harley, wraparound sunglasses in place. I said my goodbyes and left Noah’s pictures with his father and headed back down the hill to go back to my son and make good on everything I promised in the time I’d been there.

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