Chapter 35
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Dark
Sitting on the front steps at Kali’s with Lily, I pull a bag of M&Ms from my cut and hand over the contraband to my daughter.
Who, without a word, rips the brown package open and gets her chocolatey fill.
It’s one of our things. Anytime we hang out, I bring her a gift, and today, given that I spent most of my time with Iris, I snagged some candy at the gas station on my way over.
“So, kiddo, how’s your week goin’? Do anything fun?”
“I went swimming,” she mumbles around a mouthful.
“That sounds fun,” I reply in a typical dad fashion, which shows I’m listening but don’t know what else to say. Pops used to pull that shit with me when I was a kid, and it worked.
“It was.” Lily bobs her head and tosses a blue M&M into her mouth. “But Kylie kept splashing me, and I asked her to stop, but she didn’t listen.” She shrugs.
“What did ya do?” I ask, keeping my tone in check.
Even though the thought of any person, including a child, fucking with my kid puts me on edge.
I keep that to myself, but press for more, in case I gotta pay this Kylie’s parents a visit.
Abby might be the kinda mom who shrugs shit off and lets it go.
But I’m not. Never have been. Never will be.
“I said mean words,” my daughter explains.
“Like?”
Lily side-eyes me. “You promise not to tell Mom?”
I try my hardest not to smile. “No. I can’t promise that. But I can promise that I won’t be mad.”
“I used the F-word.”
“Fuck?”
“Yes.” She nods sharply. “That one.”
Not wanting to encourage this kinda talk, I swallow back a laugh. My kid is adorable as fuck, and if she needs to say fuck, then it must’ve been important. Still, I keep my expression neutral when I ask, “Okay, and?”
“I yelled that if she didn’t F-word with an ing stop, I would send an Angel to attack her.”
Hell yeah, she did.
“An angel? As in Angel?” I ask about my brother, still doin’ the dad thing.
“Yes, but she didn’t know what that meant. But it made her stop splashing me, and then she told her mom, and now I can’t go swimming for a week.” Crossing her arms over her chest, Lily pouts and rolls her eyes. It shouldn’t be cute, but is. I love the fuck outta this kid.
“Mom punished you?” I guess.
“Yes.”
“Did you tell her what happened?”
“No. I tried to, but she was mad because Kylie’s mom called and said I’d said I was going to put a hex on her. I didn’t say that.”
“And Mom believed her?”
Humming, Lily lifts and drops a single shoulder in a shrug. “I think so,” she mutters. “Mom’s new boyfriend’s a youth pastor at a church. I heard him and Mom talking about Kali’s crystals and smudging.”
Well, ain’t that fuckin’ news to me. Kali said Abby was seein’ someone and getting her slice of happy, but she never mentioned he was a Bible man.
“Do you go to church with them?” I check with my kid.
Not that I’m opposed to religion, but Abby was raised in the church.
Her father was a hardcore, abusive man of God.
Which, in his eyes, gave him a pass to cheat on her mother and abuse his kids.
God would absolve him of his sins. As all men are sinners.
What the fuck ever. He’s a piece of shit.
When I met Abby, she was running from her father, right into the arms of other men who abused her in a different way.
Not to say I’m much better. I’m not deluding myself about what went down and how it all went down.
I’m no savior. I knocked her up way too goddamn young, but I tried to do right by her.
Lily sets her bag of half-eaten candy on the step. “Not anymore. But I did.”
“Why haven’t you told me? Does Kali know?” I ask, not wanting to put pressure on her, but she knows she can talk to me about anything. Not that I’ve been around enough to prove that.
“She knows he’s a pastor, but I haven’t told her about the other stuff. Mom told me not to say anything. She was sad when you left, but now she’s different.”
Yeah. Different. She’s sucked back into the life she grew up in.
Only this time, she’s got my kid wrapped up in her unresolved trauma.
When we moved here, after Lily was born, I tried like hell to get Abby help.
I sure as fuck wasn’t in the right headspace to help her myself, but we tried the therapy thing.
She refused. It didn’t help that she had postpartum depression and was living two houses down from the woman I was married to and madly in love with.
“Her new boyfriend hasn’t touched you, right?” I ask because I have to. Given what I’ve seen, keepin’ an open line of communication up with my daughter is necessary.
“No.” Lily’s nose wrinkles as if that’s the silliest thing I’ve ever asked. “Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug to play it off. “But I’m your dad. I gotta ask these sorts of things. Do you want me to talk to Mom about the pool shit?”
“No. She’ll just get mad that I told you and not her, and that I used the F-word. It’s only a week.”
“The next time you go swimming, I’ll go with you.
Okay? So, this Kylie kid and her mom don’t pull this again.
But you gotta promise me you’ll talk to someone about the shit at Mom’s.
None of this pretending-everything-is-okay stuff.
It doesn’t have to be with me, but it’s gotta be someone. Kali. Pops. One of your brothers. “
“I will.”
“Promise?”
“Yesss, Daaad.” She drones like I’m torturing her, but there’s a smile in her voice. “I promise.”
“Thank you, Lilyyy,” I mimic, and she giggles, rolling her eyes.
“Who’s Iris?”
Ah. I wondered when she was gonna bring this up.
It’s not like I’m keeping Iris a secret, but I wasn’t plannin’ on pulling out the Iris card until things were settled.
Things are still fresh. Too new. I’m all in, but Iris is her own person, and as much as I wanna push, I’m doin’ my best here to pump the brakes a bit.
Looking down at my daughter to gauge her reaction, I throw the truth right the hell out there. If I can’t be honest with my kid, I can’t expect her to be honest with me. “My new girlfriend.”
“Oh.” Lily laughs awkwardly.
“What? Did you expect me to say somethin’ different?”
“I… I don’t know. Can I meet her?”
“Yeah. Soon. Whenever you’re both ready for that.”
“I’m ready. Kali said she’s nice.”
“She is.”
The phone in my pocket vibrates, and Kali’s front door opens. Pops steps onto the porch with his cell in hand.
“We’ve gotta roll,” he announces, frowning at his phone.
“Now?”
“Yeah. Big’s called Church for all nomads. We’ve got an hour to check in.”
Fuck.
Standing on the step, I pull out my cell, and sure enough, the same text Pops got is staring back at me. A second later, both of our phones ring—Angel on his and Wolf on mine.
“Cabin?” Wolf growls through the receiver.
“Cabin,” I agree, and the line disconnects.
I look over at my dad. “Something’s poppin’ off.”
Blowing out a breath, he cards a hand through his thick, gray hair. “Yeah. Something fuckin’ big. Call Gunz. I’ll grab our bug-out bags.” Dad spins around and reenters his house, but leaves the front door open.
Calm as I can be, given I don’t know shit yet, I escort Lily home. On the front porch, I give her a sloppy kiss on the forehead and hug goodbye before I return to Kali’s, where Pops is already throwing our bags in the back of his van.
Sliding into the passenger seat, I connect a call to Gunz, the sergeant-at-arms of our mother chapter, as Pops backs outta the driveway.
“You with Sunshine?” Gunz asks as soon as he answers.
I put him on speakerphone and rest the phone on my thigh. “Yeah. What’s doin’?
“We’re on lockdown. There’s a… Imma call you back on a secure line.”
The call ends, and less than a second later, a private, unnumbered call rings through.
“Brother?” I answer and eye Dad as he gets our asses onto the main road.
“I’m here. Sorry. We don’t know what’s been fucked with or not.
Before I said anything, I needed to be sure.
There’s a summit goin’ down at the border in Texas.
Big time shit. We just caught wind of it.
It sounds like this has been in the works for months.
But they’ve done a damn good job keepin’ it on the DL. ”
“So you’re sending the nomads?” I guess, otherwise he wouldn’t be calling us.
There’s a lip smack and a clack of hard candy hittin’ teeth. Given Gunz’s obsession with Dum Dums, the noise tracks. “Mmmm,” he hums. “That’s what Big wants. They’ve got eyes on the chapters, but they don’t know fuck all about the rest of you. Not enough to keep tabs.”
“Alright. So we need to get our asses to Texas. What else?”
“We need women,” he explains.
“What kinda women are we talkin’?”
“The kind with skills and no direct club association. Which means Rosie’s out.”
Right. That’s why he’s calling me.
“You want Kali,” I guess.
“Yeah. We want Kali and whatever sisters she trusts to play these motherfuckers.”
“What’s the job?”
“Resort staff. That’s where it’s goin’ down in a few days. Some fancy fuckin’ place, real exclusive. The kinda place that only employs hot women. If you get what I mean.”
“Rodger that. I’ll talk to her. We’re meetin’ at the cabin right now.”
“Update me when you can.”
“Will do, brother.”
“Later.” The line dies, and I glance over at Dad, who’s choking the life outta the steering wheel.
“They want my old lady,” he snarls.
“Sounds that way.”
“Fuck.”
Fuck is right. Here I am, not sure what to do with my life after the Penelope shit, and now my club needs me again. Til death do us part, I’m in this for life.
By the clench of his jaw, Pops gets it, too. He doesn’t have to like it, but he has to deal.
That makes two of us.
“I’ll call her,” I offer, knowin’ he doesn’t want any part of getting Kali involved in something that will put her in direct danger.
“Yeah,” he grates, violently hitting a turn signal.
“She can meet us at the cabin.”
A grunt.
Staring out the side window, I make the call.