Semisonic - Closing Time
My hair whipped in the wind and a hoot escaped me. It set off a chain of events that had a rusty laugh coming from my Old Man.
Behind me, as if we’d organized it—the Posse was capable of many things but this wasn’t one of them—a chorus of hoots worthy of a choir shot off around me.
It was an impressive feat considering the roar from the hogs’ engines, but we were on our way.
At long goddamn last.
Rex’s appointment at the doctor’s a month ago had shuffled things up a gear. He had angina—totally under control—but it had made me question what we were waiting for.
The big road trip he’d been dreaming of since he’d hit fifty, the one he kept putting off because of business, was like a beacon for him. A dream.
Well, I was tired of that. I wanted the dream to become reality.
I knew he wanted it too, and because I wasn’t as stubborn as him, I’d made it happen.
I might have retired a couple years ago, but I was still terrifying.
Enough that Nyx had stopped griping about not being able to leave West Orange because his granddaughter might take her first steps without him.
Maverick had finally stopped bitching about leaving his computers behind, and Link and Steel had let bygones be bygones—they’d been arguing ever since their kids had gotten together.
Sin had said he’d go only if Tiff agreed, and that had taken some of my greatest wrangling because they’d gotten into a crash a decade or so ago and she’d refused to get on the back of a bike since.
I’d twisted Cruz’s arm via Indy, because he didn’t like leaving the tristate area now that his youngest was in graduate school in the city.
Storm had been the easiest to convince, mostly because my SIL and he loved long road trips. Last year, they’d ridden the Cabot Trail up in Canada but it was easier for them because their kid was now Prez of the Coshocton chapter. Keira’d argue that that made nothing easier, but I disagreed.
Digger and MaryCat had ridden up too—we’d gotten close when her son, Gray, and Sommer had been diagnosed on the spectrum. It was good to see her cut loose behind Digger.
Sweet Lips was shouting something back at his Old Lady that had her head tipping back in a laugh that made me smile.
Hell, even Hawk, Quin, and Amara were here, which had been another rough argument too, seeing as none of them liked leaving their animal sanctuary behind. Hawk and North were hollering something at each other before I turned back to the road ahead.
I’d begged, stolen, and borrowed to make this ride happen.
We were going through the upper states of the US first, visiting the Montana chapter before we headed down to Route 66—the classic route—and then, when we made it down to Vegas, we were going to stay there for a month so I could catch up with Hunter and his family there before we returned home the long way—through Texas and along the East Coast back to the city.
All in all, it’d take twelve months minimum because I’d sketched out the itinerary to within an inch of its life so that, at one point or another, Rex would get to visit each state in the continental US.
And hell, maybe next year, I’d treat him to a trip to Alaska and Hawaii, but that could be for us.
This was for family.
I turned my head to stare back at the motorcade and I grinned as I wondered what Bear and Rene would think—I knew she’d be thrilled at the bright pink leather Posse cuts the Old Ladies wore, while I knew he’d be happy Rex was fulfilling a dream.
Both of them, I knew, would be happier still that all their kids were together.
Sisters who’d bled for us; brothers who’d killed for us.
We were wrinkled and some of us were sick, we had arthritis that’d make this trip hard on our bones, and some of us probably rattled with Viagra—Link—but fuck, we were still kicking.
Still riding.
Still dark and dirty, and we would be until the day we died.
I had no means of knowing when that’d be, but until that day when Rex and I and the rest of our generation toddled off this mortal coil, when we passed that baton on to our kids for the final time, we were going to live it up the only way Satan’s Sinners knew how—on the back of a Harley.