Chapter 5 Shade
SHADE
On the fifth morning in our new home, I wake to the sound of Kai snoring soft and even next to me.
Morning sunlight meanders through the gap in the blinds, catching the dust motes hanging above the dresser.
There’s a security in the warmth and half-light.
That this place is ours and we’re safe here.
Kai is curled into me, a possessive arm tossed across my waist, and I huff at the irony. I thought I was never going to have any kind of family of my own, because my parents had predisposed me to the notion that families were cold, explosive, and violent.
And my Wild showed me the exact opposite. He’s shown me patience, and what it is to love someone so completely, you can meet them wherever they are. He never gave up on me in that first year. When I wanted to push him away but kept dragging him back.
The first time I tried to break up with him was five months after we got together.
My mother had tried to get in touch to tell me my father was ill.
I couldn’t reconcile that there was even the smallest part of me that was concerned by the news after his treatment of me.
I accepted a run for the club that would take two weeks and left a letter on the kitchen table telling Kai he needed to be out of my house by the time I returned.
When I got back, he was still there, roasting a fucking chicken.
I still remember the way he casually turned to say hi and greet me with the smile that makes everything better.
Over the miles I’d ridden, I’d come to the conclusion I’d just thrown away the best part of my life.
When I saw him standing there, I was mad he was still there, for his own sake.
Because even back then I knew he deserved a better man than me.
One less broken.
Instead, he listened when I wasn’t even saying anything, and he understood. He read between the lines. He asked questions about my past. He never let up or gave up.
He just decided I was his and he was mine and held on until I finally agreed with him.
And I’m the lucky fuck who gets to steal some of his sunshine, some of his warmth to get me through the day.
The vibration of both our phones annoys me and makes Kai twitch.
“If that’s Grudge at this hour, I’m gonna set fire to something,” Kai says. His face is half buried in my chest, hair smushed to one side.
I reach for my phone and read it. “Yup. Church in two hours. Says it’s mandatory.”
Kai curses beneath his breath.
“Where are you going?” Kai mutters as I slip my arm from beneath him.
“Bathroom, and then I’m making us some breakfast.”
Kai smiles and forces his eyes open. “French toast?”
It’s exactly what I was gonna make because it’s his favorite. “I’ll give you a shout when it’s done.” Playfully, I tuck the sheets back up around him.
I tug on jeans and a clean T-shirt. I’ll worry about underwear and socks later. The house is about twenty degrees too hot, as we’re still playing around with all the thermostat settings.
But as I walk into the living room, I stop cold.
A word, thick and dripping red, is slashed across the living room window. It’s an ugly gay slur.
For a beat, I can’t breathe, but the rage is fast to follow, burning hot and white. “Motherfuckers,” I whisper to no one.
I tug on my boots and open the front door. The cool air hits me, but I step out and take a photograph. The paint is still wet, dripping in places. This can’t happen in our first week in our new home. I won’t let someone else take away what Kai wants so badly.
A place to call our own.
Once I have the photo evidence, I call Wren.
“Hey, Shade,” Wren says.
“Are you busy right now?”
“Just in the truck with Catfish, we slept over at Willa’s so we could babysit the twins overnight.”
“Can you swing by?”
“Sure,” Wren says. “We’ll be there in five.”
While I’m waiting, I go grab a bucket and fill it with some hot soapy water. There’s a collection of old rags in the garage left by the previous owners, so I take them out front too.
I start the way they wrote it. Washing the bright letter F off the window. The water runs red down the siding, but I don’t give a fuck.
“What the hell is all that banging?” Kai says as he steps out barefoot and in just his jeans. “Holy shit.”
“I wanted to get this off before you saw it.”
The color has drained from his face. “Not this house. Not this soon.”
I drop the cloth back into the bucket and put my arms around him. “Go back inside and make us some coffee. I’ll deal with it.”
“It must be Isla’s uncle.”
A muscle twitches in my cheek. “Seems like the cowardly bullshit he’d pull. Had no issue going up two men against one woman.”
Out of habit, we step apart when we hear the truck lumbering up the road toward us. While Catfish and Wren know who we are, we still keep signs of affection to a minimum.
Wren’s jeep rolls up, Catfish behind the wheel. The two of them step out together, but Wren’s expression is wretched.
“Oh, hell,” they say.
Catfish steps forward and squeezes Jackal’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, you two. That’s rough.”
Kai nods, but his eyes keep flicking between the windows and me.
“I want eyes on the place, Wren,” I say. “Twenty-four seven. Cameras, motion alerts. All of it. I don’t care how much it costs.”
Wren’s eyes narrow as they look around the property. “I’ll get you covered. No one’s gonna get within a hundred feet of this place without you knowing. Jackal, can you show me around the back?”
Jackal shakes off the numbness he obviously felt. “Sure.”
We watch the two of them go before I turn to Catfish. “You okay?”
“Hits harder than I thought.” He rubs the back of his neck.
“I’ve lived most of my life with every kind of privilege.
White. Male. Straight. Until I met them.
” He glances in the direction Wren just went.
“Wren and I get shit sometimes. But most of the world sees Wren and me as straight because that’s all they can acknowledge.
But seeing it aimed at the two of you… I dunno.
It’s wrong when all you want to do is exist. Feels like the club should be protecting you both more. Maybe if you told them?”
“No.” I dunk the cloth back in the bucket and continue to clean up. I don’t want the paint to dry. “And you don’t carry this. Someone else painted it.”
“Still,” Catfish mutters. “I’m supposed to have your back. All three of you.”
“Brother. You don’t need to do anything other than be here. You headed to church?”
“Was gonna grab a shower, first, but my guess is Wren is gonna want to go shopping for whatever’s needed to secure you tight.”
“I appreciate it.” I tip my head across the street and see Isla come out onto her porch. The woman’s got a hedge trimmer in her hands.
“Is that Isla?” Catfish asks, squinting into the sun as he waves.
“Yeah.”
She sees the two of us looking and quickly hurries back up the stairs into the house, closing the door with a slam so loud, we can all hear it.
“What crawled up her ass?”
I shake my head. “No idea. She moved in the day after us, and her uncle was around here firing off bullets.”
“You talking about Isla?” Kai asks as he reappears with Wren.
I tip my chin in the direction of her house. “She just popped out, then disappeared back inside when she saw us standing here talking.”
“There’s something odd going on with her,” Kai says.
“Odd how?” Catfish asks.
Kai runs a hand down his face. “She was doing some yard work to remove a fence, and I could see her struggling with it. So, I grabbed a spade and went over there to give her a hand. And she freaked out about me helping her. I keep replaying it. She was scared of me. Not pissed off—scared.”
“And yesterday, she was on a ladder trying to clear out the gutter,” I add. “Had about fifty percent done when I noticed, so I went over there and offered to hold the ladder for her, but she immediately climbed down it, told me she was done, and went back inside.”
When I look over, I can still see the clear line between the weeds still clogging the damn thing and the half she’d done.
“That’s weird,” Catfish says. “While she was at the clubhouse, did you guys ever get into it with her?”
We both shake our heads. “Never.”
Wren glances over at the house. “You know, I’ve been trying to figure out what the attraction of being a club girl is, because hardly any of the bikers I know have ended up with one of them.
They seem like they’re nothing but disposable sex objects.
I was wondering how young they start. How many times could they have been touched wrong?
Spoken to wrong? Dismissed when they needed comfort?
Asked to leave instead of being given aftercare?
I mean, how much shit do they figuratively have to swallow before they learn just how unwanted they actually are? ”
The question hits deep.
Because I’ve never slept with a single one of them, I’m often at the bar when they get kicked out of some biker’s room, holding their clothes to their chest. Some are smiling, but, sometimes, we both pretend I don’t see them crying.
“Maybe that’s it,” I say. “Isla is trying to be different. Karlie told us she got the job at the vet. Now she’s got the house. Doing everything by herself without help. She’s trying to earn some kind of clean slate for herself.”
Wren nods. “Maybe. Perhaps she just doesn’t want reminders of something she feels she escaped. Must have been a bit of a surprise for her to find the two of you across the street from her fresh start.”
Something sympathetic tugs deep in my chest. Old wounds of rejection, of never being good enough, of feeling a bone-deep loneliness. “I hate that for her if it’s true.”
“We can be selfish motherfuckers,” Catfish mutters. “Always assumed Isla and the club girls were there because they wanted to be there.”
Wren places their hand on Catfish’s back. “When you know better, you do better.”
“You’re being generous and selfless, as always,” he says before brushing Wren’s lips with his own. “But, if I’m being honest, I don’t know anyone who paid too much attention to them beyond…well…”
“Yeah, don’t finish that sentence,” Wren says. “And we should get moving so I can buy security supplies before church.”
“Do me a favor,” I say. “Get some cameras for me for Isla’s house. I’ll install them myself.”
Wren nods.
We wave as they pull off the drive.
“I hate that the club, something we love, is what’s scared her,” Kai says as I return to washing the paint off the window. “She deserves to feel safe, whole, and happy.”
I look at him, hating that the only good thing in my life is hurting.
“Then we help with that. We can’t move. Not now, when we’ve found our place.
But we can co-exist. I’m gonna go fit those cameras one night, while she’s in bed.
Leave her a note of what needs doing to fit them to a power source and connect them to her phone, without talking to her directly if she doesn’t want me to.
Day to day, maybe we don’t wear our club colors around here unless we’re out on club business or whatever. ”
“All good ideas. And so very you.” Kai puts his palm on my cheek.
I huff. “Not like I can bake her a cake and put ‘we’re not gonna hurt you’ on it in icing.”
“You’re a good man, Bear.”
“Only for you,” I say.
“Obviously not.” He points over to Isla’s house, then shoulder checks me gently. “You finish cleaning up, I’ll go make the French toast.”
“Then make sure it’s cooked through properly.”
He flips me the bird. “You want to go make it while I finish up here?”
I shake my head. “No. I got this.”
The slur was the very last word my father called me when I walked out of the house with my backpack.
And I refuse to let it stain my Wild in the same way it stained me.