Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Ayda
There was something calming about the cemetery.
It wasn’t that stereotypical place you saw in the movies, which was a small spatter of headstones in an open field, or even the New Orleans type of style with mausoleums dotted around and marble tombs, holding caskets above the water table.
This was beautiful. It was like a forest meadow, hidden among the trees that had been claimed by visitors and the wind chimes that they hung there.
In the summer, the air was stifling. The humidity hung around you like an unwelcome friend while you sat sweating over the people you missed most. In the winter, it stayed comfortable, out of the chill of the breeze that tended to bring the temperature down another couple of degrees.
I reveled in the solitude of it as I cleared their headstones and did a little maintenance of my own. The pennant Tate had dropped off after last season's game was looking a bit weatherworn and faded, but I put it back where he’d left it, along with my mom’s collection of trinkets.
“There, that’s better,” I said, finally sitting down between them and crossing my legs.
I leaned back, resting my weight on my hands as my eyes moved over their engraved names.
“What the hell am I supposed to do about Tate, Momma? He’s a good kid, but right now, I swear to God he's ruled by his hormones.”
I sat listening to the wind and imagined her response.
Her voice was so clear in my head. I wanted to close my eyes and pretend I was back on our couch with my head on her lap.
Hormones are leading him, pumpkin. Boys are rabid when they’re adolescents.
They think about one thing and one thing only.
Why do you think Daddy was so intent on you being back by ten at night?
I must have looked crazy sitting there alone, smiling at the mental image I had.
My dad would have looked over his paper at me, one eyebrow raised in a knowing smile.
He always knew me better than I knew myself.
When I’d come in from my first intimate experience with Jacob, he’d been sitting at the kitchen table, a bourbon in hand and a small hint of sadness.
It was probably designed to make me feel guilty, but I just remembered the way I’d interpreted it. He paid attention. He knew who I was.
“I wonder if I made a selfish decision where Tate was concerned. I couldn’t be happier.
I love Drew, and I love The Hut and the boys, but I feel like Tate is losing himself in it.
He still goes to practice, but I think that’s only because Kenny rags on him if he doesn’t.
His grades are still okay, but I can see the slow deterioration into not so great, and I know it’s because he’s distracted.
I found him in bed with one of the girls this morning.
She’s one of the few sweet ones, but she’s still older than him, and I’m not ready for that last part of childishness to be stolen from him. ”
Sitting up and dusting off my hands, I dragged them through my hair and made myself smaller by drawing my knees to my chest. I had so many questions to ask them.
I needed their wisdom, but all I had were my memories.
I couldn’t trust myself to give honest speeches.
I loved where my life had taken me, and if I was truthful, I was being selfish when it came to Tate.
Sure, he was happy where he was, but that didn’t mean it was the right environment for him.
So what did I do? Set ground rules? Hope that all of those men would choose to honor them for me?
I couldn’t expect them to do that. The club was a place where they could be themselves, where they were free of house rules and regulations.
I couldn’t suddenly implement some purely for my own selfish need to feel like I was being proactive.
Even so, I couldn’t leave, either. I couldn’t walk out of there and expect one of those guys to have to sit and guard our door, just so I could give Tate some kind of routine.
Drew would never understand why I had to leave, and I didn’t want him to have to understand. I just wanted to be with him.
“How do I do what’s best for Tate and think about my own happiness? Or do I put his above mine?”
You do both, came the voice of my dad in my head. Just because you think it’s not a good environment, it doesn’t mean that’s true. You said yourself these guys are decent men. What’s to say they won’t help shape your brother into a good man?
Maybe that was just wishful thinking; perhaps it was the truth. I wasn’t a parent, and I was proving to be a shitty understudy for the ones we’d lost. I still had no idea how to handle a boy or know what was good for him.
I’d just hung my arms over my legs and started to lean forward to talk some more when an almighty crack came from across the silent cemetery.
I thought I’d been alone up until that point, and it wasn’t until I sat up and strained to look over the headstones that I saw a group of three kids laughing, while a fourth was using all of his strength to kick at a headstone in an attempt to break it.
“Speaking of misspent youth…” I grumbled, pulling my purse toward me and rocking to my feet.
“I’m going to go and take care of that and figure out how the hell to talk to Tate.
I love you both, and I promise I’ll be back again soon.
Oh, and I promise I’ll bring Tate, too. Even if I have to dress him myself, and hog-tie him… Which I may do anyway.”
I leaned down, kissing my fingers and pressing them to each name before looking back toward the kids who had grown louder as one of the others had joined in the goal of destroying property that didn’t belong to them.
Whatever I’d been expecting, I got a sense of just how wrong I’d been as I made my way across the cemetery.
From my place at my parents’ graves, it had looked like the four of the kids had been wearing simple black hoodies.
But the closer I got, the more I recognized the image staring back at me from one of the fake leather vests.
The cartoonish skull had fangs, and the dog's teeth were dripping blood, but the similarities were too close, dangerously resembling the Hounds patch. This wasn’t good for either group.
These boys were putting themselves in the line of fire and incurring the Hounds’ wrath, while the behavior of the boys would reflect on the pack’s already sullied reputation.
Whatever game the kids were playing, it involved fire, and they were going to get burned.
The ringleader wiped some sweat away with the arm of his hoodie as he paused to catch his breath.
The granite hadn’t shifted since the initial crack that had alerted me to their presence in the first place.
Not one of them had noticed me, but as he pulled his foot back to try once more, my eyes were drawn to the name engraved on it, and the words were out before I could so much as think about changing my mind.
“Do that again and you’ve signed your death warrant, kid.”
Four sets of eyes turned my way, the sneer of the one with his leg suspended in the air making an insidious shiver run down my spine.
I was outnumbered.
They may have been kids, freshmen in high school if I was judging right, but they could still be dangerous.
Teenage boys were like dogs; put more than two together and you had a pack mentality, and that wasn’t always a comforting thought.
I wasn’t safe. The look in their eyes as they assessed me told me everything I needed to know.
“Put your mouth to better use and wrap it around my dick, bitch.”
Whatever line of thought was in my mind, whatever fear or caution I’d been harboring, it all seemed to go away with the little punk’s deep, gravelly voice. My incredulity at his audacity was suddenly the only thing that mattered.
“I’d have to find it first, asshole.” All his little friends made amused noises as they hid their faces. Point to me. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“It ain’t none of your business. So go back to whatever the fuck you were doing and keep your nose out of it.”
He kicked the headstone again, forcing the grass around the base to move. The real patch that was engraved under the word's Brother For Life became visible.
“Stop it. Just stop it. That’s disrespectful and disgusting. It’s also a good way to get a target nail-gunned to your backs. The fact that you were stupid enough to wake up this morning and put on fake patches was bad, but to desecrate one of the Hounds’ graves is suicide.”
“We are the Hounds.”
“The fuck you are, kid, and if you valued your balls, you’d take those terrible fakes off and forget you ever had them.”
“Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?”
“You, asshole, but I have this overwhelming sense that you have no idea who I am, which would be completely understandable if you hadn’t said you were Hounds.”
“I don’t got time for you, lady. Step off and fuck off.”
“Oh, I will. I’m sure Drew Tucker would be very interested to know that you’re here,” I said, pulling out my cell phone to call one of the guys, hoping Drew would be with them. “What were your names?”
“Elbows,” his friend said, suddenly wide-eyed and sheet white.
“Shut up, Mikey. She’s bluffing.”
“I’m really not,” I said, flipping the phone onto speaker as a growl came down the line.
“Where the fuck have you been, Ayda?”
“I’m at the cemetery, Drew. You may need to get down here. We have a situation.”
As much as I knew I would pay for it later, I hung the phone up on him and stared at the kid who looked like he was about to hurl.
I didn’t like throwing my relationship with Drew around.
I didn’t like using it to put weight behind my threats, but this was pack business as much as it was mine, and it was the only way I could stop the little fucks from ruining Pete’s headstone.
I’d barely drawn breath when the four of them took off like their heels were on fire.
The one they called Elbows stopped as the others jumped the fence and turned his head to look back at me.
With two fingers and his thumb raised, he cocked an imaginary gun and shot it in my direction, his smirk evident as he shook his head and bounced over to follow his friends.
My original instinct was right. They were dangerous, but I’d won the battle this time.
Turning back to the grave, I felt an overwhelming sadness stab me in the chest. It wasn’t the prettiest grave, or the neatest, but it was certainly the most loved.
The face of it had been left clean, but over the years, the sides and the back had been decorated.
Names, badges and messages were engraved all over it.
All signs of love from his brothers and friends.
To say he was missed was a ridiculous understatement.
Falling to my knees at the side of him, I placed my hand in the middle of the long grass and left it there.
My eyes closed as I thought about everything Drew and I had spoken about the night before.
This was the man responsible for the guy I loved.
Pete was the reason Drew was still alive, even if there was a piece of him buried under my palm with his idol.
“Hey, Peter 'Frazier' Mitchell, friend, brother and legacy Hound. We finally get to meet. I’m Ayda, and I think I may have just inadvertently forced Drew to come and pay you a visit.”