Chapter 13
?
— Colt —
The first few visits were brutal. I showed up at Betty’s every day, rain or shine, and every day the boys looked at me like I was something dangerous that had wandered into their territory.
Luca especially. He’d positioned himself as the man of the house, and he wasn’t about to hand over that role to some stranger who’d made his mama cry.
Knox let him have it, probably because Luca had been born several minutes earlier and figured that made it his birthright.
I didn’t push. Didn’t demand. Just showed up, sat on the porch when they didn’t want me inside, fixed the loose railing Betty had been complaining about, mowed the lawn without being asked. I made myself useful without making myself a problem.
Lilac watched me from the kitchen window sometimes. I could feel her eyes on me, assessing, waiting for me to prove her fears right. I was determined to prove them wrong instead.
Lilac wasn’t the only one watching. Betty intercepted me on the front porch this morning.
She’d been pleasant enough since that first night—civil, even helpful—but there’d always been something guarded in her eyes.
A judgment she was holding back. Today, apparently, she’d decided to stop holding back.
“Sit.” She pointed to the porch swing with the air of a woman who’d lived the MC life and didn’t take shit from anyone. “We need to talk.”
I did as I was told and sat.
Betty settled into the rocking chair across from me, her silver hair gleaming in the morning light, her expression giving nothing away.
“My husband was Iron Wolves,” she said without preamble.
I nodded. “I remember.”
“Forty-one years married to an MC man. I’ve seen it all, Mr. Spencer. The good, the bad, the bloody.” She held my gaze. “I know exactly what your world looks like. And I know what happens to women who get caught up in it.”
I didn’t say anything. Just waited for her to continue.
“When Graham brought Lilac to my door, she was more dead than alive. Beaten so badly I wasn’t sure she’d ever wake up. And when she did wake up—” Betty’s voice hardened. “She didn’t know her own name. Didn’t know she was carrying twins. Didn’t know anything except fear.”
“I didn’t do that to her.”
“No. You didn’t.” Betty leaned forward, her gaze unwavering. “But you come from a world where it could happen. Where things like this are always one bad night away.”
I wanted to argue—to defend myself, my brothers, the life I’d chosen. But looking at this fierce old lady who’d spent seven years protecting my wife and raising my sons, I found I couldn’t. “You’re right,” I said. “I can’t deny any of that.”
Betty’s expression shifted. Surprised, maybe, that I wasn’t fighting her.
“I’ve seen how you look at her,” she continued. “Like she’s your salvation. Like loving her is the only thing keeping you human.” She paused. “My husband looked at me that way too.”
“Was he a good man?”
“He was a complicated man. Capable of great violence and great tenderness in equal measure.” Her voice softened slightly. “He died protecting a family—a mother and two children who’d gotten tangled up with the wrong people. Took three bullets making sure they got away safe.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Be worthy.” Betty stood, and I rose with her. “That woman in there has built something beautiful out of nothing. Those boys are her whole world. If you hurt any of them—if you bring your violence into this home—I will make you regret it.”
“I swear—”
“I’m not finished.” She stepped closer, and despite being a foot shorter than me, she somehow seemed to fill the whole porch.
“I’ve been watching you this past week. The way you show up without being asked.
The way you sit quietly out here when the boys don’t want you inside.
The way you look at Lilac like she’s made of glass and you’re terrified of breaking her. ”
I held my breath.
“My husband was like that too. Gentle with me in ways he was gentle with no one else.” She studied my face for a long moment. “I haven’t decided about you yet, Mr. Spencer. But I’m willing to keep watching. Don’t make me regret it.”
“I won’t.” My voice came out rough. “I swear on my life, I won’t.”
Betty nodded once, then headed for the door. She paused with her hand on the screen.
“The back lawn needs mowing. And the gutter on the east side is clogged.”
“On it.”
“Good.” A tiny smile crossed her face. “Maybe you’re trainable after all.”
She went inside, and I stood on the porch for a long moment, feeling like I’d just survived an interrogation way more intense than any I’d faced since patching in with the Death’s Head MC all those years ago.
Betty wasn’t just watching. She was testing.
And I was determined to pass.
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On Thursday afternoon I was checking the rest of the gutters for leaves. The boys were in the backyard, Knox on his bike practicing some trick he’d seen on TV while Luca sat on the porch steps pretending to read but really keeping an eye on his brother.
I heard the crash before I saw it.
Metal scraping against concrete, a startled yelp, and then silence. The kind of silence that comes before a child realizes they’re hurt.
I was off the ladder before I could think, rounding the corner of the house to find Knox sprawled on the ground, his bike on its side, blood streaming from a gash on his knee. His face was white with shock, his eyes huge and glassy.
“Knox!” Luca was already running toward him, but I got there first.
I scooped the boy up without thinking, cradling him against my chest as I headed for the house. He felt so small in my arms—my son who’d grown up without me.
“It’s okay. I’ve got you. You’re okay.”
Knox made a choked sound that was half sob, half gasp. “It hurts,” he wailed.
“I know, buddy. We’re gonna fix it.”
Lilac met us at the back door, her face pale with alarm. “What happened?”
“Took a spill off his bike. Scraped his knee pretty good.” I carried Knox through the kitchen to the bathroom, Lilac and Luca trailing behind. “Nothing that won’t heal. You got a first aid kit?”
“Under the sink.” Lilac’s voice was tight, but she moved efficiently, pulling out the kit and setting it on the counter.
I set Knox down on the closed toilet lid and knelt in front of him. The gash was about three inches long, jagged at the edges but not deep. It looked worse than it was.
“Okay, here’s what’s going to happen.” I kept my voice matter-of-fact, not making a big deal of his tears or the snot running down his face. “I’m going to clean this up. It’s going to sting for a second, but then it’ll feel better. You can squeeze my arm if you need to.”
Knox nodded, his lower lip trembling. He grabbed my arm with both of his, small fingers digging into my skin.
I cleaned the wound with antiseptic, quick and efficient. Knox whimpered but didn’t cry out, his grip tightening on my arm. When I smoothed on the antibiotic ointment and covered it with a large bandage, he let out a shaky breath.
“There.” I sat back on my heels. “Good as new. You’ll be back on your bike soon.”
Knox sniffled, looking down at the bandage. “You’re good at this.”
“Yeah?”
“Did you learn in biker school?”
I almost laughed. “Something like that. You patch up a lot of scrapes when you spend your life on two wheels.”
“I wish…” Knox started, then stopped, glancing at his mother.
“What do you wish?” I asked quietly.
He looked back at me, and for the first time since I’d met him, there was no fear in his eyes. Just a kid who’d gotten hurt and found someone to make it better.
“I wish you’d been here before,” he said. “For the other times I got hurt.”
As he said it, he glanced past my shoulder toward the doorway—toward Luca—so fast I almost missed it. Something happened between them. A whole conversation in the space of a breath, in a language I didn’t have access to.
It unsettled me in a way I couldn’t quite name. Like walking into a room where everyone already knows the punchline and nobody thinks to explain it because it’s just always been that way.
I had to swallow twice before I could speak. “Me too, buddy. I wish I’d been here for every scraped knee, every nightmare, every first day of school. I missed so much.”
“It wasn’t your fault.” Knox said it simply, like it was obvious. “Mama said the bad men lied to you. That’s not the same as leaving us on purpose.”
I couldn’t look at Lilac. Couldn’t look at anyone. If I did, I was going to lose it completely, and crying in front of my sons wasn’t going to help anything.
“That’s right,” I managed. “But I’m here now. And I’m not going anywhere.”
Knox studied my face for a long moment. Then, slowly, he released my hand and reached up to pat my cheek awkwardly, the way a child comforts an adult when they don’t quite know what they’re doing.
“It’s okay,” he said. “We can start from now.”
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Later, after Knox was settled on the couch with ice cream and cartoons, I found myself on the back porch with Luca.
He’d been quiet through the whole thing, watching from the doorway as I bandaged his brother’s knee. Now he sat on the top step, his book abandoned beside him, staring at the bike Knox had crashed.
“Everything okay?” I asked, lowering myself onto the step beside him. Not too close—I’d learned to give him space.
“Yeah.” Luca didn’t look at me. “He always bounces back fast.”
“What about you?”
That got a reaction. Luca’s head whipped around, his green eyes—my eyes—narrowing with suspicion. “What about me?”
“Scared you too, I bet. Seeing your brother get hurt.”
For a moment I thought he wasn’t going to answer. He looked at the floor. “I’m supposed to protect him.”
“Says who?”
“Me.” He lifted his chin, defiant. “I’m older. By four minutes. That makes me responsible.”
Christ, this kid was going to kill me. Six years old and already carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. Just like I had at his age.
“You know what?” I leaned back on my hands, looking out at the yard. “I used to think the same thing. About my little sister.”
Luca’s curiosity got the better of his hostility. “You have a sister?”
“Had. She got very sick and died.” I kept my voice even, stating facts rather than dwelling on the grief. “When we were kids, I thought it was my job to keep her safe from everything. Every bully, every fall, every bad dream. I thought if anything happened to her, it was because I’d failed.”
“Did you? Fail?”
“Sometimes. She broke her arm once because I dared her to climb a tree and she fell out of it. Felt like sh…felt bad about that for months.” I glanced at him. “But you can’t protect someone from everything. Sometimes people get hurt.”
Luca was quiet for a long moment. “Knox likes you,” he said finally. “Already.”
“And you don’t.”
“I don’t know you.” It wasn’t hostile, just honest. “Mama says you were different before. That you were good to her. But I wasn’t there. I just know what I see now.”
“Which was me being an asshole to your mother.”
Luca’s eyes widened at the curse word, then a tiny smirk tugged at his mouth. “Yeah. That.”
“You’re right to be careful.” I met his eyes directly. “I was an asshole. I was angry and hurt, and I took it out on your mama when she didn’t deserve it. That was wrong. And I’m going to spend a long time making up for it.”
“How?”
“By being here. By being patient. By never, ever treating her like that again.” I paused. “And by proving to you that I’m not just some mean biker who showed up to cause problems. I’m your daddy. I know you don’t feel that yet, and that’s okay. I’m not going anywhere.”
Luca studied me with those too-old eyes. Then he picked up his book and stood.
“Knox thinks you’re okay,” he said. “I’m still deciding.”
“Fair enough.”
He started toward the door, then stopped. Without looking back, he said, “Thanks. For fixing him up. You didn’t have to be so nice about it.”
Then he was gone, the screen door banging shut behind him.
I glanced up at the kitchen window.
Knox was there, face close to the glass, watching.
When he caught me looking, he darted back fast—but not before I saw it.
Saw how he’d been watching his brother’s face the whole time, not the TV.
Saw the way Luca’s shoulders had dropped half an inch right around the point Knox must have given whatever signal he’d given through the glass.
They’d been in conversation this whole time. And I’d thought it was just me and Luca.
I didn’t know whether to feel stupid or awed.
Both, probably. There was a whole private language between these two kids that had been building since before they knew how to talk, and I’d missed every bit of it.
Six years of them learning each other’s faces and silences, building something I had no dictionary for.
The verdict Luca had just handed me—Knox thinks you’re okay, I’m still deciding—hadn’t been Luca’s alone.
It had been a joint ruling. I’d just been the last to know.
Would it be any different if I’d been there from the start? If I’d spent those six years in the same house, watching them figure each other out—would I know the code? Would I be in on it?
Probably not. Probably that was theirs alone, and always would be. But maybe I’d at least know what I was looking at.
Then again—did Lilac know it? Had she learned it over six years of watching them, living with them, becoming the person they measured everything against? Did they look at each other that way in front of her too, and she could read every word of it?
I thought about the way she’d stood in the bathroom doorway while I cleaned Knox’s knee. Quiet. Watching. Not watching me, I realized now—watching the boys.
Maybe she was in on it. Maybe she’d always been in on it. Which meant I was the only one on the outside.