Chapter One #2
My boy was there, and he was smilin’.
I blinked hard. Once, twice, then squeezed my eyes shut and opened ’em again.
He was still there.
Reelin’, I still managed to recover my voice enough to grunt, “You’re my son and not some fucked mirage, you get your ass over ’ere and let me hug ya or punch ya to test it true.”
That smile flickered and flared brighter, but his eyes weren’t creased with mirth. They were dead and pale grey as bleached stone.
He moved.
Slow, graceful-like, the way a ghost might, I thought dazedly.
But as he came closer, I saw evidence’a somethin’ I couldn’t refute.
Time.
There were faint brackets around his mouth that hadn’t been there ’fore, his hair so long now it brushed the top of his chest where he’d always worn it cropped above his shoulders. He was bigger across the chest, startin’ to look more and more like his old man in size and scale.
He’d grown.
A dead man would be unchanged, but this man was different enough to seem bewilderingly new after eight months of absence.
He stopped three long steps from me, his face sober but for that tight smile in one corner’a his mouth. He considered me as I did him, studyin’ the changes in me, maybe.
Finally, he tipped his chin up in the universal greetin’a men like us and shrugged almost sheepishly.
“I’m sorry, Dad, fuckin’ sorrier than I’ll ever be able to tell.
But I hope you get I did what I had’ta to do for our family, and you taught me that.
‘Heavy is the fuckin’ head that wears the crown, even if it’s made of grease, leather, and iron.
’ You told me that, and the kinda man I am, a man who loves and respects his dad more than even I could properly express? I took it to fuckin’ heart.”
He paused to step closer, and the cold plume’a his breath mingled with mine. It was a nothin’ kinda observation, but it broke the seal on the wet in my eyes and sent scaldin’ tears to fallin’.
“For the first time in our lives, you needed me. Our family needed me, and I did what any Garro woulda done. I sacrificed to protect the ones I loved.” His voice split down the middle and cracked through with the impact’a his conviction and sorrow.
He extended his hand, broad palmed like me, a skull ring on his middle finger beside his weddin’ ring I’d given him when he patched-in to the club.
“I did what I had to do to get the best man I know outta prison and back home with the ones who needed him.”
“We needed you,” I barked, surprised by the anger that plunged through the wet of my grief like a fallen electrical pole, rage sparkin’ through me. “We all needed you, and you fucked off for eight months, lettin’ us think you were dead?”
King stared into me, straight into me in that way he’d had since he was a boy with eyes too serious for any kid, too knowin’ for most grown men, and then he jutted out his jaw and nodded curtly.
“Fuck yeah, I did. And I’d do it again it meant you outta prison, Staff Sergeant Danner convicted, our family safe at home in their fuckin’ beds instead’a terrorised by the men in blue meant to protect them.
I’d do it again and again and fuckin’ again. ”
It was my turn to stare into the eyes’a my son and realize there were no more vestiges’a youth in those arctic eyes.
He was a man with conviction, who had sacrificed for his kin, lived these past eight months with as much grief as the rest’a us knowin’ he’d put that on us and knowin’ still he’d done it for a reason he believed in.
My gaze tipped down to that extended hand, the veins and tendons strong beneath the skin, the flesh the same pale gold as my own. My blood ran in those veins, but fuck me, if he wasn’t twice the man I’d ever hoped to be.
My hand was in his before King could blink, and I was jerkin’ him forward, off balance, to land with a hard thud against my chest, our clasped hands pressed between us. My other fist found his back, thumpin’ it as I hugged him so close our bones creaked.
I was holdin’ my son again.
Holdin’ the first boy I’d made, the precious fuckin’ surprise and one’a only two glorious outcomes from my relationship with my ex-wife.
Could remember the vivid red’a his cryin’ face in my arms as I held him so fresh and alive.
Could remember the first springy curls of blond sproutin’ from his head and how he’d started to run ’fore he could walk, from the start too eager to grow up.
I could remember every moment of this man’s life as vividly as my own. I’d taken those memories out countless times in the past eight months, worn ’em smooth with use, warped with sorrow.
And now, the dream’a every parent who ever suffered the tragedy’a losin’ a kid, I was holdin’ that baby, that boy, that man in my arms.
Could feel his heart pump hard against my chest, his breath in my hair, his body against my own.
And fuck me, I cried.
Oh yeah.
The both of us.
Strange for grown men, maybe, but reduced to it by the enormity of our relief as we loosened our grip on the pain’a loss and mournin’, on the agony’a bein’ parted, of believin’ ourselves lost to the other.
Fuck me, but we cried loud and long.
Men in their unusual outpourin’a grief, so much less elegant than our women.
We didn’t care.
There was snot on my shirt, tears in our hair, rough in our swollen throats.
It hurt to purge, but in its wake, minutes later, still clutched together ’cause honest to fuck, wasn’t sure how I’d ever let him go again, peace like I’d never known before descended.
King breathed deep, shudderin’ on the exhale, then pulled back enough to smile at me with his wet, red face and aged eyes. “Hey, Dad.”
“Welcome home, King,” I told him, clappin’ him hard on the back, then grabbin’ his neck to press his forehead to mine so he’d know I was on his side, always on his side, when I said, “Brace, son, for a rocky return. Lotta grief goin’ even eight months on.”
He sighed. “Yeah, gotta say it makes a man feel just as good as bad.”
“You bought it,” I reminded him.
“And I’ll earn their forgiveness,” he retorted easily. “Did it with my babe Cress, and one by fuckin’ one, I’ll do whatever it takes to win back the hearts of our family and Fallen.”
I snorted softly, joy startin’ to bubble up in the wake of shock, anger, and sadness. “Fuck me, but I won’t ever doubt your resolve again, that’s for damn sure.”
And then we laughed.
Quiet, short laughter that felt like wakin’ from a dream only to realize real life was just as fuckin’ beautiful.
“Proud as fuck to be your dad,” I told him gruffly, seein’ the sentiment echoed back in his face. “But prepare, I’m not lettin’ you outta my damn sight for a long fuckin’ while, and you bought that too.”
A smile, the first genuine one I’d seen. “Gotta few people to see ’fore I come back tonight. Cress heard you were gettin’ together for a kinda celebration of my birthday here tonight. Figured I could be the guest of honour.”
I shook my head, but of course, a son’a mine would have balls’a fuckin’ steel. “You’re sister’s gonna kill ya, you don’t see her ’fore that. Even then, you might be dead ’fore dark.”
King chuckled as he moved a step back, eyes fuckin’ sparklin’. “I’m thinkin’ her anger won’t last long when she sees what else I’ve brought home with me.”
On cue, the back door to the cabin creaked open and slammed shut.
My head jerked up immediately.
’Cause there was no King without his Queenie.
Shoulda known she’d be there somewhere, but the return’a my son from the dead had been too big to see beyond.
This though, seein’ Cressida Garro smilin’ as she moved down the porch, full’a joy for the first time since King had ‘died’, seein’ her for the first time since she left months ago to flee her grief, this was mammoth.
’Cause it wasn’t just his wife my son had returned with.
But a baby.
I stared fuckin’ dumbstruck at the massive swell of Cressida’s belly, contrastin’ with her slim form as she moved down the stairs and over the grass to her husband’s side. King wrapped an arm around her, tuckin’ her into his side where she belonged.
They both grinned at each other, then at her belly, then at me.
“You ready to be a grandpa with two twin babies just born?” King teased.
I blinked at them, my kids returned to me even more beautiful somehow than they’d been before, and then I threw my head back on a roar of laughter at the grace of the fuckin’ world sometimes and charged forward to hug my boy and his girl and their future kid to me like I’d never fuckin’ let them go.