Chapter Nine #2
“Maybe because there’s nothing else to put there and he’s
reaching?” Jagger suggested.
“Dad’s new wife is white.”
“Well, fuck,” Jag muttered out loud this time.
“Unh-hunh,” she agreed.
Jagger didn’t let her go when he looked down at one of the
photos, then back to Archie.
“She was gorgeous, Arch,” he said.
“I know,” she whispered.
“I was too young to remember my dad,” he told her.
Her eyes brightened with interest.
And again…
Fuck.
He quickly carried on, and not about that.
“But I know for certain I’d lose my shit if something
happened to my mom. Honest to God, I don’t know if I’d survive that.”
“You would,” she said quietly.
“Maybe day to day, but an important part of me would be
jacked until the day I died.”
“I get that, Jagger, obviously I do.”
He pulled her closer. “I know you do, and I don’t know what
it’s like for girls, daughters. I’m absolutely not downplaying what you deal
with every day. I just know there’s a time when a son stops being a son and he
starts being a protector. And it holds no logic, we don’t control every part of
our worlds, there are things we cannot change. Still, if something hurt her, my
mom, it would be there. There would be a feeling of responsibility. Of failure.
Regardless of how ridiculous it is to feel that way, unless something happens
to my ma twenty, thirty years down the line, and it’s about life cycles and
age, I’ll feel it’s somehow on me.”
He could see her working on that behind her eyes.
“Never met your brother,” he pointed out. “That’s just where
I’d be.”
She nodded.
And he pulled her even closer.
“Loved seeing these pictures, baby,” he murmured. “Wondered
what she looked like, figured she was gorgeous. I was right.”
She smiled and her next words were cautious.
“Do you have pictures of your dad?”
He let her go and sat back.
Her eyes flickered with disappointment.
Even so, Jag didn’t get into that.
He just said, “Somewhere.”
“Okay,” she murmured. “You want dessert?”
“You have dessert?”
“I have French vanilla ice cream and I have chunky peanut
butter.”
That sounded promising.
“Like, you mix them together?” he asked.
“No, you plop a wad of peanut butter on a huge bowl of ice
cream and eat it.”
Correct.
Promising.
“You dish up, I’ll clean up,” he ordered.
That got him another smile and, “Deal.”
Deep in the night, in Archie’s bed, Jag jerked awake,
and when he did, he was breathing funny.
Archie roused at his side.
“Hey,” she called softly.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “Just…weird dream.”
She said nothing but pushed up, draped herself mostly on him
and stuffed her face in his throat.
“I’m okay,” he lied, moving his hands on her.
“This happen a lot?”
Shit, shit, shit.
“Sometimes,” he admitted.
She was silent, waiting for him to say more.
When he didn’t, she said, “I’m giving you this, baby, but
repeating the caveat you’re eventually gonna have to open up for me.”
“I need to get a lock on it myself first.”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
Shit, shit, shit.
“Just…a little more time, okay?” he requested.
She kissed his throat, slid off a bit, settling into his
side, head on his shoulder.
“Okay,” she granted.
He rolled into her and gathered her closer.
She snuggled.
Jagger focused on trying to ease the tension in his neck
without moving and disturbing Archie.
It didn’t work until Archie relaxed into him in sleep.
Then he lost focus because he fell back to sleep too.
Late the next afternoon, while Archie was at work,
Jag sat on his couch, ass to the edge of the seat, slumped forward, elbows to
knees, but head tipped back and his eyes on his TV.
He had his remote in hand and was fast forwarding.
He knew the exact spot and started the playback at that
spot.
But once he got precisely where he needed to be, he stopped.
He was playing Blood, Guts and Brotherhood.
And on his screen was a pic of his dad and his mom.
They were outside the Chaos Compound, walking to his
father’s bike.
Jag’s bike.
All he could see of his ma was her back. Her long, straight,
shining black hair. She was wearing a tight red cami.
Tighter faded jeans.
They had their arms around each other.
She was facing forward.
His dad was looking over his shoulder at the camera.
Smiling.
Jag stared at Graham Black’s face.
Dutch got Graham. Dutch looked a lot like their dad.
Jagger got parts of him, his hair, his height, but he looked
more like his mom.
Dutch even got more of their dad in that.
Even more of him.
Jag hit play and the narration started with a voiceover on
the picture, then faded to a talking head of Tack.
“Can’t know. It didn’t happen that way,” Tack was
saying. “They were one by then. Keely and Black. Made the boys by then. So
it was bad, we lost him, because he was Black. He was our touchstone. Our
example. Every brother’s best friend. You lose that kind of equilibrium, the
world ceases to make sense. But it was worse, they lost him. Because
he was a man built to be a husband and father. He was the stake in the ground
to which his woman was attached. Dutch was touched by that, but Jagger never
knew it in any tangible way. His father would only ever be stories to Jagger.
So Black’s loss was a death of a part of us all. His loss to Keely and Dutch
was a heartache. But his loss to Jagger was torture.”
He stopped the documentary, turned off the TV.
Then, before he could make up a reason not to, he picked up
his phone and went to texts.
You got some time next week to talk? he texted his
ma.
He headed to his bedroom to change so he could go to the
park and work out, then get a good stretch in before he had to shower, get
dressed, hit the store to stock up for their Sunday, and then go get Archie to
take her out to dinner.
He didn’t even get to his bedroom before his mother replied.
Hear there’s a girl.
He didn’t blame Hound for sharing.
In a healthy marriage, a husband and wife talked.
And any dad shared shit about their kids with the mom.
Especially if it was important.
Yeah, he replied.
Always have time for you, honey. Just tell me when, I’ll
be there.
Thanks, Ma.
You bet. Love you.
Love you.
Jag then changed into workout gear.
But before he headed out, and again, before he made excuses
not to do it, he sent another text.
He got the reply before he hit the park.
You call it, I’m there, Tack replied.
Jag drew breath into his nose.
Then he sent a day, time and place to Tack.
He started his workout and he really went at it, ending it
in a five-mile run and a thorough full-body stretch session in order to sort
himself out so he’d be chill and loose.
And maybe, that night, he wouldn’t dream of going out to
pick up a pizza and heading back to his truck.
Only to get jumped and have his throat slit.
And leave his mom, Hound, Dutch, Wilder and Archie without
him forever.
“I knew you were the shit since, like, the instant I
looked at you,” Archie declared. “But Bastien’s? This is next level,
boyfriend.”
After saying that, she pressed into his side where she sat
next to him in a booth at Bastien’s, her face in his neck, and she didn’t kiss
him or touch his skin with her tongue.
She purred.
His dick stirred.
“Stop it,” he ordered. “I got less than a day to wait.”
She pulled her face out of his neck.
“You mean we have less than a day to wait.”
“I got you off this morning and I’ll get you off tonight.”
“It’s not the same,” she muttered, turning to her cocktail
that had some kind of spicy, tabasco salt on the rim.
“Are you complaining?” he asked.
She took a sip of her cocktail then returned her attention
to him.
“You got long, strong fingers, baby, but a girl needs some
dick.”
Jagger roared with laughter.
When he was done, she wasn’t laughing.
She wasn’t smiling.
She was pressed, her front to his arm, and reaching a hand
to his face.
She ran a finger along his jaw to the corner of his mouth
and along his lower lip.
Her eyes watched these movements.
When her hand fell to rest on his chest and her gaze lifted
to catch his, he felt it bore deep.
All amusement fled.
“Archie,” he whispered.
She retreated from her visual invasion, pushed in, touched
her mouth to his, and after she pulled away an inch, she said, “Thanks for
supporting the ’hood with your steak place choice.”
“It’s about that. It’s about the retro here, which is
fucking cool. It’s about arguably the best steaks in Denver. It’s about making
you happy, since I knew you’d dig this. But, just sayin’,
even if your crib is blocks away, we’re still spending the night at my place.”
“Your turn,” she noted.
“Yeah,” he replied.
She gave him an eye twinkle and her focus shifted to the
table because their Devils Riding Bareback were being served.
And Jagger released his breath.
Because she didn’t push, she didn’t demand, she didn’t make
him talk about what he knew she saw in his eyes, but he wasn’t ready to
explore. Definitely not share.
She let it go.
So yeah.
There was relief.
But underlying it was something else.
Because he knew it was only a reprieve.
Jag came back to the bed after going to the bathroom to
splash his face and rinse off.
He had Archie all over him since he’d finished her off going
down on her.
She was on her side in his bed, cradling his sheet between
her legs, bare hip and leg exposed, she still had on her black bra.
He slid in behind her and touched the strap of the bra.
“Want this off?” he murmured.
“Mm,” she hummed, shifting enough he knew to reach in front
of her and unhook the clasp between her tits.
He did that, slid the bra off and tossed it aside, seeing
another one of Archie’s tats.
He bent in to look closer at the small writing that went
across her side, where the band of her bra had covered the skin.
It said, The Girl Across the Way.
He palmed it and growled, “Baby.”
“Bet you wish you didn’t just make me come hard, boyfriend,
and bought me too many cocktails,” she whispered, gazing smugly and sleepily at
him.
He dropped his head and kissed the tat.
Then he pushed up and kissed her.
She near to Christ fell asleep on him while he was doing it.
“Too good with your mouth,” she mumbled when he broke the
kiss.
Which meant he was grinning when he turned out the lights.
He settled in behind her in a spoon, top arm wrapped around
her chest.
The arm he shoved under her was wrapped around her ribs.
And his hand was on The Girl Across the Way.