Show stood straight and sighed. “Look, Hav. I know what’s going on in your head. Fuck, brother, I know it. I ate myself alive for more than a year after Daisy. But here’s what’s true, and I won’t say more. They’re not more safe when you’re away. They’re less safe. They’re already attached to you. They’re your family, and you can’t change that. Not now, not with Cory making one of yours. Maybe being yours gets them hurt someday. We know it can happen, and we know it can be awful. But you need to be there if you want them as safe as can be. And you need them, too. It’s family we need. It’s family that gives us a reason to be decent, to do right. The rest of it—the cartel, the Scorps, all of that, it is what it is. It comes and goes. You make your commitment to the club, to your family. You live for that, and you roll with the rest of it.”
Without giving Havoc a chance to respond, Show opened the door. “Figure your shit out, brother. We’ll see you tomorrow.”
~oOo~
It was the afternoon before he’d worked through in his head what he had to do. And then he ran an errand. That errand was going to cause gossip; he could see it happening almost immediately, so he had to get a move on. Still, it was coming up on dusk when he pulled up alongside the Beast in Cory’s gravel driveway, his pack on his back.
As he dismounted and came toward the front door, his mind flipping madly through the things he wanted to say, the door opened, and Bonnie stepped out.
Cradling a .22 rifle across her chest.
“Stop right there, Hav. If you’re here to cause more harm than you already did, then you can turn your ass around right now.” She cocked the rifle. “I will shoot you. I will.”
He put his hands up. “Easy, Bonnie. I don’t want to make anything worse. I want to talk to Cory.”
“Why? It’s been, what, two weeks? Almost. What the fuck could you say now?”
Being a good friend was one thing. Getting in the middle of private shit was something else. “Not your business. Decock that fuckin’ peashooter and get the fuck out of my way.”
He heard Cory’s voice, low, behind the screen door. Bonnie turned, keeping one eye on Havoc. “You sure, honey? I’m happy to shoot his dick off. Do the world a favor.”
Then she gave him a full, decidedly skeptical scowl and decocked the rifle. “Okay. I’ll be just down the street. With my gun.” She came down the ramp over the porch steps and walked past Havoc, her head held high and her eyes shooting bolts of ice his way.
He turned back to the house as Cory opened the screen door. He came up the ramp. “Hey.”
“What do you want, Hav?”
She looked tired and gaunt, with big, dark circles under her eyes. The side of her face was still lightly mottled in greens and blues. When he’d seen her in the hospital, seen the dark depth of the bruising over the side of her face, he’d had trouble keeping his feet, knowing that under her hair, at the point of impact, must have been so much worse. If the blow had been an inch to the left, at her temple, or a couple of inches lower, behind her ear, even though it had been glancing, he still would have killed her.
He’d come so close to killing her.
“I’m so fuckin’ sorry, honey.”
She closed her eyes and took a breath. “I don’t know what you want me to do with that. Sorry for what, exactly? I’m not interested in a blanket apology. One size doesn’t fit all.”
“Let me in. Talk to me.”
“Why? What is it you want?”
“I want to make it right.”
“What does that mean? To you, I mean. What do you think ‘right’ is between us?”
“We were making a family. You and me and Nolan. I want that. That’s what’s right.” That was part of what he’d practiced. But he didn’t think this conversation was going to follow his script.
“It’s not just me and Nolan anymore. You have to be a father from the start.”
“I know. Cory, let me in. It’s too much to say standing out here in the cold.”
She turned away from him then, looking back over her shoulder. She said something he couldn’t quite make out. She must have been talking to Nolan. Then she faced him again.
“Nolan doesn’t want you here.”
“Then come out to me. Honey, I’m trying to make things right. I want to make things right.”
She pushed the screen door wide and held it open. When he got to the door and went through, he was closer to her than he had been since he’d dropped to his knees in the bays and pulled her unconscious body into his arms.
He lightly brushed the edge of the fading bruise that lined the side of her face, an uneven border from her temple to her jaw, about an inch or so out from her hairline. “God, honey. I’m sorry.”
“I know. I forgave you that already. I’m okay.”
“I could’ve killed you.”
“Yeah.”
Over her word, Nolan spoke, too. “Yeah, you could have. You hurt her. She let you in, but I fucking hate you. I told you what I’d do if you hurt her.” His leg propped straight out, still in a full cast, he negotiated his chair so that he could roll himself into his bedroom and close the door.
Cory gave him a rueful, grudging smile. “He’s really angry. Hasn’t been a good couple of weeks.”
“How about you? You feeling okay?” He reached out to touch her again, but she dodged him and walked into the living room.
“I don’t know. Have a seat. You want something to drink?”
He shrugged out of his kutte and coat and draped them over the old-fashioned wood rocker, then put his pack down in front of the worn, blue velour couch and stood there. “No. I want you to sit. Talk to me.”
She went toward the armchair—he’d fucked her in that chair more than once—but he stretched and grabbed her hand. “Sit with me.” He led her to the couch. When she sat, he did.
There was a lot he wanted to say, so he just jumped in. “I’m sorry I hurt you. That’s the first thing. I know you forgave me, but I’ll never stop being sorry for that. I was out of control and I didn’t know what I was doing, but it doesn’t matter. I swear I will kill myself before I ever hurt you again. Or Nolan. Or…or the baby.” He looked at her belly, hidden under one of the loose hippie shirts she liked so much. “I swear it, Cory. I swear it.”
And then he knew what he had to say. It wasn’t anything he’d practiced, but he knew it was the thing he had to say. “I’m scared, though. I never wanted to be like we are. I never wanted a woman or a family. I don’t know how to do it right. My…my…” He had to stop and think the next thing all the way out before he could make the words. “My old man beat me. I guess you figured that out. He didn’t do it angry. Always cool as you please. I never even thought it was wrong, what he did, the way he is. Not till I saw you and Nolan, the way you are. I thought I was raised normal. That’s the kind of father I know. Cory, I can’t be a father like my old man was. It fucked me up—up and down and sideways, it fucked me. I’m hardly human. But I don’t know what being a good father even looks like.
“I am a man who hit his woman in the head with a fuckin’ sledgehammer. You shouldn’t trust me to be in the same room with your kids.”
And now he was, again, unsure. Maybe he should leave. Maybe Show was wrong. He fell silent, not having said half the things he’d thought he wanted to say.
“Are you done?” She’d sat quietly through his monologue, and now she was looking steadily at him. She really did look tired.
He nodded.
“I’m still not sure what it is you want. You say you want the family, but now you sound like you’re trying to talk me out of it. So let me tell you what I think. I came on you that night when you were obviously raging and out of control. Isaac told me to stay away. You were destroying a motorcycle with a sledgehammer, and you hadn’t even noticed that flying debris was tearing your face up. But I came up to you, because I trusted you not to hurt me.”
He winced at that, and an icy pick jabbed at his chest.
“That’s
not what I mean, Hav. I’m not saying I was wrong to trust you. I’m saying you weren’t you, and I didn’t see it. You turned a wild look on me, and I still didn’t see it. I’m not saying I deserved to get hit. I didn’t. I was trying to help you. But I’m saying it’s easy to forgive you for that, and to still trust that you won’t hurt me like that again, because I don’t believe you knew what you were doing.”
He reached out to touch her, feeling a measure of hopeful relief, but she shrank back from him. “You did know what you were doing when you walked away from us, Hav. That was you. And for that, I don’t know how to trust you again. I’m so hurt and sad. I love you so much, and now there’s this baby, and…but I’m a grownup. I’ll get over it. What you did to Nolan, though? After everything he’s been through? No. There’s no trust. We’ve been abandoned for the last time.”
She stood, and he could sense that she was going to send him away. “Cory, wait.” Then her knees buckled, and she took an awkward, jerky step to steady herself. He was on his feet and holding her before she’d stopped moving. “Hey, you okay?”
“Yeah. Just tired. A little loopy.”
He guided her back to the couch and held her hands. “The baby?”
“Yeah, I guess. It’s been a long time since I’ve done this.”
Letting go of one of her hands, he laid his palm on her belly. Just her belly, nothing different from what he knew. “When?”
“Middle of August.”
Jesus. That was only…seven months away. His kid was inside her. His kid. He looked up and saw her watching his face. His eyes locked with hers, he tried to beam truth to her. “I love you, Cory. I won’t leave again. I promise. I want to do this right. I want this—to be a family. I want to be a good father. A good man. I just don’t know how. I need you to help me.”
Her eyes still on his, she didn’t reply. The room was quiet except for the sound of an old-fashioned cuckoo clock on the wall, tick-tocking rhythmically. Then she said, “Make it right with Nolan. We can try, if Nolan’s on board. And that’s up to you. I’m not going to try to convince him of anything. If he trusts you, I do.”
Havoc was not leaving this house until he had his family straight. They were his family. More his family than the one he was born into, and he was not leaving until it was right. He got up from the couch and went straight to Nolan’s door—he almost opened it without knocking, but he pulled back and knocked.
“What?”
“It’s me, kid. Need to talk.”
Silence. Havoc turned his head back to Cory, who was sitting on the couch where he’d left her. She just shrugged.
Then, “Come in.”
He opened the door. Nolan was in the far corner of his room, near his desk, in his wheelchair, facing the door at an angle. He was pointing a handgun at the door. At Havoc.
Long years of training and alertness had given him a quick, sharp eye. So he was able to see and process all of that in the tiny slice of time from him opening the door to Nolan pulling the trigger.
~oOo~
The shot went wide, into the ceiling, and Havoc hit the floor, using Nolan’s bed as a shield. But Cory was up and in the doorway right away, alarmed.
“Get down!” Havoc turned on his knees and grabbed her wrist, yanking her hard to the floor with him, less worried that he would hurt her than that her son and his wild, untrained aim would shoot her while he was trying to take Havoc out. Everybody was threatening him with firearms today.
From behind the shelter of the bed, Havoc called, “Jesus fuck, kid! Fuck! What the fuck are you doin’?”
He could hear Nolan struggling to move his chair around the room; the danger wasn’t over. “I told you what I’d do if you hurt her. I told you. You suck. You’re a lying scumbag and I hate your stupid face. I’m gonna blow it off.”
“You could have hurt your ma, you little—” He stopped, even now not wanting to say something shitty to the kid.
While he was distracted talking to the kid, Cory wrenched herself loose from his grip and stood up. “Cory, fuck! Get down!”
She ignored him. “Nolan, no. That’s enough. Let me have that.” She stepped around Havoc and went around the bed. “Come on, little cub. It’s okay. We’re okay.”
“Cory!” Fuck. He stood, too. At least he’d give the kid somewhere else to point that damn thing, so maybe he wouldn’t accidently put a hole in his mother’s head.
But Cory was already taking the gun from Nolan’s hand. The kid was sobbing. Cory held the gun out behind her back, and Havoc crossed quickly over and took it from her, dumping the clip and clearing the chamber immediately. Cory went to her knees and held her boy. Nolan just bawled into her shoulder.
Havoc stood helplessly, holding the now-empty gun—a Beretta, no serial, which made it one of the Horde’s. He was going to find out which asshole had given an untrained fifteen-year-old kid a gun, and he was going to make sure that asshole understood what a fucked-up mistake that was.
But, really, he’d done this. This was his fault. He’d ruined the trust of these people he loved more than anything. He backed out of the room and picked up his pack from where he’d left it by the couch. He put the gun and clip in it. Then he went to the door.
He got as far as wrapping his hand around the knob, and then he stopped. He’d just told her he wouldn’t go. This was what he wanted. He couldn’t just turn tail and run. He had to try to fix the mess he’d made. He’d told her once that she’d have to fight to leave him. Then he needed to fight to keep them.
“Fuck it. I’m fixing this shit,” he muttered. He turned around and let his pack fall off his shoulder.
Cory was watching him from Nolan’s doorway. She nodded. “Okay. Then fix it. I’ll make supper.” Then she walked across the living room. Nolan’s door stood open. He went to it and peered around the jamb.
Nolan was sitting in nearly the same place, his hands now empty, his eyes swollen. He looked at Havoc and then away.
“Just makin’ sure you don’t have a crossbow, too.”
“Fuck you.”
Havoc went into the room and sat on the end of Nolan’s bed. He liked this room. It wasn’t much, but it was Nolan—lots of his art taped to the fake wood paneling that made the walls, the curtains black, the bedding some kind of star map or something. Stacks of comics everywhere. The kid was a Grade A geek. He liked it. Made him think of Bart. And that made his stomach twist into a frozen knot.
Though maybe he was finding a thaw around the edges of that knot. Riley was pregnant, too. He wondered what he’d do if he had to choose between his brothers and Cory or Nolan or this baby or all of them.
He wasn’t even sure it would be that hard a choice.
Maybe someday he’d be able to think about Bart and not think he’d served Sophie up to save his own. Maybe someday that wouldn’t feel like a crushing betrayal. Maybe someday he could think of the man who’d been his best friend and not see Sophie’s head in a box. Not yet, but maybe someday. He took a breath and stopped traveling down that road in his mind. He needed to be calm.
“I’m sorry, kid. I fucked up.”
“No shit. I’m supposed to apologize for shooting at you, but fuck you.”
“Don’t apologize. I’d’ve deserved it if you’d hit your mark.”
Nolan crossed his arms over his chest. “A sledgehammer? You really hurt her. You suck.”
“Yeah, I do. I didn’t mean to do it, but that don’t matter.”
“I don’t get how that’s an accident.”
“It’s hard to explain, kid. You know about my sister? Sophie?”
“Yeah. I—I’m sorry about that.” He looked down at his lap. Havoc noticed that his cast had a lot of drawings on it—some obviously Nolan’s own work; others looked a lot like toilet stall art. He detected the tagging work of Omen and Dom. Maybe some Badger and Wrench, too. Nolan was getting lots of visitors, looked like.
“Your ma came on me after that, when I…wasn’t myself. Not an excuse. But that’s
how it was an accident.”
“And then you bailed. Knocked her up and bailed, like she’s some slut you can’t be bothered with.”
Havoc’s spine went rigid and his hands clenched. “Don’t ever use that word in the same sentence with your ma. Don’t ever.”
Nolan blinked, and Havoc could see he had a retort queued up, but he swallowed it back and nodded instead. “Why’d you bail?”
“Because I hit her. Because my sister’s dead because I didn’t protect her. Because I don’t want to fuck up a kid. Because you deserve somebody in your life who’s better at being a person.” He sighed, furious with himself. “Because I’m fuckin’ scared of all this, kid. And I ran like a little pussy. But I’m trying to make it right. I want in this family. I love this family.” He shifted his seat on the bed, so that he could face Nolan straight on. “I love you, Nolan. I don’t know if you want a dad at all, and I sure as fuck don’t know if you want me for one. But I’m applyin’ for the job. Or big brother, if you like that better.” He grinned. “Though that might be kinda weird, with your ma…you know.”
“Gross, Hav. That’s—don’t.” But he smiled, and Havoc knew things were turning around between them.
“Just sayin’.”
Nolan got serious again. “I want my gun back. If you hurt her again, I am going to kill you.”
Havoc believed him. “Fair enough. But you’re not gettin’ that back until I show you how to use it. I’ll train you, and then you can have it, and then you’ll be able to put one right between my eyes, if I ever pull shit like that again.”
“Dom’s gonna teach me.”
“You got it from Dom?” He was gonna pull that skinny shit’s lungs out through his asshole.
“No.”
Jesus, the kid was a terrible liar. Textbook shifty eyes. “Kid, I know it’s a Horde gun. Don’t fuckin’ lie.”
“What’re you gonna do?”
“Just make sure he doesn’t ever again leave a loaded gun with somebody doesn’t know how to use it. Did your ma know you had it?”
All the Sky (Signal Bend Series) Page 26