“No,” she replied sadly. “I can’t now that I know for sure. I’d feel too bad.” With that my baby girl left and I didn’t try to stop her. She was right to feel the way she did. My eyes caught movement in the mirror that reflected a portion of the kitchen and I saw Lucy there, she had overheard. I wondered if Ever had as well. She shook her head, just the tiniest of movements, as if she could read the question I had just asked as if I’d said it out loud. The disappointment I saw on my Lucy’s face was enough to drive home the importance of what my youngest child just had to point out to me. I wasn’t sure how much more I could take being cut open and bled dry by my own mistakes. My heart physically hurt inside of my chest and I wondered briefly if that was how my daughter felt all the time. She’d been through so much, and I was coming to realize I was the cause of a good deal of it. Even if I hadn’t realized some of what I had done, it was becoming clear that it had been piling on for far too long.
I took off on my bike to try to find the clarity I needed to work through how to fix my fuckups with my family. I was half way to Savannah by the time I felt my cell phone vibrating in my pocket. It took me a minute to find a good spot to pull over, but once I did I found out quickly that I was being summoned to the club.
T-Bone: Need you at the club ASAP.
Double-D: What’s up?
T-Bone: Get here! Not a fuckin’ drill.
“Fuck!” I wondered if he had heard from Lucy or Anna about what had happened earlier, what I realized. For some reason it hit me even harder thinking that my son would see me failing our girl once more. I sat there and stared up into a brilliantly blue sky with the barest hint of wispy white clouds lazily making their way across the horizon. The briny sea-salt smell wafted to me on the slightest breeze, letting me know just how far from home I’d managed to get. I turned around and headed back to find out what Toby had for me even though something deep down inside begged me to keep going and never look back.
No sooner had I crossed the threshold of the clubhouse door than Sandman’s grim face glanced in my direction. He tipped his chin back to the room we used for our meetings. It was about three times the size of the office, which meant there were going to more than three or four bodies in on this meeting. “Church,” he stated, as if to reiterate his non-verbal directions.
“Thanks,” I muttered as I moved back toward the room with a lead ball of dread rolling around in my stomach. Once I entered the room I took in the fact that the men there were the same ones that continued to be pointed out to me by Lucy and Ever as the main ones who had been causing her so much grief over the years. What hit me hardest was the fact that my son was drooped in on himself and just looked completely busted. “T?” I asked and watched as his head shot up from where it had been hanging low before.
“Dad,” he huffed out and that told me all I needed to know. Whatever else this meeting might be about… it was clear by him addressing me that way that it was mostly wrapped up in family, and not necessarily the one that had us wearing these kuttes.
“What’s going on?”
“Take a seat,” Toby suggested as he pointed to the place I usually took at the table at Merc’s right since I was his VP now. I didn’t even have it in me to ignore his order. I took my fucking seat and waited for him to start, but I continued to wait.
“Waiting on a couple more,” Merc finally stated and only a moment later the door opened and in walked the Donovan boys. “Ah, now we’re good,” Merc addressed to Toby before turning to his boys. “Take a seat, and let’s get this started.”
“Why are we all here?” J-Bird questioned.
Merc tossed his hands up near his shoulders in an over-exaggerated shrug. He nodded his head to Toby then. “This is his show,” he stated.
Toby glanced up at Deck who still hadn’t taken his seat. “It’s our show,” he corrected and Deck moved around the table to stand next to my son.
“We’re going to attempt to fix something you all broke,” Deck started in.
“Fuck!” I heard PeeWee hiss out.
“Not this shit again,” Crow complained, scraping his chair back away from the table to stand.
I stood too. “Sit the fuck down!” I yelled at him. “If this is what I think it’s about, you will park your ass, listen, and do whatever the fuck is asked of you!” Crow blanched, but he also listened and parked his ass back down in his chair. I ignored the fact that he didn’t bother to pull it back in and get comfortable at the table. He left an easy escape available.
Both T-Bone and Deck tipped their chins at me before T spoke. “Trunk and me went by Permanent Marks the other day to see Ever and I learned some things I’m going to share with you all today. I need you to really hear what the fuck I’m saying though. This,” he pointed around the room, “is supposed to be family. We are supposed to be family. That means those people who walk by our sides without kuttes on too. That means the club kids, the women who care for them and for us. We are all supposed to look out for one another, and for the most part we do that. I’ve always been so fuckin’ proud to be a part of this club. I’ve always felt welcome, loved, cared for, and fuckin’ protected by these colors. For whatever fucked up reasons you all have, my sister has never felt that from this club.”
“She,” PeeWee started, but T-Bone slammed his fist down on the table in front of him then pointed a finger directly in his face.
“SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP. I will get to you in a minute.” I don’t know if it was the authority in my son’s tone, or the murderous look on his face, but PeeWee actually listened to him, taken aback by the fact that my son was not the type of man to get in someone’s face in that way. He was usually the one who joked around. Sure, he’d throw a punch if needed, but he never spoke disrespectful to his brothers. Not once before.
Deck placed a hand on T-Bone’s shoulder. “Maybe I should start this out?” T nodded his head and then took the seat next to where Deck still stood. “T-Bone and Trunk came by to see Ever. I was there for that, and the things we learned that day will stick with me forever, and I mean its something that will haunt me.” He made eye contact with each of the men sitting around the table. The thing is, when it was all said and done and the dust settled I thought of a way to fix,” he stopped there. “No, that’s not right. There’s no fixing what has been done.” His eyes moved back to me then. “I know you think you’ve been looking for a way to fix things, but I think that’s part of the problem. You can’t fix it. There’s no way to do that. You can’t undo the past. Wish that you could,” he added.
“You can heal it though, and I have an idea for doing just that.” He pushed his sleeve up and held out his forearm showing the tattoo that he told us Ever had drawn for him. Once again, especially since I was getting a closer look, I marveled at my girl’s talent. A small smile lit my face then and when I looked up at Deck he returned it. “That,” he pointed to my face, “is how I know this will work.”
I nearly lost my shit, because it was the first time I’d heard someone give me hope about the situation I’d created for myself and my daughter.
“I don’t get it,” Crow dared to interrupt. “What does your tattoo have to do with us?”
“Well, it was drawn by Ever, and you’re all going to get one drawn by her too.”
“The fuck?” Crow asked as I just sat there and smiled. Yeah, I wished I had thought of that myself, but Deck just earned a special place in my heart that he did.
“Ever is nineteen years old. She’s been with this family for 11 years. For those 11 years you all have played a part in making her feel unwelcome, unloved, or just plain hurt. She’s bleeding out those feelings and emotions with every breath she takes, because the wounds never got plugged. They still fester, because the only way for her to get a clean start is to peel herself away from everyone – including her mom and her sister. She doesn’t want to do that. She can’t let you guys take that from her too.” He turned to his brother then. “You stripped out mom from her life with the shit you pulled.
That didn’t just hurt Ever, it devastated our mother.” He turned to his dad, “you allowed that shit to happen. You’re the president of this club. It might have been his responsibility to nip all this in the bud a long time ago, but when you didn’t see that happen you could have stepped in. You never did. I’m so fuckin’ disappointed in that.”
Merc looked like he wanted to say something; instead he bit his tongue and nodded to his son. “Go on,” was all he managed to get out.
“So, what’s going to happen is this,” Deck spent the next few minutes detailing how we were going to allow Ever to bleed out the pain each man in the room had caused her into an inked design, and then as part of our penance we would wear that pain on our skin for the rest of our lives.
“Why the fuck would I do that?” Pee Wee asked. No telling what that little bitch would put on me.
“Call my daughter another fuckin’ name in my presence, or where I can hear about it later, and I promise you I will lay you the fuck out,” I told the man in an eerily calm tone. PeeWee seemed startled for just a moment, but he still wasn’t having any part of this tattoo business.
“I’m with him. I’m not getting ink on me that I don’t fucking get to approve ahead of time. I’m also not down for this at all anyway. I feel the way I feel about that girl. Fuck all if I’m gonna change that because she’s butt hurt that not everyone in life likes her.”
The most animalistic sound I’d ever heard uttered by a human being growled out from across the table. It came from my son, and his next words made me feel every ounce of that growl. “She tried to kill herself! She wasn’t fuckin’ butt hurt, she was so broken that she didn’t want to live anymore! You, all of you, we nearly killed my sister. It may have been her who tried it, but it was us who put those pills in her hands. It was us who filled that tub. It was each and every one of us who had a hand in putting her in that place.” It took a minute for those words to sink in all the way and make sense in my head.
“What?” I asked as I sat there stunned by the things my son just spouted out. “What are you talking about?”
“A couple weeks before our graduation,” Toby started, pointing between himself and J-Bird. “It was Ever’s birthday. Her sixteenth.” I remember Lucy begging me to help get Ever a car for her birthday, and I told her to put a fuckin’ bow on her old car and I’d get Lucy something new. I remember seeing tears in her eyes that day, and at the time I’d thought they’d been happy tears, because she’d been on me for a while to replace her car with an SUV that could fit teenagers and all their shit. Listening to how Toby’s story was starting out, and thinking back, there wasn’t a happy face with those tears. I hung my head as I continued to listen to my son.
“She was supposed to have this big party, and she had the friends for it too,” he swallowed hard. “At least, she did before J-Bird said that shit in front of the whole school. After that, she had one friend. She didn’t even have Jay or me anymore.” I looked up to see my son hanging his head in shame now too. He took a minute. “The party had to be canceled. Lucy tried inviting the club family, but everyone had excuses for why they couldn’t come or why their kids couldn’t be there.”
“Fuck,” I heard Merc hiss out.
“She didn’t have a party. I don’t know if anyone but Lucy and Anna even remembered her birthday. I didn’t. That year, I was too busy listening to everyone shitting on my sister to be there for her. So, for her birthday, she drew herself a bath.” He had to stop and take a breath, and I didn’t miss the tears that had set themselves free on my son’s face either. “She drew herself a bath,” he repeated. “And she had a bottle of pills there to take. I don’t know what stopped her. I thank God for whatever the fuck kept her from following through. Instead, she got so pissed she threw that bottle across the room and screamed until her voice was raw. Mom said Ever didn’t even realize she’d come rushing into the room when the screaming started. She just kept going until she’d rung herself dry, and then she broke down on Mom.”
“Lucy,” I whispered. “She walked in on that?” Toby nodded his head. How had my woman walked in on something like that and never told me?
“She got her out of that tub, and held her that night. She didn’t leave her alone, until she could get her in to see some woman who has been her therapist on and off ever since. Mom promised her she’d never tell anyone. Ever made her promise, she said Ever kept telling her that it would just be one more reason for everyone to hate her. Momma tore through the house after that in order to throw out the liquor and any pills that weren’t necessary. She locked shit up like we had a baby in the house again.”
“That,” I said remembering asking Lucy why she’d gone nuts about shit. “I remember when she did that,” the words came out without my permission. “We got in a fight because she’d emptied my liquor cabinet. It was the one and only time she has ever talked down about the club to me. She told me I could go drink my life away with my shitty-ass brothers in my fucked up gang if I didn’t like the fact that there wasn’t any alcohol in her house.” I glanced over to Merc then because I’d actually gone to his house to see him that night to bitch about it. I didn’t know what was going on, but I honestly thought I might have been looking at the end of my marriage for a while there. Lucy wouldn’t touch me. She barely spoke to me for weeks. I blew it all off as her being hormonal or whatever. I thought she was just having a hard time because of Toby getting ready to move out of the house and into the clubhouse.
“Mom told me that Ever had no one, and if all she could offer that girl was her love and loyalty she would offer up every piece of it she had to give.”
“Why did she tell you all of this now?”
“Because Ever slipped up and told me about it herself the other day when Trunk and me stopped by her shop. All mom did was fill in the details, and she even called Ever first to make sure that was okay to do.”
That was all I could take. Every fucking emotion running through me crashed together all at once and I was out of my seat throwing a chair through the fucking wall behind me before I even realized what I was doing. I tore through our meeting room where we held church, wrecking the place with anything I could get my hands on and then with just my hands when I ran out of shit to throw and break. I wasn’t quiet as I did it, but I can’t tell you if any words came out of my mouth. I don’t know how long it took to come back to myself, I just know that when I did I was sitting and Merc’s hand was clamped firmly to my shoulder.
“Jesus, what the hell kind of a father have I been all this time to not see how much she was hurting, or that we were the ones doing it? Fucking Lucy tried to tell me, and I didn’t want to…”
“We’ll make it right, brother.” Merc promised me.
I turned to Crow and PeeWee. “You will do this!”
“They will,” Merc confirmed.
Chapter 24
(Lucy – age 42, Double-D – age 45)
It took me a while to work up the courage to go home. It made sense now why Ever had been at the house earlier today. I don’t know it was I had found her laughing with Lucy considering, but I supposed it was because for her, this was an older pain. I was just learning about it. There was also the fact that my Lucy would never let her dwell on that shit. She’d do whatever it took to make Ever smile.
If it hadn’t been clear to me over the years already that Lucy was a fuckin’ saint. That was the thought I had as I moved into our house that was far too quiet. I didn’t hesitate though, just locked the door behind me and made my way up the stairs. The house was empty aside from my bedroom where Lucy sat with her book in hand, as she usually did. Her granny glasses were perched on her face. She no longer used the chain that used to hold them on her since she started complaining about catching her hair and pulling it too often. When she saw me she took a moment to put her book aside, then she took off the glasses and set them on top of the book.
I shut the bedroom door behind me and moved straight to her. I needed her in a way that I didn
’t think was possible to fulfill anymore. If I could melt into her and become a part of all that goodness she had within her, I would. I didn’t know anymore why she wanted me, why she stuck with me when she saw proof of the failure I’d become in my life. It didn’t stop me from trying to take more from her though.
I crawled across the bed and grabbed her face between my hands, and then I kissed her. It wasn’t sweet and tender, nor brutal and punishing. Our need to be close was what that kiss was about, and that’s how it felt. It was pure need. It took a few minutes for me to realize that our faces were wet and that it was because we were both crying. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you,” she whispered against my lips.
“I’m sorry you couldn’t tell me too, baby. You don’t know how sorry I am. I owe you everything! I owe you my life. Hell, I owe you for hers.”
“No, you don’t. I’ve been telling you for years, CJ, she’s mine. She’s been my daughter all this time.”
“Then I don’t know what the hell you were doing with me, because I failed that girl. I failed our family. I…”
“Shh,” she hushed me, and planted her lips back on mine. “Not tonight,” she murmured when she put space between us again. “Did you all agree to Deck’s plan?”
I nodded my head.
“Are you sure you can handle having her pain painted on your skin for the rest of your life?”
“I think it’s about time I had it pushed in my face where I can’t look away and avoid it anymore.” I sighed then. “I don’t deserve it one damn bit, but I’m going to need you for this.”
“I know,” she agreed. “I know,” and then her lips were on mine again.
“How can you still love me?” I was barely able to ask the question without choking on the words.
“Aw, CJ, that’s something I could never turn off. I’ve loved you my whole life. I’ve been disappointed from time to time, but I never lost hope that you’d find your way out of the hole you built for yourself. I worried you wouldn’t get there in time, but…” she looked away for a moment, unable to give me her eyes. “I think we can all finally see a little light at the end now. I know, now that you’re aware of everything, that you won’t let it go on like this anymore. The tattoos are supposed to heal the both of you. Not just her. Not just you. Both. Let it happen that way, CJ.”
A Love So Hard (Aces High MC - Charleston Book 2) Page 24