Johnny Cash’s “Give My Love To Rose” was playing when I noticed him.
First, it was just an extra twang of notes, a thrum of chords added to the scratch and smooth of recorded music that pricked my ears and made me turn to look over my left shoulder.
And there he was.
Sitting on a turned over crate, one Timberland booted foot up against it, the other pressed to a mess of sheet music on the floor so his thick thighs were spread apart and taught against the worn denim of his jeans. His muted gold hair fell over his face as bent over a blue guitar, obscuring everything but the fine cut of a strong nose and the edge of a lush mouth that moved silently with the lyrics of the song. The way he cradled that guitar hit my six-year-old gut in a funny way. He had big hands that seemed too strong for his long, gangly limbs but they held the instrument tenderly, coaxing sound from the neck with his firm fingers, teasing it out of the body with a feathering touch.
He held that guitar like it was the love of his life, so it was no wonder that the swell of music he made with it made my nose itch with tears.
Both he and the music were the most beautiful things I’d ever seen in my short life.
I must have let out a quiet gasp because suddenly, he was looking at me.
He had green eyes.
God, they were the greenest living thing I’d ever seen. Greener than freshly watered grass, than the light filtering through a thicket of fir trees onto a patch of pacific northwest moss, and the green of an overripe lime. Looking into that color surrounded by a full fringe of short, spiky brown eyelashes under thick, slanting brows, I stopped breathing.
He didn’t miss a beat in the song as he locked eyes with me and added his smooth, low voice to Johnny’s growling rasp.
The song wasn’t about falling in love, but it was about a man leaving behind a woman named Rose and a son when he went to jail. It shouldn’t have been profound, I was a six year old with no context for the song, but it gave me a shiver of premonition up my spine that made my teeth ache.
When the final refines died away and Johnny’s voice came back over the record speaking to the prisoners, the teenage singer finally tipped his head in a gesture much like any of The Fallen men would do and said, “You like Cash?”
I wanted to say yes because I was in love with his prettiness. He was only a boy and he was so good looking, it should have been vaguely feminine, but there was a somberness to his character, a weight and sternness to his face that reminded me of a man.
But I didn’t, because I was young, but I was still a Garro.
“He’s not shit, I guess, but he’s country.”
The boy’s eyebrows shot up, wrinkling his forehead in a way I liked. “You hatin’ on country music? You are Canadian, right?”
I sniffed at him, my crush totally forgotten in the face of his challenge. “Uh, I’m prob’ly more Canadian than you. My family’s been here since forever. And FYI, not all Canadians like country.”
“You live rural, small town like we do, you like country.”
I snorted. “Don’t know who you hang out with, but country is for losers.”
He smiled slightly in a way that told me he didn’t smile very much. “So, you don’t like Cash.”
I chewed my lip because I did like Johnny Cash. His voice so deep and growly reminded me of my dad’s, and his country music didn’t sound country.
“It’s basically rock,” I told him, taking a wild stab at an argument to justify it.
He bit back the corner of a smile. “True. He was a cool guy though, he was arrested a bunch for pretty minor offenses during his life, but he made a point to play at prisons ’cause he understood their trouble.”
A bunch of The Fallen brothers had been to prison, so I’d been visiting penitentiaries for years. I liked that about Johnny, but more, I liked that this strange boy liked that about him too.
“Here,” he said, carefully placing the guitar back in its open case then unraveling to his full height. “Let’s try At San Quinten.”
I froze as he moved beside me to slide a new record under the player, only my lungs working hard to steady my suddenly fleeting breath. He smelled good, like fresh tilled earth and hay with the slight musk of man. If I could get close enough, lie down and close my eyes, it would smell exactly like lying on sun-warmed grass beneath a big summer sky.
He squatted beside me to switch out the records and turned to me when he was done, close enough that I could see the beginning of wispy stubble on his jaw. When the smiling creases beside his eyes flattened with anger, I realized that he was close enough to see the faint red handprint against my check.
“Who the fuck did that to you?” he demanded.
His voice was like the lash of whip cracking through the air, but his hand was soft as a butterfly kiss against my chin as he tipped my face to better see the bruise.
“What do you care?” I asked, even though my lip was curling under and the backs of my eyes were hot with tears.
What did this stranger care that I’d been hit? I wasn’t used to that kind of empathetic generosity from people outside the club and their families. Usually, outsiders sneered at us or scuttled around us like beetles.
“What do I care?” he repeated, as if he couldn’t believe I’d asked. “Someone hits a sweet kid, you think I wouldn’t care about that? You think anyone would let that go unchecked?”
“Yeah, I don’t know you. Why’d you stick your nose into messy business that isn’t even your problem?”
His face tensed with rage them settled with sympathy. “’Cause I’m not the sorta guy who can walk by tragedy without doing something about it, okay? And I sure hope you aren’t that kinda girl either.”
I thought about it for a second. “I beat up this stupid guy on the playground last week because he called my best friend Lila ugly. She’s isn’t ugly, my dad says she’ll be a real looker when she grows up.”
Again, he bit the edge of his mouth like he was trying to stop a smile. “Yeah, well can’t say violence is the answer but I’m glad you don’t let that pass you by. It’s our responsibility as decent humans to look after each other, otherwise, we’re all sunk. So, I’m going to ask you again, who did this to you?”
I chewed my gum anxiously then decided to answer him by blowing a big bubble with my Hubba Bubba. He stared at the pink balloon as it stopped an inch from his face then shook his head when I popped it with a loud smack.
“You’re not going to tell me. My dad’s important, I can get him to help you.”
“My daddy’s important too,” I told him proudly, because Zeus Garro was the youngest officer the club had ever voted in.
He squinted at me, his eyes greener than traffic lights, encouraging me to go, go, go and tell him all my secrets. “What’s your name?”
“What’s yours?” I shot back instantly.
Another bitten-off grin. “Lionel.”
I wrinkled my nose. “That’s a stupid name.”
“Yeah? Yours is better?”
I scoffed into his face, liking that I was close enough to see the deeper ring of green around his outer irises. “Duh. It’s Harleigh Rose ’cause I’m a biker babe.”
Something flashed behind those eyes that made me lean back from him.