So, no one did.
He didn’t fit the traditional look. His bike was old, but maintained, but he was small and so thin, it looked like a stiff breeze could knock him on his ass. Gunner had wondered if Smokey was losing his goddamn mind when the man was named Enforcer, but it had only taken a few months seeing him in action for Gunner to change his mind. Hawke moved with a singular focus and wildness in his eyes that scared the shit out of Gunner. It wasn’t the first time he wondered what happened to the guy, but he knew better than to push for things Hawke wasn’t ready to share.
Months after Hawke had been patched in, Gunner saw what he’d been hiding under his t-shirts. Thick raised scars along his ribs and back, covered in black, shaped like ink splatter, and a massive hawk between his shoulder blades with its wings expanded from shoulder to shoulder. It looked like it had taken years, and it looked like it hurt.
When he asked, Hawke only laughed and shrugged, wrote on his little notebook, ‘It’s gotta be worth the pain, man.’
When Gunner didn’t answer Hawke’s question, the guy tapped his arm and pointed to himself, then at the door, signing. ‘Want me to go in?’
Shaking his head, Gunner pressed his hands to the ground and heaved himself up. His left arm was trembling harder than usual, something that only ever happened when he was stressed, and he flexed his fingers in an attempt to get it to stop.
“I need to just let her be. She’s…” She’s in a mood because I slept like shit and somehow it affected her too, his brain supplied, but he was too ashamed to say it. It made him feel like a fucking terrible parent, and admitting weakness wasn’t something he was great at.
‘You need me, find me,’ Hawke’s fingers told him, then he gave Gunner a pat on the shoulder before shuffling past.
As Hawke headed for the lobby, Madeline let out another scream, and something heavy thudded against the door. He didn’t want to even consider the state Smokey’s office was going to be in by the time he got back from the auction house, and he knew he’d be in late cleaning it up. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he took a step forward and placed his hand on the polished wood.
“Listen to me…”
“I hate you!”
“I know,” he muttered, “I fucking hate me too, kid.” He cleared his throat. “Madeline, if you don’t stop yelling…”
“I. Will. Never. Stop. Yellinggggg!”
He closed his eyes and couldn’t decide if he wanted to laugh or cry. “…there will be no screen time for two days.”
There was a pause, then another scream, then something hard and metal hitting the door. He felt panic suddenly, like maybe Smokey had kept a gun or a knife in the room. He was meticulous about keeping his dangerous shit away from small fingers and prying eyes, but Gunner’s panic had rushed far past logic and trust.
He turned the handle and burst in, finding Madeline sitting on Smokey’s desk. His computer was lying on its side on the floor, and all of his photo frames were littered around the room where she’d flung them. A few had broken glass, but the damage was mostly superficial. It was his only comfort, because his fear turned to rage.
“Three days,” he said, his voice low.
Madeline’s eyes widened. “You said…”
“You broke Smokey’s things,” he told her, and her cheeks immediately pinked with shame. “You broke his pictures, you might have broken his computer.”
Her bottom lip protruded, and once upon a time, her alligator tears and trembling lip would have gotten him to relent on any and every punishment, but he was growing thicker skin. Finally. “But…”
“You’re going to go outside and help Mace and Kicks in the garden, and when you’re done,” he said, holding up a finger when she tried to interrupt, “you’re going to clean up this mess.”
“I don’t…want…to,” she said between sobs.
Gunner took three steps to cross the room, and he pulled her from the desk, lifting her over the frames and into the hall. “I don’t care what you want. One hour in the garden, and after you clean this mess up, you have to tell Smokey what you did.”
He seized her hand, even when she began to wail, and he marched her out the side door and around the building to the long, expansive garden Smokey had started as a stress project. It had grown enough that they sold some of the food at the Farmer’s Market on weekends, and it had slowly become a sort of meditative space for any of the brothers who were feeling overwhelmed.
The air around them was misty from the sprinklers, and Madeline started to cheer up a little bit as the water took the edge off some of the heat. He kept his hand at the back of her neck, then waved when he got Kicks’ attention.
The Road Captain got to his feet from where he knelt beside the squash and walked over, the ghost of his military career on his shoulders in the way he lifted his chin and held his back straight. His face was soft, though, his lips curled in a half-grin, his eyes crinkled behind his black shades.
He lifted a brow at the sight of Madeline’s pout, and Gunner could see the way he was holding back a laugh. “Do we have a problem here?”
Madeline wrinkled her nose and crossed her one free arm over her chest. “No.”
“Yes. She trashed Smokey’s office, so she’s got one hour of garden duty before she cleans it up and apologizes.”
Madeline stomped her foot in the dirt and made a frustrated growl under her breath, but Gunner ignored her and gave her a small push forward. “Come get me if she gives you trouble,” he said, passing her hand over.
She struggled, but only for effect. Kicks was one of her favorite people in the club, and he could get her to do just about anything. “I think we’ll be alright, won’t we?”
Madeline rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out at Gunner, but he decided to let her have it. “Just text me if you need me,” he said, and Kicks waved him off as he led Madeline back to where he’d been harvesting.
He watched for a minute, the way her attitude melted away as Kicks talked softly and pointed out what he wanted her to do. He supposed it was the curse of being the one raising her that he couldn’t get her to listen like that or to engage. She pushed him to the very edge of his breaking point before pulling back, and he viciously envied people who had the ability to walk away at the end of the day, or when it got to be too much.
And yet, he knew he wouldn’t trade it for the world, even when he thought he’d like to fling himself off the edge of it.
Chapter Three
Logan tapped his foot on the tile, feeling the vibration of it rippling up his calf. The back of his neck was drenched in sweat, and he briefly regretted his decision to get the moped instead of the little beater car that at least had working AC.
‘You live right by the beach, it’ll be fine,’ his idiot friends convinced him, but he was pretty sure now they had just wanted to see him suffer.
His delivery job was only part time. He’d been working at the ramen place, Kamaboko, for a year when a delivery to a mechanic’s shop accidentally turned into a side-job. The men all working there were big, bulky, covered in tattoos, and rode motorcycles. Logan had tried not to feel that familiar prickle of fear when a bunch of men like that stared him down. But then the owner had offered his hand and then took up a notepad to make communicating easier.