“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.”