“What’s up with you?” Rose grumbled, elbowing me in the side. “You’ve been spacing out for like ten minutes.”
I’d been trying to make out my dad’s recliner in the corner instead of just a dark shape surrounded by the light coming through the windows.
“Nothing. These applications are boring as hell.” I threw myself back against the couch and rubbed my eyes. “Let’s go do something.”
“Like what?” she asked with a sigh, slamming her textbook shut with a bang. While I’d been filling out applications for early admission, Rose was working on her calculus homework that had been due the day before. While I excelled in academics, Rose… didn’t. It wasn’t because she lacked intelligence; she just lacked the drive to do more than the bare minimum to graduate. She wasn’t even applying to colleges. Instead, she planned to follow me wherever I decided to go.
“I don’t know, river? The club? Movies? Anywhere.”
“You know they’re having a party at the club tonight,” she replied. I knew without seeing it that she was rolling her eyes. “You really want to get into it with our brothers?”
“We’ll just ignore them,” I said, shrugging. Getting around our brothers had become a game when we were twelve years old. It didn’t really matter how pissed they were, Rose and I usually got away with whatever we wanted. It just normally took a lot of fast-talking and innocent expressions, so we rarely went head to head with them anymore. It wasn’t worth the hassle.
“I don’t know,” Rose said, completely out of character.
“What?”
“Last time, your mom was dancing on one of the pool tables,” Rose grumbled. “Not something I want to see again.”
“You know that doesn’t happen very often,” I replied, snorting. My mom had been dancing on that same pool table for years. She did it whenever my dad was pissed it at her. Without fail, he’d drag her off the table and into their room before she’d finished a single song and suddenly, their fight was over.
“Fine,” Rose said, shoving me a little as she pushed off the couch. “Let’s go then.”
“I’m so glad Charlie’s staying the night with Rebel,” I replied as I followed her toward the front door. “Or else we’d be stuck here.”
“Or we could’ve just taken her with us.”
“Oh, right,” I joked, setting my hand on her shoulder once we’d reached the driveway. “That would’ve gone over well.”
“How many parties were we at when we were little?” Rose asked, leading me to her car. “A hundred? If you ask me, this younger generation is a bunch of wimps.”
I climbed in and laid my head back against the seat, watching things go darker around me as the sun went down. “Pretty sure they just didn’t have as many babysitters when we were little,” I pointed out distractedly. “There was nowhere else for us to be.”
“You’re probably right.”
* * *
My cousin Tommy threw his arms around our shoulders the minute we’d stepped through the clubhouse doors. We hadn’t even made it two feet inside. “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked gruffly.
The music was loud and so were the people. It was slightly disorienting if I was being honest, but I still soaked it all in. The clubhouse was a safe place, at least for me. It was where we went if we were in danger, where my dad worked, where I could trip over a family member or longtime family friend if I took a step in any direction. Occasionally, if the guys were hosting other clubs, I steered clear, but for the most part, this place was an extension of my home and always had been.
“We were hoping to get laid and do some shots,” Rose said dryly over the noise. “Point us in the right direction!”
“Also,” I piped in, “if you could show us where the lines of coke are being drawn, that would be fantastic.”
“Little sister,” Cam said suddenly from right in front of me. “What the hell do you know about cocaine?”
“I’m almost seventeen,” I replied in mock seriousness. “I know about all sorts of things.”
“You better not!” He laughed, and suddenly I was pulled away from Tommy’s side and wrapped up in my brother’s beefy arm. “What’re you doin’ here, Lilybug?”
“Just wanted to get out of the house,” I replied as he practically carried me across the room.
“Dad’s gonna shit a brick when he sees you,” he warned, setting me back solidly on my feet. “Gimme a bottle of Jack and a soda for the baby, here,” he ordered someone.
“Aw, sweet of you to get me a mixer,” I said, laughing when he pinched me.
“Jack’s for me and Trix. Soda’s for you, smartass.”
“Trix is here?” I asked, smiling. The two of them rarely had a chance to be out at the same time since my twin nephews were born. Most of their potential babysitters attended the same parties.
“Yeah, Molly and Will have all the little ones tonight.”
“Well, that’s brave of them,” I said as a cold can was pushed into my hand.
“Yeah, we said we’d take ’em next time, but you know how Molly is. Doesn’t really like Rebel sleepin’ at other people’s houses,” he replied as he guided me back through the room.
“It’s because she doesn’t sleep,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, yeah. I know. Just hard for them, not bein’ able to cut loose.”
“I’m pretty sure they do just fine,” I said with a smile.
Molly and Will were awesome parents. I knew that sometimes they were stressed about Rebel’s limitations, but I also knew that they wouldn’t have it any other way. Will had gotten in plenty of partying before he and Molly got together, and she wasn’t really the type to ‘cut loose,’ as my brother called it. They were happy to stay at home.
“Lily, what the fuck are you doing here?” my sister-in-law asked, setting her hand on my arm in warning before pulling me into a hug. She was one of the only people I knew that gave me notice before she got all in my space. It was sweet. The rest of my family just went in for the kill without even thinking about how jarring it was to suddenly have someone wrapped around you.
It was pretty dim in the room, and as I hugged her back, I got a little pit in my stomach when I realized that what little sight I’d been enjoying was practically nonexistent without the presence of some relatively bright lights.
“Me and Rose were bored,” I told her as she set my hand on the back of an empty chair. I sat down and gingerly set my soda on the table in front of me, right at twelve o’clock.
“I thought you were doing applications tonight?”
“I’ve sent most of them out. I was just finishing up the stragglers. It’s fucking mind numbing.”
“Yeah,” she laughed. “I remember. College applications suck balls. I can’t imagine trying to do it on that computer you have.”
“Eh, I’m used to it. The only thing that gets annoying is trying to proof the essays when I’m done. The way it translates from voice to text isn’t always super clear.”
“You’d probably be a really good public speaker or speech writer,” she mused. “You’ve been writing all of your papers orally for years.”
“Truth.”
Cam said something too quiet to hear, and I tuned them out as Trix said something quietly back. If they weren’t raising their voices above the music and laughter, they obviously weren’t trying to talk to me across the table. I took a deep breath and relaxed, listening to the people around me.
Old Poet’s laughter came from across the room. Somewhere nearby, the president’s old lady, Leo’s mom, was talking about an extra keg stored in the garage storage room. Someone, I wasn’t sure who, was singing really badly along with the music playing through the sound system. Glasses and feet were tapping around the room as people walked and talked and visited.
“You’re supposed to be at home, Lilybug,” my dad’s voice said quietly in my ear, making me jump. “Pretty sure my little girl told me she was doin’ schoolwork tonight.”
“Hey,
Daddio,” I replied cheerfully, leaning into him as he kissed my cheek. “I was bored and almost finished with the applications anyway.”
“Well, why didn’t you just get ’em done, then?” he asked, pulling a chair close to mine with a screech against the floor. “Quit draggin’ your feet. Deadlines are comin’ up quick.”
“I know. I just wanted you to look a couple of them over and then I’ll send them off.”
“Oh, so now it’s my fault you’re in the middle of a party instead of sittin’ at home where you’re supposed to be?” he laughed and yanked at the braid in my hair.
“It’s not like I can see any of the bad things happening around me,” I pointed out playfully, even though I knew I shouldn’t. “Someone could be stripping on this table and I’d have no idea.”
“Don’t say that shit to me,” my dad replied, his tone growing dark. “Your mother lets you get away with it, but you know I don’t think that shit’s funny. It ain’t a joke to me, Lily.”
My heart pounded as I nodded, instantly feeling like an asshole. I had my mom’s sense of humor, completely. I made jokes at the most inopportune times, and they were usually offensive to at least one person around me. Not rude, exactly, but not in good taste, either. Where my mom would snort at one of my jokes about being blind, and give me shit right back, it affected my dad differently. He hated it. It wasn’t funny for him in the slightest.
“Sorry,” I said, remorse making my voice wobble.
It was hard for me to remember sometimes that I wasn’t the only person who’d lost something when I’d gone blind. It just wasn’t something that I thought about on a daily basis. Darkness was my reality. But for my parents, they’d lost something, too. Something they’d never spoken to me about, but I knew was there all the same. One day, they’d had a fully functioning eleven-year-old daughter who loved to ride and climbed trees like a monkey, and within hours they’d been parents of a completely different child. Oh, my personality was still pretty similar after I’d gotten over the trauma of that day, but my day-to-day life had changed drastically. Suddenly, they were watching me every minute, helping me learn how to do everything all over again in a different way.
I’d realized pretty early on that they were so grateful that I’d survived when others hadn’t, that any frustration they had at my new disability had been quickly overshadowed by massive amounts of guilt, no matter how warranted that frustration was. They’d never said a word about any of it, but I knew my parents. Those first few years after the attack had been hard on them, not only as parents, but as husband and wife, too.
So, yeah. Jokes about my blindness weren’t funny to my dad. I wasn’t even sure if my mom found them funny, but she understood the need for sarcasm in a way that he didn’t.
“Well, you’re here now,” Dad said, patting my thigh. “Might as well stay for a bit.”
“Where’s Rose?” I asked. Once Cam had separated me from her and Tommy, I hadn’t heard her voice again. The clubhouse was one of the only places outside of our homes that she felt comfortable leaving my side for very long.
“Talking to Grease,” Dad said with a laugh. “And he looks like he’s about to break something.”
“She’s spent too much time with Mom,” I replied. “She can pretty much talk circles around him.”
“She’s pointing over here,” he murmured in amusement.
“Yeah, she’s probably using you as an example. See, Dad, Uncle Casper isn’t giving Lily a hard time.”
“You two are both little shits,” my dad said with a huff. “I’m gonna go find your mother. You good?”
“Yeah. I’ll probably just sit here for a while until Rose wants to leave.”
“Got some boys from the Sacramento chapter here tonight,” Dad said as he stood up. “Watch yourself.”
“Always do,” I replied as he rested a hand on the top of my head and then walked away.
As protective as my parents were, if things weren’t particularly rowdy at the club, they didn’t really mind if I hung around. There were times that my dad would have thrown me over his shoulder and carried me outside, but for the most part, he knew I could handle myself. Growing up in the club meant I’d seen and heard a lot of things that probably weren’t age appropriate, but that was just the life we’d lived. Sometimes you got a huge dose of reality before you were particularly ready for it. Living through a shooting that killed some of your family was one of those things. I didn’t think my parents were particularly concerned with me witnessing drinking or drugs or slutty women hanging all over the men after all the stuff I’d already been through.
“My dad is a pain,” Rose announced a few minutes later as she dropped into my dad’s empty chair. “I swear he still thinks I’m five.”
“He’s just protective.”
“It’s ridiculous. I’m related to most of these guys,” she huffed.
“Not all of them.” I turned my face in her direction and lowered my voice. “Dad said there’s some guys from Sacramento here. Any good ones?”
Rose was quiet for a minute, then sighed. “Yeah, but just one. Messy blonde hair, some red in his beard, built like a wall.”
“How old?” I asked, reaching for my drink.
“I’m guessing early twenties. Could be younger, I can never tell with this crowd.”
“Clothes?”
“Gray flannel under his cut. They’re pretty much all wearing long sleeves. Looks like the Cali boys can’t handle the chilly spring we’re having.”
We both laughed at her ribbing. It was spring in Oregon, nearly summer, and from the minute the temperature rose above sixty-five degrees, all of the guys around here lived in short sleeve t-shirts. It was warm for us.
“I’m gonna go to the bathroom,” I told her as she finished cackling. “Stay here so I can find you afterward.”
“Oh, hell no,” she argued. “There’s shit all over the place. Nothing’s where it’s supposed to be. You’re gonna fall on your face.”
“I’ll be careful,” I ground out through clenched teeth as I used her shoulder to push myself to my feet. “The wall is two feet from me, I’ll follow it to the fucking hallway and it’ll be smooth sailing from there.”
“Lil, there’s a shit ton of people here,” Rose hissed. “It’s not a good idea.”
“I’m fine,” I snapped.
I walked away before she said anything else, but I could feel her eyes boring into my back as I reached the wall that would lead me to the archway that connected to the back hallway of the club. I knew it was taking all of her willpower not to follow me, but I really hoped she wouldn’t. Ever since I’d begun seeing light again, the restraints I’d been living with for years had started driving me insane. I wanted to be able to go to the damn bathroom on my own. I wanted my sight back so I could learn to drive, and cook, and watch a fucking movie.
I breathed a little sigh of relief as I reached the archway that led to the hallway and bedrooms. There were rarely any people back there outside of the ones that I’d known since birth. The members weren’t real willing to let outsiders go sniffing around in their shit, and they kept a lot of shit in their bedrooms that they weren’t willing to bring home with them.
After knocking—a lot—I went inside my dad’s room and the bathroom connected to it without any trouble. I wasn’t sure where my parents were, but thankfully they weren’t inside. I’d never walked in on them, but there had been a couple of close calls that I’d rather not remember or repeat. Their bathroom was always clean, though—my mother’s doing—so I always felt safe going inside. I wasn’t about to use one of the restrooms that the guys shared out in the hallway. Men were disgusting creatures and their bathrooms were usually vomit-inducing.
As I made my way out of the bedroom, I ran my hand along the wall on my left as I absently counted my steps. It was around fourteen and a half steps between my parents’ room and the archway, but I only made it ten before an arm was wrapped around my waist and lifting me off the flo
or.
It startled me so badly that I didn’t even scream.
Chapter 5
Leo
“Dandelion,” I said cheerfully as I spun her around in a small circle. “What’re you doin’ here?”
I was drunk. Plastered, if I was being honest. And damn if it didn’t feel good.
“What the fuck, Leo,” Lily gasped as her nails dug into my forearm. “Put me down.”
“Ah, don’t be like that,” I said, setting her back on her feet. “We’re at a party!”
“You’re drunk,” she snapped, pushing away from me.
Her brows drew down in confusion as she reached tentatively out to her side until her hand met the wall.
“Feelin’ good, yeah,” I answered, even though it hadn’t been a question. “What’re you doin’ here?”
“You already asked that.”
“And you didn’t answer me.”
“I would have if—” she paused and her nostrils flared. “Where the fuck am I? Which direction am I going in?”
I realized then that I’d totally disoriented her when I’d swung her around. Whoops.
“Same direction you were headed when I found you,” I replied uncomfortably. “About three steps from the main room.”
“Thank you,” she snapped, taking a step away from me.
“What?” I asked obnoxiously, irritated that she was walking away from me. “You still pissed about that Cecilia shit?”
“Are you joking?” she asked, turning her head toward me.
“Well, somethin’ crawled up your ass.”
“You just picked me up out without giving me any fucking warning!”
“You knew it was me,” I protested, lifting my hands palm up, even though she couldn’t see me. “Come on, it ain’t like you didn’t know.”
“Actually, I didn’t,” she hissed, turning completely around. “There’s a bunch of guys here that I don’t even know, but since I was back here I wasn’t paying close attention!”