Tack didn’t do this because he couldn’t.
So she looked away.
“You want me to get Bev over here?” Boz asked.
Bev was Boz’s old lady, and Keely and her were tight.
It took visible effort but she looked at him. “No. If I’ve gotta go it alone, I gotta learn how to do that.”
That was when Hound spoke.
“You’ll never be alone.”
She turned to him.
“You don’t get it,” she whispered. “He wasn’t the other half of me. He didn’t complete me. He wasn’t my old man. He wasn’t my husband. He wasn’t a dick I fell on. He wasn’t the father of my sons. He was,” her voice suddenly got scratchy, “my life. He was my reason to get up every day and breathe. He’s gone and losing that, losing him, I’ll always, always be alone.”
Hound made no reply because he didn’t have one but also because he again felt like he’d been punched in the throat.
“We’re gonna look after you,” Tack told her, and her gaze went to him. “Please, darlin’, he’d want it this way, so will you let us look after you?”
She tossed her head and the sheet of her hair glistened in the light by her couch that was the only lamp lit.
“He’d want it that way, you’re right. So . . . yes,” she agreed.
“Let me get Bev over here,” Boz again suggested.
She looked to him.
Then she nodded.
“Boz, go. Call,” Tack ordered then turned to Hop, Dog, Brick and Hound. “Just go. I’ll stay until Bev gets here.”
Hop, Dog and Brick nodded and moved to Keely.
Hound just moved to the door.
He turned to her and caught her eyes before he walked out.
He had no idea if she read his promise.
But it wouldn’t matter.
He was still going to keep it.
He had her by her hair on her knees.
Her girl was standing, pressing herself against the wall, fear stamped in her features, tears running down her cheeks.
“Am I clear?” Hound asked, leaning over her, twisting his hand in her hair.
“Y-you’re clear, Hound,” she stammered.
“Honest to Christ, if I find I’m not . . .” He didn’t finish that.
The flash of terror in her eyes said he didn’t need to.
He let her go by yanking her hair and sending her sprawling to her back, her legs bending in an unnatural way not the only reason she let out a cry of pain and surprise.
Without another word, he turned and walked away from the two prostitutes Chaos used to pimp before Tack scraped them clean of that bullshit that none of them, but Chew, who’d renounced the Club before they carried out an execution he did not agree with, wanted to do in the first place.
Hound had no idea how that shit started. He hadn’t been Chaos then.
He just knew Tack had plans to end it.
So he’d become Chaos.
They were the two prostitutes that informed Crank that Tack was making maneuvers to take over the Club and clean it up.
The two prostitutes that initiated Crank calling a hit on a brother in order to focus their attention on where he wanted them to be.
“Hop, it wasn’t what you think,” the one against the wall called out. “We had no choice. We—”
Hop cut her off. “Crank’s rotting. Think on that, bitch.”
Hound was barely through the door before he heard it slammed.
He looked behind him to see Hop following him.
“If they don’t skip town . . .” Hound growled, again not finishing it.
“They’ll go,” Hop ground out.
Hound didn’t say another word.
He turned to face forward and kept moving.
He had things to do.
Tack had a hand to his chest and was pushing him back.
“This is not who we are anymore, brother,” he bit out. “We still got work to do to get ourselves clean, but that part died when Crank hit the ground.”
Hound locked his legs and stood solid, staring straight into Tack’s eyes.
“It’ll get done,” Tack told him quietly.
Yeah, Hound thought. It would.
Then, quick as a flash, determined, he moved clear of Tack’s hand, advanced swiftly to the man tied to the chair, took hold of his hair, wrenched his head back, yanked his knife from his belt and hesitated not an instant before he drew the blade across his throat, going deep.
Blood spewed. The man’s eyes got huge. His mouth gurgled.
Hound watched it happen with dispassion.
The man in that chair had carried out the hit on Black.
And now he was going to die like he’d killed Hound’s brother. Chaos’s man.
Keely’s life.
“Fuck yes,” High, standing to the side, rumbled.
“The way it should be,” Arlo, standing with him, stated.
“Done,” Pete, standing behind the man’s chair, clipped out.
Hound turned and stopped because Tack was standing right there.
“Now that’s not who we are anymore, brother,” Hound stated.
Then he skirted him and walked out of Chaos’s cabin in the foothills.
It was likely she heard his bike.
Whatever the reason, Hound did not stand too long in the middle of the walk up to her back door before that door opened and she stood in it, her hair perfect, her face exhausted, the shapeless nightshirt she wore drooping on her.
He was covered in blood.
He didn’t have to say a word.
She stared at him, not in horror, not in fear.
With sorrow.
And not just for her loss.
For where it took Hound.
“Now it’s done,” he growled.
He heard her whisper from halfway across the yard.
“Hound,” was all she said.
“Heal,” was all he said to finish.
Then he turned on his boot and walked away.
One month later . . .
Keely slamming the phone into its cradle repeatedly set all five men at her kitchen table to alert, and all eyes, including Hound’s, went from their poker hands to her.
“Yo,” Arlo called, and at the word she stopped with the receiver in the cradle, her hand still on it, and stared angrily at the phone.
“All okay, honey bunch?” Pete asked gently.
She took her hand off the phone and whirled.
“So, my parents weren’t all fired up I was dating a guy in a motorcycle gang,” she began.
Hound felt his jaw get tight at the word “gang.” He knew she was saying that shit because her parents thought that shit. He knew she knew better. They were a Club. An outsider might not see much difference. But there was a mountain of it.
“Therefore, needless to say, they weren’t fired up about me marrying him and getting knocked up by him . . . twice,” she went on. “So it’s not like I’m not in the know that they weren’t Graham’s biggest fans.”
At that, Hound fought a flinch.
They didn’t call Black “Black” because it was his last name, which it was.
They called him Black because the man was so far from the darkness, it was fucking hilarious that was his last name.
He was goodness.
He was light.
He was brotherhood.
If there was a disagreement between the brothers, Black waded in and had everyone laughing.
If one of the brother’s kids walked into the Compound, faster than snot Black would have them up on his shoulders, horsing around.
They all had their place in the Club, and Black’s place had been the glue that held them together in shaky times or in times when those shakes were like earthquakes.
But it was also because he was their light. The beacon of the brother they all wanted the Club to be. He was about Chaos. He was about Keely. He was about his boys. And nothing on this earth mattered beyond that. Not money. Not r
espect. Not a thing.
He was not Graham.
It was a solid name and Hound had heard Keely calling him that, but usually in a teasing way. The rest of the time, if she wasn’t using a sweet nothing, it was always Black.
She’d dropped the Black since he died, and Hound knew it was another way she wanted to drop the brotherhood.
“So now, essentially,” she kept going, “they pretty much feel like I made my bed, I made my boys’ beds, and we need to lie in them.”
Fucking assholes, Hound thought.
“Whatcha need?” Brick asked softly, and her pissed-off eyes went to him.
“I need my parents to give a shit that my husband got his throat slit,” she spat.
Hound, nor any brother, could beat back the flinch at that.
She stomped out.
The men around the table all looked at each other.
“They were always motherfuckers,” Dog muttered under his breath. “Remember their wedding. They had sticks rammed so far up their asses it’s a wonder they didn’t come out their mouths.”
Hound remembered that too.
“She’s better off without them,” Arlo put in. “She’s got Chaos, she doesn’t need their shit.”
He knew that was true. Every man at that table knew that was true.
The problem was, Keely didn’t know that was true.
He waited until after he won all his brothers’ money, they got pissed and it got late so they were all taking off.
He hung back.
She was at the door.
So was he.
He waited again, this time until she impatiently caught his gaze.
She wanted him gone.
“Whether you want us or not, you got a family who wants you. You can’t do anything to make that change. Nothing, Keely. We’re yours. Forever.”
With that, he didn’t let her say a word.
Hound gave her what she wanted.
He walked away.
Several months later . . .
Hound stood at the end of the walk with his arms crossed on his chest, his leather cut on his shoulders beating back the October chill, and watched as Keely headed back down the walk with Dutch and Jagger.
Dutch had demanded that his Halloween costume be mini-biker, and as much as Keely pushed back, he’d have none of it.
And where Dutch went, Jagger followed.
So they were both in jeans, little-man biker boots, white T-shirts, little leather vests that Bev made for them, with bandanas tied around their foreheads.
Dutch’s was red. It was Black’s bandana, he wore it all the time. Now Dutch had it all the time.
Hilariously, Jagger’s was purple. It was Keely’s. She used to wear it all the time too, tied around her neck, wrapped around the top of her skull and tied at the back with her hair flowing out under it. Even wound around her wrist.
Dutch told Jag that real bikers didn’t wear purple, but Jag dug in and purple it was.
Keely made it to Hound and stopped.
“You’re scaring all the neighbors,” she accused.
“Good,” he replied.
Dutch laughed.
Jagger pulled his hand from his mom’s and caught Hound’s.
Then he tugged on it, grunting and demanding, “Let’s go! Candy!”
Hound allowed himself to be tugged.
Keely walked next to Dutch.
Hound stood at the end of the walk as they all went up to the next house (Jagger racing to the door, Dutch playing it cool).
He did the same at the next house.
And the next.
And the next.
One year and two months later . . .
Hound moved back up the walk, into the kitchen and saw Keely where he left her, at the kitchen table, practically buried under Christmas paper, bows and ribbons.
“Trash is out,” he grunted.
She looked to him and nodded.
He looked to the doorway that led to the rest of the house then back to her. “Where’s Bev?”
“She has to get ready for her own Christmas,” she told him.
He nodded.
He got that seeing as it was Christmas Eve.
“What more you got to do?” he asked.
She was distracted with wrap and boxes and similar shit, and her eyes came to him.
“Jag’s mini-Flintstone-use-your-feet motorcycle came unassembled.”
“Right,” he grunted again. “Where is it?”
“The box is in the basement.”
He nodded once, turned on his boot and headed to the door in the basement.
He put the little-kid motorcycle together and hauled it up the steps.
She slapped a bow on it and he put it under the tree.
“You rock, Hound, thanks,” she whispered. “Now go home. And Merry Christmas.”
He nodded again.
“Later.”
Her eyes stayed dead but her gorgeous face got soft. “Later, honey.”
Hound walked out her back door.
Four years later . . .
Hound did not hurry through the halls of the hospital.
But he didn’t take his time.
He hit the nurse’s station and grunted, “Black.”
The nurse behind the station stared up at him with big eyes and such was her bullshit judgment about bikers, she didn’t have it in her to speak. She just lifted a hand and pointed down a short corridor at the end of which was a number of curtained bays.
Hound walked that way.
When he hit the bays, he looked left and right.
They were three in to the left.
He barely moved into the space when Dutch hit him, wrapping his little kid arms around his hips.
He put a hand to the boy’s back.
The doctor or nurse or whoever was working on Jag in the bed looked up at him.
“Can I help you?”
Dutch turned in his hold so Hound’s hand was at his chest.
“He’s with us,” he said.
Hound wasn’t and never would be.
And he absolutely was and always would be.
Hound forced his eyes from a pale Jag with his pinched face and his yellow tee stained with blood to Keely sitting next to him looking even paler and totally freaked.
Her eyes were glued to Hound.
“What happened?” he asked.
“It’s my fault,” Dutch spoke up, and he looked down at the kid.
Then Hound turned his gaze to his brother and saw the gaping wound tearing up the inside of his thin, kid forearm that the nurse or doctor or whoever he was, was stitching.
He returned his attention to Dutch.
“How’d you do that?” he asked quietly.
“We were fightin’,” Jag put in, his voice usually loud and excited, was weak. “I did wrong.”
“It’s okay, baby,” Keely whispered. “Get you stitched up, it’ll all be okay.”
“We were just messing around,” Dutch muttered.
Hound looked down at him again and his tone was still quiet when he asked, “Tell me how messin’ around got your brother that gash, son.”
“We were just messin’ around then I got mad then Jag got mad then Mom told us to cool it, and she sent me out to the yard and Jag up to his room, but Jag was so mad he went to the back door and slammed his fist on the glass and it went through and he got cut,” Dutch answered, looking beaten. He cast his eyes to his feet. “But I shoulda cooled it before it got to that place. So it’s me did wrong and I know it.”
“What’d you learn from this?” Hound asked.
“Hunh?” Dutch asked back, lifting his head.
“What’d you learn from this?” Hound repeated.
“Uh . . . I . . . dunno,” Dutch answered.
Hound looked to Jagger. “What’d you learn from this, Jag?”
“Well, uh . . . not to hit a window with your fist?” Jagger asked back, uncertain his answer was the right one.
Hound beat b
ack his smile and gave them the knowledge.
“What you learned is that life is gonna pull its own punches so you gotta stand strong to fight those. You don’t waste your energy fightin’ your brother. You never fight your brother. Your brother is gonna be in your corner from now until forever. You might get pissed at him. You might have words. But you don’t fight. Are you hearing me?”
“Yes, sir,” Jag muttered.
Hound shifted his gaze to Dutch.
“Yes, sir,” Dutch mumbled.
He looked at Keely and did not allow the look on her face to penetrate.
“The window?” he asked.
“It’s messed up,” she told him.
He nodded and looked down again to Dutch. “You’re goin’ with me. We’re fixin’ the window.” He turned his attention back to Keely. “You got Jag.”
She nodded.
He then looked at the doc or nurse or whatever he was. “How many stitches?”
“Probably . . .” he started, still working, “seventeen, maybe a few more.”
Hound grinned at Jag. “Boy, when you get bloody, you do it up big. First battle scar.”
Jag grinned back.
He felt that particular comment didn’t win a soft, grateful look from Keely, but he didn’t look at her to get her pissed.
He wrapped his fingers around Dutch’s shoulder and said, “Let’s roll.”
“’Kay, Hound,” Dutch muttered.
“Later,” he said to Jag, turning to go.
“Later, Hound,” Jag replied.
His eyes skipped through Keely. “Later.”
“Later.”
With that, he and Dutch took off.
When they did, like he always used to do when he was with his Hound but hadn’t in a while since he’d reached the age to stop doing it, the situation made him need it, so Dutch found then held Hound’s hand.
And seeing as Dutch had reached the age that Hound had lost that from his boy, instead of reminding him it was time for him to think about being the man he was becoming, like he always used to do, Hound let him.
Three years later . . .
Using his fist in the collar of his tee, Hound pushed the kid up against the brick wall.
Then he got in his face.
He was the perfect mix of his old man and his momma.
Fourteen and already a heartbreaker.
“Am I gonna have to make another visit?” he asked.
“Piss off, Hound,” Dutch Black bit back.