Violet watches the fish Justin gave her swim in slow, methodical circles in the glass vase she placed him in when she returned to the police trailer. It was the only thing she could find in the cabinets that would work.
“Why are you keeping it?” I whisper in her ear, but Oz and Razor glance over. The room is too quiet and we’re all too hypersensitive from today to not hear even the most hushed sound.
Violet lazily lifts one shoulder. “I don’t know.”
“Have you considered it’s bugged?” Oz asks.
She smiles and one by one, including Oz, we all smile, too. It’s been a long day and we’re full of paranoia.
“Forget I asked,” he said.
“Never,” she replies. “I will remember and remind you of that question until the day I die.”
Until the day she dies. I wrap my arms tighter around her and she places her head on my shoulder. There’s no humming anymore, and as long as she’s around, there won’t be. “Seriously, why keep the fish?”
“Justin let me pick it out. There were over a thousand fish and this one spoke to me.”
“That’s a Siamese fighting fish,” Razor says. “Those are highly aggressive. The males will kill one another. Females sometimes will, too. I had a buddy once tell me that if you put a mirror up to the tank that the fish will kill itself trying to fight its reflection.”
From the slight tilt of her lips, she already knows all of this and I kiss her temple. Violet picked the fish that best describes herself.
“It’s a reminder,” she whispers to me, but she’s aware Oz and Razor hear.
“Of what?” I ask.
“That there are some fights worth fighting and some fights that need to be let go. And that sometimes I need to really take a good look in the mirror before I react.”
“I need one of those fish,” Razor mumbles.
She giggles, then sighs. “Our English paper is due tomorrow.”
School. Somehow that feels a thousand miles away. So do football games and pep rallies, dances and homework. “Have you written yours?”
“Nope.”
“You two mean you can’t figure out which path to take?” Razor says teasingly.
I know what path to take, and the way Violet kisses my neck, she knows, too. It’s not the one most travelled. It’s not the one least taken. We don’t need a path when we’re confident enough to set our own course in the thick woods.
“Remember you promised me boring,” she says. “And I think we should start with blueberry pie. I like blueberry pie. I want to eat it until blueberries are running through my blood.”
“I, Chevy, do promise you, Violet, a life that is as boring as we can possibly create.”
She smiles and I’d do anything right now to have her alone, roll her under me and kiss her in very not boring ways.
Rumbles of motorcycle engines and we don’t move. Due to the arrests, guys from other chapters have been driving in all night and evening. Oz watches the yard, then he stands. “It’s them. It’s Eli and Cyrus.”
Violet hugs me and I hug her back. She’s aware, like me, that they’re going to want answers.
Violet
AFTER ELI STALKED into the cabin and saw the four of us there, he raged out of the cabin and ordered every single person to leave. It didn’t matter how long they had driven to get there. He didn’t care who had what position on the board. He didn’t care about anything. Eli came across like a man whose mental wires had crossed, causing a nuclear reactor meltdown.
Then after two hours of him stalking around the place to confirm there was nobody around, he yelled at us to go to Church and we did. All four of us scuffling over like puppies with ears back and tails between our legs.
It isn’t lost on me that this is the first time I’ve been officially invited to Church. It isn’t lost on me that I might be the very first woman to have that invitation extended. But I don’t revel in the win, at least not now. Eli’s a little too hotheaded and heading to crazy for me to do anything more than stare at the wooden table in front of me.
Eli yelled. A lot. The yelling I expected and could take. The extremely silent and intimidating stare from Cyrus unnerved me.
“Do you have any idea how much danger you were in?” This time I’m pretty sure he’s shouting just at me and not at the overall group. “I thought you were smart. I thought you had enough common sense to keep yourself alive.”
I’m not fighting back. None of us are. We went behind their backs, behind the club’s back, but not one of us regrets it.
“Why, Violet? Why would you do all this? I understand now that you didn’t feel safe. I understand that we’ve got a security problem, but why the hell didn’t you find a way to tell me? Just me?”
Eli stops yelling and I glance up from my possibly hours-long stare at the table to meet his eyes. His questions until now have been rhetorical, but from the way he’s standing with his hands on his hips and glare firmly planted on me, he wants an answer.
“Because you never would have allowed me to wear the recorder. You would have tried to find a way to fix this on your own and the only way this could work is if I did it. I want the Riot out of our lives, so I did what I had to do.”
Eli grabs hold of the chair in front of him and his knuckles turn white under his grip. “You’re damn straight I would have stopped you. I promised your father I would take care of you if anything should ever happen to him. Even if I didn’t make that promise, I still would have and will do anything to protect you. I don’t ever want you pulling bullshit like this again.”
Hopefully, I won’t have to pull bullshit like this again. “But I will...that is, if it means keeping the people I love safe. Eli...yesterday at the diner, you asked me if our relationship was worth something and I want you to know that it is. It was worth my wearing that recorder.”
Eli’s eyes snap shut, and for the first time since we entered Church, he drops into a chair. “The Riot have already started with the account numbers. The police could probably go in and arrest them now, but they want to keep handing them rope to hang themselves with. Cyrus and I have given them permission to keep doing what they’re doing. I can’t decide if I want to hug the four of you or strangle you and I’m too fucking beat to decide. All of you are staying here until I can figure out what the hell I’m going to do with my security problems.”
Eli glares at me as if he’s waiting for me to challenge him and that glare is rightfully warranted. A week ago, I would have been in his face, but I’m all angered out. “Okay.”
Eli points to the door. “Go. All of you. We’ll talk again in the morning.”
Oz, Razor and I don’t hesitate in standing, but Chevy stays seated. He and Cyrus are staring at one another. Chevy wants to talk to him—needs to talk to him. Cyrus has another grandson and Eli has another nephew. But even better, Cyrus is now aware Chevy chose a different path.
Not the one his mother might have wanted, not the path Cyrus would have picked. Chevy has gone rogue, is blazing a trail that belongs to himself. His worst fear is that by doing so, he’ll lose his family.
“I can’t talk to you tonight,” says Cyrus. “I need to think this all through.”
“Tough,” Chevy says, and a shot of pride courses through me. “Because I need to talk to you.”
CHEVY
VIOLET OFFERS ME a soft smile before she exits Church. The door closes and it’s me and Cyrus. I’ve betrayed him. So have Razor and Oz and Violet, but with me it’s been different. It’s always been different. To be honest, there are times I’ve felt like the third player of a video game Cyrus has been playing and I’m the last do-over.
Cyrus first had James and James left the club, Snowflake, Cyrus and the rest of his family for the unknown in Louisville. Eli stuck with the club, continues to stick with the club, but went
against them one time when he was younger for the woman he loved and ended up in prison for too many years.
Cyrus believes I’m his last hope and I didn’t fall into line like he wanted. I can’t help but wonder if I’m a disappointment.
“You could have come to me,” he says in a voice barely above a mumble. “I understand why none of you went to Eli. He feels too much, loves you all too much. But I don’t understand why you didn’t come to me.”
“I turn eighteen in two weeks. What happens if I’m not ready to join the club?”
Tonight, Cyrus looks his age. He’s nearing seventy and I’ve never thought too much about that. Before this evening, he had an everlasting air to him. That he was ageless, defying time.
But sitting at the head of the table it’s apparent he wears every year like an oxen wears a yoke. His hair and beard are gray. His dark McKinley eyes full of too many years of past pains and learned knowledge that I’m sure he wishes he could forget. His skin is weathered by tears, laughter, wind, rain and sun. The wrinkles around his eyes and mouth are cemented in by happiness and sadness.
My grandfather has seen it all, probably knows it all, yet at the same time he can control nothing. Like James, Eli and me.
“Do you not want to join the club?” he asks.
Last thing I want to do is hurt the man who stepped up to be my father when my own died. Each and every warm memory of our time together churns together in my stomach. “To please you, I do. To keep my family, my brothers, the bonds I’ve built here, I do.”
“But?”
“My entire life, I’ve been James’s son, your grandson, Eli’s nephew. I’ve been the heir to a legacy I don’t even understand. You don’t talk about James after he left. No one talks about James—not even my mother...that is until this week. It feels like I’ve been raised up on a high horse supported by a house of cards and I’m one good blow away from falling.”
A flicker of anger in his eyes. “What did your mother say?”
“That’s not important. What is important is what you haven’t said. Did you give up on James as a son when he decided he wanted something different from the club and is the same thing going to happen to me if I decide not to wear a patch on my back?”
Cyrus smooths out his beard, but shifts in agitation. “Do you not want to be a part of this club?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know who I am or what I want to do with my life. I’m eighteen years old and I should be worried about the paper that’s due in English tomorrow. I should be wondering how to ask Violet to prom and if I have to rent a tux to match her dress. I should be losing sleep over play-offs and have my nose in a playbook memorizing routes. But I’m not doing any of those things.
“I love this club and I love you, but for fifteen fucking minutes, I’d like to be eighteen and I’d like to be eighteen without having to lose everyone I love in the process.”
Cyrus falls back into his chair as if my words were a punch to the gut and the chair rolls back with the force. “Why the hell are you just saying this to me now?”
The anger at being in the middle all these years bursts through me. “Because any way I chose, I was disappointing someone. You, Mom, the club, Violet. I’ve been a damned knot in the tug-of-war rope my entire life and I thought it was my job to stay in the middle. Past few weeks have taught me that it’s not my job. It never has been.
“Oz knows what he wants, Razor knows what he wants, Violet knows what she wants and I don’t because I’ve wasted too many years of my life trying to please other people. I don’t know if I want to be in the club. I think I do, but that patch will feel like a weight if I wear it before I know who I am.”
I roll my neck to ease the tension building there, and when it doesn’t help, I spit out the rest of the truth because it doesn’t make a difference if I hold it in or not. “I want to go to college. I don’t know what I’ll major in or have the slightest clue where to go, but I want to go somewhere and figure myself out, and if I get my way, I want to do this with your blessing. I want to know that no matter what I choose, I’ll still have a home here with you.”
My throat burns, my eyes water and I quickly rub at my face to hide the emotions clawing at me to be released. I’ve done it. I’ve rolled out my soul for him to kick around.
Cyrus scratches at his head, then lowers it. “I don’t know where I went wrong with your father. We were all close. Me, Eli and James. Eli and James especially. Even though James was older than him, James loved Eli. Like a big brother should, like a best friend.”
This I’ve all heard.
“James went to college,” Cyrus says, and that captures me. “He did fine for three years, but then everything started to fall apart when the Riot realized Eli was dating Meg. James would come home every chance he had, but then as the situation became more intense, he stopped coming home as much until one day he stopped coming at all.”
Cyrus closes his eyes as if someone shot a person he loves through the heart in front of him. Close to seventy years old and something that happened over eighteen years ago still crushes him from the inside out.
“Why?” I ask.
He reopens his eyes and shakes his head. “I don’t know. We never knew. One day I had him and then one day—I lost him. I lost my son before he died and I don’t know why. I have my theories, theories you’ve voiced, but that’s all they are—damned theories that only haunt me.”
The Riot told Cyrus about me. The Riot told me James was a traitor and then I passed that information along to Cyrus. My grandfather thinks his son was a traitor and it’s got to be killing him. Isaiah said James wasn’t Riot, but other than the word of a guy I’ve got no attachments to other than genetics, I can’t prove him wrong.
“Chevy.” Cyrus’s voice cracks, and when he clears his throat, my heart throbs in pain. “I don’t fucking care if you become a member of this club. You are my grandson and I love you. This is your home, this will always be your home and I will take this vest off my back and set fire to it if that means you’ll believe me.”
I don’t need that. I’ve never needed that. I just needed to hear him say I’ll always have a home. I swallow to keep my throat from closing and stand because my mind’s a mess. “I’m not James. You’re not going to lose me.”
Cyrus climbs to his feet and hugs me. Hands high in a show of respect as if I was wearing a patch. In the club, men hug. It’s a show of affection, a show of brotherhood, but it’s hard and it’s fast. As my grandfather hugs me and I hug him back, we hold on longer because we’re making a promise...we’re never letting go.
Violet
I’M NOT SURE how Chevy’s able to stay awake when my eyelids close of their own volition every few seconds. Each drop into darkness is like a piece of heaven, but then when my body begins to drift toward the car door so I can sleep, I jerk and force my eyes back open. Chevy needs me and I need to stay awake so he’ll stay awake and then we won’t die in a fiery car crash.
“I don’t feel like this is our brightest idea,” I say. “We’ve already missed a ton of school and our mothers will be pissed. We’ve already got the club mad at us. Do you think it’s wise to anger the moms, too? We’ve had plenty of awful ideas lately, so shouldn’t we pull back on the bad ones for a bit?”
“We’ve also had some good ones.” Chevy switches hands on the steering wheel. “Besides, I can’t wait for answers anymore. I need to start fresh, and to do that, I need the truth.”
James. He’s talking about James and my heart aches for him. Chevy shook me awake at six this morning. I at least have had a few hours of sleep. I’m betting Chevy has had none, but he’s awake due to freebasing caffeine.
Chevy was determined to meet Isaiah by just showing at his Monday through Friday job, but I was able to convince Rachel via text to push a meetup between Chevy and Isaiah this morning. I promi
sed that Chevy would buy him breakfast. Pretty sure neither of them care about that.
The donut shop Isaiah picked is up on the right and I point it out to Chevy even though the GPS is giving instructions at the same time. Except for a Mustang and another car around the back, the parking lot is empty, and when we walk into the place, we find the same.
It’s a quaint little place. Only one table with two chairs near the windows, but other than that there’s a glass case holding lots and lots of frosted and not frosted donuts. The sight of baked goodness and the scent of delicious sweetness cause my mouth to water, but then I notice Isaiah talking in a low voice to a woman behind the counter and my appetite dies.
The woman looks over at us, and when she spots Chevy, she places a hand on her stomach like she was kicked. “You look like him. Not as much as Isaiah does, but you look like James.”
Isaiah folds his arms over his chest and stays silent as the woman crosses the room to Chevy. She’s not what I would have expected for Isaiah’s mom, but then again, that’s not fair. My mother wouldn’t be the definition of a biker chick. Looks are often deceiving.
This woman is young—obviously old enough to have a son out of high school, but still young enough that I don’t consider her old. Her long hair is blond with a slight curl and she wears a cotton dress with cowboy boots. Her earrings dangle and she has a soft country twang as she speaks. “I’m Isaiah’s mom, Ruth. He told me you want to talk about James.”
Chevy glances over at me and the anguish written on his face slays me. He wants to talk about James, but he doesn’t. He needs this and he needs me. I link my fingers with his, he locks them tight and we follow Ruth as she leads us away from the front of the store to a breakroom in the back.
CHEVY
“I DON’T OWN the place.” Ruth is a rambler. Hasn’t stopped talking since we walked through the door. “I just work here, but the owner feels like I do a good enough job that he lets me take care of the place after nine on my own. We get real quiet after nine, but I don’t mind.”