Thirty

Two Weeks Later

“The doctor said not to push it,” Ava reminded, and Mercy went easily when she put a hand in the center of his chest and pressed him back into the pillows stacked against the headboard.

He grinned, and waggled his eyebrows in a way that was more cute than seductive. “Your doctor, or my doctor?”

She tried to give him a stern look, and smiled instead. “ My doctor said I could continue with any regular physical activity for the time being. Hence…” She gestured down the length of her naked body. “ Your doctor said not to lift anything over fifty pounds until your shoulder’s healed up. Hence…” She gestured to him, equally naked, sitting against the headboard, stitches removed to reveal shiny, new-pink scars on both arms.

Ava swung a leg over his hips, and snugged in close enough to feel the hot brand of his erection against her belly. All of her clenched in helpless response. They’d started out on their sides, both awake in the dark of predawn, and gentle kisses had turned to heated, slick kisses, and quiet, comforting touches to purposeful strokes and squeezes. Things had cooled a little, when he tried to get on top, and negotiations had become necessary, but Ava’s excitement was a slow-burning sort of fire that could get stoked up quickly .

He knew how to do it, too: He gripped her hips, thumbs sweeping up over the points of bone and back down again, pressing in until her hip flexors twitched. Teasing deeper into the creases of her thighs, arrowing in to where she was already wet and wanted him most…then retreating.

His grin turned shit-eating when she huffed with impatience, and he said, “I’m not picking you up, though.”

“You were going to hold yourself up, and you weigh a lot more than fifty pounds, and a lot more than me, thank you very much.”

“Aw, baby.” He stroked down her thighs, huge hands spanning them and then some. Shit, that was never going to get old. “You didn’t think I was calling you heavy, did you?”

She braced her hands on his chest, smooth, and firm, but with that delicious give of relaxation, of that little bit of extra weight fatherhood and contentment had put on him. She hated it on herself, that smooth layer of padding, but she loved it on him; the way it meant he was happy. That they made good food in their kitchen together, and ate amidst the bright voices of their children.

The kids. All of them back together again. Cal and Millie had broken free of Leah’s handhold and sprinted across the tarmac to them. Mercy had moved, as if to scoop them up, and winced, and held himself in check with a face like he’d been shot all over again. Ava had grabbed them instead, and hugged and kissed them, and Mercy had crouched down to do the same. Then both of them had leaped on their brother, showering him with questions, Cal tugging his hand, Millie bursting into noisy tears as she hugged him around the waist. Remy had patted them, and been so quiet, and sweet with them, so mature beyond his years after all that he’d been through. All that he’d seen…

“Oh, Mama,” Mercy said, softly, and touched her face.

She blinked, and realized her eyes were full of tears. “Oh.” She dashed at them, but more took their place. “Oh, I–”

“Come here, fillette,” he murmured, and pulled her down to rest on his chest.

“No, no, I’m…” But it was no use. She was crying. Softly, not hysterically, but enough to kill the mood.

Mercy murmured to her in French, love, my everything, I love you , and hitched her up higher against him, so she straddled his stomach instead of his lap. His hands petted up and down her back, stroked through her hair. “I know, fillette, I know. I’m sorry.”

The hollow of his throat was warm, and achingly familiar against her tear-stained face. He smelled like him: their soap, his deodorant, their laundry detergent, his skin, clean and the same as it had always been, since the very first time he kissed her, all those years ago.

She meant to say that she was okay, that they was fine, that she didn’t know why she was crying. Instead, she made an ugly noise, and his hand cupped the back of her head, and he kissed her crown.

Her now-familiar friend, that ugly black tide of panic and grief, crested now, though it was useless. Though Remy was safe, and Mercy was alive, and their family was whole again, back home. Though she and Mercy were in their bed, in the comforting, dark veil of early morning, their babies sleeping just down the hall. Everything was fine, was good, but the tide rushed up…

It crested, drowned her.

And in its wake, when it receded as quickly as it had come, she was left shaking, and bare, and so grateful and terrified and heartsore that she thought she might be sick.

“Oh my God,” she murmured.

He rubbed her back some more, his palms rough-skinned, but so gentle, and soothing, and loving. “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay.”

She shook her head, which amounted to grinding her forehead into his pec. No. No, it wasn’t okay. It hadn’t been.

But maybe, one day, it would be.

When she swiped at her tears, his hand joined hers, so gently. “I wish I could take it away,” he murmured.

Oh no.

She braced her hands on his chest and pushed up. His eyes, she saw, that deep, beautiful warm brown she’d known since she was eight, glittered with unshed tears. But he smiled, and said, “Aw, shit. I stepped in it, huh?”

She touched his face, because she could, because he was alive. “Felix.”

His face went somber, and sad, and a few tears spilled over. He brushed hers away, with careful fingers. “We always knew it wouldn’t be easy, didn’t we?” he asked, aiming for light, but heavy with truth.

She nodded, tracing the edges of his chest tattoo with a fingertip. Sometimes, when they were in bed, she fit her teeth to the marks to see if it was still a perfect match. It was. But she didn’t test it now. Worked instead on swallowing down her tears and clearing her throat to get her voice back.

When she felt properly stern, she lifted her gaze to meet his again, and said, “We did know it wouldn’t be easy. It’s never been easy. But don’t wish to take it away. Because that would mean…” The lump in her throat swelled, and she swallowed helplessly against it. “Don’t wish that. We made it out the other side.”

“We did.” He cupped her jaw and drew her in close for another kiss. This one was sweet in the way his lips clung to hers, and salty to taste with tears. After, his thumb traced slow patterns across her cheek, breath shared in the close space between them, his eyes a dark blur at this distance. There was no mistaking the reverence in his voice when he said, “Do you know how proud of you I am?”

“Yeah.” And she did know; had seen it shining, radiant, in his face, had felt it emanating from him like a physical heat: on the dock, after he’d pitched Boyle’s gutted body into the water; in the hospital, when the sedation wore off and he found her hovering over him; and during all the years before that, before he’d ever even touched her with intent, when he asked her about her grades, and she showed him the tidy row of As on her report card. He’d been proud of her before she’d ever done anything important, and was proud of her still. “Back atcha.”

She kissed him again, marveling that she could . That they’d both survived the relentless hurricane of Harlan Boyle’s attention, that their babies were safe, and sleeping soundly, so that this stolen moment alone together could exist in the first place.

His hand slid back to sift through her hair, and take a gentle fistful of it. His other hand settled on her chest, right over her breastbone, where her heart throbbed slow and deep for him. Always him. Only him.

She put her hand over his heart in turn, and leaned in closer, lips parting against the slick press of his tongue. His touch trailed down, between her breasts, to her belly, where his hand splayed open over the softness below her navel. She wasn’t showing yet, but his palm spanned the place where the baby curled, tiny and growing.

She pulled back, their lips parting with a wet smack.

Mercy was panting. His gaze, when she caught it, was wide, and awed, his pupils blown huge. “ Ava .”

She covered his hand with hers. “I know, baby.” She’d told him she was pregnant in the thick of the action, both of them slick with stress sweat on the lawn of a cabin deep in the swamp, the night before she went to torture his half-sister for information. So much had happened, and they hadn’t begun to unpack any of it.

But this, the expansion of their family, was what he cared about. What she cared about, too. They’d both learned long ago how best to compartmentalize the bad shit.

“I know,” she murmured again, and urged his hand farther down.

His gaze dropped down to between her legs, where his fingers slid through the gathering wetness there, and then parted her, so that two could hook up inside of her.

Ava spread her legs wider on a shaky exhale. Clutched at his chest with both hands and pressed down on his fingers, the delicious stretch of them, only a tease for what she really wanted.

He worked her open, thrusting up again and again with his fingers, spreading them, teasing a third, the wet noise of it getting louder, and more obscene in the quiet of their bedroom. Ava rocked her hips, chasing the rhythm he built. Watched her fingers dent the sun-bronzed skin of his chest, and, even as pleasure coiled like a spring in the pit of her belly, couldn’t help but think about all the ways she might have lost him.

Her eyes burned and welled with fresh tears. She closed her eyes against their sting and bore down on his hand, three fingers now, pushing in firm and steady on each drop of her hips. Motherhood had turned her into a multitasker, and she had the capacity to feel all sorts of ways during sex. Or the lead-up to it, anyway. Right now, she wanted him so acutely that it hurt, and yet the sweeping tides of relief, and gratitude, and post-adrenaline-rush crash wouldn’t leave her.

He settled his free hand on the small of her back, down low, and urged her hips down, and down, and down. “You okay?” he asked, and his voice had gone deep and gravel-rough; he knew exactly the state she was in, because his eyes, when she cracked her own open, were damp, too. “You wanna stop?”

“No. No, just–” She shifted back, and regretted the press of his fingers immediately. But she wriggled back across his hips and took his cock in hand. It twitched in her grip, and she swore under her breath when she looked down and saw how flushed and hard he was. Dripping at the tip, ready for her.

She was never going to get over the size of him. Would never grow jaded of the physical proof of just how much he wanted her. She was pregnant with her fourth child, but looking down at him in her hand, she felt seventeen again, skin hot and too-tight with want, dizzy with the knowledge that he wanted her .

The only man she’d ever wanted, and he wanted her back, just as badly. It made her feel like she was flying – or maybe flying apart.

Mercy sat up straight, and kissed her slack mouth, her cheek. Mouthed wetly at the edge of her jaw, and then her earlobe, until she was shivering with overstimulation. His voice was dark velvet when he murmured, right against her cheek, “You need it, baby? You need it inside?”

Had he asked that at random, in the middle of the day, or thrown out a similar cheesy porn line, she would have burst into helpless giggles. But right now, she stroked him root to tip until she felt more than heard his low grunt, and panted, “Yeah. Yeah, I need it.”

“Okay. I know you do, fillette. Hold on.” Then he gripped her hips, and flipped them.

“Merc, no! Your shoulder–” He pressed her down to the mattress, caged her in with his arms, and cut her off with a kiss.

His tongue pressed hot and slick into her mouth, pressed deep, in imitation of a good fuck. Against her lips, he murmured, “If I’m not dead, then I’m not hurt too bad to give you what you need.”

That was demonstrably untrue. In general. But it hadn’t proved true, yet, and Ava’s whole body was pulsing with want. If he felt strong enough to spread her thighs with his broad, hot palms, and push her legs up and out; felt steady enough to settle there against her, cock dragging along her wet folds, then she wasn’t going to protest anymore.

“Please.”

Time slowed when he slid inside of her. Her whole world narrowed down to the place where they were joined, the hard stretch, and the branding heat of him; his weight denting the mattress beneath her; the sure stroke of his hands up her thighs, and across her hips, her ribs. Every worry, every responsibility faded. She was no one and nothing but one-half of a familiar, feverish need, a want made loving by long-practice and the kind of transcendent understanding that had nothing to do with the physical act itself.

It was always so good. So clarifying. But this morning, back in their own bed, draped in forgiving yellow lamplight, home again, after an ugly ordeal, the way he filled her on that first relentless press inward felt necessary .

Through all of it, each interrogation, each phone call; each bullet fired, each name added to their respective hit lists, even the desperate night in Walsh’s old cabin by the train tracks, she’d needed him. And now, finally, here he was, where he belonged.

Ava made a wordless, pleading noise, and lifted her hips in offering when he sat back on his heels and hauled her lower body up into his lap. She had no leverage in this position, but it didn’t matter. Despite the scars still fresh and gleaming on his arms, the tiny dots still visible where his bicep had been stitched, Mercy pulled her down onto his cock over and over again, maddeningly slow, breathtakingly easy.

She let herself bask in it, for a while. The delicious friction of being filled again and again. She loved watching the bunch and flex of muscles as he moved her. The way his pecs threw shadows down onto his stomach, bowed out with effort as he ground forward into her. His expression was worshipful – but his brows were harsh and slanted with want; the tendons and veins stood stark in his throat, in his forearms. He wasn’t careful, but he was gentle with her, conscious with each touch and each roll of his hips of his size, and his strength. He was the portrait of savagery, a wild beast that had clawed his way indoors, and there was love in every single point of contact. A mindfulness of her pleasure that left no doubt that she was precious to him.

Orgasm ripped through her like wildfire. Her pleasure spiked, sudden and unexpected, and she closed her eyes as it seized her, and wiped her mind clean in a bright, white flash.

When she floated back to reality, skin buzzing, insides all liquid and hot, she first became aware that Mercy was still gripping her hips – tight enough to leave bruises; the good kind that she would admire in the mirror later – and was still moving inside her, no longer thrusting, but grinding into her, the sound obscene where she was sopping wet around his cock.

He was murmuring: “…God, you…baby, fillette…oh my God, I hadn’t even touched you yet. You’re so gorgeous, I love you so much…” From there it devolved into French, low and purring, and he stroked up the center of her stomach with one hand, soothing pets slippery with sweat.

When she had enough wits to gather, she hooked her ankles together behind his back, and said, “Felix. Come on. Fuck me for real.”

His chuckle came out breathy and shocked. His gaze was feverish as it raked her head to toe. He shifted forward, and stretched out above her, hands braced on the mattress; it shifted his cock inside her in a way that, hypersensitive now, left her gasping.

He breathed against her lips. “‘Fuck me for real.’ And here I am trying to make love to you.”

She pinched his ribs, and he grinned. “Such a gentleman.”

“I sure do try to be, baby.” He circled his hips forward and she made an undignified guh sound in the back of her throat.

She gripped his hair in both hands, and he went easily when she angled his head into a kiss. This time, his tongue and his hips worked in tandem. “Shit,” she breathed, when he pulled back to nudge her nose with his.

“What was that? You wanted me to fuck you for real ?” He thrust hard, and oh God, she was going to go off like a bottle rocket again .

He pressed a laugh into her throat, and chased it with a kiss. “Hold on to me, fillette. I’ve got you.”

All told, he made her come three times. The second time, he came with her, bathing her insides with heat. After, while she was still catching her breath, he prowled down her body like a panther, shouldered her thighs wider apart, and cleaned her up with his mouth. The third time she came, she turned her head and bit the pillow to muffle the scream that built in her throat, wrung out and painfully sensitive.

Then they sprawled together under the ceiling fan, splayed out on sweat-gummy sheets with the covers kicked all the way off.

“Oh my God,” Ava murmured, still catching her breath. “I don’t think I can move.”

He grunted something that sounded agreeing, and she laughed. “What? No story, storyteller?”

“Sex good. Me tired.”

She lifted a shaking arm and patted his chest, pleased by the damp smacking sound of it. “How’s the nerve damage?”

“Better.”

“Horseshit.”

“Well, they’re not more damaged.” With a groan of effort, he rolled onto his side, hooked an arm around her waist, and kissed the side of her head. “Don’t worry so much, Mama.”

She snorted. “Every time you call me that, it reminds me that it’s my job to worry.”

But she wasn’t worried now, skin itching as the sweat dried, gravity pulling her into Mercy, always Mercy, again and again. Now, she was basking.

The sky beyond the sheer drapes began to lighten, a slow silvering that turned the room luminous, shining along their bare limbs. “Big day today,” she said, finally, and tipped her head back in the cradle of his arm to peer up at his face.

He looked contemplative. “Yeah.” His gaze dipped down to meet hers, and he smiled, soft and worn-out. “A good day, though, I think, no matter what happens.”

She smiled back. “Yeah. Me, too.”

~*~

When the alarm went off at six, Emmie sighed, and rolled reluctantly away from Walsh so she could lean over and slap the clock silent. When she sat up to swing her legs over, he caught her around the waist and dragged her back.

Emmie laughed, and sprawled sideways against his chest. Shot him a raised-brow look when they were face-to-face again. “Are you serious?” she asked, laughing all over again at the sight of his expression, which was so very him in a way it hadn’t been for…a while. Slack with relaxation, but his eyes the bright, glittering blue of Caribbean waters, sparking with the same excitement he’d worn when he woke her up with a string of kisses pressed like pearls down the slope of her throat in the predawn darkness.

“You know I believe in you,” she said, “but, in my experience, your record is twice within one hour.” She held up two fingers. “It’s not that I’m doubting you…hey!” She giggled when he nipped at her chin. “I’m just saying! Again?”

He pulled back, brows furrowing in a show of deep contemplation. He twisted his hips, so he lay between her legs, where she could feel him damp and soft from round two. “Give me…twenty minutes. Maybe thirty.”

“How optimistic of you.” She leaned up to kiss him, a quick peck that he deepened, and which she pulled back from with real regret. “But I have lessons to teach and you have church to attend.”

He sighed, but sat back, and let her up.

As she slipped out of bed, and donned her robe, she reflected on the change in her husband. It was a return, really. A return to the way he’d been after they were first married, once they’d settled . He was always going to be quiet and subdued – that was just his nature – but it had been startlingly easy to see, when she and Violet stepped off the plane and back onto Knoxville soil two weeks ago, how the stress in Walsh had built, and built, and built, until he was no longer quiet, but stewing. Brow constantly furrowed, gaze constantly flitting between half-lidded with fatigue and razor-sharp with apprehension. He’d been waiting for them on the tarmac, and he’d looked peaceful, and the sudden reversion to the husband who was content with his lot in life had hurried her along until she was almost running by the time she reached him.

They’d had more sex in the past two weeks than in the past two years. It made sitting firmly in the saddle during schooling sessions a little tender, sometimes, but it was a willing sacrifice on her part.

Today, though, she thought he was trying to use sex as a delaying tactic.

Emmie belted her robe, and turned back to the bed. Walsh was sitting up now, covers pooled around his waist, scrubbing both hands through his hair so it stuck straight up like he’d put his finger in an electrical socket.

She’d meant to ask him, once more, are you sure? But instead, watched him scratch at his stubbly face, watched him swing his legs over the side of the mattress and reach for the rings he’d left on the nightstand; watched him slide them on one by one, save his plain wedding band, which he never took off. She knew that he was sure. There was a lightness to his wiry shoulders, and a quickness to his movements, and his face, when she said, “Babe?” lifted and revealed naked affection. Bright relief.

Instead, she asked, “You excited about today?”

He snorted, but a true smile played across his lips as his gaze dropped, and he adjusted the small, skull-adorned ring he wore on his left pinky. “Little kids get ‘excited.’”

“And apparently husbands do, too, at five-thirty in the morning.”

He smirked, and a cute flush of pink spread across the bridge of his nose and both cheeks. “Okay, okay. That was exciting. This is…” He spread his fingers, inspected both hands, and then set them on his knees and met her gaze. “This is a change. For the better.”

“Yeah?”

“Definitely.”

~*~

“Daddy? Daddy!”

Aidan blinked, and realized he was caught in an unconscious staring contest with the blue Froot Loops toucan. Didn’t that fucker have a name? Dim, childhood memories floated back to him, Saturday mornings with cereal and cartoons, and Dad sleeping off a hangover on the sofa behind him. He was ninety-nine percent sure the toucan had a name.

Not that it mattered.

“Oh, yeah, here, baby, sorry.” He grabbed the box and passed it down to Lainie, who scampered back to the table with a fast “thank you!”

Behind the Froot Loops there was…

“Special K?” he asked, dismayed.

“It’s the chocolate kind,” Sam said from behind him, at the counter.

He wrinkled his nose, picked up the box, and turned it around to read the back, well aware that he could stop at Waffle House and choke down something greasy if he wanted to, but that eating here at home was a means of delaying the inevitable. “There’s a lot of talk about fiber here,” he said, and put the box back. “My dad needs fiber. I need something that won’t make me gag.”

“I’m having egg whites and avocado toast. Want some?” she offered, and he could hear the smile in her voice; knew she was trying to get him to pull a disgusted face.

But all he wanted was to go back to bed, pull the covers up over his head, and when he woke, the church meeting, and its inevitable decision, would be behind him. A coward’s thinking, and he wasn’t proud of it.

Sam drifted up to stand beside him at the open cabinet. “I think…” She reached past him, and shuffled boxes around. “Aha, here we go.” She pulled down a fresh, unopened box of Cookie Crisp from the top shelf, and offered it with a smile that said she knew exactly where his head was right now.

He lifted his brows. “I thought you drew the line at Froot Loops? That this was way too much sugar for breakfast.”

“For her.” She tipped her head Lainie’s direction. “I bought this for you.”

He took the cereal, and kissed her hard, until Lainie started making loud disgusted noises. “Thanks,” he said, and didn’t mean for breakfast.

“Always,” she said, and that wasn’t about breakfast, either.

~*~

“…but then there was this other truck, and it was blue , and it was going really fast –”

“Brush your teeth,” Remy said, slotted his own toothbrush into the holder, and turned to leave the bathroom.

“But, Remy,” Cal protested, “I didn’t get to tell you about the–”

“Brush your teeth,” he said, firmly, over his shoulder, and went down the hall to the kitchen.

It was a morning just like every other morning in his memory. It would have been identical, if not for two factors.

Mama was at the kitchen table with her laptop, same as always. Sweats and a soft-looking shirt, hair piled up loosely on top of her head. She wore blue light glasses sometimes, in the early mornings like this, when the screen was brighter than the kitchen lamps, and the dark still snugged tight in the corners of the windows. She wore them now, worrying absently at her lower lip with her teeth. But, usually, her mouth was trying to frown against that little tic, and she usually had one hand cupped beneath her chin, the other scrolling across the laptop’s touch pad. Today, her mouth was tugging upward against the bite of her front teeth, and both hands were on the keyboard, fairly flying over it, click-click-click-click .

The second factor was that though he was home, sleeping in his own bed, wearing his own clothes, clean every night, and well-fed once more, he didn’t feel the same.

Mama glanced up, saw him, and her smile widened, hands stilling on the keyboard. “Hi, baby. You okay this morning?”

“Yes, ma’am.” His belly squirmed, as though he’d lied, so he went to the fridge to get a yogurt.

“Sleep okay?” she asked.

“Yes.” That was a lie, because he’d slept poorly. He’d tossed, and thrashed, and surfaced from at least a half-dozen dreams in which he’d been trapped beneath black swamp water, hands tangling around his ankles, his wrists, his throat. Dreams in which Boyle’s sneering face cracked wide and toothy as a gator’s just before he bit Remy’s face off. Each time, he’d blinked against the semidarkness of his room to find that it was, in fact, his room, the one he shared with Cal, with the little football-shaped nightlight over on the dresser, Cal sleeping starfished out in the other bed, covers trailing down onto the floor where he’d kicked them loose. But he’d felt no great relief in his surroundings; hadn’t breathed easier when he rolled over and sought sleep again.

Behind him, Mama’s hands resumed typing, the click-click returning, and he thought of her hands – familiar, kind, sure – dragging a knife across Boyle’s belly, opening him up.

He wasn’t afraid that she’d do that to him. His trust in his parents’ love was complete and unwavering. But it was the idea that she’d had to do it in the first place…that she couldn’t simply be “Mama,” but that she’d had to be someone who cut a man open, too…

It made his bed, and his books, and his room, and Cal’s stories about his favorite car-themed TV show seem like the flimsiest of window dressings. Real life – his life – seemed like a play on a stage, now. And his mother’s hands gutting a man were a part of the real world. The ugly world that people on TV and at school tried to pretend didn’t exist.

He opened the fridge, and there sat his yogurt, in its little white cups, same as ever. All his favorites: peach, blueberry, strawberry. An image filled his mind, of the blonde woman who’d claimed to be his aunt, setting a yogurt cup and a spoon before him on the table where Boyle sat.

He let the fridge fall shut.

Behind him, the clicking had paused again. “Remy,” Mama said, in a gentle voice. “Come sit with me for a minute.”

When he turned, she was patting the chair directly beside hers, and he went and sat.

She didn’t speak at first. Pushed the laptop away – he saw she wasn’t writing an email, but something else, long paragraphs in a Word document; a story, then, or part of one – and reached to rake her nails through his hair, tidying it where it was still damp. It felt nice, and he leaned into it.

No, he wasn’t afraid of Mama’s hands, no matter what they’d done.

She said, “Have you had nightmares?”

He nodded.

“Me, too.”

He sat up straighter, surprised, and she nodded.

“Every night. I have nightmares that we didn’t find you in time. That – that Boyle did something terrible to you. That we…” She broke off, and her eyes looked shiny, her smile small and close-lipped. “Daddy and I were so scared . We were so worried about you. And, to be honest, I’m still worried, even though you’re home safe and sound. Even though Boyle’s gone. Being scared like that…that kind of worry…it takes a while to go away.” She tipped her head, and he thought she could see right inside his skull, could read his mind. “It can make it hard for things to go back to normal.”

He let out a deep breath he hadn’t been aware of holding, and nodded. “Yeah.” Because that was just it: everything was back to normal physically, but in his mind, he was still in the swamp, was still scared, still running, still desperate to get away.

She smiled at him again, and stroked his hair some more. “But we can get through it together. That helps.”

His mama had cut a man open, and his daddy had run through the swamp, bleeding from bullet wounds to get him back. Love and gratitude surged up inside him, a bright swell that put a lump in his throat, and blotted out the worry, for the moment.

When he flung his arms around her neck, she hugged him right back. Rubbed at his back. “We’ll be okay,” she promised, and he really, really wanted that to be true. If they were okay, then he thought that, one day, he could be, too.

~*~

Ghost arrived at Dartmoor just as dawn was pinking the sky to the east, the river a fat, glittering snake brushed with rose. He parked by the clubhouse, and walked over to sit in Maggie’s garden. The fish were still drowsy, and didn’t bother coming to beg for food. He sat on the bench at the water’s edge and stretched out his boots. Watched the fog slowly burn away; watched his empire come awake in a way he hadn’t for a long time.

It wasn’t unusual to be here at this time, but usually it was because he’d stayed all night, bent over his computer, on the phone, trying to solve another crisis. He never just…sat like this, anymore. Never appreciated the view.

There were feeders hanging in the twisted apple trees of the raised garden, and birds flocked to them. Goldfinches, chickadees, English sparrows. He knew them on sight, which surprised him; Maggie had named them over the years, but he hadn’t thought he’d internalized the information. There was a titmouse. A nuthatch, after the peanuts strung up in a mesh bag.

He'd left Maggie only half an hour ago, before the alarm went off. Her skin still dewy, glowing, pulse still beating fast and strong in the hollow of her throat. Her eyes had been half-lidded, drowsy with satisfaction, and when he’d kissed her one last time, he’d nearly climbed back into bed and asked her to undress him.

But he had business this morning, and she knew it. She’d stroked his face, and given him a serious look, and said, “I know how brave, and strong, and smart you are. So do they…but you’ve got to show them what you show me: that you care . That you love them.” When his throat felt thick, she smacked him on the ass, and wished him luck.

He swore he could feel her handprint there, now, and on his face. Could smell her perfume when he breathed.

No matter what happened, he had Mags. However this morning shook out, no matter how low it brought him, he had her to go home to, and she could lift him back up from there.

The only activity at the clubhouse had been Chanel and Stephanie’s quiet comings and goings: taking out the trash, going up to the mailbox to get the paper, rinsing out the rubber mats from behind the bar with the hose out front. The rumble of an approaching bike engine caught his attention. He stood, and shaded his eyes against the brightening sun to see Walsh turning in at the clubhouse gate, rings on his fingers sparkling brighter than his wrapped tailpipes.

Ghost walked down to meet him.

Walsh was on his feet, helmet off, tidying his hair with a few absent gestures. He was fresh-shaved, clear-eyed, and his face had a certain rosy glow to it that Ghost had seen on himself in the mirror earlier; it had nothing to do with the morning’s already-mounting heat. It had everything to do with a good woman, and maybe Emmie was to thank for the way Walsh met his gaze, and nearly smiled when he said, “Hey.”

“Hey. You’re here early.”

“Yeah. I wanted to give you something, before church.” He fished into his pocket, and handed something over. It was only then that Ghost noted the blank space on the front of his cut.

Ghost’s hand trembled, faintly, when he took back the PRESIDENT patch. It wasn’t a new one; it was his own, carefully unstitched and given to Walsh in his absence. He recognized the dirt ground into its threads; the faint burn mark along the edge where James had once fallen asleep while smoking. There were a few tiny, brown flecks, too. Blood. Duane’s blood, from where Maggie stabbed him to death.

Walsh said, “I don’t know how much my word’s going to be worth. Or my vote – but you have both, Prez.”

Ghost felt like he’d been punched, right in the sternum. He nodded.

Walsh scrubbed at his jaw, and tipped his head, and a smile still lurked at the corners of his mouth. “But there’s one other thing.”

~*~

In a perfect world, Mercy would have gathered all his brothers around him and extolled Ghost’s virtues, and they would have nodded, and agreed, and said, Yes, you’re right, Merc, he made a hard call, but the right call, and we need him as our president still . But the world was far from perfect, and so Mercy knew he had to let his brothers feel the way they felt.

He walked into the chapel – the same chapel, with the same table, same chairs, same framed photos and flags that he’d known since he’d come here, feeling then as though he’d lived an entire, miserable life, brought low by terrible grief…only to find that entering this room for the first time, and finding a girl hiding in a cabinet, had been, in fact, the beginning of his life. His real life. His best life. He walked in today, and breathed deep its smells of wax and oil, and he took his usual seat, and he surveyed the faces around him. Contemplative. Concerned. Confused.

He caught Tango’s gaze, beside him, and Tango, he noted with pride, with a surge of affection, looked hopeful. Leagues and leagues past the pallid, shaking boy who’d once spilled his guts over cigs and coffee in Mercy’s old apartment. A well-fed, well-loved Tango whose gaze seemed to say let’s hope for the best .

Mercy winked, and Tango grinned, and winked back.

Ghost walked in first…and every head turned toward him, and the way he stopped short, and leaned back against the wall. He didn’t speak, and just as Hound was sitting forward, stubbing out his smoke, clearly with something on his mind, their acting prez and VP entered together, as a unit.

Walsh took the head of the table, and Aidan sat at his left.

Walsh, Mercy noted with a start, wasn’t wearing his president patch.

He picked up the gavel, though, and tapped it once, though no one was talking. “I call this meeting to order.” Then he set the gavel down, and leaned back in his chair, and surveyed each and every one of them. His gaze was a strange blend of his usual impassive coldness, and something warm and unfamiliar. Something open. He looked…free.

Aidan, by contrast, was picking at his cuticles, and looking at no one.

Walsh took a deep breath and said, “It’s been two weeks. At this point, we all know what went down. I’m not going to rehash it for anyone. What I will say, though, is that I quite willingly went along with Ghost’s plan. That’s not,” he said, quickly, “slander against him. He did what he did in an attempt to protect the club and everyone in it. I agreed with his decision, and so, if anything, I’m the one who lied to you all.”

He surveyed them again. “Which is why,” he continued, “I’m stepping down.”

Chairs creaked as men sat forward.

“As president, yes,” Walsh said, “since our president isn’t actually dead. And, for the record, I think he should be our president still. But I’m stepping down as VP, too.”

Mercy’s gut did a roller coast swoop.

Aidan’s head snatched up. “What?”

“Wait,” Dublin said, “you–”

Walsh cut across him. “I take full responsibility for deceiving you all. Knowingly. With good intentions, but I’m not sure if that counts.” He took a deep breath. “But doing that – all that followed – revealed to me that I need to take a step back. Not all the way back. If you’ll have me, I’d still like to be a member.” When his gaze flipped up, and moved around the table, Mercy could read that it would kill him to have his patches stripped. “I want to work in my capacity as the Money Man. As…” He turned to Aidan. “The vice president’s right-hand man.”

Aidan’s head kicked back. He blinked, like a fish at the bottom of a boat.

“I don’t want to be an officer,” Walsh said. “I want to be your accountant, and I want the chance to earn everyone’s trust back.” He pushed his chair back, stood, and stepped back against the wall, hands folded together in front of him.

Mercy leaned forward and put his elbows on the table, adrenaline cycling through him. He searched the table for anyone who might defect. Who might argue, ready to slap them down. But everyone looked properly slapped already.

“What the fuck?” Aidan murmured.

Slowly, giving anyone and everyone a chance to protest, Ghost shoved off the wall and moved to the president’s chair. He didn’t sit in it. Braced his hands on the back of it. Looked at them all.

He said, “I lied to you.”

Mercy heard several long, slow exhales.

“I could stand up here and give you a buncha shit about how I hated it, and I wished I hadn’t done it, and that I beg for your forgiveness. But.” He angled his head so that he was looking up at them all from beneath his still-black, straight, harsh brows. “That’s not really my style. And, honestly? I’m not sorry.”

“Fuck,” someone murmured.

Hound drew in a wet-sounding breath and said, “Didn’t think you would be, asshole.”

Ghost nodded, and took it in stride. “Yeah, I’m an asshole. I’m a dictator. I’m not a nice man, and, most days, I’m not even a good one. But. This club…this club raised me. It taught me what I didn’t want to do, when Duane was president. And I know I’ve made a lot of missteps” – he looked straight at Mercy, then Tango, then Aidan – “as president. But every decision I ever made was an attempt to hold this club together. To keep it whole.”

He shook his head, and dropped it for a moment, looking down at his boots. He sighed when he lifted his head. “I’ll let you vote on it. You can choose my fate. But I want to be your president, and I want Aidan to be your vice president. I hope he’ll hold my feet to the fire, and keep me honest. Abacus is gone. I killed the main man myself. And, if you’ll let me, going forward, I want to be more honest with you all. More collaborative.”

He shrugged, and stepped back, and folded his arms. “I’ll leave it to all of you. I’m ready to be your president. Vote whether that’s okay or not.”

The silence rang.

Aidan gaped at his father.

Slowly, because his arms were heavy, and twitching, and half-numb after holding himself up over his wife earlier this morning, Mercy stood. “Can I say something?”

“Yeah,” Ghost said, clearly curious, and no one else spoke up.

The silence droned .

Droned like flies in the bayou. In a kitchen full of dead people. In a house that would never be a home again.

Mercy felt at peace.

He gripped the back of his chair, loosely, and he smiled. Smiling was so easy. It had always been, since the day Daddy was killed. It was smile or go crazy. And then he met Ava, and he started smiling for real again. At first because she was so sweet, and small, and she trusted him so completely, right away. This tiny thing who should have been terrified of him, Merci , Mercy, who tortured a man before he killed him. And instead, she turned his life around. Made it happy. Made it worth living.

When he’d first stood, he wondered what he would say.

But now, he laughed, and he knew, effective or not, that there was only one thing to say.

“I guess,” he started, “I’m biased. Scratch that: I know I am. But you all went down to New Orleans to help me get my son back, so I think you care, at least a little. I’m here to say that, in years past, I’ve hated Kenneth Teague so much that I wanted to strangle him. And, in the years since, I’ve loved him better than my own father. Because my daddy lied to me an awful lot, and Ghost lies, sometimes, yeah, to protect us, but he always tells the truth in the end. And this is his club. His family. I owe every good thing in my life to him. So he has my vote.” Mercy sat back down. “As president. And Aidan as VP, because it’s about damn time.”

Silence again. The hiss of cicadas, the groan of a gator…

But then, startlingly, Hound stood, and said, “You’re a real ambitious son of a bitch.” He heaved a minute. Then said, “But James never was, and Duane certainly never was. So. You have my vote.”

He sat back down, and the room erupted into cheers.

Aidan glanced up, wild-eyed, terrified.

Ghost gripped his shoulder. “And who votes Aidan as VP?”

Every hand went up.

~*~

It took Agent Mike Chambers another three months after the dust-up in New Orleans to die. He did it peacefully, at home.

Alex went to the funeral.

He stayed behind, after the final graveside eulogy had been spoken. Stood under the cooling sunset in a hilly, Virginia cemetery plot long after the mourners had moved on, and he’d been asked to leave. Stood five rows back, and watched the backhoe start its grisly work.

The sun was winking off the corner of a marble colosseum when he heard someone sigh behind him, letting himself be known.

His brother, Felix, said, “He was a good man.”

Alex watched the backhoe’s bucket dump the next load of red earth on the coffin, and then turned toward Mercy.

He looked good. His skin glowing, his jaw clean-shaven. Well-fed, his clothes clean. He had his long hair tied back in a braid that Alex knew Ava had plaited for him.

There was nothing to be done about the surge of affection and relief that swelled in his belly.

Mercy said, “You’re a good man, too.”

Alex blinked, throat suddenly tight. “I try to be.”

Mercy angled his body back, revealing the black Harley waiting on the cemetery drive. “You want to try somewhere else?”

Alex thought.

And thought.

And loosened his tie.

~*~

Ava had driven this road so many times.

And still, every time, her belly clenched with excitement.

There were people who would have dreaded drawing near to the Dartmoor headquarters. But for her, it was home. Was peace.

“Mama,” Cal said in the back seat. “When’s Daddy going to be home?”

“Soon,” she said, and caught Remy’s gaze in the passenger seat, his steady presence. “He’s gonna meet us here.”

Behind her, she heard the roar of bikes.

Two of them.

She backed her foot off the gas, grinning.

To the right, she saw the sprawling parking lot, the buildings, and the twining blue-green ribbon of the Tennessee River. Dartmoor.

In her rearview mirror, she saw a familiar bike roar up on her left, and she slowed further.

But it wasn’t just one bike.

One shot by on her left.

And one on her right.

She smiled, as they merged together to ride side-by-side in front of her.

“Daddy!” Millie crowed.

And then Remy said, “Is that Uncle Alex?”

“Yes,” she said, and her grin hurt her face. “Everybody’s come home.”

THE END