Page 87 of Virago

Showdown made a sound like a growl, but sat back in the sofa. Gia thought he’d conceded the point, but as she started recording again, he grumbled, “We came for your birthday, not this.”

Today was Gia’s twenty-fifth birthday. She didn’t enjoy being the center of attention like that, and she especially hated opening presents before a live studio audience, so birthday bashes hadn’t been a thing for her since she was a kid. She didn’t mind a nice dinner with people she loved, though—and some cake. Of course, the Horde family was huge, so her ‘nice dinner with cake’ had a guest list of a couple dozen people.

One of those people was Zaxx. Gia was trying to keep a lid on her feelings about him, but that was going about as well as could be expected. She was falling for him.

This past week had been pretty great. He’d been over for at least a couple hours almost every day. Physically, they were keeping everything very PG; he didn’t want to hurt her leg, and she was sleeping in the living room anyway, so privacy was at a premium. Mostly, they’d talked a lot, and he’d hung out, having dinner with her family a few times, watching TV afterward. Her parents seemed down. Even Dad. It was all kind of amazing.

Zaxx hadn’t shown yet tonight, but they’d had a lively chat going all week, so she knew he’d be here soon.

Gia hadn’t intended to do interviews at her birthday not-party. Obviously. But Shannon had come over early to help cook, and Show had come with her. Gia had merely mentioned she wanted to set up a time to sit down for an interview. Shannon was the one to suggest they do it now.

Shannon turned and gave her husband a stern look. “Show. Stop. I am capable of making this decision for myself. If this is upsetting you so much, go out and help Isaac set up the grill.

That made Show chuckle. “Set up the grill? It’s brick, hon. It’s set up.”

Shannon swatted lightly at him. “Don’t play dense. If this is too much for you, you don’t have to sit here. I’m okay.”

“I’m not leavin’ you.”

“Then hush.” Shannon turned back to Gia and smiled. “Where were we?”

Gia gave her godfather a wary glance before she said, “You were describing how you felt that night, sitting by his bed.” She backed up the recording a few seconds and pressed ‘play.’

Shannon’s voice, shaking with incipient tears, rose from the speaker: That was the night we decided to have kids. The last few words were warped and muffled as tears overcame her.

Again, Showdown grunted. Shannon ignored him this time.

“Yes, right. Well, Show was unconscious at the time, so I guess that was the night I decided to have kids. But I already knew he wanted kids with me. We’d talked about it, and I’d told him I didn’t.” She smiled at the grumpy bear beside her and squeezed his hand. “I thought he’d be mad, but he told me all he needed was me. And for a long time, that was that. But that night, sitting beside him, and he was so hurt, so very ... broken.” Her voice broke and made it onomatopoeia. Before Show could lodge another protest, Shannon gathered herself again. “I think the first thought I had that started to change my mind was that I didn’t want to be without him. That night I almost lost him, it wasn’t even the first time I’d almost lost him, but that night, I really saw how close that was, every day. In those years, every day might have been the last day. And I didn’t want to be without at least a part of him. I think I first thought of sharing a child with him like that—a piece of him I could keep, even if I lost him.”

Shannon’s head dropped slightly. As her own throat tightened, Gia watched Show. His eyes were on Shannon, steady and intense. He looked like a man who wanted to be almost anywhere else, but would sooner chew off his own leg than walk away from his woman.

The question Gia needed to ask next might actually incite violence from him, but she asked anyway. “Did you have qualms about bringing children into that world?”

Show responded by punching the arm of the sofa. “Goddammit, Gia!”

“Stop!” Shannon ordered him. “Enough of that.”

“I’m sorry,” Gia said, in sympathy but not repentance. It was an important question that needed an answer. “I have to ask.”

It was important because Len and Tasha had talked specifically about it being one of the factors in their decision not to have kids, but they were outliers in that choice. The Horde family was absolutely teeming with kids who’d been conceived and born while violence was a nearly daily fact of club life. Gia herself had been conceived—intentionally—in the middle of the chaos that had spawned a whole fucking movie. Bo had been conceived—accidentally—while Dad was paralyzed from a shotgun blast and Mom had risked death to carry him to term. This urge to procreate despite the danger was a hinge on which her dissertation hung.

She was analyzing the lives of outlaws, not the crimes. Her developing thesis was that outlaws were so acclimated to life-or-death risks in their business they didn’t see, or didn’t acknowledge, risk in their lives outside that business.

Also, and crucially: there was hope in the choice to seek love and to build a family despite a life of blood and chaos. Only a deep, powerful, impervious kind of hope could sustain through that life. What was missing from most discourse about outlaws, academic or otherwise: the simple fact that outlaws were emphatically human, complicated and multifaceted. They had the same needs and desires of every other human on the planet: for love and community, for safe haven and security, for legacy. To matter.

Shannon smiled. “I understand. And yes, I think I did worry about that—I mean, how could I not? On that night, the clubhouse was full of men on the brink of death, and one who had been killed. Actually, more than Havoc died on that night. So sure, I thought about the risk. I just didn’t care. I wanted to keep Show with me if he died, and if he lived, I wanted to give him everything he wanted. So I didn’t care about the risk.”

Gia paused the recording so she could note the time—that was a quote right there.

A new question occurred to her, spawned by Shannon’s words, but she hesitated, unsure how to ask it so it didn’t sound nastily judgmental. She didn’t feel judgmental, but the directness of the question in her mind could easily be interpreted like that.

Impact mattered more than intent. This was why Gia preferred to stick to her carefully curated questions, with potential follow-ups: so she could ask them in the gentlest way possible.

But Shannon seemed to be on the same page; she answered the question Gia hadn’t figured out how to ask. “It wasn’t just about Show, though. I actually did want a baby. I was just scared, and thought I was too old, and ... well, you know, I didn’t get to be Adrienne’s mom until she was fully grown, and I felt so much shame for how I’d lost her ...” She did another of those sniffle-shakes and brightened again. “So I had to work through all that before I could embrace having a baby. But that night, that was the first time I wanted to work through it.”

Through the closed windows and the low hum of the air conditioner, a faint clamor of voices rose up, their tone and cadence that of greeting. People were arriving.

All three of them had turned to the window at the sound. Show turned back to Gia. “Can we stop this now?”

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