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“Duck and weave, brother, duck and weave!”
When I reached the end of the hall, I found not only Dad sitting at the table—a pile of papers in front of him—but also Mom with her hands wrapped around a coffee. I eyed each of them for a moment as I pulled out a chair and took a seat. “What’s going on?”
“I wanted to talk to you about Stella,” Mom said before sipping from her cup. “How serious are you two?”
My father remained straight-faced, flicking through the bills for some of the club’s businesses as I glanced between the two of them. “If you’re about to give me the birds and the bees talk?—”
“I’m not,” Mom insisted, shaking her head vigorously before suddenly pausing. “Though, you are using protection, aren’t you?”
I scrunched up my nose. “Mom…”
“Aren’t you?” she repeated, this time a little more pointedly.
“Stella and I aren’t fuc?—”
“Don’t fucking curse at the table,” Dad ordered, scratching at his short, silver-streaked beard and finally looking up. “What your mom is trying to get at is that your girl asked her what it would take to be an Old Lady.”
I blinked a couple of times as those words processed in my head. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Stella had been unwittingly immersed in the club since the night we met, and during the past six months, she’d asked plenty of questions about our lifestyle.
It was new to her. There were different rules and expectations.
And different titles.
An Old Lady was something I knew I wanted for my future but also was something most patched members didn’t announce until they were older. Some quicker than others after meeting a woman, but almost never while one of them was still in high school or fresh out of their prospect’s cut unless they had both grown up in the club.
“Okay, but why would she be asking you?”
“Because she’s thinking about not attending college and staying here instead,” Mom explained. “And my guess would be that she wasn’t going to involve you in that decision.”
“Because she knew I’d say no.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I told her we had time to talk about it. Summer’s only just started, so there’s at least two months before the new school year starts.”
Was I sure what I was going to do at the end of those couple of months? No. Not at all. But I figured we would work it out together. There were options.
Mom let out a heavy sigh. “She didn’t tell you she got early acceptance to some summer program.” What the fuck? “It’s starts next week.”
Gritting my teeth, I shook my head, stunned and a little fucking annoyed by this new information. She could have told me. There were plenty of opportunities, but she knew what my answer would be.
“You love this girl?” Dad questioned, drawing my attention to him as he leaned back into his seat. It was always hard not to squirm under my father’s scrutinizing gaze.
“I think so.”
“You think so?” he challenged, raising his brow.
“I do,” I said with more confidence this time. “I love her.”
“And I believe you,” Mom said. “But you have to be careful with love in lightning.”
My brow pinched. “What do you mean?”
“I mean the kind of love that’s built within a storm. Stella is fighting with her parents and herself. She’s desperate to figure out who she is and what she wants. Everything is coming at her, hard and fast, trying to knock her off her feet. And during that, you came in and became her shelter.” I hated that everything Mom said made sense. Our relationship had been short, and during that time, it had also been a whirlwind of chaos from her being drugged the night we met to the constant panic she was always in about her grades. “You make her feel good. You’ve gone out of your way to help her succeed. You tell her what she wants to hear. But when the storm starts to move on, she will still be holding onto you like you are her protector, always looking to you to keep her from being struck down when the next storm hits instead of learning how to weather it herself.”
I didn’t want that.
I didn’t want to keep her from growing stronger and more independent.
I was starting to see glimpses of those things in her, but I didn’t want them to be there because she knew I was standing behind her, supporting her. I wanted to see them in her because she’d grown strong enough to stand tall on her own.
“So I’ll tell her to go to Chicago,” I stated, rolling my shoulders back as tension and discomfort instantly settled into my body—the universe preparing me for what I was about to do.
