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“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
