Page 35 of Crash’s Secret

Trapper takes the cut in both hands. He stares at it a second too long, his bottom lip quivering, and all the bikers pretend not to see it.

He puts it on.

The yard erupts. The men close around him in a wall of leather and noise, slapping the new patches, shaking him by the shoulders.

Joker’s voice comes up over all of it, telling a funny story about Trapper everyone has heard fifty times.

Leo wakes up on Duke’s shoulder, takes one look at the commotion, and holds his small hand out flat, and Trapper breaks out of the crowd to high-five the kid. The yard laughs all over again.

Crash appears at my side and puts his arm around me, his hand curling at my shoulder.

Later, I sit on the porch steps with a plate I’m not eating from, and Saber lowers himself down next to me with a groan he’d deny making.

“Old man,” I say.

“Watch it. I can still throw you in the horse trough.”

“You can’t. I’m somebody’s Old Lady now. There are rules.”

“There are no rules that protect you from your brother.” But he bumps my shoulder with his, and we sit there watching his yard full of people.

Crash is at the fire pit telling a story with both hands, and a dozen brothers are laughing at whatever it is, and Trapper is standing in the middle of them in his new cut, grinning so wide it has to hurt.

“Dad used to do this,” Saber says. “The barbecues. You remember?”

“Yeah.”

“He’d stand right where I was standing tonight.” He turns his beer in his hand. “I used to think I was keeping everything going for him. The club, the family, all of it.” He nods toward the yard. “It’s not for him. It’s for this. Took me a war to figure that out.”

I lean my head on my brother’s shoulder. He lets me.

“You happy, Cass?”

“Yeah.” It’s an easy answer. The easiest one I’ve ever given. “You?”

“Very.” He finishes his beer and stands, and squeezes the back of my neck once. “Your man’s looking for you.”

Crash is crossing the yard toward the porch, firelight behind him, and he holds his hand out when he reaches the bottom step.

“Come here,” he says. “There’s a thing I want to show you.”

“What thing?”

“A thing. Come on.”

He pulls me up and leads me away from the fire, around the side of the house, where the noise drops off and the dark takes over and the stars come all the way down to the horizon, the way they only do out here.

He stops, turns me by the shoulders, and points.

“There,” he says. “See the ridge line? Left of the windmill.”

“I see desert, Crash.”

“Forty acres, backs right up against Saber’s east fence. Old house on it, needs work. It went up for sale this morning.” He’s behind me, his arms coming around me, his chin on top of my head. “I called the guy already. We can see it on Monday.”

I turn around in his arms. “You want to live next to my brother?”

“I want to live next to family.” He pushes my hair back from my face. “But far enough away where we have our own space, so I can have you all to myself when I want you.”

“I like the sound of that,” I say. “Monday?”

“Monday.” He kisses me, slow, no audience, no hurry.

I came home after four years, thinking I was over Crash. I was wrong, and being wrong was the best thing I ever did.