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Looking down into his glass, Mav nodded. “I’m worried she’s pulling away. She needs family around her. The kids, too.”
Eight did not like telling other people what they needed. He shook his head. “She’s a smart chick. She knows she needs family. It’s gonna take time.”
Maverick shook his head. “Joanna went away after Dane. Maddie disappeared after Ox. I don’t want that happening with Sage and the kids. We need to take care of Beck’s family.”
“We will. They’re not gonna disappear. Sage has run this place for years. As far as I’m concerned, she’s still the queen. It’s not like I’m ever gonna bring a woman in to take her place. And she’s too fucking bossy to give it up.”
Sage Becker was a tiny bull in a china shop. He didn’t think there was an opinion she’d ever kept to herself. She ran the clubhouse like a drill sergeant. Maybe she thought she didn’t want to be the queen now, but eventually she wouldn’t be able to stand not being in charge.
Eight’s observation made Mav laugh. “Yeah, true.” He shoved his empty glass at his kid. “Fill it.” Then he turned back to Eight. “You want me to call Showdown, tell him we’re in for the SoCal charter run?”
“Nah, I got it. I’ll call in the morning.” He finished his beer and decided he wasn’t in the mood to grab any tail. “I’m gonna head out.”
“You’re getting boring in your old age, Prez,” Mav joked.
Apollo called out to send Duncan down to the basement for a case of whiskey, and Eight watched the kid walk away from the bar. He wondered what it was like to be a father—or, hell, to have one. What parts made up a relationship between a father and a son?
He couldn’t imagine he’d be good at it. When Marcella had told him she was pregnant, he’d immediately said no. She couldn’t, no way, that condition had to be eradicated, because no fucking way could he be a father. His childhood had been a horror show, and he was probably fucked up in more ways than he even knew, so no. His genes were bad, his life was bad, he was bad, and the world did not need another version of him.
Then she’d said she wasn’t having an abortion, she wanted to keep the kid, and Eight’s prevailing reaction had been pure, ball-shrinking terror. So he’d done the only thing he could have done: bailed.
He’d have paid support if she’d asked for it, but she never had. That, however, was the limit of the participation in that kid’s life he’d ever intended. Everybody would be better off if Eight stayed away.
Except lately, that decision felt raw and wrong. When he tried to work it through in his head, all the reasons he’d steered a wide route around Marcella and the kid still made perfect sense. He was bad news; the kid was better off without him.
But now he couldn’t stop wondering if he’d fucked it up.
Marcella didn’t wonder at all. She was one-hundred percent certain he had fucked it up. And she wasn’t in the mood to consider letting him try to unfuck it.
With a blink and a jiggle of his head, Eight hit the brakes on those thoughts and focused on the son walking away from the father beside him. “He’d make a good Bull, Mav. Never knew anybody who wanted it more.”
Mav froze in the act of taking a drink, then set his glass down. “Don’t, Eight. Not your fight.”
“It is, actually. I’m wearing this flash”—he slapped his chest—“and I think you’re getting in the way of a good patch. And while we’re talkin’ about family, make sure you don’t lob a bomb in the middle of yours because you’re not getting your way.”
Mav stared at him, and Eight stared back. Then Mav made a sound that might have been intended as a chuckle, without any humor. “Don’t try to be insightful, Eight. Just fuck off.”
Eight didn’t take offense. After so many years of stirring up shit, he had skin like saddle leather, and it took a whole lot more than a ‘fuck off’ to get under it. He grinned, he nodded, he slapped his hand on Mav’s shoulder, and he headed toward the side door.
Speaking of lobbing bombs, he needed to back off Marcella, stop stalking her, let things go back the way they’d always been. Her boy was better off without a bullshit excuse for a father like him.
CHAPTER FOUR
Marcella sat beside Dash and squinted at the screen. The monitor was huge, and she could see everything clearly, but since she was a kid in school, she’d always squinted when she concentrated. From the time she was that kid in school, her mother had declared such squinting would cause her to wrinkle prematurely, but here she was, almost forty, and still hardly a wrinkle or a grey hair.
Another one of her mother’s sayings was ‘black don’t crack,’ and she herself was a testament to that old adage, looking twenty years younger than her age of sixty-six.
There was a logic break between the two convictions, but Mama wasn’t one to let a little logic get in the way of good advice.
“I don’t know,” Marcella said now. “How about if we bring the drums down a bit in the second section.”
Darrin, the sound engineer, pushed around at the mixing board controls. Marcella knew a whole lot about music and the business, but one thing she’d never been able to master was sound mixing. For whatever reason, all those toggles and levers remained a mystery to her, no matter how many times the board had been explained to her. She just couldn’t hold the information in her head for long.
It had been the same with algebra in school. While it was being explained, she’d think she had it, she could even play around and get it right while she was being taught, but the second the lesson was over,poof! Out the back door it went.
Which left her saying vague things like ‘bring the drums down a bit,’ and hoping the expert in the room could figure her out.
The band had worked with Darrin for a few years now. He’d produced their first indie EP, and from there he’d started working with them regularly for their YouTube channel content, and their first full album. Now, he was producing their second full album.
