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“Like what?” I’ve never heard him talk about something I’ve done for him. He’s never seemed ungrateful, but he’s also not very outspoken when it comes to his thoughts.
“You give me a reason to be better.” Jake kisses my forehead and cranks the water pump again so he can rinse the shampoo from my hair and not have to tell me anything else.
Chapter Ten
Jacob
I can’t hide the scowl as Brittany shows me her brother’s name on the screen of her phone. “Answer it.” It’s not like we can kill each other through the phone.
She slides her thumb across the screen and puts him on speaker so we can both hear him. “Hey, Rowan.” Of course she gives him the soft voice, and I appreciate the insight into her emotions. She misses him, which I expected. They have issues, like most siblings do, but she’s used to having him around.
“Britt,” Rowan sighs on the phone, clearly agonized by the words he has to say. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have acted like that.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you genuinely apologize.”
I reach over and nudge her with my elbow, mouthing, ‘Don’t.’ I can empathize with the situation he’s gotten himself into. He thought he was protecting her, and he was just doing what he was taught. It doesn’t make him less of an asshole, but I can understand it better after a week in the car with Brittany where she had to fill most of the silence with stories from her childhood.
Her father was the old president of the Aces Motorcycle Club, the one her brother is in now. He believed that the best thing he could do for his daughter was to protect her from boys who might be just like him. He raised his son to protect his sister from boys the same way, and they both trapped her in the world they were trying to save her from.
“Probably not,” Rowan admits sheepishly. “I don’t know if I’ve ever done it, but when Mom finished screaming at me, she said I need to apologize. She was right. I fucked up. I didn’t mean to put you through all this. Will you come home now? I miss you.”
“You wanted me to leave.” She’s not going to give him an easy time with it, but I’m not going to stop her.
“I just want you to be happy. If you’re happier wherever the hell you are, then that’s good, but you still have to come back sometimes. You can’t make me spend Christmas with Mom all by myself. You can even bring… Jacob. If he’s still with you.”
The tone that Rowan uses to speak my name brings me a sickening amount of joy. “I’m still here.”
“Good. Good! I’m glad. Really. It seems like you make her happy, and that’s all I ever wanted for her. I talked to Army, my president, and he said you can prospect with the club, especially since you were strong enough to knock me out in two punches.” Rowan chuckles to himself. “He wants to meet you no matter what. He was impressed by that. But… I know you don’t really have a connection with your family, and the club is like that for a lot of people - a family. If you bring my sister home, maybe you could check us out, see if it’s something you want to do.”
Brittany’s puppy dog eyes immediately turn to me, ready to beg for me to agree. “Jake,” she whispers. “I do… miss home. I miss him. We can always adventure,” she adds quickly. “But I do want to be with my family.”
“We all look out for each other,” Rowan says. “It’s like a brotherhood. Do you have brothers?”
No. I used to, but we've all gone separate ways now. There is no family left. I moved to New Mexico alone and would have left it alone, if it wasn’t for Brittany. I don’t know what to do without her now, and I can’t deny myself the chance to have a family, to have brothers. My parents stole the chance to be functional from all the children they produced, but maybe I can get it back. For myself. Like my sisters did.
Rowan and Brittany deserve to have a strong relationship with each other, and, hell… I deserve someone that has my back, right? It would be putting down roots in the ground where I never intended to stay, but-
“You don’t have to join the club,” Rowan explains. “Prospecting isn’t like getting patched in. You can try it out, see if you like it, and decide not to commit if you don’t want to.”
Brittany’s eyes get even rounder as the begging intensifies. “Jake?”
“You want me to stay that badly, Bubbles? You want me to join a ‘biker gang’?” I can’t help but tease her with her own words, and it finally wipes that sad look off her face.
