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He held me a little tighter, stealing the air from my lungs as the world around us seemed to fade away. For at least a few seconds before…
“Mom! Come see,” Kadey called from downstairs with an excited giggle, and both Hawk and I pulled apart, inhaling deeply. “Mom!”
“I’m coming,” I called, Hawk reluctantly letting me ease from his arms. “What am I going to find when I open the front door?”
His deep chuckle warmed me, though I still didn’t get an answer as he pressed a hand to my back, guiding me out of Kadey’s room and down the stairs. The front door was wide open, and I could see Kadey standing on the porch, bouncing on her tiptoes, her dress swishing and floating in the breeze.
The roar from outside was almost deafening now, but I still wasn’t prepared for the sight in front of me as I stepped outside.
“Hawk…” I murmured, my eyes growing wide. “This is… I don’t…” I struggled to speak through the tears that were clogging my throat. There were at least thirty or more motorcycles in our street, the men riding them all wearing Exiled Eight MC cuts, some with a woman on the back wearing their property patches like the ones Hawk had given me almost a year ago now.
It was a small gesture that might not mean much to the outside world, but that meant everything to anyone inside the club. It wasn’t simply about telling people that I belonged to Hawk, it was about letting people know that this was my family, and I was proud as fucking hell to be a part of something so chaotic but so damn beautiful at the same time.
“Well?” Hawk questioned, lifting Kadey onto his hip, wrapping his arm around my shoulders, and pulling me into his body as we looked out over the street filled with bikers. “What do you think?”
“I love you, Swayze.”
“I love you too, baby,” he said, pressing a gentle kiss to the top of my head and looking at Kadey with a grin. “Now let’s go to fucking school.”
SHAY
Four Years Later…
“You sure your dad will be okay with me crashing your Thanksgiving?” I asked Calli as I climbed out of her tiny hatchback and looked up at the large Victorian home in front of me.
Its stature was a little menacing.
Though also kind of beautiful.
Calli laughed as she climbed from the driver’s seat and stretched her arms high into the air, letting out a satisfied groan. “You asked me that question twice before we left Pittsburgh and three times on the drive here. Stop,” she ordered, rolling her eyes dramatically. “I told him you were coming. He said it was fine. End of story.”
“Okay, okay!” I laughed as I gathered my backpack from the backseat, hefted it onto my shoulder, and looked at my friend with a raised brow. “Well? Lead the way.”
Calli’s grin grew bigger, and she practically skipped toward the house and up the staircase. I don’t remember ever not seeing a pep in that girl’s step whenever she talked about home. We’d been friends for almost two years now, though this was the first time I was meeting any of the large biker family she gushed about.
We met at a party during our sophomore year.
She saw the guy I was dating drop something into a drink, so she followed him. When he handed it to me, she stepped in and let me know just what kind of bastard I was seeing, and after I laid him out, we went back to her apartment and got drunk together.
She had a spare room and was looking for someone to fill it to help with expenses, and the guy who had tried to drug me was my roommate’s brother.
So I got the hell out of there and moved in with Calli a couple of days later.
We’d had each other’s backs ever since.
Her keys jingled loudly as she searched through her keyring for the right one. “My dad’s motorcycle isn’t here, so he’s probably still at church.”
My brow pinched. “Your dad goes to church?”
She finally slipped a key into the hole and turned it. “It’s hard to explain,” she said, pushing open the large door, stepping to the side, and holding it for me. “It’s called church, but it’s biker church.”
“Biker church,” I repeated with a smile as I stepped past her, the two words sounding a little ridiculous paired together.
I twirled a couple of times, taking in the stunning old home. The inside had obviously been renovated and updated, although whoever had done it had kept the character with crown moldings and an intricately designed banister on the staircase.
I had an appreciation for things that were repurposed and reinvented.
Maybe because that’s exactly what I’d done to myself years ago.
