When he's finally in my arms, I hold him tight against me, barely giving him room to breathe. Even when he pushes against me, I don't let him go. I just tell him what he needs to hear, never stopping until he takes a deep breath and drifts off to sleep.
"Clean, clean, clean," I chant as he dozes off as if saying the word will erase the sin he feels in his heart. Once his breathing has stabilized, I haul him into the bed and go about cleaning up the room. I get as much antiseptic on his scratches as I can, but he stirs too much, so I save that for the morning. When everything is as tidy as it's going to get, I crawl into the bed and wrap my body around my poor, broken little boy and cry as silently as I can so not to wake him.
"Tomorrow we leave for California. Things will be better there," I whisper through the sobs that rack my body. "It'll be better. It will. I promise."
CHAPTER 3
Jim
Fort Bragg, California
March 1997
My eyes scan the main room of the clubhouse, surveying the sea of leather crowded inside. There's a tightness in my chest with this many guys in here, and it doesn't help that more than half of them aren't even Forsaken. Fucking Arizona shows up with the whole goddamn charter in tow. These bastards need to learn that their dick size doesn't mean shit this far north. I have to tolerate them, though. Rage gets his prick hairs all knotted up if we start shit with other clubs for "no reason." Like having a bunch of orange, leathery-looking bitches up in my space isn't reason enough for shit to hit the fan.
"Don't like seeing this many strange fucks in my clubhouse." Sterling Grady, our newest patched member, walks up to me. His eyes slide from one side of the room to another, and the corner of his top lip is curled up in disgust. The kid is barely twenty years old with more brawn than brains and an attitude to match.
"Your clubhouse, Sterling?"
He doesn't take the bait--something he's never done before--and it leaves me on edge until I follow his gaze across the room. Chief, Grady's surrogate dad, who's really better aged to be an older brother figure, is staring him down and shaking his head. Only person who can give this prick any kind of perspective is Chief, and thank fuck for it, too. Otherwise I'd have choked him by now.
By Chief's side is his wife, Lona, who has an arm wrapped protectively around their daughter, Elle. Chief gives Lona a quick nod, mutters a few words, and sees them to the door. Right on their heels is my fucking kid. Ryan's just turned nine, and he's already hard up for Elle, who's just two years older than he is. I ignore the kid as he follows them out the door and decide to actually take care of shit so these assholes can get out of my clubhouse.
I'm in the middle of finalizing a deal with one of our visitors when Ryan runs back into the room shouting, "Dad! Dad! Dad!" at the top of his lungs. My entire body stiffens at the noise. As it is, Rage doesn't like having him around all the time. Don't know what he thinks I'm going to do with his grandson if I don't have him at the clubhouse, but whatever. It's called parenting, and it's not like I have Ryan's whore of a mother hanging around to make sure the kid eats and doesn't chop off a limb or something. Sensing Rage's agitation even from across the room, I stop what I'm doing and head toward my son. The moment he realizes I'm heading his way, he rushes back out the door. Fuck. The kid gets himself in more trouble than any other kid I know. At least when his friend Josh is around, my boy is less likely to do something to get his ass sent to juvie.
Once I'm outside, I find Ryan standing on the bench of one of the wooden picnic tables that sit between the clubhouse and the fence separating our private parking lot from the Forsaken Custom Cycle lot out in front. A woman stands in front of him, bouncing nervously from foot to foot, and she's got a kid hiding behind her. Ryan doesn't seem to notice or care about the kid. He's all smiles and attitude with the woman. I can see what he sees in her. She's short, but probably not so much for a woman, and she's got long reddish-brown hair that hangs over her shoulders in waves. Even from here, I can see the way her old, worn jeans cling to every curve. She's young but not young enough to cause me problems, so that's a good thing. Despite her small figure and slight curves, she's got a healthy set of tits that look like they're threatening to escape her faded and torn black tank top. The top hangs loose everywhere but her chest, and fuck me if it ain't a sight for sore eyes.