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“Yeah,” he said, sighing hard. “Harder than I think either of us realized yet. At this point, we’ve never really spent much time apart. But I can’t ask him to stop before he’s done. And he wouldn’t ask me to keep on when I’m done. We care about each other too much for that.”
“What do you think will have him settling down?”
“Fuck if I know,” Riff said, shaking his head. “We’ve always been so different. I think, I dunno, maybe a woman would slow him down or stop him.”
“Or be crazy on the road with him,” I said, shrugging.
“I honestly can’t imagine him settled down, so I have no clue.”
“Does he want to settle down?”
“Eventually, yeah. He really likes kids. So he wants some of his own one day.”
“Do you?” I asked, wincing, hoping that it wasn’t too soon to ask something like that.
“Yeah. There was a time where I was worried I wouldn’t be a good parent…”
“Because of your father?” I asked.
“Yeah. I don’t want to learn I got that kind of meanness in me.”
“You don’t,” I said, knowing that down to my bones. No man who had been so sweet and patient with me would be cruel to children. “Besides, if it was true that we are doomed to repeat our parents’ mistakes, then I would be a selfish teen mom who decided to drop her kids off at her mother’s doorstep, so she could follow a band across the country.”
“You never told me that before,” he said, his fingers moving up and down my spine.
“I don’t like to talk about my mom. She’s not really my mom. My grandmother was my mom.”
“Did you ever see her again?”
“She dropped into town on occasion, broke and needing to crash for a while. Something was always missing after she left. Money, family heirlooms, my laptop once.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, pressing a kiss to my head. “She never grew up?”
“Not the last time I saw her.”
“When was that?”
“At my grandmother’s funeral,” I said, sucking in a deep breath, and then releasing it slowly, finding there was a lot of anger inside me still about that. “She showed up late and drunk, making a scene. And then at the house after, while we were all just trying to share fond memories of my grandma, she was ranting and raving about how she never tried to help her get on her feet. It was embarrassing and frustrating.”
“I’m sorry, darlin’. You shouldn’t have needed to deal with that while you were grieving.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I know this probably makes me sound awful, but I told her that night that I never wanted to see her again.”
“I get that. You had to protect your peace. She doesn’t deserve to be in your life if all she did was bring you frustration and anger.”
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“We went no-contact with our old man too. So, I’m never gonna judge you for that.”
“Does anyone here have a family?” I asked. “No one really talks about them.”
“Detroit has a father and brother. Coach has some family. And Colter had some but they didn’t stay in touch when he went to prison. And Rook, obviously, has his mom. As a whole, though, I think the kind of people drawn to an outlaw biker club are ones who don’t have anyone else.”
“People looking for found family.”
“Exactly,” I agreed.
“Are all of the clubs like this one?”
