Fuck, he was knocking up his wife as soon as he could.
“Now she’s all pink,” Essence declared happily.
He had no fucking clue what that meant.
But he didn’t care.
He had nothing to do but sit with the woman he loved, the niece and nephew he adored, and a crazy old lady who had a piece of his heart . . . and chill.
So life was good.
That night . . .
Rush was bent toward his laptop, looking at mountain home listings close to his dad and Tyra’s pad, when Rebel wandered in.
He didn’t like the look on her face or the way she plopped onto the kidney couch next to him.
“So?” he asked.
“It didn’t take.”
Fuck.
“Tyra’s with her. So is Lanie. Keeley’s headed over. I think I should go,” she continued.
Of course she did.
“Want me to take you?” he offered.
She shook her head, leaned in, put her hand to his chest and touched her lips to his. “I got it.”
“Millie should go. She gets this,” Rush advised.
“Yeah, that’s what Tyra said. She’s giving her a call.”
“Talk to her about adopting,” he murmured.
She nodded. “Maybe not tonight. But I’ll broach it when this latest loss isn’t as fresh.”
He nodded back. “Give Sheila my love.”
“I will, honey,” she whispered, touched her lips to his again, started to pull away, but stopped when she saw what was on his laptop.
“I thought we weren’t moving up until next year,” she noted.
His wife didn’t want to leave Essence.
Speck was renting his pad, a home Rush owned, and they were paying rent to Essence.
It was stupid.
And he didn’t care.
She wanted to be there, and he’d grown immune to her kitchen, so they were there.
Anyway, she was cute as fuck when she was meditating out front next to the meditating garden gnome, and banging his wife in that cave she called a bed was awesome.
“Doesn’t hurt looking,” he said.
She grinned at him. “Don’t wanna miss the perfect place, not keeping on top of that.”
He grinned back.
He wanted a place in the mountains, so if he found it, they’d be there.
“Go so you can come back,” he prompted.
“Right,” she muttered, another lip touch then, “Love you, Cole.”
“Love you too, baby.”
He watched her walk away.
He gave it fifteen minutes, clicking through listings.
Then he called Dog.
Five minutes after that, he’d texted his wife and he was on his bike to go throw some back with his brother whose woman had just lost the last shot they were going to take at making a baby.
In the end, Dog and Sheila didn’t adopt.
They became foster carers.
But the first baby they got who didn’t get returned home . . .
They made her their own.
Rebel
Two months later . . .
The credits rolled on the 70-inch TV they’d brought in, and after the memorial dedication to Graham Black and then the brothers’ names slid by overlaid on a Chaos insignia, I lifted my hand with the remote to switch off the TV.
I’d been standing at the back, ignoring Rush’s eyes sliding to me frequently (mostly because he wanted me to take a seat, but I was way too nervous to sit down), throughout the whole ninety-seven minutes.
It was just the brothers in their meeting room, no old ladies. If the guys okayed it, the women would see it next.
That said, Tyra and Tabby had already seen it. And loved it.
They’d also given their go ahead that I could show it to the men.
So now I was there, watching a movie I’d watched approximately five thousand times while editing it.
A movie I called Blood, Guts and Brotherhood: The Story of the Chaos MC.
The title was long.
I should shorten it.
And a colon in a documentary?
Wasn’t that cliché?
And the montage on Black. Maybe it went on too long.
I mean, the man was photogenic and any picture he was in alone or with his brothers—hot, but the ones with Keely and his sons—total melt. Those pictures told a thousand words of the man called Black.
But using “Spirit in the Sky” to lay over that was totally cliché.
I should have used “Wish You Were Here.”
But it’d probably take a fortune to get the rights to “Wish You Were Here,” and even though Chaos had made it so that me and my cast and crew got all the monies earned from the films we’d made at Luxe, so I had some cake, that would for sure be shooting a huge wad of it.
And I had more films to make.
Not to mention that song was about Sid Barrett, and it wasn’t about him dying. It was sadder, and the words didn’t put him in a good place because, well, the rumors were, it was about him being mentally ill.
“Spirit in the Sky” had a much better vibe.
And Keely would see that (and Dutch and Jag just had).
Keely had given me all the pictures, with Dutch, Jag and Hound going through them with her, and I’d filmed them doing it. Her sons’ eyes gentle and alert on her, Hound close.
But Keely had such a beautiful, peaceful smile the whole time she did it.
And the way she handled those pictures with love and reverence. I was beside myself how that translated to film.
But there was so much of that coming from Keely (and Hound), it was impossible for it not to.
That scene was one of my favorites.
Outside, of course, the one of High watching Millie watching TV with her cat, Chief, tucked close to her belly, purring. Unable to have babies, she had furry babies and gave all her mammoth love to them. And what was so cool about that was, big, bad High gave those fluffballs the same, probably mostly because it made his woman happy.
I’d caught that footage when Rush and I were over for a movie. I didn’t even know (until right then, of course) if High knew I got it.
And then there was the one of the backs of Joker and Carissa walking out of garage, one of Joke’s kickass builds mostly done off to the side, Travis up on Joker’s shoulders, Clementine Elvira on Carissa’s hip.
Carissa was talking, looking straight ahead.
Joker had his head turned to watch her as she did.
And the look on his face as his wife chatted to him.
Oh man.
Also, there was the one of Snapper falling to his knees to kiss the growing baby bump protruding from Rosalie.
God, that moment had been priceless. Totally unplanned. And super sweet. I was psyched I was there with my camera when he did that. It was cute and sweet and so, so biker and so un-biker, which was so Snapper, it was perfection.
And the footage of Tack sitting out at a picnic table, throwing back some brews with Hawk, Mitch and Slim, that bond outside the brotherhood etched in all four men’s faces, even when they were all laughing.
And the stuff with Hop’s face changing when Lanie walked in the Compound in her trendy, stylish business lady’s clothes, looking like a model who’d wandered into an MC clubhouse.
But he’d slipped right off his stool so she could slip her ass right on it, and suddenly, she belonged. She was his, she was Chaos. She was a reflection of these men who loved who they loved, and fuck anyone who thought it didn’t fit.
I adored how the both of them smiled at each other through the seat exchange like they hadn’t seen each other in months, rather than rolling out of the same bed together that morning.
And of course, there was the film of Tab shoving Shy in the chest with both hands when he was laughing uncontrollably and she was in some snit. Then he’d caught her up in his arms and held her tight, laughing into her neck. That scene was about how her face changed, unable to hold on to the snit when she was in her husband’s arms.
The Chaos princess and her prince, the brothers’ VP. Attitude and affection and love.
It defined the whole movie.
And I especially adored the last shot of the film.
The one of Tack and Tyra taking off through the forecourt, Tack’s hands on the grip of his bike, gazing forward, Tyra on the back of it, her hair beginning to whip around. She was twisted toward the Compound, a huge smile on her face. Waving.
No.
The best was the footage at the last hog roast.
It was the money shot. The one, a still from it, I’d put on the poster.
They were all congregated around a steel drum filled with fire in the forecourt. Every last brother. Some of them had hands held to it. Some of them had their fingers wrapped around brews (though Hound had a bottle of tequila in his hand). Some were looking at others. Some were looking at their boots. Some were looking at the sky.
Big Petey had just said something.
So they were all laughing.
Yeah, that was my favorite.
The men and old ladies had dug up a bunch of pictures and I’d had pretty intense chats with all of them, so the movie wasn’t just fly-on-the wall footage, but also Ken Burn’s style stills with narration.
They’d trusted me with a lot. I knew I didn’t have it all, but they trusted me with so much. It meant the world to me.
And I hoped I’d done them proud.
“Babe?”
I came back into the room at Rush’s call to see all the men’s eyes on me.
Fuck.
I focused on Rush sitting at the head of the table.
And the relief washed through me in a wave.
“Babe,” he repeated.