Joker closed his eyes behind his shades and returned the gesture.
Linus broke free but left their hands gripped between them, shaking them back and forth before he finally let Joker go.
“Christ, good to see you. Fuck me.” His eyes tipped down and up and his smile stayed steady. “You look good.”
“Same, Lie.”
Linus accepted the comment by lifting a hand and clapping him on the shoulder.
“Where you been, Car?”
“Around and about. Came back just over a year ago.”
The smile stayed in place even as he stated, “Well, kiss my ass, dickhead. Over a year and this is the first time you come to see me?”
“Not big on visiting the old ’hood,” Joker told him. Then he went on to lie, “Just found out about your place, decided to swing by.”
It was a lie because Joker had known about Linus’s garage even before he approached Chaos to join their ranks.
But back then, he wasn’t ready.
He didn’t know why he was ready now. He just was. So he’d rolled with it.
“Don’t live in that ’hood anymore, bud. Got me three kids. I look at my woman, she gets pregnant. And Kamryn wasn’t big on raisin’ our crew in a two-bedroom house. We moved to Littleton four years ago.”
Joker studied the face of a happy man and said quietly, “Glad for you, brother.”
“Not as glad as me,” Linus replied just as quietly. “You gotta come meet my kids, Car. Two boys, in the middle, a girl. Apple of her daddy’s eye. And my boys,” his chest puffed up, “tough. Love their momma, make their old man proud.”
Joker nodded.
He liked that too.
“Kamryn?” he asked.
“Woman gets prettier every day,” Linus told him. “Don’t know how she does it. Tell her I think she’s got voodoo. She just laughs and falls on my dick. Six weeks later, she’s pregnant. That’s my life.”
“Heard worse,” Joker remarked.
“Bet you have,” Linus said low.
Joker rounded that and asked, “Mrs. Heely still at her place?”
The joy slid out of Linus’s face and Joker again braced. “Kam got her a new place a year back. Assisted living, so it ain’t like it’s a shithole where you go to die. What it is is life. She just got old, found it harder to get around, took a fall. Luckily, she and Kam and the kids had planned to do something that day. Kam found her. Got her sorted.”
“Shit,” Joker muttered.
“She worried about you,” Linus told him. “You took off, that asswipe didn’t do dick. Mrs. Heely marched over there, givin’ him shit about how her boy was dead, his boy was alive and breathin’ and a good kid, and how your old man was good for nothing. Shouted and carried on so much, had to go over and get her outta there. No tellin’ what your dad would do if he lost it. Even with an old lady.”
That was the fucking truth.
“You should go see her, Car. She’ll be freakin’ beside herself, you show.”
Joker drew in breath before he made his decision and nodded.
“Tell me where she is, I’ll drop around.”
Linus grinned at him.
Then his eyes fell to Joker’s jacket and bike before coming back to his face.
“Found yourself a place to belong?”
Joker nodded.
“You good there?”
“Got brothers. The good kind. Don’t know what to do with them. But they’re patient with showin’ me the path.”
“Like that, Car,” Linus murmured.
“Joker, Lie,” Joker corrected. “Left the boy I was at my dad’s house. I’m him on paper only. Now, I’m Joker. It’s a better fit for me.”
Linus held his eyes. “I get that.” He tipped his head to the side and his lips curved up. “Find yourself a good woman?”
“A few.”
Linus’s lips turned down. “Mean a certain kind, son.”
“Know what you mean, and no.”
“You’re young,” he muttered.
He didn’t feel young, but he still was.
That didn’t change who he was and how he intended to live his life, and no good woman would be a part of that. But Linus didn’t need to know that.
“You’re at work,” Joker said. “I’ll leave you alone. But give me Mrs. Heely’s details, I’ll go ’round.”
“Sure thing,” Linus said, turning and inviting, “Come to the office. Gotta call Kam to get it.”
Joker followed him.
Linus spoke while he walked.
“Not shittin’ you, Car… I mean, Joker. Want your ass at my table. Kam’ll wanna see you too, and I want you to meet my kids.”
Joker made another decision.
“I’ll be there.”
Linus gave him another smile.
Ten minutes later, he left with Mrs. Heely’s address, Linus’s number in his phone, his in Linus’s, and after another back-pounding hug.
He rode off seeing Linus standing outside the bay, still smiling.
Joker didn’t smile.
But that didn’t mean he didn’t feel good.
*
“Oh my goodness gracious!” Mrs. Heely cried, her hands going straight up in front of her before she reached further, slapped them on either side of his head, and didn’t let go. “Carson!”
She’d just opened the door and, like Linus, she knew exactly who he was.
She shook his head side to side. “Oh my goodness gracious! Goodness! What a fantastic surprise! I can’t believe it! I simply can’t!”
“Yo, Mrs. Heely,” he greeted.
She dropped her hands and narrowed her eyes. “Yo? What kind of greeting is ‘yo,’ Carson Steele?” Before he could answer (not that he was going to), she kept at him. “And when was the last time you got a haircut? Or had a shave?”
“Like it like this,” he told her.
“You look scruffy,” she returned. “You’re a handsome boy. You shouldn’t hide it under all,” she circled her finger two inches from his face, “that.”
“You gonna let me in or make me stand outside your door for the next hour, ridin’ my ass?” he asked.
She rolled her eyes, pretending to be pissed even when she wasn’t. He knew. He saw her mouth quirk.
He also knew because she used to do that when she’d give him shit and mean it, but not.
He’d missed it, but he didn’t know that he had until right then.
“Your language. Always did my head in with your language. I blame your father.” She pierced him with a glare. “For a lot of things.”