“Because you never would have allowed me to wear the recorder. You would have tried to find a way to fix this on your own and the only way this could work is if I did it. I want the Riot out of our lives, so I did what I had to do.”
Eli grabs hold of the chair in front of him and his knuckles turn white under his grip. “You’re damn straight I would have stopped you. I promised your father I would take care of you if anything should ever happen to him. Even if I didn’t make that promise, I still would have and will do anything to protect you. I don’t ever want you pulling bullshit like this again.”
Hopefully, I won’t have to pull bullshit like this again. “But I will...that is, if it means keeping the people I love safe. Eli...yesterday at the diner, you asked me if our relationship was worth something and I want you to know that it is. It was worth my wearing that recorder.”
Eli’s eyes snap shut, and for the first time since we entered Church, he drops into a chair. “The Riot have already started with the account numbers. The police could probably go in and arrest them now, but they want to keep handing them rope to hang themselves with. Cyrus and I have given them permission to keep doing what they’re doing. I can’t decide if I want to hug the four of you or strangle you and I’m too fucking beat to decide. All of you are staying here until I can figure out what the hell I’m going to do with my security problems.”
Eli glares at me as if he’s waiting for me to challenge him and that glare is rightfully warranted. A week ago, I would have been in his face, but I’m all angered out. “Okay.”
Eli points to the door. “Go. All of you. We’ll talk again in the morning.”
Oz, Razor and I don’t hesitate in standing, but Chevy stays seated. He and Cyrus are staring at one another. Chevy wants to talk to him—needs to talk to him. Cyrus has another grandson and Eli has another nephew. But even better, Cyrus is now aware Chevy chose a different path.
Not the one his mother might have wanted, not the path Cyrus would have picked. Chevy has gone rogue, is blazing a trail that belongs to himself. His worst fear is that by doing so, he’ll lose his family.
“I can’t talk to you tonight,” says Cyrus. “I need to think this all through.”
“Tough,” Chevy says, and a shot of pride courses through me. “Because I need to talk to you.”
CHEVY
VIOLET OFFERS ME a soft smile before she exits Church. The door closes and it’s me and Cyrus. I’ve betrayed him. So have Razor and Oz and Violet, but with me it’s been different. It’s always been different. To be honest, there are times I’ve felt like the third player of a video game Cyrus has been playing and I’m the last do-over.
Cyrus first had James and James left the club, Snowflake, Cyrus and the rest of his family for the unknown in Louisville. Eli stuck with the club, continues to stick with the club, but went against them one time when he was younger for the woman he loved and ended up in prison for too many years.
Cyrus believes I’m his last hope and I didn’t fall into line like he wanted. I can’t help but wonder if I’m a disappointment.
“You could have come to me,” he says in a voice barely above a mumble. “I understand why none of you went to Eli. He feels too much, loves you all too much. But I don’t understand why you didn’t come to me.”
“I turn eighteen in two weeks. What happens if I’m not ready to join the club?”
Tonight, Cyrus looks his age. He’s nearing seventy and I’ve never thought too much about that. Before this evening, he had an everlasting air to him. That he was ageless, defying time.
But sitting at the head of the table it’s apparent he wears every year like an oxen wears a yoke. His hair and beard are gray. His dark McKinley eyes full of too many years of past pains and learned knowledge that I’m sure he wishes he could forget. His skin is weathered by tears, laughter, wind, rain and sun. The wrinkles around his eyes and mouth are cemented in by happiness and sadness.
My grandfather has seen it all, probably knows it all, yet at the same time he can control nothing. Like James, Eli and me.
“Do you not want to join the club?” he asks.
Last thing I want to do is hurt the man who stepped up to be my father when my own died. Each and every warm memory of our time together churns together in my stomach. “To please you, I do. To keep my family, my brothers, the bonds I’ve built here, I do.”
“But?”
“My entire life, I’ve been James’s son, your grandson, Eli’s nephew. I’ve been the heir to a legacy I don’t even understand. You don’t talk about James after he left. No one talks about James—not even my mother...that is until this week. It feels like I’ve been raised up on a high horse supported by a house of cards and I’m one good blow away from falling.”
A flicker of anger in his eyes. “What did your mother say?”
“That’s not important. What is important is what you haven’t said. Did you give up on James as a son when he decided he wanted something different from the club and is the same thing going to happen to me if I decide not to wear a patch on my back?”
Cyrus smooths out his beard, but shifts in agitation. “Do you not want to be a part of this club?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know who I am or what I want to do with my life. I’m eighteen years old and I should be worried about the paper that’s due in English tomorrow. I should be wondering how to ask Violet to prom and if I have to rent a tux to match her dress. I should be losing sleep over play-offs and have my nose in a playbook memorizing routes. But I’m not doing any of those things.
“I love this club and I love you, but for fifteen fucking minutes, I’d like to be eighteen and I’d like to be eighteen without having to lose everyone I love in the process.”
Cyrus falls back into his chair as if my words were a punch to the gut and the chair rolls back with the force. “Why the hell are you just saying this to me now?”
The anger at being in the middle all these years bursts through me. “Because any way I chose, I was disappointing someone. You, Mom, the club, Violet. I’ve been a damned knot in the tug-of-war rope my entire life and I thought it was my job to stay in the middle. Past few weeks have taught me that it’s not my job. It never has been.
“Oz knows what he wants, Razor knows what he wants, Violet knows what she wants and I don’t because I’ve wasted too many years of my life trying to please other people. I don’t know if I want to be in the club. I think I do, but that patch will feel like a weight if I wear it before I know who I am.”
I roll my neck to ease the tension building there, and when it doesn’t help, I spit out the rest of the truth because it doesn’t make a difference if I hold it in or not. “I want to go to college. I don’t know what I’ll major in or have the slightest clue where to go, but I want to go somewhere and figure myself out, and if I get my way, I want to do this with your blessing. I want to know that no matter what I choose, I’ll still have a home here with you.”