* * *
Since guns and swearing had been banned, Zane wasn’t sure what to talk about with Ty. He’d never hung out with a kid. He stayed away from the Sinner parties where kids were invited, never dated a woman with children, and didn’t frequent locations where kids might be found. So when Evie left him alone with Ty in the safe house kitchen the morning after the party, he found himself disconcertingly unprepared.
“Where’s mom?” Ty stared at Zane from across the white plastic table. Who the hell had done the decorating? The safe house looked like something out of a catalogue, all white and shiny with blue accents. Cold. Austere. Certainly not welcoming. Not that he usually cared about such things, but he wanted Evie and Ty to be comfortable.
“In the shower.” He pushed the eggs and bacon Evie had cooked around his plate. Whether it was the alcohol or the fact he had to sleep alone on the couch with his guilt and frustration, he’d had the worst night of his life. Why the heck had he taken her so roughly in the forest, let her see that side of him? This was Evie, soft and sweet, not one of the women who came to his apartment wanting exactly what he needed to dish out to soothe the darkness in his soul. No wonder she’d tried to push him away. Or maybe it was like Dax said. She could sense he wasn’t fully committed, that he was still half in and half out the door.
“What are we doing today?” Ty’s voice pulled Zane out of yet another round of self-flagellation. “Mom says we can’t go outside.”
“We’re all gonna go to the clubhouse. I got some work to do and the brothers are gonna be too busy to keep watch over here.”
“Are there other kids there?” Ty stirred his cereal. He hadn’t eaten anything since they sat down. What was up with that?
“No. It’s not a place for kids except once a year when they have a summer barbeqcue, or there’s a special reason for a get-together, and kids can come.”
“Am I a biker kid?” He put down the spoon and pushed the cereal bowl away.
“I guess you are.” Zane pointed to the bowl. “You gonna eat something? Boys need food.”
“You didn’t eat anything.”
Fuck. Zane stared at his plate, unable to even contemplate putting anything in his mouth. Except for the conversation about coming to the clubhouse, Evie had barely spoken a word to him this morning and the idea that he had hurt her made him ache inside. “It’s different when you’re a grown-up.”
“Mom will be mad at us,” Ty said. “She doesn’t like food to be wasted, although it’s better now. When we lived with Mark, we had to be very careful of our money and if I didn’t eat my breakfast, she made me eat it for lunch.”
Mark. The man who had raised his son. The man who had slept with Evie. Zane hated him, and not just because he had been there when Zane hadn’t, but because he’d hurt his girl.
He inhaled deeply to calm himself, and the scent of bacon made his stomach turn. Maybe he shouldn’t have had so much to drink last night, but the thought of coming back to the apartment last night after he’d scared Evie away was almost too much to bear. Alcohol had numbed the pain, but when the buzz wore off, he felt worse than before. “Musta been tough.”
Ty shrugged. “It was okay until he started yelling all the time. They thought I couldn’t hear, but I could. It was always about money and where they were going to sleep. Sometimes Mark slept in another lady’s house and Mom didn’t like that. Once Mom said she was going to sleep somewhere else, too, but she never did. Big Bill wanted her to come and work in Conundrum because he liked how she painted people’s motorcycles and she wanted to go. That’s when Mark pushed her down the stairs. I saw him do it.” He looked up, his eyes haunted. “Are you going to do that, too?”
Zane let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. That bastard, Mark, wouldn’t be able to walk after Zane got through with him. “No.”
Ty’s gaze flicked to the kitchen door and then back to Zane. “I cried when Mom fell down the stairs. I thought she was going to be dead and there would be no one to look after me except Mark, and he didn’t like me. I wished I was strong enough to fight him, but I wasn’t.”
Zane thought he’d fucking cry, too at what Evie and his son had to go through. “I cried when my dad died.”
Ty looked up, his eyes wide. “Really?”
“Really. It doesn’t make you less of a man.”
“Will you teach me how to fight? Just in case I need to help Mom when you’re gone.”
Christ. Even his kid thought he was going to abandon them. Well, that made three of them. “Who says I won’t be around?”
“Mom says you’re busy with the club and maybe you’ll see me on weekends, or you might go away and not come back for a long time. My friend Mason only sees his dad on weekends ’cause his parents are divorced. They get to go to restaurants all the time and football games, and he gets to sleep on his dad’s couch, like you do.”
“Yeah, I’ll teach you to fight. But you gotta eat something. Can’t fight if you have no energy.”
Ty slid off his seat and reached into one of the grocery bags Arianne had brought to the safe house this morning. He pulled out a box of cookies and carefully pulled it open, his eyes never leaving Zane’s face. Now there was a challenge if he ever saw one—and that he understood.
“Your mom usually let you eat cookies for breakfast?”
“Yeah. All the time.” Ty bit into a cookie, watching, his body tense.
Zane bit back a smile and stretched out on his chair. “You know … even outlaw bikers got rules. We live by a code: honesty, integrity, brotherhood and loyalty. You want to be a biker, you gotta live by the code. You got to be able to trust your brothers just as they got to trust you, because the world we live in is not forgiving of mistakes. We had one brother, Axle, he did lotsa bad shit and betrayed his brothers. He lied, stole… In short, he was dishonest. In the end, he died alone.”
Ty’s eyes widened and he stopped chewing. “He died?”
“Yeah. You get involved in bad shit, it always comes back on you.” He leaned across the table, made his son a promise. “What Mark did to your mom … that’s gonna come back on him. Big time.”
Ty placed the box and the unfinished cookie on the table. “I’m not hungry anymore.”
“Didn’t think you would be.” Zane gave himself a mental high five. Maybe parenting wasn’t so hard after all.
They cleaned up the breakfast dishes together and put the groceries away. Ty talked about his friends, the games he played, and movies he had seen with his mother. Except for that one outburst about Mark, he never talked about Stanton, and Zane wondered if he didn’t remember much, or he didn’t want to remember. He was an easy kid to be around, curious about Zane’s life as a biker, enthusiastic about his friends, and passionate about superheroes.
“Batman. He’s the only true superhero,” Zane said as they put the last of the food away. “He’d win a fight against any of the others hands down ’cause he’s got that streak of dark in him, makes him able to cross the line that pansies like Captain America can’t cross. He doesn’t take shit from anyone.”
“Duh.” Ty rolled his eyes and pointed to his Batman pajamas. “I know that.”
Nobody had ever said “duh” to Zane since … well, ever. The kids at school had been afraid of him and the junior patch and prospects knew to stay out of his way. “You allowed to say ‘duh’ to a grown-up?”
Ty shot him a sideways look. “You allowed to say shit to a kid?”
Damn. The kid was smart. He would have to watch his mouth. He stuck his hand in his pocket and pulled out a roll of bills. “How about I pay a couple of months in advance since I seem to have used up my last advance payment?”
Ty took the money and put it in his swear jar. “Can I use some of it in case I need to swear sometimes like you?”