Page 95 of Between Brothers

I backed off, and took his hand and said, “Come here, I want to show you something.”

He followed me to my studio door where I unlocked it and left the door standing open to the warm weather outside. I led him to my worktable and said, “I finished it last night.”

He stopped and looked down at it, eyes roaming the bits of melded glass, from smoke to crimson, blues, reds, fiery oranges and blacks… He turned to me and asked, “What made you do this?”

I looked down at the large window with the Sacred Hearts logo done in bits of scrapped glass and shrugged. “It was for Cell… to remember him.”

“Little one, it’s beautiful.”

“Do you think that they’ll want it?” I asked. “I mean, I made it the dimensions of that front window, the one with the flag in it… I just thought if you didn’t want people looking in the front window that this might be a better way to do it.”

His eyes travelled over the bits of stained glass and metal and he brought out his cell phone, snapping pictures of it. He frowned at his phone and asked, “Turn on the overhead light?”

I went to it and flipped the switch and he nodded, “There we go.” He took several more pictures and fiddled on his phone.

“Who are you sending them to?”

“Dragon.”

I was nervous and a moment later he looked up from his phone, “He says he can have it transported today.”

“It still needs a frame,” I protested and Blue grinned.

“We’ve got a guy for that.”

“Oh…” It would be nice to get it out of here today so that I could start something else, now that it was done. I nodded, “Sure, send them the address, tell them to bring the guy and the wood, it really should be framed for stability before it moves.”

“You’ve got it, beautiful.”

I was shy and nervous about the men who showed up coming into my studio. I recognized them all. Dragon, Rush, Reaver, and Trigger. Dragon and Trigger showed up in a pickup truck full of timber and boards in the back and when Rush and Reaver got off of their bikes they were the ones to ask, “We building a framework for the back of the truck to transport this thing?”

I nodded, “It would be best.”

“Let’s see it.”

“This way…”

Reaver came up and hugged me and said, “Congratulations and welcome to the family.”

I smiled and nodded, blushing fiercely and Trigger laughed. Dragon grumbled, “Quit stealing my thunder, Reaver.” He came over and hugged me next.

“Thank you,” I murmured lightly and he said, “I can’t believe you did all this…”

“I needed to do something… I just wonder if he would have liked it.”

Reaver was the one to answer me, which surprised me, “He would have thought it was cool,” he said and the look on his face, distant, wintery, a match for the look I’d caught on Cell’s face time and time again, I had to believe him.

“I’m kind of dying to see this thing, now.” Rush stated and I took them over to my work table.

Trigger let out a low, low, whistle of appreciation. “That’s something,” he said.

It was just like the flag that hung in the window, only a full sized to spec for the window that was at the club. I’d asked Melody to have Archer measure it and he had, and never even once had pried about what I needed the measurements for. The logo would glow with fire and alive from the inside, I’d used nearly opaque black glass for the surround and the logo itself I’d used the most richly tinted but transparent glass I could.

The barbed wire wrapping around the heart I’d used solder to make between glass pieces and the most impressive part about it all? I’d freehanded it entirely with no base image. I hadn’t needed one. I’d looked at that patch so often, stared at it so many times I didn’t need to.

“I used black as a background rather than white because…” I choked up a little.

“You ain’t got to explain,” Dragon said kindly.

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