Page 35 of Carver
Despite the pressure in my head, the way my brain is spinning, and my body feels as though it’s going to follow, my lips twitch. “You and Kael didn’t get this amount of help. I feel bad.”
“Don’t. Before she moved in, this place was exactly the same. Overcrowded, noisy, and joyful. The club loves days like these. For them, this is what brotherhood looks like.”
I don’t have to say that he’s not a patched-in member yet and at the start, doubted he ever would be because he was just using the club for cover of sorts, or that I haven’t made any decision about prospecting. No one’s pressured me. It’s never once been implied that there’s anything conditional in this help. That doesn’t mean I fully understand it, or that sometimes I wake up feeling as though I’m living a dream life.
“Are you okay, Dom? Really?”
Bronte’s family has come to feel like my own, but I don’t have that same bond with her brother that I shared instantly with Dravin. I love Gabriel, but there are people you meet who you feel as though you’ve known forever. People who see things you don’t want them to see and hear all the words you’re silently screaming. That doesn’t mean that it still doesn’t send a chill through me or that I’m not clawing back uncomfortably. It’s hard to be thisseen, even if at the same time, I’m incredibly moved and grateful.
“Does Kael really call you Daddy Dray?”
He bursts out laughing. “Fucking hell, man, don’t ever say that again. I haven’t even pissed her off lately. Why on earth did she tell you that?”
“Just for the fun of it.”
He’s still smiling, but totally somber at the same time. “Sometimes it scares me half senseless, making a life with her. I love her. I’d do anything for her. I… it’s useless to try and describe the way I feel. I just know that she’s the one and she’s always going to be it, but it’s terrifying at the same time as it’s the greatest blessing I’ve known.”
“Yeah.”Fucking rights, that’s exactly it.“Bronte chose me. I’ve always had trouble making friends. It’s ironic because Bronte and her family have told me how kind and magnetic and smart I am. They say that anyone would want to know me. The first thing she ever did was share her lunch with me, that was when we were back in school. But she started looking out for me and after me. She noticed I didn’t have clothes that fit properly…” I glance down the street, my face heating at the old shame. Bruises? They were obvious, but neglect was too. “She brought me some of her older brother’s things. She said he didn’t need them anymore. She knew that I was scared to go back home most days, so she invited me to ride the bus with her. Her mom would drive me back after dinner, even though we lived so far apart. No questions asked. Her family fed me, clothed me and gave me safety. We were fourteen and we stayed friends until we were sixteen. I wanted to get her a gift for her special birthday. I was already sculpting, and I’d sold a few small things. She’d helped me build a website and get that going and… anyway, I had a bit of money. I would have bought her anything, but when I asked her what she wanted, she saidme.”
I wish there was something I could hold onto, but there’s only the hedges in front of me, so I wrap my hand around my bad arm and cradle it instead. “It’s hard to believe that was almost nine years ago that she formally made it known to me that we were going to have a life together. She claimed me. Right from that first day she sat down with that extra lunch, I’ve belonged toher. No matter how far I strayed into myself, she waited for me to come back. I want to give her the world, and it kills me that I can’t. This day, this house, this welcome… I know you don’t want thanks, but thank you. Thank you for the bike, for coming out and showing me the way out. I’ll be askingwhyfor a long time to come, even if you tell me not to, but I’m also so grateful. And terrified.”
A shout turns both our heads to the backyard, but it’s followed by loud male laughter.
“There’s Grave. If we needed proof he’s still in the backyard and not causing trouble somewhere else, we have it.”
I have no idea how he knows that’s Grave and not Decay. They look similar, act similar, and sound about the same. There’s a reason people come up with the sayingterror twins.
Dravin thumps his chest with a fist, bringing us straight back into a serious conversation. “A regular man knows gratitude and terror, but for men like us, who’ve been given a second and third and eighth chance, it’s different. We see living and dying differently. It’s okay to be that way. It’s okay to be exactly who you are, because who you are is whosheloves.”
I don’t know if there’s a special book of sage knowledge that I missed the memo on, but it’s uncanny how Dravin and Bronte both have my number. “Kael might have said that you get poetic.” Dravin just laughs. “She told me she painted you.” Now I have his attention. He freezes, and I have to wonder what’s in those paintings. “You moved all the art before I could see it here, you bastard.”
“You’re going to be sharing a studio space with Kael. If she decides to display them, you’ll be the first to know and see them.”
They can’t be that racy then. Kael was probably just playing. She has a dark, dry sense of humor and she seems to get quite a lot of enjoyment over causing Dravin to half lose his mind.
“I’m half worried now,” Dravin says, but he’s not really. “She seems to spill all our secrets to you guys.”
“It seems like you’re well equipped to handle the mortification.”
I know Kael can’t hear us from over by the hedges. She just has the most incredible sense of timing. She cracks the upstairs window and shouts out to us. “Daddy Dray, did you guys get burgers yet? They’re all cooked out there and going fast.”
Dravin sighs, but Kael just presses her face against the screen and gives him the widest grin. She waves at him before cranking the window closed and latching it so hard that the sound echoes outside.
“It’s not just me who needs friends. Most of Bronte’s moved on, but she stayed. She’s away from her family. It means so much that the whole club turned out, but it’s nice to have a couple we can be friends with.”
“Doing suburbia right,” he quips.
I roll my eyes. “We probably should go get a burger. Those guys will have them polished off in no time.”
“There’s always sausage.”
“That probably went first.”
“Okay, Daddy Dray. Lead the way.”
His eyes narrow at me. “I’d offer to rearrange your face if it hadn’t already been done for me.”
It’s a testament to how far I’ve come that I can laugh about my face now. “You missed the part where it would be an improvement.”
