Page 37 of Gonzo's Grudge
“I hear motorcycles are dangerous,” her mom said softly, like she was tossing a blanket over a fight. “My brother broke his wrist when he was twenty-one. Do you two wear helmets?”
“Always,” I responded, truly wondering how this kind woman ended up with a snake for a husband.
“Gabriel makes me,” IvaLeigh added, small smile aimed at me like a secret.
“Hmm.” He lifted his glass. “Makes you.”
I could feel him reaching for anything. Poke the beast, test the waters, see which one moved the machine. Men like him ran houses like rulebooks—silent pages everyone learned to turn without touching. Men like me fucked the rules.
“What are your plans?” he asked next, still not looking at her, but directing this question to her. “With school? With life?”
She took a breath. “Grad school. Maybe. Or a year off. I don’t know yet, Daddy.”
“You should know,” he said, not unkind, which somehow made it worse. “You don’t drift into a future.”
“I’m not drifting.” She sharpened her tone, heat under the words now. “I’m deciding.”
“Are you?” He sliced another tidy square. “Or are you being distracted?”
“Enough,” her mom said gently, setting the salt down like a referee lays hands on two boxers. “Let’s let her be twenty-two for a minute.”
He smiled at his wife. It was the kind of smile you learn to fear if you live under it long enough. “Twenties turn into thirties when you’re not looking.”
“Then maybe look at me when you say that,” IvaLeigh challenged, voice steadying. It hit me how she’d learned to hold herself at this table—polite, pretty, pressed—and how she was unlearning it one sentence at a time. “I’m not a project. And I’m present.”
His eyes cut to her. The air in the room changed temperature.
I set my fork down so quiet it didn’t make a sound. “Sir,” I said before the next bad sentence could find his mouth. “I know what you think I am.”
“Do you?” He leaned back just enough for his chair to complain. “Enlighten me.”
“Trouble,” I said. “Leather, smoke, scars. A man who makes messes.”
“And?” He was almost amused.
“And you’re not wrong.” I took a sip of water relaxing into the chair. “But regardless of your judgments, I keep what’s mine safe. If she’s with me, she’s safer than she is walking across that campus with boys who don’t know what their hands are for. It’s she’s with me, she’s safer than she is behind the gates of your community. There is no place safer than under the protection of my club.”
He studied me like I was a suspect he didn’t know he’d already indicted. “You keep saying ‘safe.’ You think that word absolves you of being responsible to do what is right.”
“No,” I said. “It obligates me and binds me to taking care of her both physically and emotionally. And who defines what is right? You and your law book that you twist to work your personal agenda? Or me a man who lays shit out in front of a grown woman and gives her more than one opportunity to walk away? I’ll take someone who gives me an out over someone who twists words to their favor any day.”
A silence fell that wasn’t empty—more like a gas filling a room invisible, but deadly.
Her mom cleared her throat and reached for the gravy boat, bumping her glass in the process. Water jumped, spotted the runner. “Oh! Look at me.” She laughed at herself again, smaller this time. She dabbed at the spill with a cloth she must’ve left there for just this contingency. “Tell us about your family, Gabriel. Do you have kids of your own? What about your family? Your mom?”
“She did what she could,” I stated casually. It was both more and less than the truth. I wasn’t going to give more than I had to away.
“And your father?”
“Didn’t participate,” I deadpanned.
Her dad’s mouth tilted like he’d found a seam, a place to pry. “So you found community elsewhere.”
“No. I found family is what I did,” I replied. “And I keep it.”
“With violence,” he challenged, mild as a weather report.
“With loyalty,” I stated. “And whatever that requires.”
