Rest & Trust (21 page)

As the hearse and all the riders parked, an older man with a long, iron grey ponytail came out of the house, followed by two older women—one much older than the other. And then more people came from the mobile homes, until the Horde were greeted by more than a dozen people: men, women, and children. They were all silent and somber. The man with the ponytail stepped forward.

Leah had dismounted, and she went to him. He put his hand on her shoulder and looked past her. His eyes scanned the Horde and lit on Show, and then on Hoosier, the oldest of them.

Speaking to Hoosier, he said, “My name is Everett West. David is my son. Thank you for bringing him home to rest.”

~oOo~

In keeping with tribal custom, Lakota’s funeral lasted three days and two nights, around the clock. It was held in the reservation’s school gymnasium, and his casket was placed before a tipi, so that his ancestors might convene and lead him to the spirit world.

Sherlock’s observant mind was fascinated, despite his own grief and loss. The rituals were complex but also simple. They were reverent and somber, but not despondent. There was the sense of loss that all funerals carried, but there was no sense of ending, not that he could discern. The rituals were about moving on.

Family members and others took turns playing a funeral drum. There was chanting. But most of all, there was storytelling. Although Lakota had left the reservation years before, scores of people seemed to have stories about him, as a child and a good-natured but troubled teen, and even as an adult. He’d stayed close with his family. Sherlock hadn’t realized how close.

Lakota had sent a lot of money home. He’d never been extravagant, but Sherlock had always simply assumed he was one of the Horde who saved his take. He hadn’t ever suggested otherwise, not as far as Sherlock had known. He had counted Lakota among his closer friends, but he had known, it turned out, very little of him.

No one speaking at the funeral talked about his financial help with much specificity, but many, many of the more recent stories were about his support of the community, how he’d made lives better, made things possible. He’d helped kids go to school, sent a couple to college. Put Leah all the way through graduate school.

Listening to these stories, Sherlock felt hollow. He took care of his mom, sure. But most of his earnings were either squirreled away or ‘invested’ in his toys and gear. He was a selfish son of a bitch. His whole life was about himself. He’d lived for no one or nothing else. He’d even given up on the brother who’d raised him. Christ.

His personal phone zapped his thigh, alerting a text. Expecting it to be Sadie, who’d been extra quiet since he’d called to tell her what had happened and send her to Bart and Riley’s—where everyone was safe and snug—he stood and dug his phone out, heading toward the main door of the gym. He’d call instead of returning a text. He needed to hear her voice. He needed to hear her need him.

He stopped halfway to the door. It wasn’t Sadie.

It was Taryn.

Miss you
.

Sherlock stared at those two words, real rage pumping through his heart. It was their pattern: she’d be done, they’d go a few months without speaking, then she’d text those two words. Rarely, it would be him who texted first, but usually, it went down just like this.

But that last breakup had been the real one. Even if Sadie hadn’t been in his life now, he’d still have been done.

So done he didn’t even want to text her back.

Fuck the bitch.

“You look angry.”

Sherlock hadn’t noticed Leah coming up on him. He put his phone away. “Personal shit. How are you holding up?”

She shrugged. “I miss him. I’ll always miss him. But no one is surprised that he died wearing that leather. He was a warrior, in a way he could never have been here. He lived and died the way he wanted, as a warrior. And he remembered his people. Our older brother died when he passed out drunk on top of a space heater and set his trailer on fire. David defied a fate like it and brought us all back from that. His was a good life, and a good death.”

Sherlock knew that Leah was aware of the circumstances of her brother’s death. She had seen his body. In fact, his casket was open now, and surprisingly little had been done to disguise the violent nature of his passing. The entire community knew how Lakota’s body had been abused. He was being laid to rest in his kutte, his carved faced and scalped head exposed, as if these things were the signs of his warrior’s death.

He realized then that that was exactly what they were. Lakota had been the first casualty of a war that had been declared on his flesh.

~oOo~

After three days, Lakota’s casket was carried out of the gym and taken to the tribal graveyard for burial with his ancestors. Before the casket was closed and carried away, while an elderly man played the funeral drum, each member of his family—his grandmother, his parents, Leah, aunts, uncles, cousins—went up one by one and sliced a piece of hair from their own heads and laid it in the casket.

Everett West was the last. When he had laid his lock of hair in his son’s casket, he turned and walked to Hoosier. A low disquiet rumbled over the room. Hoosier stood, and Lakota’s father handed him the small knife. “He called you brothers. You, too, were his family.”

Hoosier stared down at the blade in his hand. Then he met Everett’s eyes, nodded once, and walked to Lakota’s casket. All the SoCal Horde stood as well. Missouri, seeming to recognize its distance from the moment, remained seated.

The Horde tradition was to place a memorial artifact in the casket with a fallen brother. Because they were burying Lakota according to the customs of his blood family, they hadn’t expected to have the chance to honor him in that way. But this felt like an even greater honor—for their brother and for their club.

Diaz kept his head smoothly shaved, so he cut a hank from his beard. Keanu wore dreadlocks and cut one off. Most of the others had enough hair to cut a lock; even Demon wore his hair longer lately than he had since he was a kid. But Ronin had only fuzz for hair or beard. He was last in line. When he took the knife from Muse, he held it and stared into the casket. After a moment, he opened his left hand and drew the blade through his palm. Then he picked up Lakota’s left hand—battered from the fight he’d put up—and held it.

David ‘Lakota’ West’s father came up to Ronin and pulled him gently back. Then he closed his son’s casket.

~oOo~

After Lakota was buried, his family served a huge meal to all the mourners, in a feast that lasted deep into the night.

In the morning, though no one had gotten much sleep, the Horde prepared to return home. They said their goodbyes to Lakota’s family and friends, and the Missouri and SoCal charters parted ways as well.

SoCal had to return to Sturgis first and collect Jerry’s body. They had one more fallen brother to honor.

And a brother he was. They had voted to award him his patch posthumously. Small atonement as it was.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Sadie felt a small, sticky hand on her calf. She turned and saw Lana, Faith’s two-year-old daughter, looking up at her with huge, hazel eyes.

“Shoe,” the little towhead said and lifted her foot. She was wearing the tiniest pair of purple Chucks Sadie had ever seen, with glittery laces, one of which was undone.

“You need me to tie your shoe for you?”

“Shoe,” Lana repeated.

“You got it.” She squatted down and tied the lace, adding a double knot just to be on the safe side.

“Good lady,” Lana nodded and then trotted off, pale blonde curls bouncing.

Sadie laughed. Better than a thank you.

She’d been more or less in charge of the kids this afternoon, mainly because she’d been playing online on her laptop, and Tucker and Ian had been fascinated, and shortly the room had been full of kids. She didn’t mind; she was happy to give the moms a break, and it was fun showing the kids all of her mounts and pets and things.

She’d never really been around a lot of kids, at least not since she’d been one herself, before her mom and Ben were killed. Over the past several days, though, staying at the Elstads’ house with all of the women and children of the Horde, she was getting a crash course in children. And parenting. And, well, family.

It was the weirdest thing—though they were all trapped in this house and had been for days (not that that was a hardship; the place was enormous and the yard was like a park) because they were possibly under a threat, and though two of the Horde had been killed in South Dakota, the atmosphere here had been generally relaxed. Often somber, yes, but not infrequently joyful and easy. These women enjoyed each other’s company. They helped each other. And they had welcomed Sadie as one of them as if she’d been born into the family.

She thought the children helped a lot with keeping the attitude light. They didn’t understand the gravity of the reason they were all together; they only knew they were all together, and they all got along. There were seven of them: nine-year-old Lexi, gorgeous and serious, and always trying to be older than her years; her seven-year-old brother, Ian, a scamp and an instigator; and their three-year-old brother, Deck, who tried to keep up. All three were the Elstad kids; this was their home, and Lexi had styled herself as the One in Charge. Two-year-old Lana had a nearly-six-year-old brother, Tucker; they were Faith and Demon’s kids, and Tucker was the kind of big brother who considered it his job to keep his sister safe—not something Lana always appreciated.

Sadie wondered what Tucker would do when his new little sibling showed up. Faith was pregnant again, though she didn’t look it and hadn’t meant for people to know yet. But Bibi was like a secret-seeking missile. Sadie swore that Faith had yawned, once, and Bibi had known—and then pried the truth loose. Not even Demon knew yet.

Lucie was Juliana and Trick’s girl, about the same age as Tucker. In fact, Sadie thought there was some puppy love going on between those two. Lucie was never far from Tucker, and they often held hands. And then there was baby Ezra, who had been much quieter here than he’d been while Sadie had stayed with Sid and Muse. He was still fussy and never smiled, and sometimes he could scream literally for hours with barely a pause. But here, there was a troop of women who would take their turn with him. The variety, at least, seemed to calm him, and Sid looked a hundred percent better.

Not all of the women were mothers, but almost all of them pitched in with the community mothering. Even Sadie had discovered a flair for talking to kids. She didn’t know any other way to do it, so she just talked to them like little people. It seemed to work. She even took her turns with Ezra. He liked to bounce. She’d found that out accidentally, just looking for some kind of movement to calm him.

She also found out that no matter how calm he got, bouncing was a terrible idea right after a bottle.

He was bottle-fed. Apparently, Sid’s milk hadn’t come in right or at all or something. There had been a big conversation, with Sid weeping in the middle of a group hug, about how it didn’t mean she wasn’t a good mother, and it wasn’t her fault that Ezra was fussy, and a whole bunch of stuff that frankly scared the pants off Sadie. Could you be a bad mom to a four-month-old, if you were loving and trying to do it right? Was there more to it than that?

She’d sat on the edges of that scrum and chewed her nails. She and Veda and Pilar had all had an awkward, ‘not-our-scene’ moment, meeting each other’s eyes and looking away, while all the moms had their support group.

They were the three non-mothers. Veda seemed bitter about that sometimes. Pilar seemed uncomfortable with the whole business. Sadie, though, felt wistful. She liked the kids. She liked playing with them and talking to them, helping them with their shoes, fixing their food, reading to them. She didn’t even mind bouncing Ezra. And that baby smelled freaking fantastic in a way that she couldn’t describe. Like his scent pulled something inside her.

She’d never much thought about it—until recently, she hadn’t been living the kind of life where she could afford much time to think about things like the future—but she kind of thought she might want to have a kid or two. She wondered what Sherlock would think of that.

Grinning to herself at the thought of maybe being with Sherlock long enough to make a family together, Sadie walked into the Elstads’ kitchen, which was bigger than her whole apartment.

There were two bikers sitting at the breakfast table, eating sandwiches and drinking beer. They weren’t Horde, but Red Rebels. Bibi had explained that the Rebels were helping out so that all the Horde could be at Lakota’s funeral. Pairs had been cycling through since Sadie had gotten here. They were friendly—a couple were almost a little flirtatious, but in a carefully platonic way—but they kept their distance. They were armed, and they did regular patrols of the house and grounds; they didn’t really socialize.

Again, Sadie was struck by the strange contradiction of being essentially imprisoned in a house (for her own good or not) but yet content about it. She’d been able to work, and she’d enjoyed the companionship and community. The thought of going back to her little studio, where she lived and worked and could go days without seeing anybody, made her feel lonely, even while she was still surrounded by people.

Juliana stood at the counter, slicing a cantaloupe. She was, like, halfway pregnant, just enough to show a little bump under her t-shirt, and she must have been having cravings or something, because she ate about a cantaloupe a day.

She smiled when she saw Sadie. “Hi. I don’t supposed you’ve crossed paths with Lucie recently?”

“She and Tuck were playing store. But La-zilla was on her way over a second ago, so they might be playing earthquake recovery now.” Lana’s favorite game was throwing things on the floor. With panache.

Juliana laughed. “Sounds about right. You want some cantaloupe?”

Sadie side-eyed the mound of melon. “No, thanks.”

One of the Rebels’ phones rang. Every time that happened, all the women stopped and waited. Even now, when they knew the Horde were riding toward home, there was a collective rush of adrenaline throughout the house.

Bibi came into the room, holding Lana in her arms. They watched, and then the Rebel—his name was Adeel; he was Pakistani or something like that—stood and handed his phone to Bibi. “Hoosier wants you.”

“Thank you, honey,” Bibi said and took the phone, guarded relief clear on her face. As she put it to her face, she walked Lana over, and Sadie took her.

“Hi, baby,” Bibi said into the phone. She listened for a minute, then said, “Okay…okay…yeah…love you better.” And then she hung up. Handing the phone back to Adeel, she turned and, with a bright grin stretching her cheeks, said, “They’re in California. We’ll have a full house for supper. Come on, girls, we got a meal to put on!”

~oOo~

The women and kids were all waiting in the expansive living room when the Horde roared up the circle drive. Riley went to the door. As she opened it, Bart bounded up the stairs and picked her up. Their kids started to shout, “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” and after that it was chaos.

They’d been gone about two weeks. Half of that time the women and children had spent together in this house. As Sherlock wended his way through the crowded room toward her, Sadie thought that she understood family in an entirely new way now.

He looked exhausted: circles under his eyes, his beard uncharacteristically disheveled. But he smiled when he got to her. “Hey, little outlaw.”

She didn’t answer; she couldn’t. Instead, she raised her arms, and he came in and wrapped her up in his. When he lifted her off the ground, she tucked her face against his throat, under his beard, and held on.

“God, I missed you,” he murmured. She felt the words move in his throat, and she tightened her grip on him.

In this room, right now, was everything she wanted in her life. All of it.

~oOo~

Leaving the house later that evening was almost like leaving home, as weird as that seemed. Dinner had been a robust affair, beginning with serious reverence for Lakota and Jerry, and then ending with laughter and camaraderie. Faith had told Demon that she was pregnant, and he’d surfed that rush the whole night.

Sherlock was quieter than most of his brothers. He seemed depleted and disconnected, and finally he bent down and spoke quietly at her ear. “Let’s go home.”

That was too vague a statement for them, though; they didn’t share a home. “Which one?”

He tensed, as if he were stung by the question. “Mine.”

~oOo~

They came in through the back door, and Sherlock flipped on the light over his table and dropped his keys on the Formica surface—which, for a change, was otherwise bare. Sadie heard his personal phone buzz. He took it from his pocket, sneered at the screen, and then tossed it roughly to the table near his keys. She wondered who was texting that he hated so much.

While he slipped his kutte off and hung it on the back of a chair, Sadie set her packs down and looked around. The kitchen was noticeably less gross than usual. Dirty dishes were still stacked everywhere, but it looked like he’d at least taken the time to clear the trash and garbage before he’d gone away for a couple of weeks.

“You cleaned up…sorta.”

He lifted one shoulder in a distracted shrug. “I went away once for a week and came back to stink and ants. Fucking hate ants. So I now I take out the trash before I go.”

As if his legs had simply given out, he dropped onto a vinyl chair that had been turned outward from the table. Then he grabbed her hand and pulled her close, tucking her between his legs. He draped his arms around her waist and leaned his forehead on her belly.

“You’re so tired,” she whispered, combing her fingers through his hair. There was a piece that was oddly shorter than the rest, and she played with that for a moment, wondering.

“Yeah. I need a shower and a bed. Sadie, tell me you love me.”

Her hand stilled; that had seemed to come from thin air. “I love you. You know I do.”

His arms tightened around her waist. “Tell me you need me.”

Her heart thumped. Need was different from love. Need was a scary thing for Sadie, the thing she struggled to control. She did need him; she knew that. Not to live, but to feel complete. There was something about loving him that made her feel…just
better
. The thought of saying that aloud, however, made her dizzy. Fizzy.

But he’d never been like this before—vulnerable. Needing her.

When she didn’t answer, he looked up. His beautiful, intense teal eyes were sad and weary. “Sadie.”

There was no condescension, no cast of disappointment in the way he’d spoken her name. Only need. So she swallowed down the fizz and answered honestly. “I do need you.”