Page 32 of Vandal Unbound

Yeah, I’m naked. It’s not like he hasn’t seen me in this state. We’re just…brothers. In every way that counts. Seen him naked plenty times. In the school locker room, on rides to Sturgis in communal showers, or when he’s gotten so drunk, I’ve had to put him to bed.

“Thanks,” I mumble through a mouthful of toothpaste bubbles. My heart has been racing since the minute Havoc knocked on the door. “What are we at?”

He glances at his watch. “Five minutes and seven, eight, nine seconds.”

“Go and make sure she’s okay,” I say before spitting my toothpaste down the drain and tossing my toothbrush into my sink. It takes another thirty seconds to rinse all the soap off my body and hair. Another thirty to run a towel over my body as fast as I can. I spare a glance at the way my wounds are healing. Hair is sprouting up over the scar that runs from ear to ear.

“Do you know what you’re doing, Van?” Havoc asks.

I wipe my face on the towel. “What does that mean?”

“I say this with love, man, but this is the worst possible time in your life to be hooking up with anyone, let alone someone with a kid.”

“Fuck you,” I say, even as my brain processes the fact he’s right. “And I’m not hooking up with her.”

“You don’t just ride off to a woman’s house in the middle of the night because a kid called.”

I raise an eyebrow at him, and we have a standoff for a second.

“Fine,” he says. “I get it. You would. But I saw the way you looked at her in the bar. You like her.”

“What I’d like is for you to get the fuck out of here so I can get dressed.”

Havoc huffs a laugh at that. “Dude, you’re rolling on pills right now. Being a functioning drunk. If I didn’t know you, I’d say you were the last person who should be around a kid you care about. I mean, any kid. You know that firsthand.”

My dad was a drunk. A hard one. He was angry, unreliable, and a liar. He left and came back over and over like a yo-yo. He died when I was seven. Mom found him on the dirt driveway toour trailer. He’d had a heart attack on the walk home from the bar late one night.

The comparison to my father rankles.

But Havoc isn’t alone in his thoughts. I’ve seen it in her eyes on the few occasions she’s visited me here. There’s a fear I’m going to turn into him, and a nervousness that I’m going to put her through the same hoops my father did.

Havoc walks over to me. Him fully dressed. Me, naked. He grips my biceps, his fingers digging into muscle. “You got a lot of work in front of you, Gid,” he says, using the short form of my real name, Gideon, for once. “And to do it will require you to be selfish.” He shakes his head and furrows his brow as he tries to find the words. “You got two options here. You don’t do the work and spend time with her now, but then she gets this side of you, and Elsie’s gonna have to wonder which version of her father figure she’s gonna get tonight. Or you tell her you can’t do this right now because you need to work on you, but she’ll be your first call when you’re through this, and she’ll get the best of you. And I’m telling you, if you gave me the choice to not have you in my life for a while but then have you back, or see you every day from now on but you stay as you are…I know which I’d choose.”

He releases my arms without letting me answer, and then I hear the door slam.

In the minute it takes to pull on clothes over still-damp skin, I think about what Havoc said. And then in the fifteen seconds it takes to roughly rub the towel over my hair, I decide he’s wrong. I can do both.

I may look like shit, but I sure as hell don’t smell like it.

When I walk into the clubhouse, I see the two of them before they see me. Elsie is holding a glass of milk and has a milk moustache that makes the kid even cuter than normal. And Daisy is sitting in a chair across from Maren, smiling at something she said.

I get what Havoc said. Fuck, I even feel it myself. But wouldn’t it be the kind of blessing you can only dream about for this to be my life, to have a lovely wife and kid to come home to, and them to be there for me every day?

I mean, I barely know them.

But something tells me I’m meant to.

As I start walking toward them, Elsie sees me first. She puts her milk down, grabs a piece of paper, and runs across the clubhouse. “Vandal,” she yells as she throws herself at me.

I’m not sure what the etiquette is, but something tells me to crouch and grab her and tug her up into my arms. So I do.

She smells like sunscreen and fresh air. “I brought you a picture to say thank you.”

I know there are plenty of brothers in the bar giving me looks. New woman in town, and the loser who lost the fight is bringing her and her daughter around. But I block the stares and look down at the picture.

“It’s us when you came over, but I drew us all at the table because I want you to come have dinner with us one night, but Momma says you’re probably busy. And she said a bad word driving over here. And Jodie, my friend, wasn’t at camp today because she was sick. And my sneakers hurt.”

“Woah,” I say, looking at Elsie, who is practically nose to nose with me. “That’s a lot of intel to share with me at once. Let’s look at the picture first.”