Order (Tattoos and Ties 2)

“I’m cool, but my old man’s not. I thought you should know,” he said, unfolding his arms, sticking his fingers in his front jeans pockets.

“What’s going on?” Clyde asked, looking concerned.

“Lung cancer. Sounds like he’s in hospice.” He gave a single nod to emphasize the dire situation.

“Key, that’s terrible.” And that was the true reason he was there. He needed Clyde’s conscience. Keyes seemed to be missing his reasoning ability lately. It made him nervous at how detached he’d gotten from his father, his illness, his club, even Clyde. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not,” he replied honestly, furrowing his brow, tucking his chin to his chest as he re-crossed his arms. He trusted Clyde, and after a moment, he lifted his frustrated gaze, holding Clyde’s concerned one, wanting Clyde’s true opinions on the distance he had placed on his old man. “I hate that motherfucker.”

“Keyes…” Clyde’s tone turned scolding.

“I do,” he reaffirmed, battling back.

His uncle’s stern expression turned into a small smile. “I was scolding you on the language, not the dislike. I’ve been on this journey with you for a long time. I know why you feel as you do. He’s a monster. You know I’ve wanted you away from him and that club since the moment I found you.”

“He should’ve just given me to you,” he said, brought back to the time he had been sitting on the porch, locked out from his parents’ house when he saw Clyde’s very normal looking car pull to the front of the house. His mom had died by then, and Keyes had been in trouble for whatever reason his old man found. Keyes was good and pissed off when Clyde rounded the hood of the car wearing his fancy slacks and a dress shirt. Their eyes locked, Keyes somehow instinctively knowing they were family. Keyes had looked enough like his mother for Clyde to see the family resemblance, but for him, Clyde represented hope and he’d never had that before.

“He should have.” Clyde nodded. “But he wanted your mother’s social security benefits.”

“I don’t even think that was it. He hated me and wanted me to pay. I was a fuckin’— Sorry. I was a reminder of bad shit that went down.” He skirted the part he had learned about his mother whoring around the club. Of course, he’d always suspected, and Clyde probably did too, but he didn’t need to say it to her brother. Hell, he wished he didn’t know. “Fox told me a couple of months ago that Smoke wasn’t my father, and he knows it. I guess they all knew it. I’ve had time to think about that. It explains a lot. I think he wanted me to pay for what she did.”

Okay, that was straight off the cuff, out of his mouth before it registered as a thought. Clearly, he was holding on to some emotional baggage. He still couldn’t seem to use his mother’s name out loud. Where his father was a vindictive brutal bastard, his mother was a meth head who had lived her life as if she had a death wish—which she finally accomplished.

“I suspect so too. Have I told you about the conversation we had about you coming to live with me?” Clyde asked, pushing off his desk, going around the front to pull his lunchbox from a side drawer. Keyes only shook his head, waiting for the response. “He had some derogatory things to say about my intentions with a young boy and my sexual orientation.”

Clyde was gay, so of course his evil-tongued father would have something like that to say. “I’m sorry…”

“Son, you don’t have to apologize for that man,” Clyde said, nodding him toward the classroom door. “Walk me outside.”

Keyes did, following behind his uncle until they were out in the deserted hall. Clyde locked the door behind him.

“Keep talking. Tell me what’s on your mind.”

His fingers were back in his pockets as they walked toward the same door he had entered through. “I haven’t seen my old man in months. The last time I did, though, I put my hands on him. He was frail but that goddamn mouth of his— Sorry,” he said, looking over at Clyde, who nodded. “He threatened me, and I lost my shit, not terrible, but enough that I lost some control.”

And there it was again, more of the emotional baggage he’d been harboring, pretending all the hate in his life didn’t bother him. It did, weighing so heavily on him at times he couldn’t breathe.

“It’s understandable. I’ve always been amazed by the strength of your character, a far lesser man would have caved before now,” Clyde said, pushing open the outside door for Keyes. “But you need to be careful, Keyes. He’s a trigger. You need to be aware and mentally prepared if you see him again. He’s not worth going to prison for.”