Bull (Kings of Mayhem MC 6)

I watched her walk to her car and climb in. She looked over and gave me another wicked smile before closing the door and driving away.

The challenge was on.

And I was never one to back down from a challenge.

TAYLOR

“Things are finally looking up, kiddo,” I told Noah over breakfast the next morning.

He looked at me and then dropped his eyes.

“I don’t know why we had to move here in the first place,” he grumbled over his cereal.

I sat down at the table as he raised his chin to look at me, and it killed me to see the sadness in those big brown eyes. “It’s a new start for us, buddy.”

“But I liked our old place.”

“I know. But this is a better place for us to be. We’ll be safe here.”

As soon as I said it, I regretted it.

Noah didn’t know anything about our past.

Or why we were running.

Hell, he didn’t even know we were running.

He was so young when we left.

“What do you mean? What do we need to be safe from?” he asked, a frown creasing his sweet face.

Fuck.

To protect him, I had never told him anything. About our parents. About our godfather. About the horrors of days long gone. None of it.

And I didn’t plan to either, because the less he knew, the better.

“I mean, it’s a safe town, and we live in a nice neighborhood, with good neighbors.” I gave him a reassuring smile and ruffled his hair. “Speaking of which, I’d better fix Pickles his breakfast while you get ready for school.”

Mr. Gino Piccoli, or, Pickles, as he was nicknamed by his comrades in Vietnam, was our neighbor. He lived across the pathway from us in an apartment that mirrored ours. He lived alone, and was frail and elderly. Yet when we first arrived in Destiny, he’d hauled himself up onto his unsteady feet and offered to help us unload the U-Haul.

He was a kind man. With a kind, toothless grin and laughing eyes.

He also knew how to sign.

His only son had been deaf following a bad case of the mumps.

But all of his family was gone now—his son in a car accident when he was nineteen, and his wife from cancer almost twenty years ago, and in the first few weeks of living here, I realized he had no visitors. No one to call on him. No one to make sure he was alright.

My heart broke for him. Some days I would see him sitting out on the porch as the sun set, just staring out at the world and thinking about days gone by. A lonely old man in the last years of his life with no one to talk to.

One day, when he saw me arrive home with bagels, he told me about living in New York with his wife just after the war, and how they would wake up early and wait outside in the dark for their favorite bakery to open, just so they could buy their bagels fresh out of the oven.

The following day, I brought bagels from a cupcake bakery in town, and every morning since, I dropped a fresh cup of coffee and bagel to him as I was leaving to take Noah to school. No matter how broke we were, I made sure he had a visitor and a bagel.

Some days, we would sit with him while he ate his breakfast. Other days, Noah would pop over after school and watch TV with him, or talk with Pickles about what life was like when he was a young man.

Today, Pickles was sitting in his chair by the front door, dressed in his pressed slacks and button-up shirt, his feet in a pair of plaid slippers.

When he saw us walk across the path, his face lit up.

“Bella!” he said cheerfully. His eyes gleamed in the pale morning light. “And my favorite bambino, Noah!”

He held up his hand for Noah to high five, while I leaned down and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Morning, Pickles.”

He accepted his coffee and bagel with appreciative delight. “You spoil me!”

“Well, you’re worth spoiling. How are you feeling today?”

“If I were any healthier, I’d be dangerous!” He laughed, then turned to Noah and started to sign. “Are you feeling happy today?”

There was no need to sign. Noah was wearing his hearing aids. But signing was a part of their bond. A magical language between them. A tie to his own son who was gone.

“I’m okay.”

Pickles knew about the bullying.

“Have you chosen the next film yet?”

Noah and Pickles were both crazy about westerns. It was one of the many things they bonded over. On a Saturday night, you could find them wrist deep in popcorn with their eyes glued to the TV. But they were running out of DVDs because we had borrowed everything available at the local library over the past couple of months.