Always Crew

He was off the seat and heading for the door before I registered what he said.

And when I did, he was through the door.

“How was it seeing Drake today?”

Cross asked me that as I slid into bed that night.

I just got back thirty minutes ago, since the drive there and back took most of the trip.

Drake’s words stayed with me, and I didn’t know how I felt about them.

But I said, “He joined the Red Demons, did everything for protection.”

Cross faltered, his head rearing up. His eyebrows arched. “He did?”

I got under the covers and something settled in me, settled in my chest.

I was home.

I don’t know why I felt it now, but it was a wave and I knew—everything would be fine.

I nodded. “He did it for Drayana and he said he’s going to look out for me when he gets out of prison and joins the Red Demons full time.”

“Hmmm.”

I was waiting, expecting.

Cross didn’t say anything.

“You’re not going to ask why?”

He looked up, meeting my gaze and there was a knowing in his gaze. It took my breath away. He said, a sad smile pulling at his mouth, “I already know why, Bren. We loved you at the same time.”

“I love you.”

Another smile, but less sad. “I know that, too. I’m the one who got you.” He leaned forward, his forehead coming to rest against mine, and he said softly, tenderly, “I’m the one you’re going to call husband. I’m the one who gets to call you wife. I’m the one who will have children with you. I’m the one who gets your forever. And he knows it. He’s always known it, just like I’ve always known it.”

Not letting me respond back, he touched under my chin and dipped his head.

His mouth found mine, and he didn’t let me speak for a long time.

BREN

Years later

To say that I never saw my dad after the Red Demons came to our house would’ve been a slight exaggeration, but the truth was that I didn’t see him much after that. Over the next weeks and months, I went back to working for Coug r Lanes, passed my test, and became a full-acting bounty hunter.

I saw my dad a few times.

It was on my end. I reached out, asked if he wanted to do dinner.

He was still in Cain, and was working at a local garage repair shop on the outskirts. After I got more familiar with Cain, and more specifically, the underbelly of Cain, I knew that shop was one of the businesses owned and ran by the Red Demons.

Still.

It was clean, or that was the rumor.

A few times we had to hunt down one of their workers, guys who weren’t a Red Demon, and on those occasions, we went to the shop. I saw my dad. Pleasantries were exchanged.

He’d ask how I was doing, how Channing was doing. I answered, and reciprocated.

It was surface talk, nothing deep. I knew he wanted a closer relationship, but I couldn’t.

I just… I couldn’t.

After working through my self-imposed guilt over what he did, thinking he did it for me, thinking he did time for me, I didn’t harbor any resentment toward him. I was more ‘nothing’ toward him. There were some good memories, but not many. I loved my mom. I missed my mom, but I had Channing. Channing was my blood family, and once I came to that decision, I decided I was okay not having dinner with Derrick so much.

I was told recently that he took a job promotion within the same franchise to a shop closer to Roussou. And I adhered to what I promised Maxwell. Any time a Red Demon member popped up on our grid, I recused myself from the hunt. Brock was fine with that. So was Gramps. Hawk too. They all understood, and once that member was apprehended, I returned to the fold.

I got a lot of hours manning the bowling lanes, which Trundle loved. He kept asking me how to get ‘the Jessie girl,’ or ‘those other three chicks who come in with the Tree Willow Girl’ to give him a chance. I told him to focus on girls his own age, but he was ambitious.

That was his response every time.

As for those girls mentioned, all of them had stints in our house.

Zellman dated Angeline for a year. They broke up, got back together, broke up, and we were experiencing déjà vu from his relationship with Sunday. They were currently on a break, but that’d last till tonight. Party. Booze. And the heated looks both were giving the other when the other wasn’t looking told us that Z would have a girlfriend again, only to break up probably the next day.

The whiplash was real from them.

As for Jordan, he got a little bit more diverse.

He and Tabatha tried, and they lasted for six months.