"It's okay," I said, moving closer, putting my hand on his stomach. "Are you alright?"
He looked over my shoulder, past me, thinking it over for a genuine moment. Then he exhaled hard as his arm slid around my shoulders and his head ducked to look at me. "Not right now, no," he admitted, surprising us both, I think.
I moved even closer, resting my head under his chin and putting my arms around him, letting him squeeze me tight without any objection even though it was borderline painful. "Tell me about him," I prompted.
"Jazz," he supplied, resting the side of his face to the top of my head. "He joined around the time Repo did. He was a fucking slob and he was constantly purposely trying to make the clubwhores jealous of each other by being nice to one one day then another the next day. Just a shit-starter really. But he was loyal. He never bitched about walking the grounds or being left behind when the others went on a drop and he had to stay and watch the clubhouse. Found him in that bathroom," he went on, voice going low so that I had to strain to hear. His hands had started rubbing up and down my back absentmindedly, like I was an anchor for him and he needed to keep touching me to remind himself he was here, in the present, and not back in that God-awful night.
"He must have been getting ready to shower. The place was steamed and the water was running still when I came in. He was facing it too, shot in the back of the head three times. There were pieces of brain matter fucking everywhere," he added and I could feel him swallow hard at that.
I wanted to tell him it was okay. I wanted to offer hollow comforts. But Renny wasn't the type of man to accept them. He knew it wasn't alright, that he wasn't alright about it and that he likely wouldn't be for a good, long time. People didn't just get over things like that. It was a mark on the soul. It was a source of nightmares for years to come, no matter how hardened a criminal you were.
So I gave him what I felt. "I'm sorry, Renny," I offered, tilting my head up slightly, planting a kiss under his jaw. His arms squeezed me even tighter for a second. "Why are you in here?" I added a minute of silence later.
From what I understood, since the cleaning had been conducted, a large part of that done by Renny himself, the poor soul, the doors had been closed and the rooms had become somewhat of a memorial to the fallen brothers.
He took a long minute to answer and when he did, his tone was resigned. "Got three potential new members. Eventually, they are going to need rooms."
"But they're usually probates for..."
"A year, give or take," he answered for me. "But there's a lot to fucking do. Figured I would start packing up, get the clothes and shit to Goodwill at least."
Really, it made more sense to get the rooms taken care of. If, for no other reason, to have more places for the kids to hang out. But, on top of that, keeping the rooms like shrines kept things in suspension. If they wanted closure, they needed to get things taken care of.
But it was unfair for Renny to take that all on by himself.
"Want some help?" I asked, pulling back slightly to look up at him, wanting to gauge his non-verbal reaction.
He looked down, his light eyes seeming suddenly soft. "Yeah, sweetheart. I'd like that."
So then we boxed up clothes for Goodwill. And, on a roll, emptied the garbage and the drawers, tossing anything that wasn't of some personal significance, and putting the things that were into a separate box that we eventually kept filling up as we went to the next room where the bed was missing both the boxspring and mattress because the brother who occupied it had been killed in his sleep on them. Then, finally, we finished a third room before calling it quits, deciding three rooms for three new members was plenty. Eventually, they would move in and put their own marks on the rooms, taking away some of the bad memories with their personal stamps.
We stopped there for the night.
We had dinner.
We went to bed.
We woke up.
And everything changed.
Because Renny was in a mood.
Meaning- one his his moods.
I walked out of the bathroom, post-shower, and he was in the room, sitting off the side of the bed, all shut down.
The thing was, nothing and happened. There seemed to be no trigger. We had woken up, he had gotten his "breakfast", we had hard sex, we both came, then I went to clean up.