Order (Tattoos and Ties Duet #2)(41)

“I don’t want to interrupt.”

“No, come in. Have a seat. We’re almost done.” Clyde turned back to the student, falling easily back into teacher mode. “When you solve this system of equations, you get x equals eight and y equals twelve. Do you see?”

“Yeah…” The lightbulb must have blinked on for the teenage girl who sat up straighter and grinned.

“Try that suggestion and email me tonight if you get confused, how about that?” Clyde said.

The same care Clyde had used with him, he had for all of his students. He never got tired of teaching. Keyes looked around the room. A lot of the same math posters were on the walls. The room hadn’t changed much at all over the last ten years. Keyes walked the length of the row of desks to a back shelf, spotting a picture of him and Clyde and his Harley XR750. He picked it up, looking down at the young man he used to be. He had gotten his high school equivalency diploma on the sly and the old broken-down Harley had been his gift from Clyde. Next to that picture was the same motorcycle after he finished the rebuild. That was about the time he completed the online mechanics course Clyde had talked him into. His uncle had been so proud of him.

“So, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

Keyes turned to see Clyde shutting the door after the pupil. His uncle felt like home. He hadn’t named that feeling before meeting Alec, but he understood it now. He placed the picture back on the shelf and went to the front of the classroom where Clyde leaned against his desk, crossing his arms over his chest.

“I stopped by the shop and you weren’t home.”

“This is my evening-tutoring day. I try to stay one night a week—you know all that. I haven’t seen you too much lately. Everything going okay?” Keyes stopped about a foot and a half from his uncle, crossing his arms over his chest. Of course, he hadn’t told Clyde about Alec, and since everything he thought about had Alec in the forefront, he had to get past that before he could go on.

“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…”