Ride Steady (Chaos, #3)(44)

“I’ll be there.”

Linus gave him another smile.

Ten minutes later, he left with Mrs. Heely’s address, Linus’s number in his phone, his in Linus’s, and after another back-pounding hug.

He rode off seeing Linus standing outside the bay, still smiling.

Joker didn’t smile.

But that didn’t mean he didn’t feel good.

*

“Oh my goodness gracious!” Mrs. Heely cried, her hands going straight up in front of her before she reached further, slapped them on either side of his head, and didn’t let go. “Carson!”

She’d just opened the door and, like Linus, she knew exactly who he was.

She shook his head side to side. “Oh my goodness gracious! Goodness! What a fantastic surprise! I can’t believe it! I simply can’t!”

“Yo, Mrs. Heely,” he greeted.

She dropped her hands and narrowed her eyes. “Yo? What kind of greeting is ‘yo,’ Carson Steele?” Before he could answer (not that he was going to), she kept at him. “And when was the last time you got a haircut? Or had a shave?”

“Like it like this,” he told her.

“You look scruffy,” she returned. “You’re a handsome boy. You shouldn’t hide it under all,” she circled her finger two inches from his face, “that.”

“You gonna let me in or make me stand outside your door for the next hour, ridin’ my ass?” he asked.

She rolled her eyes, pretending to be pissed even when she wasn’t. He knew. He saw her mouth quirk.

He also knew because she used to do that when she’d give him shit and mean it, but not.

He’d missed it, but he didn’t know that he had until right then.

“Your language. Always did my head in with your language. I blame your father.” She pierced him with a glare. “For a lot of things.”

He didn’t have a chance to say anything, she stepped aside.

“Get in here,” she ordered, waving her hand at him and moving inside. “If I knew you were coming, I’d have made cookies. Since I didn’t, you get Chips Ahoy or Oreos. I think I also have some Nilla Wafers.”

Fuck, but it felt good to know some things didn’t change.

“May have escaped you, darlin’, but I’m not eight anymore,” he muttered, coming in behind her and closing the door.

She whirled on him. “I’m not either. I still like my cookies.”

He stared at her.

She rolled her eyes again and flounced through the small living room to an even smaller kitchen.

Joker followed, not liking what he saw. Not that it was a pit, just that it was small. She’d filled it with stuff that was familiar to him, made it hers. But it wasn’t like the house she’d lived in that just was her, becoming that after she’d spent decades of her life living in it.

And there was no flag outside the door.

“Where’s the flag?” he asked carefully as he hit the kitchen.

“We have a clubhouse where all of us in God’s waiting room go to experience such thrills as bingo and movie night, with every movie they show being PG. I told them about the flag. They let me fly it out there,” she answered, grabbing all three brands of cookies, dumping them on the counter, and shuffling to the fridge to get out the goddamned milk.

He nearly smiled because the last glass of milk Joker drank, she’d poured it.

“Good you still got it in your sights,” he told her and she looked to him after pulling down a glass.

“Never let it out of my sight, sweetheart.”

Joker fought back swallowing against the lump suddenly clogging his throat.

She poured him milk.

After she did that, she slid it along with the cookies toward where he was leaning a hip against her counter. “Where you been?”

“Here and there,” he answered, reaching for an Oreo. He gave her his eyes. “Home now.”

“Good, Carson,” she said softy.

“Not Carson. Known as Joker, Mrs. Heely. Left my father’s son behind.”

She nodded, surprising him with her easy acceptance of that, her eyes moving to his cut before lifting again to his, “Found a home.”

“Yeah, and brothers.”

“Hear some of those motorcycle boys can raise Cain,” she noted. “Hear some of them take care of their own.”

“I got both.”

She grinned. “Reckon that’s good.”

“It is,” he assured her.

“Missed you,” she whispered, blindsiding him. The look on her face, her tone, the suddenness of it, taking it in, his insides shredded. “Worried for you, bad. Missed you, worse. Thought about you every day and—”

He shut her up by shoving the Oreo in his mouth and pulling her in his arms.

She wrapped hers around his middle and pushed her face in his chest. She was tough, though, and he wasn’t surprised when she got a lock on it and didn’t lose control in about the time it took him to chew and swallow the cookie.

But when she tipped her head back, she said, “God took my boy. Then He gave me you.”

That was when his insides started bleeding.

He stared down at her wrinkled face. A face he remembered from since he could remember. Her hazel eyes bright with wet.