Walk the Edge (Thunder Road, #2)(106)

God smashed him like a bug. I crushed fireflies. Mom’s dead. Breanna’s floundering. And Pigpen wants to spin a story about how shit happens. “Working on a seminary degree?”

A smile stretches across his face. “Naw, but we had a chaplain over in Afghanistan. Cool son of a bitch. And he’d do this. Out of nowhere tell a story that would put it in perspective.”

“Got a point?”

The grin slips off his face. I hate it when he goes dead serious. It usually means bad shit is about to go down. “God could have flattened Jacob, but he didn’t. God knew that Jacob was stubborn, was prideful, so he let the poor bastard wear himself out before God does what he does—prove to Jacob he’s nothing compared to God.”

“Still waiting on that point.”

He shrugs. “I was thinking you look like I expected Jacob would have after he realized he was fighting something bigger than he was, and I wonder, like Jacob, how long it’s going to take you to figure it out that you don’t have to be fighting alone.”

Sometimes, I hate this guy. Especially when he makes sense. “I’m in love with her.”

“Figured,” he says. “Is she making you choose between us and her?”

“She’s making me choose between keeping her safe or keeping her.”

“That f*cking sucks.”

It does. Sucks enough I don’t need to respond.

Wind blows across the field and the cold air causes the hair on my arms to stand on end. Breanna still has my jacket. I’m glad she does. Maybe she’ll take it with her. Maybe it will help her remember me.

“How’s that wrestling match with God going?” Pigpen asks. “From here you look mighty tired.”

I’m f*cking exhausted. “Breanna doesn’t want me to go to the club with her problem, and when I tried talking her into it, she drew the line.”

“Where you at on this line?” he asks.

I shove my hands into my jeans pockets and toe a piece of faded wood splintering off the deck floor. “If I cross it, I lose her. I might be losing her anyhow, because her parents are sending her away, but she’ll walk if I go to the club for help.”

“Hate to say this, but the way you sent her away, you already made the decision.”

That’s what is killing my soul. I know the choice has been made and so does Breanna. The agony of letting her go strikes deep. “I love her. Enough that I’ll do anything to keep her safe.”

The graying wood of the porch creaks under Pigpen’s weight as he crosses it to join me. “Sounds like the decision your mom made when she drove away from the clubhouse—sacrificing herself to protect you.”

My heart stalls out, but Pigpen’s not done torturing me yet. “Also sounds like the decision the board and your dad made by keeping how she died a secret from you. And before you say shit, you and I both know how ugly that demon is inside you when it comes to her. I know it when I see it because that warped monster lives inside me. If you grew up knowing the truth, you would have gone into Louisville guns blazing by the time you were sixteen, starting a war that this club can’t win, costing lives we couldn’t save.”

My head swims like I was involved in a head-on collision. “So he let her die and moved on? He just accepted it? The Riot wins because the Terror was weak?”

“The Terror is strong because we don’t act like the Riot.” Pigpen spits like he’s a viper showing his fangs full of venom. “My old man—he’s Riot.”

“What?”

“I grew up in their clubhouse. I understand you because I am you. I also learned to crawl on the sticky floors of where guys made their oaths. But here’s the difference, I grew up watching people make stupid mistakes in the name of revenge.”

“You grew up Riot?”

Pigpen flicks my questions away with a shake of his head. “Another conversation for another day. Point is I’m Terror because the Riot don’t play straight.”

Anger rumbles through me like a thunderhead about to hit land. “They killed my mother. Are you telling me that’s worth letting go? That justice shouldn’t be served?”

“I’ve killed people before, Razor, and that shit...it changes everything and it doesn’t just change you. It’s an avalanche to everyone around. What your father did, lying to you about how she died, it may not have been the definition of right, but he did it because he loves you...because he wanted to keep you and the people he cared about safe.

“What your father did—it wasn’t weak, and he sure as hell didn’t accept it, but that’s his story to tell, not mine. Here’s the thing, kid. You are the product of your parents, a product of this club, and you’ve been denying us for months, and the man I’m standing next to now, the one wrestling with God—you’re beginning to understand what it means to make a sacrifice for the one you love. Question is, can you forgive us for loving you the same way you love her.”

There’s a shifting of wood and Pigpen and I both snap our heads to catch my father near the screen door. How long he was there and what he heard, I don’t know. But I think of how he sat with me after I took the bullet, the night I came home and he stood proud next to me, the way he looks at me now like a broken man waiting for his son to return home.

Right and wrong begin to get muddled. Black and white merge into shades of gray. My father loved me enough to do something so huge in regards to my mother that the Terror respects him and it brought a fragile peace to two warring clubs. He also did what he could to maintain that peace throughout the years—including lie to me...because he loved me.