Have Gun, Will Travel (The Bare Bones MC #5)(44)

“But the fact is,” Lulu sobbed into her hands, her voice muffled, “he’s your son, Sax! Leo can’t ignore that forever! Just because I’m still married legally to Leo and Harte is legally our son on paper”—she removed her hands from her face, but her voice became even more hushed—“doesn’t mean you stop loving Harte and stop wanting to parent him. I say have a private, confidential talk with Harte.”

Sax whispered too. “And say what, Lulu? I don’t think it’s right for him to be gay?”

He could understand Lulu’s frustration. “Oh, I don’t know! Remind him that this is a man’s world, that not only Leo but probably every single other club member will bury him alive if they find out he’s…he’s…” Lulu couldn’t even bring herself to say the word, covering her mouth again.

Sax said it for her. “Gay?” He’d been around the block a few times. Attending BDSM clubs, one saw a fair amount of gay stuff. It didn’t faze Sax anymore, although there probably had been a time when he’d been like Leo. Now he knew it was just another way of being. “Listen. He did get that girl pregnant, and we’ve known him to push up on many, many young ladies. Maybe he’s just experimenting, Lulu.”

“‘Experimenting’? Sax, he’s twenty-four years old! If he was just ‘experimenting,’ I’m sure he would have ‘experimented’ before the age of twenty-four! Leo’s going to have an absolute coronary, Sax. If Harte chooses this f*cked-up path, and I don’t see how he can, Leo’s going to have him iced for not giving him any grandchildren!”

Sax bristled at the f*cking emphasis always placed on Leo’s grandchildren. Big f*cking deal if Leo didn’t have any more progeny. What about Sax? What about his own progeny? Didn’t he count for shit? For twenty-four years he’d raged inwardly, not being allowed to tell anyone that Harte was his son, how proud he was of him, how much advice he wanted to shower on the boy. How he wanted to take him on some of his road trips, go to the shooting range with him, take him fishing. None of that had been allowed because Leo was too deathly afraid Sax would get too close, too comfortable with the boy and let on his real identity.

There were times Sax felt like doing just that.

Now it was all about whether Leo had grandchildren? Just because he was, what? Prez of a f*cking motorcycle club? That meant Sax was just chopped liver? He’d lived with a woman for a couple years in Chicago. Anna had become pregnant and they had plans to marry. But when she miscarried, she became unglued, absolutely rocked to the core by her own insufficiency as a woman. Her depression became so deep Sax couldn’t leave her alone. Eventually he got Anna’s sister to take her in. Anna had no more interest in lust-fueled love affairs. And that was Sax’s one chance at having a child of his own.

He snapped, “Maybe Harte could just leave the club, you ever thought of that? That new gay club Turk Blackburn formed in Lake Havasu, the Bent—”

“The Bent Zealots? Oh Lord, Sax, you’ve got to be kidding! Leo would take out Harte personally before he’d let him join the Zealots. He doesn’t even let those guys come around our clubhouse, even though Turk was a long-standing member of the mother chapter, and Lock Singer was an Assassin of Youth.”

“What if Leo wasn’t here to complain?”

“What if—what? Sax, I don’t know what you’re referring to, but I don’t think I f*cking want to know. Listen. You of all people know how important progeny is to Leo.”

Yes. It was why Sax had agreed to go along with Leo’s plan to impregnate Lulu to begin with. Leo’s boys weren’t swimmers, they had tried for years with no success, and the first shot of Sax’s super sperm to Lulu’s eggs had done the trick. Leo was burning up with jealousy on many different fronts, and that was one of them. He was shooting blanks while Sax, so the nurse said, had the sperm of an eighteen-year-old.

Once Lulu had given birth, everything changed. Leo became overly protective, secretive, going out of his way to affirm his status as The Father. The brothers had been thick as thieves before, and now it was different. Things went downhill, to the point where Leo was exiling Sax out of fear someone might pick up on their covert pact. Leo had become obsessed with keeping his secret. The more obsessed Leo became, the more it irritated Sax, although he’d agreed to the deception to begin with. It just hadn’t seemed like a big deal, donating sperm for a good cause. Now Sax realized he’d made that decision flippantly, off the cuff. It mattered.

Sax sighed heavily. “Yes. I’m painfully familiar with how important progeny is to Leo. I’ll talk to him. Have you seen him around in the past half hour?”

“Well, he was talking to Papa Ewey and Breakiron behind the stage. But then some guy from a club I’ve never heard of came, and they went into that electrician’s shack, you know the one, it used to be full of UXOs, whatever those are.”

Sax knew the unexploded ordnance shed. It was out past where the music stage was, out in the revetment area. “What was the name of the club?” He imagined Lulu would know the names of every club. It was weird to see colors that no one recognized.

“Oh, the something something, I don’t know. The Skeleton Screechers, I’m not sure, it had the word ‘skeleton’ in it, I think.”

“All right. Let me see what I can do.”