With a sigh, she faces me. “There has been a gaping hole in this family since you left and I’ve prayed for years for your return, but now that you’re here, I fully understand why your mother had to go. When you go home, tell her that for me and also tell her to never make the mistake of bringing you to Snowflake again. For all of our sakes. You need to go home, Emily. I love you, but I love my son more and I am begging you to not drag him into this mess.”
Oz swings off his bike and he’s immediately on the move toward us, but his dad steps in front of him. A slow dull throb pulses in my head. I rub my temples, and the anger that’s been simmering at my mother for lying to me over this entire fiasco begins to evaporate.
Everyone’s so paranoid, so terrified, that I’m starting to get swept up in the mania. I’ve been here for over a month and the most dangerous thing I’ve experienced is me jumping in water the wrong way.
A loud growl of engines and I suck in a breath when bike after bike, too many to count, race past the car. I press into the seat as a sea of black vests leave the clubhouse and swarm Oz and his father. The newcomers park their bikes and create another layer around them. I can’t spot Oz anymore. Instead, what glares at me are half skulls with fire blazing out of the eye sockets.
“They’re patching Oz in tonight,” Izzy says quietly.
I jolt as if electrocuted. “But he’s not a prospect yet. Oz said that he has to go through that period before he can officially join the club.”
“If it weren’t for me and Olivia insisting that Oz not be allowed to be a prospect until he graduated, Oz would already be through his prospect period and patched in. They took a special vote because of Olivia’s declining health and everyone agreed that she should see him as a member before she passes. They also felt that thanks to the past month Oz has spent watching you, he’s served his time.”
Served his time...with me. I sound like a prison sentence.
“Against anything I’ve wanted,” she says, “Oz has been a prospect of this club for eighteen years. Some things are so inevitable that they don’t need to be made formal.”
Izzy departs the car and I follow her as she goes up the steps of the porch. I blink as Olivia exits the house. The screen door shuts and the yard plummets into silence. Every man honors Olivia as they turn to acknowledge her.
She nods to me as if the last time I saw her she wasn’t in the midst of a seizure and I wasn’t screaming for Oz to help. Her blue scarf covers her head. Her jeans as tight as normal. She has gold dangling earrings that almost touch her shoulder. She wears that black top again that resembles a corset. As always, she’s striking and radiates kick-ass.
But as I step closer to her, there’s a slow deliberateness to her movements. A tiny quiver of her hand and that tremor slowly progresses up her arm. I slide up beside her and ease my fingers underneath hers and she grasps on to me. The slight shake of her body would only have been noticed by someone standing near. She knows this and so do I.
Olivia inclines her head and we walk together on the porch, past my window and the seat Oz has used as a bed for too many weeks. The lone sound in the yard is our footsteps against the wood. Hand in hand we reach the corner of the porch and there’s a part of me that feels self-conscious that everyone stares.
A breeze rushes through the trees. The leaves clap against each other and a few maple helicopters drift to the ground. There are so many men in the yard. Seventy. Eighty. A hundred. So many. Too many. And Olivia and I have their undivided attention.
The wind dies and this moment is too intense with silent expectation. I search the crowd for Oz and when my eyes meet his, he imperceptibly nods at me. The world fades away and, suddenly, I can breathe again.
I wait for Olivia to do whatever it is everyone is expecting her to do, but nothing happens.
“Are you supposed to wave or something?” I whisper. When Olivia raises an eyebrow, I curl my hand and tilt it side to side. “Like the queen does on TV?”
She laughs. The loud one. The one from when we first met that scared the hell out of me and, this time, I can’t help but giggle along with her. She squeezes my fingers, releases them, then cups my face as she leans over and kisses one cheek and then another.
“If I’m the queen, then you’re the princess, and this is your kingdom.”
When she lets go of me, Cyrus calls out, “Reign of Terror!”
“Hoo-ra!” is the answering rumble.
“Reign of Terror!”
“Hoo-ra!”
“Reign of Terror!”
“Hoo-ra, Reign of Terror!”
Someone applauds and the entire yard bursts into noise. Both Eli and Oz are grinning at me. I can’t help the silly and shy smile forming back.
“This is your family,” Olivia says to me. “If you learn to love us then you will forever have our love in return.”
I think I am falling in love and that love would belong to Oz. I search for Oz again and I spot him just as Eli slings an arm around his neck and leads him away from me and into the clubhouse.
“Come on,” Olivia adds. “We have a ton of work to do and not enough time to do it.”
Oz
I TOOK A quick shower in the clubhouse’s bathroom, changed clothes and now I’m bounding up the stairs to Church. Hook’s at the door and opens it the moment he sees me. This is nothing like the last time I was invited in here. Each man at the table peers at me as I walk in and it’s not with the look they had last time, as if I were a man strapped in the electric chair.