Black Dog // Led Zeppelin

Grinder

My bike is parked at the back of the hospital next to the employee entrance. I slip in the door as someone walks out, not even giving me a side glance. The beauty of looking a little rough around the edges is that most people shy away from eye contact. That in itself opens a lot of doors.

I don't know what room Brax is in, so I stop at the first nurse's station I see.

"Looking for my nephew but his old lady forgot to tell me what room he's in."

The nurse looks up at me. I watch as she checks me out from head to toe. Her eyes stop at my steel-toed boots covered with more grime than they should be for this setting. I came straight here from the café and couldn't be bothered to stop for a change of outfit. Take me as I come.

The nurse looks back down at her computer screen. "Name?"

"Braxton Henderson." I haven't said his full name out loud in years. Feels strange on the tongue. My hands are in my pockets and I rock back on my feet. It's a less intimidating stance than my normal crossed arms and scowl.

"Fifth floor, room five-oh-one."

I salute her a thanks and head over to the elevators. As soon as I step inside and watch the metal doors close, my heart starts to pound in my chest. I'm fucking nervous. Not much gets me rattled, but the prospect of seeing the boy after all of these years has me on edge. I don't want to think about the repercussions because if he still hates me...

The door opens and I sense all of the oxygen leaving the room. There's a wall of tension that is somehow tangible and I can't understand what it's about. I enter the room anyway to see a look of anticipation on the face of the man, no longer a boy, staring back at me. But a split second later the anticipation fades, replaced by a sour expression. I swallow the disappointment and continue to stride into the room.

"Lookie, here. Beau's boy is all grown up." Referring to his dad as 'Duke' always felt wrong, so I use the name given to the man at birth, the man who had been my friend before he became the leader of the Reapers. I force the light tone into my voice even though I'm sick to my stomach at this reception Brax is giving me. I can't really blame him though. Maria's had him isolated for too long.

"Grinder, what are you doing here?" Brax grits his teeth as he eases himself back onto the bed. I'm struck silent at just how serious his injuries are. Too many tubes and wires attached to him. Too many bruises and bandages.

Once he's settled, I watch as he sets his glare on me, taking in my knotted back hair and dirty jeans. Brax lets his eyes linger the longest on my leather cut. It's the resentment I see there that hurts the most. The Reapers took so much from him as a boy, but I always liked to think that he got me in return.

"Your ma called me, told me to pay you a visit." I say as I cross my arms, covering the patches on the front of my cut. It's a defensive move which unsettles me, but I do it anyway.

Brax raises his brows. "Since when do you do what Maria tells you to do?"

"Since she told me your life was in jeopardy." I take three more steps into the room, caked mud dropping from my boots.

"Shit, how the hell did they let you in here with that crap all over your shoes?" Brax shuffles back onto the bed.

"Who said anything about letting me in? You know well enough that I don't use the main entrance of any establishment, hospitals included." I take a seat in the recliner and put my feet up on the mattress. Brax scowls at my feet then right at me.

"Feel free to show yourself the backdoor, Grind. No need to stick around." He pushes my boots off of the bed.

"Not yet, boy. Got some words for you." I cross one foot to rest on the opposite knee then rest my hands on the back of my head. This isn't a casual conversation, but one look at how bad up Brax is physically and I realized I needed to lighten things up. He doesn't look good. Even without a doctor's explanation I can tell he has a long road of recovery ahead of him. My stomach clenches at what a close call he may have had.

"Not interested." Brax doesn't give me his eyes. I'm sure he remembers that eye contact is submission in the club. Brax was never one to give me the upper hand, even as a kid.

"Your ma is concerned."

"Coulda fooled me. She hasn't stepped foot in here the entire time I've been laid up."

"You know your ma. She's a practical woman. If you had died, the hospital would have called her. So, no news is good news and no need to visit." I put my feet flat on the floor and lean forward. "But she didn't call for me to check up on you."

I wish he would ask. I want Brax to care because that would be a sign that he's fighting. Call me a selfish bastard, but I want the boy to fight for his life. I want him to fight for a better existence. I want him to live.

Brax finally makes eye contact with me but not in submission. This is a dare to just spit it out, whatever I've come to say. So I speak.

"You can't go back there."

"Tell me something I don't know. If that's what you came to tell me, you wasted the gas."

I shake my head. "It's more than the Kings with your name on their list. Apparently, the Menace is after you now, too."

"Little Menace, my own uncles, want my head?"

"They don't appreciate it when someone rescinds their application for membership." It's not exactly what Maria told me, but that's the implication. When you join up, it's not a decision to take back.

He shakes his head. "So, let me get this straight. I've got a target on my head by not one, but two gangs, one of which is run by my own family, and my ma who refuses to visit me herself sent the leader of my old man's club to warn me off?"

"Something like that, yeah. But your ma is worried. Why the hell else do you think she got in touch with me?" I give him another hard look. "You can't go back there. Your ma doesn't want to know where you go because she doesn't want your uncles to find out. Just...disappear, got me?"

Brax leans back and runs his good hand through his hair. He blows out a breath stuttered with anxious energy.

"This is such bullshit." He mutters the words.

I drop the cheap burner phone in his lap. Brax winces. Maybe I should have just handed the thing to him.

"What the f-" He looks down at the cellphone.

"Brought you this. New number so not traceable to you. Just a burner phone. But you know how to find me if you need me, son."

"Perfect. I'm sure mine didn't survive the accident anyway." Brax picks up the hunk of plastic that some fool called a phone. "You really went all out on this, spent the big bucks, eh?"

"Nah. I wouldn't spend a dime on you." I get up and start to walk out. This is not the reunion I was hoping for and I need to leave before the disappointment shows on my face. "That was your old lady." I pause at the door and look back at Brax. I take a deep breath before speaking again. "Remember Braxton, even though she has no ability to show you, the woman does love you."

Brax doesn't say another word as I walk out, and I don't bother looking back again. I know Brax won't believe what I just said to him, but he needs to hear it. He was old enough to remember how his Ma and I didn't see eye to eye on much. Her crazy thinking infected Duke, killing the guy who'd been my friend and replacing him with a selfish mother fucker. Beau would have been a great father to Brax. But Duke was emotionally absent, physically, too, most of the time. Maria wasn't there for him either, but I also knew she just didn't have it in her. I wasn't going to let Brax suffer because his parents were too selfish to care for him properly. I was the one who gave him advice, attention. I let him be a kid and never gave him a reason to hate the life he was living.

Ultimately, the way she mothered her only son is what killed my love for Maria. It's what broke my heart.

But I love her son like my own. The day they got on a bus and rode out of my life is one I wish I couldn't remember. I got rip roaring drunk as soon as that bus was out of sight. But every second of that goodbye is burned into my mind. Sometimes it will come out in nightmares. The strange fucking thing is that I never dream of Beau. I never dream of him during the years he became Duke, either. I dream of his son, as an infant. I dream of watching him grow and learning to walk, learning to bike. I dream of riding alongside him. Eventually those dreams seem to morph into him boarding that bus, being dragged away.

At the time, Brax couldn't care less about leaving everything he'd known. I could tell for years he was unsatisfied. It didn't matter that I made sure he had everything he'd needed. All Brax could see was that the Reapers took his parents from him in more ways than one. Something like that stays with a kid, gnaws at him until it kills anything good that could have come with the bad. There was no good from the Reapers in Brax's eyes.

I let him go, hoping that he'd find some happiness wherever it was they were going. I let him go with a mother who was less than she should have been because he was almost old enough to leave if he'd needed to. And I didn't have a legal leg to hold on to him anyway.

As I leave the hospital, the number to Brax's crap phone already programed into mine, I hope that this is a chance for something better for him. It's obvious his life didn't spout rainbows and unicorns after he left. I hop on my motorcycle, the same one I was riding the day I met his mother, and ride away.

This time I'm the one leaving but I don't plan on staying gone. If Brax is in so much trouble that Maria reached out to me after twelve fucking years, I fully intend to keep watch over him. It's the only distraction I have in life right now, so I will put one hundred percent of my focus on keeping him safe.

It's what I should have done that day he left. I've been kicking my own ass ever since but never did a damn thing to change it. Now is my chance to make things right.

It's a chance I have to take.

The flip side of that hospital scene with Brax isn't exactly what we thought it was. Grinder seemed way more casual on the outside than he really felt.

Ok, next chapter will feature Julia and her world. Let me just say, it's not so rosy over in the burbs! And here's a little breadcrumb if you are reading All There Is as well as this one, one of Julia's J sisters, Jess, is Jeff's mom! Small world, amirite??? And thanks so much to @Emiloo for her great #WickedWednesday hashtag suggestion 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

Black dog is another Zeppelin song that screams Grinder. Had to be used...

[There should be a GIF or video here. Update the app now to see it.]

Get ready for the upcoming release of Broken Lullaby! We are getting ready to send it to Beta readers and an editor for polishing and then...Kindle Unlimited!