“Short answer: I thought I could take care of things and spare Drew any more shit from men like Taylor, Cortez, Walsh, and specifically Travis Gatlin, so I went to deal with it myself. I tried and failed. Long answer: Travis Gatlin was ready for me, and when I went to drop that Nav’s bike back at their club, he decided to make his move. One minute I was outside their yard, staring at Travis and a few Navs I’d seen a thousand times before. The next, he was taunting me, asking me how my son was, how you were, how the whole damn club was. He couldn’t get a rise out of me no matter how hard he tried and that pissed him off. Before I knew what was happening, a van pulled up behind me, Navs popping out from behind every wall, gate, tree, and car. You name it, they sprung from it, and I was thrown into the back of the van.” Eric’s face creased, as though the memory caused him more pain while he stared at Drew. “They did some fucked up things,” he whispered. “They had fun with that shit.”
I was glad he didn’t elaborate. I was pretty sure I’d seen the tame end of Travis’s sadistic games twice now, and I wasn’t looking for an in-depth insight into the inner workings of his mind. Especially not when it came to someone Drew loved.
“He’d set it all up, already knowing how it would play out,” I said, blowing all the air from my lungs. “He knew the guy was following me. He knew Drew wouldn’t stand for him being in Babylon, and he somehow knew that one of you would make sure that Nav, or his bike, would make it back to him at one of your hands. Did he know they had a warrant for Walsh?”
“I think Travis Gatlin knew more than any of us could ever have imagined,” he offered quietly, a soft sigh of defeat falling free. “I hope he burns in the darkest depths of Hell.”
“He said he was the one pulling Cortez’s strings,” I said, looking down and rubbing my thumb over the back of Drew’s hand. “Even Walsh didn’t argue that he had some control over him too. How far back does this go?”
Eric turned to me, his eyes searching mine carefully. “Far enough,” he eventually answered. “And most of it probably began because of me. Because of what happened with Rubin’s mom. Because of the mistakes I made. Nothing breeds corruption like a need for revenge. Everything bad begins because one man’s ego became bruised.”
I understood that to some extent. Walsh had been a proud man for as long as I’d known him. He looked down his nose at almost everyone in Babylon, but the only times it had ever really bothered me was when he’d taken it out on Rubin. That kid had done everything in his power to be what his father had wanted him to be. He’d made himself sick trying to make the man proud and all the time and effort had been pointless. Walsh was never going to be proud of a boy that wasn’t his, but his ego wouldn’t let him admit that his wife had cheated on him because appearances were worth more than anything else to him.
“What happened with you and Carolyn Walsh?” I dared myself to ask.
Eric sighed softly, the regret obvious. “We crossed a line we shouldn’t have crossed. My Shelby had died. Carolyn was lonely, stuck in a marriage she hated. She’s always been a beautiful woman and… things happened that weren’t meant to happen.”
I could tell he wasn’t willing to expand on that, so I had to respect it… at least to some level.
“How long have you known Rubin was your son?” I asked, my thumb gentle over Drew’s swollen knuckles.
“From the moment he was born.”
I felt a stirring of anger in my belly for the first time in days but swallowed it.
“Did you know Walsh treated him like shit?”
He looked away from me. His movements slow as he stared at Drew and mulled over his response. Eric’s shredded hands twisted together, his pose thoughtful and calm, forever in control, even when it seemed that his emotions were sitting closer to the surface than ever before. “I knew he treated Carolyn like shit, and that should have been enough,” he answered quietly. “But a moral code isn’t something we always get to stick to in this life, Ayda. Everything I did, right or wrong, I did with the intention of it serving the greater good. For the most part, I can admit I got that wrong.”
“I understand.” I did, I honestly did. I saw some of the decisions Drew had struggled through since I’d known him. “Are you going to tell Rubin you’re his father?”
“I can’t think about that yet. I can’t think of anything that could happen beyond me being in this room with my broken son.”
I let a humorless laugh fall from my lips as my eyes clouded with my emotion again. “I know that feeling.” I leaned forward, brushing my lips over the dry skin on Drew’s knuckles, and Ibreathed him in. “For the record, I don’t think he’ll be upset about you being his father. Just maybe that you waited so long to tell him.”
“Upset, I can handle. I’ve had a lot of practice handling that with Drew.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” I said, my lips curling into a small smile. “You know they say your kids are worse than you just to punish you. What do I have to look forward to? How bad was Drew?”
“Oh,” he said through a laugh, straightening his shoulders as a twinkle returned to his eyes. “Drew was an asshole from the moment he could talk. A real pain in my Shelby’s side. He was born to be trouble. Anything else, and he’d have been disappointed with himself.”
I let off a watery chuckle and gently squeezed Drew’s hand. “Do you hear this, Drew? Are you going to let your old man talk about you like this?”
“Did you know Drew’s first word was fuck? Came out as ‘uck while Shelby was collecting bread from the bakery. She’d forgotten her purse, and she thought she’d cussed to herself under her breath, but Drew was listening like a hawk, always paying attention. He shouted that word so loud, Shelby didn’t dare show her face in town for three weeks. Back in those days, your boy could get a reputation for that kind of language at six months old.”
This time I fully laughed, my free hand covering my mouth as the sound cracked from me. Laughing wasn’t something I’d done in what must have been days. It sounded foreign to my ears, but hearing about Drew as a child, imagining him at six months old… it made me think more about our baby, about who he or she would look like. How much of Drew would they have in them? How much of my favorite parts of him would translate into his mini-me? It was the first time since we’d arrived in this hospital that I’d thought of anything outside ofhis health and these four walls, and even now, with him broken in the bed in front of me, I could still see Drew in that future.
He had to be there to share these memories with me. There was no alternative.
“I can’t lose him, Eric,” I whispered feeling weak and hating myself for saying the words aloud. “I’m not sure I can survive it.”
“When has Drew ever quit on us all?”
“Never,” I barely said the word aloud as I stared first at Eric, and then the hand covering mine. Drew had never once quit on me since he’d figured out I was what he’d wanted. “Not once.”
“Then we have to believe he isn’t about to start quitting now. He’s just being a little dramatic.”
A stray tear loosened itself and slid down over my cheek as I shook my head with humor. “I’m sure he’d have something to say about that if he was awake. Like it’s a trait he gets from you.” I sniffed, wiping the back of my hand under my eyes and swiping at the tears. “But I’m kinda hoping he’ll be over the drama soon.”
“Drew?” Eric smirked. “Never.”