Nobody says anything after that. The room is quiet with the particular weight of something being settled.
Razor stands.
"Unanimous," he says. "Austin Reed, the Black Saints MC have voted to patch you in. Tonight. Church dismissed."
The room moves and suddenly there's noise, chairs scraping back, voices, and Cash is the first one around the table and he hits me on the shoulder hard enough to make my teeth click. "Don't look so shocked, man, it was obvious."
"Wasn't obvious to me," I manage.
"That's because you were too busy trying not to look like you cared." Ramsey appears on my other side with the faint smile he gives when something goes the way it was supposed to. "You've got a few hours. Get your head straight."
The brothers filter out. Knuckles goes past me without stopping but he puts two fingers briefly to the back of my shoulder where the patch will sit, and that's Knuckles being as expressive as he gets and I feel it right through to my sternum.
Pops stops in front of me and grips my forearm the way older men in this club do when words aren't quite sufficient. "Your parents would've been proud," he says quietly. "I knew your dad before he moved the family north. Good man. You've got his chin."
I didn't know Pops knew my dad. I don't know what to do with that.
"Thank you," I say, and mean it more than I've meant those two words in a long time.
Then the room is empty except for me and Brick.
He's still at the table. He's still looking at it rather than me, and he's got his hands flat on the surface and he's breathing carefully through his nose in the way he does when he's managing something. I walk around to his side of the table and I stop about a foot away and I wait.
He looks up.
"I vouched for you because I believed in you," he says. "Not because you're my nephew. I need you to know that."
"I know that."
"And I need you to know that if you ever do anything to embarrass this club or compromise this brotherhood, I'll be the first one to vote you out. Blood doesn't cover that. It doesn't cover anything in here."
"I know that too."
He studies me for another second. Then he puts his hand on the back of my neck and pulls me forward and my forehead hits his shoulder, and he holds it there for about three seconds, which is the most demonstrative thing Brick has done in the entire time I've known him.
He lets go. Steps back. Smooths his cut down.
"Tonight," he says. "Don't be late."
He walks out while I stand in the empty church room for a moment and breathe. The table is scarred from decades of fists and gavels and club rings. The map on the wall has pins in it that I don't understand yet. Somewhere outside I can hear the garage running and one of the prospects shouting something with another one shouting back.
This is my life now. All of it.
I think about Savannah for exactly thirty seconds before I make myself stop.
She's out there starting her life. I'm in here starting mine.
Tonight I get my patch.
The ceremony happensin the main room of the clubhouse and it happens the way everything in the Black Saints happens. Without ceremony that isn't earned and without warmth that isn't genuine.
The room is full. Every patched brother in the chapter, the old ladies who are in the inner circle, Cam behind the bar with a look on her face that she'd never admit to. Seb is there, standing off to the side with his arms folded and his chin up, and when I clock him he gives me a slow nod that meansI'm proud of you, but I'll never say those words out loud.
Razor stands in the middle of the room with my cut in his hands.
I've seen it before, the vest itself, because they showed it to me before they added the patches. Black leather, the Saints colors on the back, the rocker that says our town underneath,the chapter name on the side. They're sewn on properly, not temporary, and seeing them on the leather in Razor's hands does something to my vision that I'm going to blame on the lights.
The room goes quiet when Razor raises his voice, not loud, just enough to carry.