“Thickens, Pop-pop!” Alexa yells in my ear. I set her on the ground and she runs toward the hens, making them squawk and flap their wings.
“Easy,” Murphy calls out. “Don’t scare them.”
“I not!” she shouts back.
“Let’s talk.” I say to Murphy. Doesn’t seem like he’s going to say anything to me otherwise.
His hard stare doesn’t offer an ounce of forgiveness. “Do I have a choice?”
I grit my teeth and resist the urge to throttle him for the disrespect. “You always have a choice.”
He scowls, and for a second, I think he’s going to tell me to fuck off. “Did you even want me for your VP?” he asks. “Or did Z force that on you?”
Let’s get right into it, why don’t we?
Stunned by the question, I rock back on my heels and stare at him. “Of course I wanted you as VP. Z made the nomination, but he didn’t have the last word.”
“Then why didn’t you trust me enough to tell me?”
“I do trust you.” I stare at the sky, searching for the right words. “The club should’ve come first. But this threw me. I never saw it coming.”
“Yeah,” he rasps. “I can imagine.”
“This…” I gesture toward the house. “It doesn’t change anything.”
“Why lie to ourselves? It changes a lot of things.”
“You’re family. The club is our family.”
“Sure,” he says, but he doesn’t sound convinced.
“Other clubs make it work.”
He snorts. “Uh-huh. The son’s usually the VP. You want me to swap places with Teller? You know I’m shit with numbers.”
The question throws me. Is that what he thinks? “Not at all. I need you right where you are.”
He shifts his jaw from side to side.
I lift my hands and wave my fingers between us in a give-it-to-me-straight gesture. “Get it out. Let’s have the conversation you wanted to have the other day.”
“You’re not ready for that conversation.”
“Yes I am. We both are.”
He jams his hands in his pockets and stares at the ground. Like something’s percolating behind his angry facade but he’s not ready to say it out loud.
“Forget our roles as president/vice president, club protocol, bylaws, or any other bullshit. Say what you need to say,” I encourage.
“You two have been having little secret meetings for months.”
“That’s not true.”
He rubs his knuckles over his chest. “I know get lost vibes when I feel ’em.”
Some of that was probably me trying to get Marcel to come clean but the instinct to protect my son keeps that thought in my head. “It wasn’t intentional.” At least that’s the truth.
“Okay, setting this family tree issue aside.” He waves his hands toward Teller’s house. “I can’t seem to do anything right in your eyes lately. And the personal stuff isn’t the only thing you kept from me.”