I almost didn’t look at ’em then, my gaze drawn out to the field so I could say a silent kinda prayer for the soul of Mute Garro, my first fallen son.
But somethin’ was there in the corner’a my eye.
Some glint’a gold that shouldn’t have been there.
Instinct froze my form ’fore my brain could catch the fuck up.
’Cause suddenly that low-grade fear I’d been livin’ with flared bright enough to blind. Some crazy fuckin’ terror that warned me I was startin’ to hallucinate my son in strange places as if the strength’a my grief was magic that could conjure him into bein’.
On that day, his birthday, I didn’t have it in me to fuckin’ withstand the break’a my own mind in addition to my mournin’.
So, I didn’t look.
Just stood there, hands fisted so tight the knuckles ached, draggin’ air that felt sharp as blades into my lungs.
There was a creak.
Just a fuckin’ creak, so slight I wouldn’t’a heard it if I’d been doin’ anythin’ but standin’ like a moron.
But it came from the goddamn porch.
The porch my son’d helped me build. Could still remember the shape’a his smile as he laughed at me for bein’ an old man as we’d laboured over it together. The smell’a his sweat with mine, the pride I’d felt watchin’ him do somethin’ I’d taught him, the fuckin’ joy I’d known seein’ the glory’a the man I’d made and raised.
The memories sucker-punched me like a prize fighter, so I was fuckin’ breathless when I manned up and let my eyes slant to the right.
He was there in my memory so fuckin’ clear every atom of my body stopped functionin’ for one surreal second.
Leanin’ against the porch railin’, long and lean as ever, gold hair gleamin’ in the strengthin’ sun, eyes so pale they mimicked ice, body strong and easy in denim and an old Metallica tee I’d given him as a kid.
He was there.
I was bein’ throttled by tears, throat swollen with ’em, eyes aflame with the effort to hold ’em in.
I knew it was some kinda mad mirage ’cause King wasn’t smilin’, and my boy was always smilin’, always laughin’ like life existed just to entertain him.
The real King, seein’ his dad, had always broke into a wide, wild grin.
I was ’bout to turn on my heel and leave the haunted house behind, maybe seek out a fuckin’ professional or a full bottle’a Crown Royal, when a sound I’d never thought I’d hear again in real life punctured the still mornin’ air.
“S’okay, Dad,” King said quietly. “You’re old, but you haven’t lost your mind yet. It’s me. I’m here.”
My heart beat against my ribs like a heavy fist as I turned slow, grass crunchin’ under my boots, to face the porch.
He was still leanin’ against the porch.
But there it was.
The grin.
Small, compressed with the weight’a strain, his smile was a thin mimicry’a his normal beamin’ expression.
But…
Fuck.
Me.
My boy was there, and he was smilin’.
I blinked hard. Once, twice, then squeezed my eyes shut and opened ’em again.
He was still there.
Reelin’, I still managed to recover my voice enough to grunt, “You’re my son and not some fucked mirage, you get your ass over ’ere and let me hug ya or punch ya to test it true.”
That smile flickered and flared brighter, but his eyes weren’t creased with mirth. They were dead and pale grey as bleached stone.
He moved.
Slow, graceful-like, the way a ghost might, I thought dazedly.
But as he came closer, I saw evidence’a somethin’ I couldn’t refute.
Time.
There were faint brackets around his mouth that hadn’t been there ’fore, his hair so long now it brushed the top of his chest where he’d always worn it cropped above his shoulders. He was bigger across the chest, startin’ to look more and more like his old man in size and scale.
He’d grown.
A dead man would be unchanged, but this man was different enough to seem bewilderingly new after eight months of absence.
He stopped three long steps from me, his face sober but for that tight smile in one corner’a his mouth. He considered me as I did him, studyin’ the changes in me, maybe.
Finally, he tipped his chin up in the universal greetin’a men like us and shrugged almost sheepishly. “I’m sorry, Dad, fuckin’ sorrier than I’ll ever be able to tell. But I hope you get I did what I had’ta to do for our family, and you taught me that. ‘Heavy is the fuckin’ head that wears the crown, even if it’s made of grease, leather, and iron.’ You told me that, and the kinda man I am, a man who loves and respects his dad more than even I could properly express? I took it to fuckin’ heart.”
He paused to step closer, and the cold plume’a his breath mingled with mine. It was a nothin’ kinda observation, but it broke the seal on the wet in my eyes and sent scaldin’ tears to fallin’.
“For the first time in our lives, you needed me. Our family needed me, and I did what any Garro woulda done. I sacrificed to protect the ones I loved.” His voice split down the middle and cracked through with the impact’a his conviction and sorrow. He extended his hand, broad palmed like me, a skull ring on his middle finger beside his weddin’ ring I’d given him when he patched-in to the club. “I did what I had to do to get the best man I know outta prison and back home with the ones who needed him.”
“We needed you,” I barked, surprised by the anger that plunged through the wet of my grief like a fallen electrical pole, rage sparkin’ through me. “We all needed you, and you fucked off for eight months, lettin’ us think you were dead?”
King stared into me, straight into me in that way he’d had since he was a boy with eyes too serious for any kid, too knowin’ for most grown men, and then he jutted out his jaw and nodded curtly. “Fuck yeah, I did. And I’d do it again it meant you outta prison, Staff Sergeant Danner convicted, our family safe at home in their fuckin’ beds instead’a terrorised by the men in blue meant to protect them. I’d do it again and again and fuckin’ again.”
It was my turn to stare into the eyes’a my son and realize there were no more vestiges’a youth in those arctic eyes. He was a man with conviction, who had sacrificed for his kin, lived these past eight months with as much grief as the rest’a us knowin’ he’d put that on us and knowin’ still he’d done it for a reason he believed in.
My gaze tipped down to that extended hand, the veins and tendons strong beneath the skin, the flesh the same pale gold as my own. My blood ran in those veins, but fuck me, if he wasn’t twice the man I’d ever hoped to be.
My hand was in his before King could blink, and I was jerkin’ him forward, off balance, to land with a hard thud against my chest, our clasped hands pressed between us. My other fist found his back, thumpin’ it as I hugged him so close our bones creaked.
I was holdin’ my son again.
Holdin’ the first boy I’d made, the precious fuckin’ surprise and one’a only two glorious outcomes from my relationship with my ex-wife. Could remember the vivid red’a his cryin’ face in my arms as I held him so fresh and alive. Could remember the first springy curls of blond sproutin’ from his head and how he’d started to run ’fore he could walk, from the start too eager to grow up.