Brother to Brother: The Sacred Brotherhood Book I (3 page)

I finished changing Noah and picked him up, hugging him and asking, “Are you hungry?”

“Yeah,” he said in his soft baby voice and it was one of the things that made me smile. He was growing up so fast, and so many things he said were clear but then he would come up with something silly and it was a never ending source of joy… my only joy now.

“What does he eat?” my head snapped up and I quailed at Archer’s voice I started to immediately apologize and he gave me one of his withering looks, like he didn’t give a fuck, so I quit while I was ahead and shut my mouth. “What does he eat?” he asked again.

“Anything, he isn’t allergic to anything,” I said.

“I meant formula, baby food; cereal? That kind of thing,” he said and with a grunt he sat up.

“Oh, regular food like what you and I eat,” Noah shifted in my arms and I readjusted him.

“Mamma, hungee!” he said and Archer almost,
almost
cracked a smile. I couldn’t help myself,
I
smiled.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“Chicken nuggets,” he said clearly and I sighed.

“Okay, chicken nuggets is not breakfast food, how about cereal?” I asked.

“Pancakes good?” Archer asked.

“Pancakes!” Noah lit up and I laughed.

“I think you have a winner there,” I said and Archer nodded, climbing to his feet.

“I’m gonna run out and get you guys breakfast, but I need your car to get to work,” he said stretching.

“I thought you just got home from work,” I said.

“Yeah, well, I’ve discovered you have to work twice as hard at a living when it’s honest,” he said with a frown.

“Oh,” I murmured softly. Back in Arizona I’d known the club to be in less than legitimate dealings. Drugs, money, weapons, you name it and they ran it for the cartels out of Mexico. Still, I wasn’t so dumb that you would
ever
hear me talk about it.

“What am I supposed to do about lunch or dinner?” I asked.

“Don’t worry about it for now, that’s what. I’ll bring back some rolls of quarters, since you’ll be here all day you can sort out this mess,” he said, gesturing to the piles of mine and Noah’s clothes.

“Okay,” I was looking at the crib and asked, “Where did that come from?”

“Never mind,” he grated. “I’ll be back,” and with that, he hauled himself onto his feet and left us. I sighed and hugged Noah, eyeing the TV.

“Cartoons, buddy?” I asked and Noah threw his arms around my neck with an enthusiastic “Yah!”

I turned on the TV and looked for the remote, switching channels until I landed on Billy & Mandy, which would just have to do.

“Okay, bud?” I asked but he was already gone, fully absorbed in the happenings on the screen. I sighed, “Right, okay,” I muttered to myself and began sorting through the rest of the mess on the table, sorting laundry by type, whites, coloreds, and darks.

I had no idea how I was supposed to do laundry with Noah, the laundry room being
downstairs? Somewhere? Maybe?
In any case, I wasn’t
about
to leave my son alone not even for a minute. Too many things could happen, he could fall, he could choke, and I tried so hard,
I tried too hard
, to protect him…

Archer returning, opening up the front door, startled me. He froze and I did likewise, my hand pressed to my chest. He didn’t say a word, just finished entering his small apartment, closing the door behind him. He had a couple of bags of fast food clutched in one hand.

“So what happens now?” I asked softly.

“Now you feed the boy and I go to work, I already said that,” he said frowning.

“And after that?”

He sighed, “You both can stay here, for now, until you find something better. In exchange, I expect you to keep this place clean and to fix meals.”

“Thank you,” I murmured, “I’ll find a job as soon as I can, start saving, get an apartment of mine and Noah’s.”

“Whatever,” he grunted and dropped the bags on the coffee table. Noah got down off the couch and started to go through them and I sighed, going over to him and getting him out of the bags so I could take care of him.

“Anything you need, make a list. We’ll get it taken care of tonight. This is the best I can do until I get off. Here’s money for food, and the quarters. Order pizza for lunch or something.” He paused and looked around. “I mean it, I expect this to be sorted out by the time I get back.”

He dropped an envelope and two rolls of quarters onto the coffee table and turned to leave.

“And
I
mean it, Archer… thank you.”

“The boy –”

“Noah,” I said, and Archer scowled at the correction.

“Noah, is family. Grind ain’t here to take on his responsibility; that leaves me,” he said and it was less than a rousing endorsement, especially given his tone. He left the apartment, shutting the door tightly behind him, and I felt my shoulders drop. Archer
clearly
wasn’t happy about our being here, but he was giving us a chance, and that was really all I could ask for. If he weren’t awful to Noah, well, then that was really better than I expected. He could treat
me
poorly, but to be honest, given his track record thus far, I think both the best and worst I could expect was his cold indifference, which was fine.

Indifference beat getting slapped around, it also beat being derided and insulted on the regular. I didn’t want Noah around either of those things. He needed to grow up understanding how to treat women. It was a big part of why I’d left Arizona in the first place. I hadn’t known what to expect, coming here, to be honest. So far, it was both better and worse than I imagined.

I fed myself with the breakfast sandwiches in the bag, and Noah with the pancakes and syrup cups. There were two things of orange juice in one of those cardboard drink carriers. I poured some into one of Noah’s sippy cups for him, and put the rest into the barren refrigerator. I drank the other, and with a sigh, continued dealing with the piles of laundry.

Once they were all sorted, I had to figure out how to go about carting both them, and my one year old, back and forth to the laundry room with me. It was a daunting task to be sure. I gathered the first load into Archer’s lone laundry basket and was about to open my mouth to tell Noah we were going to go when a knock fell on the front door.

“Melody!” A woman’s voice called from the other side, “Melody, we’re some of the ol’ ladies from the club, can you open the door?”

I peeked out the blinds, through the window over the couch and sure enough, two petite women stood in front of Archer’s front door. I went to it, and unlocked it at the knob, opening it up.

“Hi!” the one who’d called out said brightly.

“Um, hi,” I said back nervously, stepping aside.

“I’m Ashton, this is Hayden. Trigger is my ol’ man and Reaver is hers,” she said and they both breezed into the living room, arms loaded with plastic bins; paper grocery bags in them.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know any of the brothers’ names here yet, Noah and I just got in yesterday.” I shifted uncomfortably and closed the front door.

“I heard all about it,” the one introduced as Hayden said, rolling her eyes.

“Was Reaver one of the men there, then?” I asked.

“Yeah, he’s my husband,” she said smiling.

“Look at you!” Ashton cooed, and she smiled, waving at Noah, “I’m Ashton, what’s your name?” she asked and I went to Noah and picked him up.

“Can you say ‘hi’?” I asked him.

“Hi,” he said softly. For some reason I wanted to instantly like these women, but I was still reserving judgment. Back in Arizona, the ol’ ladies of the club there wouldn’t hesitate to throw you under the bus. Snakes in the grass, all of them.

“He’s Archer’s?” Hayden asked and looked tickled pink.

“Oh, no… he’s Grinder’s,” I said softly.

“Oh, you poor thing!” Ashton said and touched my shoulder.

“I… I still don’t know what happened,” I said and my eyes welled. It was still so awful and new.

Hayden sighed, “Tell you what, let’s get this place sorted, and laundry going and then we can all sit down and talk about it.”

Ashton was nodding, tossing her long auburn braid over her shoulder. I bit my lower lip and asked, “Did Archer call you?”

Ashton and Hayden exchanged a look and rolled their eyes, “No, Reaver told me about you, and Ashton and I figured with Archer’s bike still at the club he had you holed up here like some kind of prisoner, all by yourself, with an infant.”

“We figured we’d come to the rescue with a welcome and some grown up conversation, but don’t you worry. We swung by the garage he works at to ask permission first. He told us you probably needed a few things like laundry soap, and some bins to stash your stuff, so here we are.” Ashton smiled brightly and these two struck me as genuine. Still, I kept on my guard.

“Thank you,” I murmured.

“Not a problem, and you’re not you know,” Hayden said.

“Not what?”

“A prisoner, silly!” Ashton laughed. “You get used to these guys acting like Neanderthals and doing what they want like you’re some kind of afterthought,” she made a face, “The good news is, they usually make it hard to be mad at them, because they’re just doing it to protect you.”

Hayden’s look grew distant and she muttered something to the effect of, “Oh trust me, you can still be mad.”

Ashton sighed, “He meant well,” she said and I was bouncing between the two of them like a tennis match.

“Well you know what they say about hell and good intentions,” she said dispassionately.

“I feel like I’ve missed something significant,” I said, my curiosity getting the better of me.

“Trust us, it all ties in to what happened surrounding your man,” Hayden said. I must have made a face, because she froze, both her and Ashton looking at me, “I’m sorry did I say something wrong?” she asked.

“Grinder was never technically ‘my’ anything,” I uttered. “I was just a club...” I paused and looked at Noah who was playing with a lock of my hair against my shirt. “Well, you know…” I uttered.

“A club bunny?” Ashton supplied and I smiled.

“That’s what we call them here,” Hayden murmured. “It’s a little more kid friendly and not quite as rude to the girls.”

I laughed, “I’ve never met an ol’ lady who cared about
that
.”

“Well, we do things a bit different here,” Ashton said and smiled.

“Right, so how do we want to do this?” Hayden asked, “All three of us to the laundry room?”

“Four,” I said, boosting Noah higher on my hip, “And sure, I’m not quite comfortable letting my little man out of my sight just yet.”

“Perfectly understandable,” Ashton smiled.

“You have any?” I asked.

“I can’t,” she said and I could see it pained her.

“We’ve been trying, but no luck just yet,” Hayden said, blushing.

“Revelator and Mandy have a seven month old girl named Eden, and they’re already pregnant with their second. Ghost and Shelly are pregnant with their first, so there’s that.” Ashton beamed. She and Hayden had set down their bins and grocery items and were pulling the bags out and replacing them with laundry to carry down. Hayden popped an odd looking container of laundry soap on top of one of the piles of clothes.

I asked Noah, “Go for a laundry basket ride?”

“Yah!”

“You going to hold still?” I asked.

“Yah!”

I nestled Noah in among the laundry in the basket I’d loaded and hefted it, groaning. “Oi! You’re getting too big for this, monkey boy!”

“No!” he called laughing and giggling.

“Yes!”

My son and I bantered back and forth as I followed the two women out and downstairs in search of the laundry room. We found the door, down at the end, by way of following our noses and the smell of drier sheets on the crisp, but not terribly cold, spring air. It was warm in the laundry room where two of the seven driers were going. We took up three of the seven washers, the units stacked, washer on bottom, drier on top, along the little room’s walls. Three on one end four along another wall, the remaining two walls containing a sink, a coin dispenser, and a powdered laundry soap dispenser. The free long wall had a Formica workbench where residents could fold their clothes.

“Shi-oot!” I cried, “I forgot the quarters on the coffee table.”

“I’ll get them,” Hayden said brightly, “I’ll be right back.”

“Thank you,” I called after her.

Ashton and I sorted laundry into the washers and Hayden returned with the quarters, Ashton opened up the laundry soap container, extracting little pillow packs of detergent.

“I’ve never used those, are they any good?”

“Oh my god,
yes
,” she said, “You have to use two for loads this size, but they are so convenient, you just have to make sure your hands are totally dry before you handle them or
big
mess.”

“That and you should find someplace really high to keep them, they’re shiny and pretty and awfully appealing to little ones to stick in their mouths,” she made a face and I had to agree.

“Pretty sure he’d only do it once, but I’d rather not have to call poison control freaking out,” I agreed.

I picked Noah up along with the laundry basket on the floor and we returned upstairs with our baskets and bins. Ashton set a timer on her phone to remind us to go back down and switch the laundry out to the driers and start the last two loads.

“Archer left me a little money for pizza for lunch, I um, I don’t have anything to pay you for the laundry soap or –” the women started laughing, cutting me off.

“Trust me, Melody. Money is
no
object for me; consider this a ‘welcome’ present from the club.” Ashton smiled and I shifted uncomfortably.

“She’s serious, not to be rude, but she’s a millionaire and I while I come from old money;
I do just fine for myself with interior decorating. This stuff,” Hayden swept out a hand, “Is really nothing, for either of us.”

“It still doesn’t feel right,” I murmured.

“I’ve been where you are, starting from nothing…” Ashton said softly, and launched into the story about how she and Trigger first met, and how the club helped her.

“And your husband committed suicide?” I asked skeptically. Men like what she described him to be just didn’t
do
that, at least not from what I knew and my own experiences. She and Hayden exchanged a telling look and said yes in unison before dissolving into fits of laughter.