Irresponsible hoodlum was Grammie Lowe’s favorite descriptive phrase for Ghost. Denise Camden Lowe, of former Little Miss East Tennessee fame, had made what she liked to call an educated decision the day her teenage daughter dragged a twenty-seven-year-old biker through the front door for the first time. Men who rode motorcycles and marked themselves in permanent ink were wastrels of the worst kind. “He’ll never amount to anything,” she’d warned Maggie. “And taking advantage of a little girl – he’s a monster!”
The monster part was debatable, depending on which angle you were looking from. But irresponsible…clearly, Denise had never been on the receiving end of one of the man’s lectures.
“…at all times,” he was saying, pacing back and forth in front of the sofa, hands jammed at his hips, his posture comical. He should have been a drill sergeant, Ava reflected.
“Why doesn’t he just duct tape you to his back?” Aidan whispered from the corner of his mouth.
Ava bit down on her tongue against a giggle.
“What?” Ghost whipped around on them, dark eyes flicking between the two of them.
Aidan cleared his throat and said, “I was just explaining to your sweet princess here how important it is to listen to your wise–”
“Stuff it,” Ghost said, and resumed pacing.
Aidan lifted his brows at her and she pressed a hand over her mouth to keep from snorting.
Princess? she mouthed, when she could. Kiss my ass. She stuck out her tongue at him.
He feigned a deep bow in a moment when Ghost was turning on his heel and had his back to them, sitting upright and munching jerky innocently when their dad passed them.
I don't care how big, bad, scary or powerful someone is, his kids are always going to mock him behind his back. This is one of the lighter scenes in the chapter, like Mercy's antics at Bell Bar later, and I love the chance to sprinkle a little silly in amidst all the angst.
Twenty-Nine manages to be fun, somber, and, thanks to that, one of the beefier chapters of the book. The emotional meat of it consists of Ava starting to put some labels on her unhappiness since coming home, wrestling with its causes, and the attitudes of the men in her life. Ao3 trope tags would include things like #mutualpining, #jealousy, #ghostisanasshole, and #alcoholconsumption.
Very Serious plot beats are discussed here, chiefly with regard to the Carpathains' return to Knoxville and all their probable revenge. But one of the scenes mentioned to me most often (and fondly at that) by readers is the Bell Bar scene, where Mercy and Ava both get a little drunk at their respective tables, miss one another, and think the other is beyond reach.
Mercy said, “Lemme ask you something.” He leaned against the back of his stool, arms folded. “What do you think of that boyfriend of hers? Does he look shifty to you? You know, just your bodyguard opinion. Off the record.”
“Jesus Christ, Merc,” RJ said.
Walsh pulled the Johnnie Walker deftly out of reach – both glasses.
“Hey,” Mercy protested, and Walsh held up a finger in silent refusal.
“Um…” Littlejohn scratched at his hair. “Shifty like…how?”
“Like shifty,” Mercy said, exasperated. Jesus, why was this kid so thick? And why couldn’t he come up with any appropriate synonyms? He wasn’t drunk. Not really… “Like…no es bueno.”
“Oh, look,” Walsh said, “he’s trilingual.”
Mercy flipped him the bird. “Write me a sonnet, Shakespeare.” And turned back to the prospect.
“This is so not good,” RJ muttered.
This is one of the reasons I love Walsh: he's trustworthy. Up to this point, Mercy hasn't been able to talk to any of his club brothers about the way he still feels about Ava, and how difficult it is to see her with Ronnie. Every Dog knows what happened five years ago, but it's not exactly something he can discuss with any of them. Here, it's mostly an alcohol-induced slip of the tongue, but he does trust Walsh, even sober; everyone does. Walsh is the guy who can know all about your dirty laundry, and isn't ever going to gossip about it with anyone else. Though he might try to save you from yourself. At least a little.
“I want my drink back,” Mercy said, and Walsh moved the glass even farther away.
“Well that’s not happening.”
These bar scenes are also where we meet Holly for the first time! Spoiler alert: I was already mapping Price of Angels in my head at this stage, so I decided to bring her to life a little early and shave off some explaining time in book two.
“See?” RJ said. “She’s just…something’s off.” He shook his head and poured the beer, frowning as he tried to puzzle it out.
“She’s scared,” Walsh said. A quick glance to the Englishman’s ever-present flat expression proved that he’d detected the fear, too. His blue eyes touched Mercy’s and they acknowledged each other’s perception. “Of what, who knows. But she ain’t interested in letting any of us help her figure it out.”
RJ snorted. “Not us, no. But she’s got her sights on somebody for sure.” He motioned across the bar with his mug, and Mercy was surprised to see that Michael had a corner booth all to himself.
The guy was reading, some thick hardback book open on the table in front of him, hand stroking idly through the condensation on his beer mug. His usual lack of expression seemed appropriate for once, given what he was doing. If it weren’t for the cut, and the hard bulges of muscle visible beneath the long, thin sleeves of his shirt, he would have looked like a professor. As it was, the benign, emotionless picture was set off by a certain terrifying aura of calculated violence.
And Holly made a beeline for him, sliding into the booth across from him, letting her tray rest against the seat, propping an elbow on the table and saying something to him with a smile that set her whole face to glowing.
“Michael?” Mercy asked. “She likes him?”
And Ronnie proves that a) he's not as naive as he seems, and b) definitely knows that Ava had some sort of romance with a biker. He'd be stupid not to at least suspect it, given she grew up with the club, but he definitely isn't expecting her ex to be the scariest looking dude he's ever seen.
“Which one is he?”
Ava felt her throat constrict. “Which one is who?” She tried to play dumb.
“Okay, I may not have a clue about this club stuff, but I’m not so stupid I can’t see that you obviously had some sort of thing with one of these guys. What was the name ? – Mercy?” He nodded and tipped his head toward the table of Dogs. “Which one? He’s over there, isn’t he? And that’s why you look like you just got punched in the stomach.”
The waitress returned, with perfect timing, and set down their drinks. Ava ordered them a basket of wings and a plate of fries, and threw down half her drink in one swallow as the brunette stowed her pad and walked away.
Ronnie may have enjoyed the cleavage, but once the girl was gone, he was laser-guided on Ava again. “So?” He lifted his brows.
She sighed, and ran her finger around the rim of her heavy glass tumbler. “Mercy, yeah,” she said, feeling defeated. There was no sense pretending at this point, not if he’d figured it out. Her face heated and she furthered the problem with another slug of Jack. “He’s the tall one, with the black hair.”
Now it was Ronnie’s turn to look like he’d been punched in the stomach. “What?” He twisted around in his chair and took a good long stare at Mercy; he had to be seeing the same stalwart man she saw, the way he made all furniture seem insubstantial. “No.” He was shaking his head when he turned back around, his eyes wide, face pale. “No. No way were you ever with that guy.”
My personal favorite scene of the chapter is the final one, the nighttime kitchen table moment between Ava and Ghost.
Ava's been rattled, unhappy, and afflicted with a yearning she doesn't want to name outright because it reminds her of five years ago, and makes her feel like a kid again - in a bad way. A lot of this is about Mercy, but not all of it.
I'm hard-pressed to think of a post-coming-of-age story in which a character is able to return to a life cut short by circumstances and pick right back up where they left off. Student of literature that she is, Ava knows this well, and has told herself, during her time away at undergrad, that she hasn't just moved on, but that she's become a better version of herself. But hearing Ghost say that hurts, because the longer she's back in Knoxville, the more she realizes that her "growth" was a valiant attempt and a convincing charade, but nothing true and spiritual and deep. She's the same person she was before - and that's a person (she thinks) Mercy never loved, and which her father and boyfriend think no longer exists.
Much is made in literary circles of subverting reader expectations. I chose, in this novel, and the series as a whole, to subvert character expectations instead. Probably the "good" or "correct" outcome would be for Ava to have actually moved on; to fulfill the old "you can't go home again" trope. But I went for the opposite. Ava's fast nearing a crossroads, and quietly accepting here that Ghost will never understand her is another nudge toward a complete and total return to her factory setting.
“You’re finding your way. Your way, and it has nothing to do with the club, or me...” He frowned savagely. “Or people who ought
to know better.” Read: Mercy. He snorted, then the softening came again, such a rare and valuable thing, that Ava hated that she hated what he said next. “I’m proud of you.”
Her smile was thin, but she couldn’t seem to help it. “You wanted me to be different.” From the rest of you, she left unsaid.
“I wanted you to be better,” Ghost corrected. “And you are.”
The backs of her eyes burned. She blinked and stared at her hands.
“I just…” Ghost took a troubled breath. “I wanted you to know that. That you’re doing a good job and I’m proud.”
That was probably her cue to leave, because she wasn’t going to get bigger praise than that. But she felt unsteady. It had been a very long time, she suddenly realized, since she’d sought shelter in the arms and leather-covered chests of any of the Lean Dogs in her life. She missed that. She was rabidly nostalgic for that, and wanted to dive across the table and into her father’s lap so he could tuck her under his chin and promise to put bullets in all her fears.
But she wasn’t a little girl anymore – not that club-attached girl she’d been growing up – and he was proud of that.
“You okay?”
“Fine.” She shoved to her feet so fast her hip caught the edge of the table, and she bit down on a yelp.
Maggie would have called her back, forced her to sit down again and talk about whatever was putting the stricken expression on her face. But Ghost didn’t – he never did – and he let her go.
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