by Emma Creed
“Tell me Nyx did not just leave the compound with your bitch.” Skid squares me with his eyes and when I go to answer, he cuts me off before I can speak.
“Jessie. She loves you and don’t even try telling me that you don’t feel the same. Hayley fucking gave up her life for you to be with her, there I said it… Hayley loved you, and I’m done pussy footin’ around your sorry ass. She knew she couldn’t be with you, but she still wanted you to be happy and that’s why she took a fucking Bastard bullet. So you’d have a chance to be loved. And you repay all that by packing that chance the fuck off to Utah.”
“Skid I—”
“Save your shit, man, stop feeling sorry for yourself. I didn't give my chance up, it was fucking taken, stolen from my fucking hands, so you won’t get sympathy from me. Now pull up your big boy pants and get the fuck out there and get her back.”
“If you’d let me finish, I’d tell ya that’s exactly what I’m about to do.” I shrug him off and straighten myself out.
“Well, then what you hanging around staring at me for?” Skid grabs my cut off the chair and forces it into my chest. “Go get your bitch and bring her home where she belongs.” For the first time in a week my friend smiles, and I grab him by the shoulders and bring him in, slapping his back. I grab my keys and head straight out to my bike. “I’ll call Nyx, tell him to turn back,” he calls after me.
“Don’t bother he won’t answer. I told him if he took a call while he was driving with my girl in his truck I’d slice open his stomach and strangle him with his own intestine.”
“Got it,” Skid says, nodding at my point and placing his phone back in his pocket. He follows me out and stands on the porch, watching me as I hop onto my bike.
“Hey, Skid,” I shout over the engine. “You’re gonna be alright. Yeah?” I check, still amazed at how the man could be thinking of anyone other than himself right now.
“Never again,” he shakes his head. “But luckily I got you assholes to keep livin’ for.” He nods, and as much as his answer cuts like a knife it’s good enough for now. I let my wheels kick up the dusty earth and I speed off to get my girl. Praying that I haven’t pushed her too far to get her back.
As travel buddies go, Nyx is up there with the worst of them. He could tell I was distraught, and he was making, what I guess for him, an effort. He’d asked me some questions about my mom, and I gave him back one-word answers because I wasn’t in the mood for a conversation. I doubt it hurt his feelings though, like he would care about my mother anyway.
As we get further out of town and further away from Jessie, I can feel panic starting to overtake rationality. I force myself to take slow, deep breaths, and try not to let the fact I don’t think I could ever go back to not having Jessie in my life again consume me.
My chest is a dead weight, struggling to lift high enough to take in my next breath as the truck continues on the freeway. I start to imagine things. At first, it’s the sound of Jessie’s bike—yes, I can tell his apart from any other bike because it’s a sound I listen out for whenever he isn’t with me. Then I swear I see his sandy blonde hair, blowing wildly as he passes Nyx’s window and cuts in front of us.
“What the fuck?” Nyx says leaning forward over the steering wheel to get a closer look. It gives me a little hope that I’m not hallucinating.
“Is that…?” I ask leaning forward myself.
“Yeah it’s Jessie, crazy son of a bitch,” Nyx confirms, and I suddenly feel the weight lift, my body calming and hope begins to spark.
We follow Jessie for a few kilometers until he sticks his left arm out and points at the next junction. “He wants me to pull off,” Nyx says, following him off the freeway and up the slip road. Jessie leads us to a rest stop and I watch him get off his bike then run towards the truck, and he rips open my door. I barely have chance to absorb what’s happening when he lifts me out of the seat, then without any explanation, he grabs my face between his hands and kisses me until I become dizzy from lack of oxygen. Despite all my confusion, I let him. It’s everything I’ve been thinking about since I left Manitou Springs.
“I’m sorry,” he pulls away to tell me, pressing his lips straight back onto mine, like he doesn’t want to break away even to speak.
“So.”
Kiss.
“Sorry.”
Kiss.
“I don’t understand?” I manage to get out in between breaks of his lips.
“I noticed you the first day I dropped Hayley off at college,” he starts.
“You were sat on the steps all by yourself, totally unaffected by all the chaos that surrounded you. Freshmen not knowing where to go, everyone trying so hard to impress and make friends on the first day. You were eating an apple, and your hair was tied up on top of your head. You had those sexy as fucking sin glasses on and looked so beautiful. Everything stopped for me. Everything. I hadn’t even spoken to you, and I doubted everything I was.” His hands on my face are trembling as he speaks. “Hayley got out of the truck and I drove home, and I couldn’t get you out of my head, not even for a second. I wanted to know everything about you. Every little fucking thing, like what it felt like to touch your skin, and how your hair would smell up close.”
“Jesus Christ,” I hear Nyx huff.
I try to tone down my goofy smile by biting down on my lip.
“I wanted to talk to you myself, to ask you what your deal was but I was fucking petrified. So for the next few months, I just watched you. You went to Bernie’s every Friday the same as us, and every single Friday while I was driving to pick Hayley up I’d try and convince myself to talk to you, but then as soon as I saw you again, I’d back out.”
“But why? Why couldn't you just be normal, come over and ask me my name? Why all the deceit and fake friend crap?”
“’Coz fucking look at you, Mads, you’re just about everything that's fucking right about the world, and I’m just about everything wrong with it. A blind man could see that you were as pure as fuckin’ air. That you were too innocent for me even to be looking at.
And, because I’ve never cared before, never wanted anyone the way I want you, I didn’t know how to fuckin’ deal with it. You put things in my head that I didn't even know I was capable of thinking. Even then, that first time I saw you, I’d figured by the time I’d gotten home that I liked you enough to stay away from you. I’ve spent every day since then trying, trying so hard to do what I thought was fuckin’ decent, but failing.
People try telling me I’m a good person, but when I'm with you, the feelings you give me actually make me believe that maybe I could be…” I see how sincere he is, and feel the tears form in my eyes as I listen.
“Mads, I fuckin’ love you, and for that reason, I can’t give you up.” His forehead rests on mine, and he breathes as though the heaviness of the whole world has just risen from his shoulders.
I wish I had words for him, but I’m speechless. I’ve never had anyone say things like that about me before, and I realize I only ever want it to be him who does.
“Fuckin’ says something, Mads.” He swipes his hands through his hair, then bangs his fist on the door of the truck like he’s being tortured.
“I love you too.” The words come out by themselves, sounding as though I've been saying them my whole life. I know by the way his eyes check me over that he’s trying to catch me in a lie, but he won’t. I mean every word.
“Come home with me?” he asks, tipping his head to one side and making my heart leap. I let him think that I have to contemplate the idea, leaving a heavy silence in the air before I speak.
“One condition,” I tell him, crossing my arms like a bratty child.
“Name it,” he snaps back, shaking his head as if there’s nothing I could say that he wouldn’t make happen.
“You stop making assumptions over what you think I want. Why do you think I went to Bernie’s every Friday after class? I could have sat alone in my room and done my homework like I did every other night
.”
“What you trying to say?” He looks back at me with a hint of a smirk.
“I’m trying to tell you that Maddy goody-two-shoes had the hots for the sexy biker who hung out in Bernie’s every Friday,” I tell him, a little embarrassed. I’d noticed him months before Hayley became my friend. Used to watch him and wonder what it would be like to be with a guy like him. I’d known Jessie was part of the club before I’d asked him because I’d seen him in his cut so many times. I never really understood why he kept it from me.
“So stop assuming. Jessie, you've given me so much. You care for me in a way I've never been cared about before. I love everything about you, even all the wrong things, you don't have to hide yourself from me. I want you, all of you.”
“You’re gonna regret saying that, darlin’,” he tells me, just before his lips press back onto mine and he lifts me up off my feet, I feel the smile on his lips as I straddle his hips and let him carry me across to his bike.
“Hey, does this mean we don't have to go to Utah?” Nyx calls out from the truck behind us, and Jessie drags his lips off mine to speak.
“It means we ain't going to Utah… But you still are.”
“The fuck?” Nyx moans. “What for?”
“I need you to pick something up for me.” Jessie looks for my reaction as he speaks. “I need you to go get Mad’s mama and bring her back to the club.” My breath catches in my throat as I replay his words in my head.
“Really?” I check I heard him right.
“Yeah, I'll speak to Prez, we can get her a job in the bar.” Sitting me on his bike seat he must have noticed the horrified look on my face and he quickly corrects himself. “Not that kinda job.” He rolls his eyes and climbs on in front of me. “We have free cabins, she can make herself a home, and she’ll be safe on the compound, I promise.”
“See, just when I don’t think I can fall any deeper, you go prove me wrong.” I reach my hand around him and flick his nose playfully with my finger.
“Keep on falling, darlin’, I'll catch you at the bottom.” He winks over his shoulder.
Nyx looks unimpressed as we turn around and pass him on the way out and I hold on tightly to Jessie as he rides us home. It’s the longest journey I've taken on the back of his bike, and it feels amazing. Wind wraps around my hair and tightens my skin and if it weren't for the purring and vibration of the engine beneath me, I would feel like I was floating.
We make it back to the entrance of the compound without me even realizing, and Jessie cuts the engine and twists his body around. The sad look on his face makes me panic that he’s changed his mind again.
“Mads, you know this is all I can ever offer you, right? You sure it's what you want?” He waits nervously for my answer, but he should know by now that this is all I want.
“I want you, this club is where you belong, and they’re your family. So I belong here too,” I tell him. “Besides, the guys are kinda growing on me,” I giggle.
“I know it’s shit right now, you being trapped here because of the Bastards, but I promise I’m gonna find a way for you to feel safe again,” he assures me.
“I know you will,” I say without any doubt.
“So no turning back?” he checks one last time.
“Never,” I shake my head then lean forward and cuddle into his back.
“You must be fucking crazy,” he shakes his head and laughs as he restarts the engine and takes off up the dirt track that leads to the club. We pass the clubhouse and the garage where Skid lifts his head from the hood of a car he’s working on and nods to us. I cling a little tighter as Jessie takes us further up the track and all the way back to his cabin.
Our cabin.
Our home.
I dare anything left out there to be thrown at us to come and try. I know we will always make it through fighting. Because Jessie and I were two lost souls, and now we’ve found each other, we’re indestructible.
I've never been a religious man. Yet this place has been my sanctuary for the past ten years. Somewhere I could always come to clear my head and think straight.
Before I lost Hayley, I used to admire the beautiful windows. I had an appreciation for whoever put the time and effort into achieving such intricate detail. The people in the scenes weren't just figures on display, each one of them were characters telling a story. But just lately, as the sun bursts through the glass and illuminates the stunning artistry, I’d felt their eyes burning into me. Judging me, and it was becoming suffocating.
Fuck. If Mary-Ann had been right about nothing else it was that Hayley hadn't asked to be born into this life, and she certainly hadn't deserved to be taken from it.
Being a woman in our world was never going to be easy.
I tried for her, and I failed. Thinking about it now it made the decision I'd regretted since the day I’d made it eighteen years ago all the more justifiable. Which has me wondering why the hell I couldn’t just let that shit lie in peace, and why I’d asked Jessie's old lady to dig up a past I swore I’d laid to rest.
I look away from the windows unable to bare the scrutinous eyes any longer. I know I can trust Maddy with my secret. She’s trusted me with hers. The USB stick Maddy had given me not long after Jessie hauled her back here was still sitting in my safe. I’d known as soon as I’d heard what was on it that it was what Chop had been looking for the day he came and killed Carly. I should have shared the information by now, told the brothers what I knew, but I couldn't have my new VP losing his head at a time like this, not when I need him more than ever.
The voices on that recording belonged to men I considered to be my best friends, one already dead, the other about to be dead. What the girl hadn't realized when handing the device over to me was that the information she was giving me wasn't all new to me, just a confirmation of what I'd thought I heard. Chop had mentioned Mary-Ann in the video before he killed Carly, it had weighed on my mind ever since. Not saying Mary-Ann hadn’t gotten what she had deserved, she'd been screwing me over since the day she got knocked up with Hayley. She was never supposed to be my old lady. But learning that Chop had deceived me had been a sledgehammer to the fucking balls. He’d gone behind my back, and I know now that he’d killed my wife and almost killed Hayley in the process.
I've acted like a leader, chosen not to react, and ignored the blood that boils beneath my skin when I heard him mention Mary-Ann’s name. You don’t become in charge of the biggest club in the state by losing your shit on a whim.
Maddy's recording had given me an explanation to why Chop had killed Mary-Ann, and proven that there wasn’t shit wrong with my hearing. In my eyes though, Chop’s death still belongs to Skid. He’d taken away the person he loved.
There was something else Maddy hadn't realized when she handed over her latest evidence against Chop. In doing so, she had brought something else to light. Another action Chop would pay for when we found him. She couldn't have known who the other voice in the recording belonged to, and she’d promised me no one else had heard it. So the secret remained at my hand for now. Only I know that the man who was giving Chop the ultimatum in the recording never made it to Manitou Springs to take care of business that week. That he was found two days later dead in a motel room, and his kid had been unlucky enough to have to witness the whole thing. The hairs on the back of my neck had stood up when I’d first heard the voice, coming at me from the fucking grave. Brian Donavon. Jessie's dad. It’s best for now that this stay hidden. I’m weak, and there’s so much anger within the club I need Jessie focusing on club business, not vengeance.
The knock on the chapel door echoes loudly pulling me out of thought and back on to the reason I came here. I call out for Nyx to enter, and he marches in with his usual bad attitude, his baggy jeans hanging over his bright white trainers. It still surprises me how a lad his age can be so tall and broad.
"You asked to see me." He nods, keeping his shit together as always, though he couldn't help his eyes skating around the room. Pros
pects are all the same when they have a chance to enter church, no matter how guarded they are. Being in here is a reminder of why they put up with all the shit we throw at them. I’m well aware that a few of the brothers don't like his attitude, reckon him to be too big for his boots. Some go as far as to say disrespectful, but I disagree. Nyx reminds me of myself when I was his age, intolerable to other people's bullshit. Kid has spent his whole childhood in foster care, who could blame him for wanting to prove to the people around him that he has no weakness.
But I know differently. I may not have figured out what his was just yet, but everyone has a weakness, even me. The kid’s about to find out exactly what mine is.
"Yeah." I gesture for him to sit in the space that’s usually occupied by Troj, and he makes himself comfortable slouching back in the chair. His elbow hangs lazily on the arm rest and his hand rests on his mouth. He’s a cocky shit alright.
"You never finished high school. Am I right?" I question him.
"School weren't for me. I dropped in 10th," he replies. I shrug, not many of us here could say we made it through to the end.
"You know a few people around here don't think you’re ever gonna patch in. Think you don't have enough respect." His facial expression may not change, but I notice how his fists clench.
"You’ve been a prospect a few years now. You gotta be eager to make the cut kid?"
"Wouldn't be here if I wasn't," he responds, and it gets a laugh out of me. I can't help admire his integrity.
"See, I think you’re misjudged, Nyx. Reckon you think you have a point to prove. That the day you left your foster home you promised yourself that you would never be walked over again, am I right?" His face remains stone, but the way his eyes swell with recollection and his jaw clenches tell me I’m getting somewhere.
"I'm gonna give you a chance to prove yourself once and for all," I tell him. Nyx’s posture suddenly changes, and I can see he’s intrigued when he sits up and leans forward. I've fed his hunger.