Outlaw's Ride: An MC Romance

by Carter Steele

  Since we arrived in Devil Kings HQ in Rosewood almost a year ago our lives had been more about damage control than anything else, what with me coming back from the dead legally and court cases from everything that happened in Baltimore. This vacation was our way of marking the end of a chapter, but more importantly the beginning of a new one.

  Wreck liked Rosewood well enough for a small, midwestern town and I was just happy to be away from the chaos and crime of a sprawling metropolis. It was a good place to set down roots and maybe raise a family although we hadn’t talked about that much just yet. I was happy to take things slow as long as we were together.

  Bravo and Vikki had set us up in an apartment downtown and had found us jobs in the meantime. It wasn’t anything glamorus. They asked me to help run their website, be their researcher and do a bunch of IT work which was fine for the time being since I had so much experience with all of Patrick’s legal and illegal projects. Wreck went to work as a bike mechanic and helped out on any off-the-books problems that Bravo needed taken care of.

  When we got back though everything was going to change.

  I’d just passed my GED test before we left on this vacation and would be starting an art history class at a local college in a few weeks with a goal of teaching art eventually. It was always something that brought me peace in dark times and I really liked the idea of using art to help or enrich the lives of others. I was very nervous about taking the steps necessary for the enrolment process but fortunately some of the other ladies at the club kept nudging me along, non- more so than my new close friend, Elisha. She owned her own bounty hunting business and was relatively new to the Devil Kings as well. She was a tough love kind of woman and would call bullshit whenever I found excuses not to follow through. She was a lot stricter about it with me than even Wreck!

  Wreck was actively trying to figure out his place in a world that wasn’t so transient. The time for being a nomad had passed for him and he was also quickly growing unhappy with being a club enforcer as well. ‘Bashin’ skulls was a young man’s game,’ he was fond of saying. While he would stay in the MC, he liked the idea of being a mechanic for the town instead of just the club.

  I think he wanted to be known for fixing things rather than destroying them.

  Buck’s words and what happened to his brothers still kept him up at night occasionally and every once in a while would cause him to excuse himself to deal with the grief privately. At my behest Wreck agreed to talk to a therapist. Bravo actually set one up for him that he used personally to overcome some demons of his past. It was going to be a long road for Wreck, but he was making progress with the healing process thanks to an exceptional local therapist. For the first six months after his brothers died he refused to so much as mention their names and now he could openly recount some of the good times. It was a start.

  Dreamer had started therapy with Wreck, but it wasn’t a good fit for him. Instead, after several months he decided to transfer to a Devil Kings chapter in southern California and reconnect with some family, especially a few close cousins. Last we heard he’d found a nice girl and was putting together a new book of poetry. We’d go visit him over my winter break from college.

  One of the tour guides passed us with his group and told us we were in the home stretch, which was good because the sky was starting to bleed with the oranges of sunset.

  “Last set of soul-crushing stairs,” I signed to Wreck as we looked up at a forty-five degree incline of about fifty feet. Each step was nearly twice the size of a standard stair and there was a sheer drop of what felt like a couple miles on one side. The Incas really had a flair for the dramatic when they built this place.

  “Last stairs?” Wreck looked up at the steep incline, hopeful.

  “Oh no, there will probably be a ton more stairs.” I signed, winking at him. “This is just the last of the soul-crushing ones.”

  “At this point, they’re all fucking soul-crushing,” Wreck grumbled, then hoisted both packs into tighter positions on his body and started up.

  Looking out over the valley once more before tackling the first giant step, I thought about my mom and brother and how they would love the view.

  Reaching out to my mom and brother after I was free and set up by the Devil Kings was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life. Gone were the days of sleepovers, school proms, flicking cheerios at Jeffy before school, dance recitals and being grounded for flunking science and skipping a class. Mom’s baby girl died that night in the car with her friend. So many thoughts paralyzed me.

  Would she even recognize the person I was now or would she see me as a stranger that looked like Sarah?

  I wouldn’t have blamed her or Jeffy if they didn’t know who I was. For the longest time – with what Patrick kept me doing – I didn’t recognize myself. Wreck was a huge help in getting me to push past those fears. One of the many things he said really hit home and pushed me through my fear. He told me, ‘Every second I spend apart from them now is another second Patrick keeps me locked away in that shitty room above the laundromat. The door is open and when you walk out that whole fucking bulding burns to the ground. You’ll never be in that prison again.”

  His words resonated so much that I immediately started feverishly typing my estranged, back-from-the-dead daughter reintroduction email. It took me two full days to write and rewrite and rewrite and rewrite...but when I finally finished it I didn’t hesitate for a second to hit send.

  Then my confidence and resolve completely evaporated and I cried for an hour straight.

  With Wreck’s support I got through the anxious waiting period for the initial reply and soon actually developed a back and forth pen pal relationship with my mom! It turned out that the FBI had told her about me being alive a little while ago and she was hoping every day that I would call her. I told her everything that happened, including why that call would never come, even now. Reconnecting with her through messages on a screen was the right way for us to do it. We had plenty of time to cry while reading and writing and could tell each other the whole story without having to actually hear any of it said out loud which might have been too difficult for both of us.

  Eventually a month later we even had a video call together with Wreck serving as my translator. When Mom found out I couldn’t speak she started learning to read sign language, but wasn’t nearly as proficient as Wreck was yet. These days though, after weekly video chats and even visiting in person a few times she had everything down like a pro.

  Between the high altitude, the incredible distance we walked and the fact that I should’ve hiked at least one small mountain before attempting this ridiculous bullshit, my feet ached, my legs threatened to give out and I was pouring sweat. I couldn’t think, and sucking in air was a conscious act of will to keep myself from passing out. The rest of the world faded away. All I could see was the next goddamn step – over and over. Each a mountain in their own right. I wasn’t going to last much longer. Soon Wreck would have to abandon the bags and carry me out of here...

  Unevenly-spaced rock stairs eventually gave way to packed earth as the cliff face fell away and was replaced by roughhewn stone walls that rose all around us as the near endless final ascent blessedly came to a stop. I crawled up the last stair and when I found the strength to actually look around the first thing I saw was Wreck who’d beaten me to the top. He’d dropped the bags and was leaning against one of the walls for support. The awed, child-like wonder on his face was something I’d never seen on him before. With a big grin he helped me to my feet and took me into his large arms so that we could bask in the view together.

  Our walk ended at what I could only describe as the back door Incan ruins of Machu Picchu. The hike had taken us higher than the legendary city so that we were overlooking both Machu Picchu and the whole sacred valley mountain range when we arrived at the Sun Gate. The gate itself was a series of rooms that looked like an entrance outpost to guard the pass into the ancient city.

  “Sta
y here,” Wreck whispered into my ear and let me go. I was so entranced by the view that I couldn’t have moved if I wanted to.With the roof having been long ago worn away by the weather there was no reprieve from the sunset as it flooded the whole valley. The golden yellow light caught the mist cascading over the mountaintops giving it a flowing water effect that was truly breathtaking.

  “Hello? Can you hear me?” came a voice behind me. It was so impossibly familiar that it broke the view’s spell on me.

  Mom? I wondered, turning slowly. I knew for a fact that she and Jeffy were back in the US. When I video-chatted with them this morning I recognized the décor of their living room. There was no way she could be here, it just wasn’t possible.

  It turned out I was right and wrong. Wreck had set up the camera stand and was actually streaming a live video chat through his phone with my mom and little brother. I gave him the biggest look of disbelief. I would never in a million years have thought of all places we’d actually have reception here at what felt like the top of the world, but seeing it with my own eyes made me realize how wrong I was.

  “Hi sweetie!” Mom cried excitedly, pulling Jeffy closer who was waving emphatically.

  “Hi!” I signed in reply with a smile that warmed my heart. Wreck didn’t have to do this, it was incredibly nice of him. “It’s so nice that we can share this moment together!”

  “Oh you have no idea,” Wreck scoffed with a smirk and adjusted the camera so that my family could see the city through one of the sunset soaked doorways. It was a perfect shot. After he was finished he walked into that doorway and waved me over. “I couldn’t think of a better place to do this so…”

  Then he dropped to a knee.

  My eyes became saucers and my breath betrayed me.

  “What do you say?” Wreck asked. There was a twinkle of hope in his eyes and the crease of a smirk on his lips. “I love you, Sarah. Wanna waste your life with me?”

  My hands stumbled with the simple yes so I just nodded instead. I would’ve screamed if I could’ve, fortunately Mom and Jeffy had me covered and when Wreck scooped me up into a big embrace and kissed me even the smattering of tourists in the area started clapping and cheering.

  I was terrified at what the future would hold for us, but from that moment on I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that with him at my side there wasn’t anything we couldn’t handle. This was a new chapter in our lives. For the first time in my life I could finally put the past to rest and actually look forward to the future.