by N. Tetterton
I nearly push the girls into the living room and see all the lights are off. Fury’s phone starts to ring as I bring the girls upstairs and peek into Ella’s room finding that she is asleep. I bring the girls down the hallway to the spare bedroom and nod, “Lucy, you okay staying in here?” She nods her head. “Billie you can sleep in my room.” She pulls her head back and looks at me. “I’ll stay at the clubhouse tonight. I have a room over there. It’s not a big deal.”
“I don’t want to put you out.” She tells me and I smile.
“You’re not putting me out. I promise.” I smile at her and kiss her cheek again. She nods her head. “Text me if you need anything. Keep the doors locked you should be safe here.”
“Should be?”
“The safest place you could be right now.” I shrug, pause, and then look at her again. “But if something happens.” I pull her to the closet, I can’t help myself from hesitating for a moment, just one before I open it and move towards the safe in the corner. I scan in my thumbprint and hear the clink of the locking mechanism unlocking, I pull the door open. I take out one of the Glocks and hand it to her. “Ever used one before.” She nods her head. “Okay. Remember to text me if you need anything. I’ll come back over to check on you.”
I come out of the house making sure to lock it back up and nod to Fury as we start to walk over to the clubhouse.
“You know you’re bleeding, right?” Fury says in a calm voice as we make our way down the driveway and come up to the path that heads in the direction of the clubhouse.
“Yea, I figured, I was.” Matching his calm tone.
“You want me to clean it up?”
“After, we’re already late enough.” I shake my head.
“Man you really haven’t fucked her, yet?” I just move my head to the side and glare at him. “Seriously, last night you were gone-,”
“I’m not talking about this.”
“What is going on with you, dude?”
I shrug, “I have no idea. All I know is that when I’m with her everything just seems right. Last night was probably the most memorable night and we kissed, that was it.” He cocks his eyebrow at me. “I know.”
“Pussy.” He mutters at me and I try to stop myself from laughing.
…Who he… is definitely, not fucking.
"Holy hell, you guys are like an hour late.” I hear Ash say to me as we walk into the war room.
“Well, thank god you can’t start without me.” I throw my hands up, “What have you guys talked about?” I ask, making sure no one else has anything.
“You called the meeting.” I nod, furthering my point.
“There was a door-dance,” Fury says nonchalantly, trying to give them a reason as to why we are late. I try not to laugh at the confused expressions of everyone else.
“What he means to say, is there was a car that blew up, then we were chased.”
“What?” Someone shouts.
“It’s all a part of what I called you guys here. I had a feeling it would escalate only it escalated much faster than I anticipated. Billie is Ella’s principal at her new school. Helped me get her in.”
“And they’re not fucking.” Fury says with a mouth full of food, sadly I’m more curious about where he got the apple he is eating than his statement and as if my stomach thinks the same thing, it growls in response.
“She also has a crazy husband, who she is in the process of getting a divorce from. In the last month, he has come into the club twice and purposefully starting shit with me. Last time he tried to threaten me. Turns out he’s stalking his soon-to-be ex-wife.-“ All of the guys here understand why this is an issue for me. I can also see on the majority of the faces that it’s a problem for the majority of them as well.
“Who he… is definitely. not fucking.” he says pointing at me and I just glare back to him as if he can hear my internal monologue shout enough he tosses his hands up and turns towards the group.
“Anyway, he blew up her car in the Sirens’ parking lot. She was trying to get in it to drive away but I persuaded her to let me drive her.”
“That’s where the door dance came in.” Fury mumbles.
“Her car exploded when she accidentally started it from the key fob. Then he chased us down Main Street.”
“What you want us to do, Prez?” I pause how do I ask them to do this for me.
“You know we put it up to a vote. You don’t have to if you don’t want to. If not I will handle it by myself. She’s under my protection.” I tell them and they all nod.
Bullet stands up towards to back and looks at me, “He threatens you he threatens all of us. If she is under your protection she is under all of ours.” There are mummers of agreement from everyone in the room.
“Yeah, Prez,” Fury stands up and I give him a side-eye as he shrugs, “told you I liked her.”
“What’s the plan?” They ask me.
“I need someone with eyes on him at all times, preferably two at a time. I don’t care how you split it up, just send me updates. I also need someone to reach out to everyone we know to try and find what drugs he is on. And I want to run a tox-screen on him to make sure of the drugs he is on.”
“How do you want us to do that?” I hear from the back.
“I don’t really care, get creative. Ace can you hack into his computer see what he has been up to.” He nods his head. I get up and start to walk out of the room, but I pause and turn around looking back to the men sitting in front of me, “One other thing, if he catches anyone, try not to kill him, this one is all mine.” I nod to Fury, who gets up out of the chair he’s sitting in and walks with me out, he grabs his medical bag and we walk out of the club and back towards the house. Still, I can't really bring myself to call it my house.
I hear a gasp as I pull my shirt off in the kitchen and look over to see Billie and Lucy standing in the doorway. It’s not a gasp like Lucy did this morning when I was leaving their house, it’s a horrified gasp.
“I’m fine,” I mutter to Billie as she just walks to me. And looking at the wound I then look back as I awkwardly look to the backside of my arm and see a small gash. When Fury walks into the room he has his sutures in his hands with him.
Fury walks to the table and sits down. “He’ll be fine,” he says reassuring Billie. Sitting down the bottle of whiskey he brought with him on the table. He grabs a couple of glasses and pours me and him a drink and motions to the girls. They both nod.
“I just feel bad, this is because of me.” She mumbles. She reaches for my chest to touch it. I’m fine I mouth the words to her as I reach up and lay my hand over the top of her’s.
“You know,” Fury starts. “I’ve caused your boy some stitches as well,” she looks over at him questioning. “Yeah, the first night that I met him.”
Fury had finished college in 3 years, was accepted into med school at Johns Hopkins, and was three years in when he dropped out, he bought a bike, and he left. He didn’t have a destination in mind but ended up in Sturgis, South Dakota. Right in the middle of bike week.
“Ow, motherfucker,” I snap as Fury stabs the needle into a tender spot in my arm.
“Stop being a pussy.” Lucy and Billie’s laughs make me smirk.
“Remember when you used to be nice to me,” I ask him causing him to laugh. “No laughing, you’ll fuck it up.”
“You mean that one fucking time I was nice to you.”
“Yeah, that time, what happened to that?”
“I got to know you.” He tells, “You should be worshipping me… you know how much worse that scar would be if I didn’t stitch it up.” He says point up to my face.
“Yeah, you keep reminding me.”
“Wait, that’s how you got that scar?” Billie asks and I laugh nodding.
“Yeah, saved him from getting his ass jumped and haven’t been able to get rid of him since,” I say causing Fury to laugh once more as he stabs me and I wince.
“That’s not the whole story, and I hel
d my own.” He explains, “I was in a weird place my whole family had just died…”
❖
Through the window I see this kid walking around outside of Full Throttle. Poor kid, I can’t help but think as I see his brand new all-leather outfit as he clearly stands out in this crowd. We don’t expect you to dress a certain way; however, by the way, that he is dressed and since none of his leather is creased… at all… it’s pretty apparent that he is a baby biker. My phone rings, groaning I pick it up,
“Khan,” her voice comes through the earpiece and I roll my eyes as I nod to Chell for another whiskey.
“Yes,” I don’t know why she keeps calling, she’s the one who decided to leave. All I wanted to do this week is come out here and do nothing, but she has called me every day as if jealous because I didn’t ask her to come with me, but she was the one who left. She walked out on me and somehow still expected that I would bring her. I step away from the bar and move closer to the window. She’s talking, but I can’t hear what she is saying. Instead, I hyper-fixate on the kid outside of the window and the lost look on his face. It isn’t a lost look because he feels out of place here, at the rally, the look seems to be more about being lost in life. I see a passing club starts hassling him. Now, I’ve always had an issue with fights that were very clearly unfair. 6 guys were surrounding him, more like hovering around him. My attention comes back to the phone as she is complaining about something to do with work, “Look,” the word is very agitated, “why are you calling me?” I ask her. She says something about she wanted to make sure that I was okay. “Well, I’m not okay.” And I hang up the phone and walk out of the door. No better way than to take out frustrations about a soon-to-be ex-wife than on assholes.
I light my cigarette, inhaling the nicotine into my lungs before I start. “Back away,” I call to them as I walk out of the bar, standing towards the road but still in the shadows so that they cannot see me. I look down at my hands and open and close my fists a couple of times before I step up to them. I hear the mutters from the men as come out from the shadow and into the streetlights. They see my cut and stop, taking it in as I walk over and step in front of the kid. He’s a tall fucking kid. Has a couple of inches on me, but he’s still scrawny like he’s never seen the inside of a gym.
“Holy fuck,” I hear asshole #3 say, “that’s Khan.” He points to me and I’m not exactly sure how he recognized me. Probably spotted my rockers and maybe as Oz likes to put it the babyface.
“My reputation precedes me.” I say as I let my hands come out at my sides, “Come on guys this is a place for people with similar interests, you, me, and the kid here.” I move my hand behind me, “We all similar interests. Why pick on someone who you can so easily overpower?” The asshole clan mutters to themselves for a minute as I look over my shoulder, asking quietly, “Can you fight, kid?” He nods his head. Even though I’m not so sure about his skills when the first guy comes towards me. I let him move and close the gap I don’t even hesitate until he is almost at me when I jump towards him and put my cigarette out on his chest, even if it will have to burn through his shirt first and then I let my fist connect with his face, I’m always surprised when people blackout from one hit. I see a glint of silver from one of the clan “Fuck, knuckles, kid.” He dodges them and I watch as he comes up swiftly and sends his fist into the man’s gut, when he looks up I can see his eyes wide open with rage, he may be just as furious as I am, and I don’t mean about this fight, but life itself. The man grunts and while he is doubled over the kid roundhouse kids him to the fucking head. “Oomph,” the sound comes out of my mouth mostly because of the kick to the head that man just received, and a small part because since I wasn’t paying attention I got punched in the gut. Seriously, that’s a cheap shot. I look at asshole #3 again as he stands, almost holding his hand, as if it hurts. I want to laugh but I don’t want him to see me laugh. Seriously though, I haven’t spent every night in the gym since she left, to not have abs that hurts people’s hands. Until I start to lunge at him and he runs away. One of the other assholes catches me with a different set of brass knuckles that I didn’t see before. Right under the eye, “Fuck,” I shout out as my eyes snap open and the guy in front of me stumbles backward, eyes in shock by just the look on my face. That’s right motherfucker you’re about to meet Khan. My rage boils up in me and I’m fucking pissed, not just at him but at my fucking self, at my fucking life, at my fucking wife. I’m like Banner and the Hulk. I feel myself hit this fucking guy at least 3 times before I realize that there are cops on us. But I don’t give a shit as I start to stalk towards the last of the asshole clan.
“Stop, hands up,” one of the 4 officers shouts at us and I hesitate for a second before I hold my hands up.
“He didn’t do anything,” I nod to the kid, but the cops don’t say anything as they cuff him as well.
“Oh yeah,” the cop, who sounds like he’s really from Minnesota, “then what happened?” He asks me.
“I saw those assholes giving kid, here, a hard time. I could see it escalating and knew that it was very clearly an unfair fight. I don’t really stand for that shit. So I came out to help.”
“Oh, you expect me to believe that the 1%er,” he nods to the patch on my vest, “came out to help defend someone who was helpless.” The cop is staring at me clearly not believing me.
“Yeah,” I nod my head, “I may be an outlaw, but I’m not an asshole.”
We sit at the tables, in cuffs as they cuff all the guys on the ground, as well as the last one standing when I see Chell come out of the bar.
“Khan,” her hands are on her hips like she’s mad until she sees the blood running down my face. “Oh my god,” she shouts a little worried as she rushes over and the officer stops her.
“Ma’am you cannot touch him.”
She looks at him with a look that says… motherfucker, you tell me not to, “why not, they didn’t do anything. All of those fuckers were hassling this kid-,”
“Um, I have a name” I hear him say next to me, and I kind of laugh about it. I kick him telling him to shut the fuck up.
“Khan, saw them hassling him and came out, so they didn’t kill him. To help him.” She says.
“Whatever, I don’t even fucking care. I don’t want to be here.” And he comes over and takes the cuffs off of our wrists.
“Thanks, Chell,” I walk up to her and hiss her cheek. She rolls her eyes and smiles.
“Just stop trying to get yourself killed.” I smile and nod my head. “Go clean your face up.” I salute her and she laughs. Looking over as they haul the last, starting to wake up, guy off of the ground and into the patty wagon. I laugh as I walk up to the kid lighting another cigarette and look at him. Not a scratch on him, it’s kind of impressive.
“So kid, what’s your name?”
“Aubrey” the audible oh comes out before I can stop it and he looks at me laughing. “I know,”
“Don’t tell anyone here that’s your name. Come up with something else.”
He laughs and nods his head. “Where are you staying?” I ask him looking around as if that’s going to magically make it appear.
“Ugh,” he mutters looking around, “I didn’t really plan this trip.”
“Oh no, you didn’t book anywhere?” The thing about Sturgis, South Dakota is bike week is the only thing that ever happens here. It’s a tiny town in a state that’s claim to fame is Mount Rushmore… although, I personally prefer Crazy Horse. There are three hotels in the town and the next closet town is a handful of miles away. Everyone in the town as well as the surrounding towns leave for the 10 days that bike weeks happens. Something about not wanting to be in the same place as thousands of bikers. They even rent out yard spaces for people to camp out on.
He shakes his head and then says, “I was getting ready to leave cause I can’t find anywhere that has any vacancies.”
“Do you want to leave?” I ask him. And he shrugs and shakes his head at the same time. I laugh a
nd sling my arm around his shoulder causing him to hunch over since he’s just slightly taller than I am. “Where’d you park your bike?” He points in a direction and I nod my head, “Well, it’s your lucky day. I have a couch in my room. You can crash on it if you want?” His face picks up maybe a little concerned about what I’m expecting. “Dude, I just helped you fight those assholes. I’m not gonna hurt you. I know the patch,” I point to the 1%, “comes off a little scary to some, but the guys are harmless… well unless they have a reason not to be.” I laugh, which causes him to laugh, skeptical. I tell him where to meet me at the hotel. When I see him pull into the parking lot I laugh. His bike is very clearly brand new, but he doesn’t waver while he rides it and he rolls it to a stop next to me. Oz comes walking out of the hotel and shouts over to me. When he sees my face he comes walking over.
“Where you the fight that I just heard go out.”
“Me?” I point to myself, “Never,” which actually causes Oz to laugh,
“Who’s the kid?” He asks nodding over to Aubrey.
“Dunno, some members from a club out of Texas were hassling him.” He nods knowing what I’m going to say next so I skip that part. “Anyway, he’s running from something or looking for something. He had no plans on coming here. Just showed up. Brand new bike, brand new clothes, clearly out of place.” Oz laughs. “He doesn’t have a place to stay. I’m gonna let him crash in my room.”
“You sure you want to do that. That’s gonna make it hard to get some pussy?” He asks me.
I shrug and respond, “I feel bad for him.” That’s when Oz looks around and reaches into his pocket handing me a keycard. “What’s this?” I ask him
“Since Rod had to bail on us last minute we have an extra room.” I look at him surprised. “Find out as much as you can about him. We need some good prospects. If he’s looking for something…,” he trails, but I understand what he is saying. I nod my head. We watch as he walks up to us standing in the parking lot and then he starts talking.