by Aiden Bates
So that was it. He’d hit the tree. He’d shattered his pelvis. The medics had tried to keep his heart beating, but there wasn’t enough blood in his body to keep him alive. I leaned forward, putting my head between my knees, and stayed like that until I didn’t feel like puking anymore.
I called a cab and stood outside the station with my club leather zipped up against the chill. Was it better or worse that I knew all the details of Dad’s death now? The image of his broken body lying in a pool of dark blood was burned into my mind. He had to have suffered, and that only made my determination harden.
Whoever did this would pay.
I couldn’t summon enough anger, though, not with the deep wound of grief freshly reopened. Of course the mystery hadn’t been solved by asking the first responders the same rudimentary questions that they’d answered in their incident reports—I hadn’t expected it to. Still, part of me had hoped that someone had seen something they hadn’t recorded. Something that they’d maybe forgotten about until now. Something minor even, but enough to give me a lead. I needed forward momentum. I needed something to chase to outrun my grief.
The cab arrived, and I directed it to Ankhor Works. Since my bike was still with Coop, and I was not dealing with that, I needed a car to get to the site of the accident.
I had the cab pull around the back of the shop, and I bypassed the warehouse building entirely, opting to go in through the gate to the back parking lot instead. I didn’t want to run into Maverick or anyone else. Just needed to grab the car and go.
The car was one of Dad’s old rides—a 1979 Pontiac Trans Am, not quite a classic muscle car, but not unimpressive either. If I had to be in a cage, the Pontiac was my preferred choice: it handled nicely, the transmission was smooth, and I could still feel the road beneath the tires.
I took a moment and ran my hand over the car’s gleaming black roof.
I remembered riding in the passenger seat with Dad behind the wheel. I was probably twelve or thirteen, and we’d been driving through the winding mountain roads. Dad had been wearing his club leathers and a pair of aviator sunglasses. He had looked so cool. Like a movie star. I had wanted to be just like him.
“Okay, Raven,” he’d said as we idled at a scenic overlook. “We’re going up this mountain, and I want you to tell me when to shift gears, okay? Before you can drive a car like this, you’ve got to understand the engine. You’ve got to be able to feel it.”
I had nodded, hanging on to every word, even though anxiety had been coursing through me. What if I did it wrong and told him to shift at the wrong time? What if I fucked up the engine?
In retrospect, of course Dad wouldn’t have let that happen. He was amazing in that way—he always knew how to make me feel capable, without putting me over the edge into overwhelming responsibility.
“All right,” he had said. “Let’s do this.”
He’d grinned and pulled the Pontiac out of the overlook.
The engine had roared.
“Don’t look at the RPMs,” Dad had shouted over the noise. “Feel it?”
I had closed my eyes and felt the Pontiac’s vibrations beneath me and had heard the engine roar—then, the tone had shifted a little higher. “Shift!”
“Good!”
“Shift again!”
“Very good!”
The road had flattened out and the Pontiac had picked up speed, moving smoothly across the asphalt. With the windows rolled down and the wind whipping my hair, I had called out “Shift!” one last time, and had watched in awe as Dad easily hit the clutch hard and shifted the Pontiac into fourth.
“Good boy!” Dad had laughed, his voice warm with pride. He’d reached across the bench seating and tousled my hair roughly, and then pushed it out of my eyes. “We’ll have you driving this thing before your next birthday!”
Sometimes I half-expected to hear his voice in the clubhouse still, or his loud, raucous laugh. As a teenager, it used to annoy me, how he was always cracking jokes or calling me stupid nicknames or pulling club members into headlocks. Now I’d give anything to hear that laugh one more time. But Dad was gone.
Taking a deep breath, I unlocked the car, but before I could open the door, I heard a shout behind me.
“Hey! You’d better not!” Gunnar stalked furiously across the parking lot, leaving the back door of the shop wide open behind him. He’d left his club leathers inside and his navy waffle-knit Henley was snug with the sleeves pushed halfway to his elbows. His fists were clenched, the muscles tensed all the way up his muscular forearms.
With the top few buttons of his shirt undone, I couldn’t help but stare at the immense tattoo of the club logo on the side of his neck. Though it was slightly faded from age, it was still intimidating: an anchor in a bed of flames, with the top bar of the anchor culminating in the rounded shape of an ankh. The tattoo was impossible to hide. That alone showed his unwavering commitment to the club.
And sure, I respected his dedication.
I even liked the way his Henley clung tight to his arms and waist.
And his deep, rumbling voice made my stomach do a somersault while his unwavering stare sent a small thrill down my spine. Which immediately pissed me off. I hated that he still had this effect on me—that one shred of his attention could reduce me to my teenage self, desperately pining for him.
I did not want to deal with him. Not now. From his purposeful gait and pointed gaze, he was clearly in sergeant mode, and he was going to be a real fucking pain in my ass.
I grabbed the car door handle, hoping to jump in and drive off before Gunnar could get into my business. But he closed the distance between us and grabbed my wrist, yanking me away from the door and then shoving my back up against it.
“Sorry, you don’t get to run away from this conversation,” Gunnar said.
The swelling around his shiner had gone down, but it was still an impressive shade of purple. His voice was rough with frustration, and his furious gaze bored into me. But even when he was looking at me with disdain and annoyance—he was at least looking at me. My stomach flipped, which felt like a betrayal. The closeness between us drove my body crazy with the desire for just a little more—another touch, another look—but logically, I wanted him gone.
He didn’t want me. He didn’t care about me as anything but a club member. Why couldn’t I just accept that and move on?
“What the fuck is going on with you?” Gunnar asked. “First you freaked out when I tried to talk to you after Logan’s patching in, and now Coop calls me to tell me you ditched him? He had to call Tex to come out and ride your bike back to the clubhouse! You know how he feels about parking tickets.”
“It’s none of your business.” I was too used to hearing Gunnar talk to me in that strict holier-than-thou tone of voice, when he bothered to talk to me at all. I tried to shove him away. He didn’t budge at all.
“Nope,” he said. “Not good enough. Are you in trouble? Why were you at the cop shop?”
“It’s not anything that involves you.”
“Bullshit!” Gunnar braced his hands on the roof of the car, boxing me in with his arms.
We were way too close together. I couldn’t meet his eyes.
“It involves me,” Gunnar said, “because I’m the sergeant-at-arms of this club, and member safety is my responsibility. That’s everyone’s safety. Including your uncooperative punk ass.”
“Not everything is about you.” I steeled myself and finally met his gaze, tilting my chin up to stare him down. Anger twisted inside me—anger and desire. I hated that. I hated that even when he was talking down to me, prying into my life, I still wanted him. “Since when do you care so much? You’ve been perfectly content ignoring me since that night”—Gunnar pressed his lips together and finally looked away at the mention of our night together—“but the second I try to have a little privacy, suddenly you’re entitled to know everything?”
Gunnar said nothing, but didn’t back off.
“Whatever,” I s
aid. “I’m over it. I’ve never gotten any complaints before, but I must’ve done something really wrong for you to treat me like that afterward.”
“I don’t want to fucking hear it,” Gunnar said.
“Hear what? You can’t even acknowledge that night happened?”
“I don’t want to hear about other guys.” He gripped the front of my shirt in his hand and pulled me closer to him, his dark eyes boring into mine.
My breath caught in my chest. I was trapped between him and the car, our bodies so close they were nearly flush. His face was inches from mine. I clenched my fists helplessly at my side. We hadn’t been this close since that night, and the heat from his body made me breathless.
Part of me wanted to reach out and touch him, to feel the hard muscle of his chest and the angle of his hips again, but the majority of me wanted him gone. He didn’t get to treat me like shit, walk around picking up men and women alike at parties right in front of me, and then act all possessive when I had the audacity to suggest I had a life that didn’t include him. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of a response.
But at the same time, I knew he wouldn’t let this go. He took his job seriously. And for as much as it annoyed me to admit, he was good at it. He trusted his intuition, and he took every precaution necessary to ensure members’ safety.
“You done?” My voice sounded a lot more collected than I felt.
Gunnar deflated at the quiet words. He let go of my shirt, stepped back, and then crossed his arms over his chest. I sniffed and rubbed at my nose, and then looked away. I still felt exposed under his unrelenting gaze.
“Raven, please.”
I hadn’t heard him speak to me so quietly in a long time. Like he used to, before I screwed it all up.
“Will you tell me what’s going on?” he asked. “I’m not trying to invade your privacy. I’m just trying to do my job.”
I couldn’t tell him everything, not until I had all the pieces of the puzzle. But I could tell him a little bit, just enough to distract him, like giving a bloodhound a bone.
“I’ve been thinking about Dad,” I said. I pulled the car keys out of my pocket and tossed them from hand to hand. “You know this was his car.”
“Yeah, I know,” Gunnar said. “That’s why no one drives it but you.”
“I’m fine with other people driving it.”
“Sure, everyone knows that, too. But it’s yours now. Didn’t he teach you to drive stick in it?”
I toed at the dirt. “It used to smell like him. Like his jacket. But it finally wore off—now it’s just a cage.”
“Raven…”
I sniffed hard and scrubbed at my eyes, once, just to get my bearings. “I just wanted to talk to the police who dealt with the crash.”
“What were you trying to find?”
“Nothing. I don’t know. It just thought it would make me feel better. I’m going to visit the crash site.”
“Yeah?” Gunnar asked. He stepped forward, quick as a flash, and snatched the keys from my hand. “I’m coming with you.”
Before I could say anything as a retort, he leaped over the hood of the Pontiac, sliding over it smooth like he’d done it hundreds of times, and then jumped into the passenger seat. It was a stupid, show-off move, but it still brought a small smile to my face. He jangled the keys at me from inside the car.
Fine. This was not how this was supposed to go, but I guess Gunnar was along for the ride—and I definitely didn’t have a choice about it. Hopefully this would be enough to sate his curiosity. If I could just get through this afternoon, he’d lose interest soon enough, and I’d be able to continue investigating in peace.
Hopefully.
5
Gunnar
Gunnar
I shouldn’t have been so pushy with Raven. If I had known it was Ankh’s death that was chewing at him, making him so tetchy, I wouldn’t have been so aggressive. Raven wasn’t open with his grief. He had always been a little reclusive, a little private, and Ankh’s death had only amplified that. But we all knew he was struggling.
Raven drove the Pontiac with practiced ease up the mountain toward the site of Ankh’s crash. He kept his gaze fixed on the road, pointedly not looking at me. I couldn’t help but watch him drive, though. The late afternoon sun caught his dark, mussed hair and set it shining.
As soon as he’d sat in the driver’s seat, an ease had washed over him, like he was exactly where he needed to be. His body just relaxed into the driver’s seat, same as it did when he climbed onto his bike. He kept his right hand on the gear shifter, casually resting it there, his fingers drumming to whatever rock song was playing low on the radio.
I could forgive him for his pissy attitude the past few days, since he was still wrestling with grief from Ankh’s loss. We all were, but it was worse for Raven. Ankh was our president, but he was Raven’s dad.
My kindness didn’t extend quite far enough to forgive the punch, though. The shiner would last a while.
There wasn’t really a reason for me to come with Raven to the crash site. I mean—it was within my line of duty to ensure member safety. So it’s not like there wasn’t a reason at all, but he’d’ve been fine on his own. It’d been instinctive, really, to insist I come with him.
I guess I didn’t want him to be at the crash site alone.
When he’d said it was Ankh’s death that was bothering him, he’d looked different—vulnerable. Honest. Like he’d dropped the badass façade he felt he had to wear to fit in. It had set something aflame in me: a desire to protect him that was definitely not part of my duty as sergeant. And it was something I needed to tamp out, fast.
We drove deep into the mountains outside Elkin Lake, onto narrow, winding side roads far from the routes we usually rode on our bikes. Finally, Raven pulled the Pontiac onto the shoulder. He climbed out of the car without saying anything. I followed him.
An immense tree grew on the side of the road, just beyond a narrow, hairpin turn. Raven walked directly toward it.
The view from the side of the mountain was gorgeous. The valley below was lush with trees, vibrant green against the clear blue sky.
I hated it for being beautiful. A crazy, grieving part of me couldn’t believe that Ankh’s death hadn’t changed the landscape. His death was so sudden, and cruel, and profound, the mountain itself should’ve transformed in some way. There should’ve been a rockslide. The tree should’ve died. The world couldn’t just go on being beautiful after his death.
The realization hit me like a punch in the chest, knocking the breath out of me. I was standing where Ankh had died.
I missed him in a bone-deep, aching way. Ankh had been the first person to believe I was more than just an attack dog.
The military had been my initial escape route—a path away from the life my father had wanted for me before he’d died, working the same spot on the same factory line for decades. I needed more than that. God, I’d been easy fodder for the Marines recruiter. Young, restless, and desperate. All he’d done was wave the idea of good pay, good benefits, and even free education, and I was in. And maybe if I’d had a different CO, things could’ve gone differently. I was supposed to follow orders, and I did, even when I didn’t know why those orders were being given. But eventually that didn’t sit right with me.
I still had nightmares about Afghanistan—about that one day that changed everything.
But after four years, I was out, and back in California where I started. I’d thought the Marines would be the beginning of a career—of my life. But there I was, a twenty-two-year-old veteran who felt like he’d done nothing worthy of pride over there, feeling like damaged goods, like I’d never be worth a damn again. The things I’d done that day, back in the desert heat—I’d done them on someone else’s orders. But I’d still done them. The blood was still on my hands.
I’d first decided to prospect with Hell’s Ankhor because I misunderstood it. I thought the club would be violent, bloodthirsty, and l
awbreaking. I was ready to trade one militia for another, because that’s all I thought I was good for, and I felt like I had something to prove. I definitely had plenty of anger to burn. What else was I supposed to do—go crawling back to the factory?
In my first prospecting meeting with Ankh, I told him what I’d done overseas. And he hadn’t flinched, or ignored it, or pretended it wasn’t as hard as it was. He was always able to do that: to look the truth straight in the eyes. And he’d thought there was more to me than my past. He had faith in me. I still didn’t know why.
His death had cut me to my bones. It wasn’t just grief. It was like death had visited me, too, and scooped out all the best parts of me, leaving just a gaping chasm behind. It’d taken me a long time to recover. I couldn’t imagine what Ankh’s death had done to his son.
After all Raven had been through, he deserved someone good in his life. Someone who would make him happy—and I had no business wanting to be that person. My service, so far in my rearview mirror, still haunted me. Raven deserved someone better—someone who could keep up with his sharp wit and ambition. Someone who hadn’t had the joy wrung out of their life in the sands of the Middle East. Someone who hadn’t taken lives before they could legally drink. Someone he could trust, someone who could keep up with him, someone he could grow old with.
Someone nothing like me.
Here, on the side of the mountain, Raven stood stoic and unmoving in front of the tree, save for a slight twitching in his right hand.
I walked the short distance between us and stood at his side. “Have you been up here before?”
Raven shook his head.
“Good,” I said.
He finally looked away from the tree and furrowed his brow in confusion at me. “Why do you say that?”
“Well, I… I just think you shouldn’t be here alone. Without a friend.”
Raven crossed his arms over his chest. “Is that what we are? Friends?”
My heart sank. I had always assumed that despite the tension between us, there was still an undercurrent of a bond. And there was, sure, but maybe it was more like… coworkers. I didn’t have the same friendship with Raven that I did with the other members of Hell’s Ankhor, not anymore. We didn’t laugh together, or shoot the shit, or share meals, or any of the everyday things I did with the other guys. We were just occasionally in the same room. And he was right. Proximity didn’t constitute a friendship.