Sven's Ride (A Bad Boy MC Romance)

by Sara Crest

  I thought about what Emma said, about how I thought I was doing the right thing when I killed those men. The thing is I was slowly beginning to realize that I couldn’t justify it to myself, it didn’t matter if those men were the scum of the Earth, they never directly harmed me or mine so I had no right to put a bullet in them. I think that’s what’s been weighing me down so much.

  I let go of the accelerator and rode the momentum until I finally came to a complete stop. I was there in the middle of the road, realizing what I had to do.

  I had to take Emma back to her family, I had to make sure they left this town for now. I had go back to the Freedom Riders and do everything I could in order to stop this gang war from escalating. I don’t know how I would do but, but I damn well knew that I would be a much better asset alive than if I were to just give myself over to Clay. That ship has sailed, it was now my time to make sure that I saved as many lives as I possibly could, every life I would save would be one less face haunting my conscious.

  Maybe if I fought to make this right, or at least to clean up the damage I helped create, I could actually be at peace. I could bring Emma into my life then, I could be with her for as long as I wanted and make sure that nobody could do shit about it. Maybe I would have to put a few more people in the ground before the gang war stopped, maybe I would have to break down a couple more doors, maybe I would have to ride like hell through sleepless nights to make sure that I got to where I needed to be, but I knew that I could do it if she was waiting for me at the end of it all.

  I looked out over the hills at the sun that was now beginning to set. It had been the longest day of my life, and I could only assume it was about to get much longer.

  I turned and looked back down the road I came from, I must have rode for at least an hour, I should have never left Emma behind on her own but I needed time to think without having her words cloud my judgement. I just hoped that I was making the right choice.

  I knew I had to go back and get her, I had to go back and start what might be the hardest chapter of my life.

  “Just a little while longer” I said as I looked out over the sun kissed hills.

  Only Emma and this scenery calmed me down like this. Only they made me truly feel normal.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  (Emma)

  I hung up my phone and took a deep breath. I contemplated throwing it across the room in extreme frustration but I didn’t want to break it so I settled for throwing it as hard as I could into the bed cushions. Didn’t have the stress relieving effect I hoped for.

  I had just finished calling my mom and Milly, they had both already heard the news about what happened but I just wanted them to know I was safe. Mom worked out of town so she was staying over a coworker’s house, Milly was going to meet me at an out of town gas station so that we could figure out what to do.

  The more I sat there alone the angrier I got with Sven. He should be coming with us, he shouldn’t be risking his life going back to that club. After everything that happened I couldn’t help but feel they would sell him out the first chance they got.

  It had been hours since I had seen him and the sun had almost completely set. I still gripped the pistol he gave me, fearing that at any moment a Freedom Rider or a Empire State MC member would bust down my door and try and drag me away to give to Clay. Now that the bullets had started flying me giving myself up to Clay would just be submitting myself to a life a torment for the benefit of nobody, the same kind of life John would want me to live under him.

  The gun was a revolver, similar to the one Sam had used when he tried to assault me. I pressed the button on the side and the cylinder that held the bullets swung out. With the way I was holding the gun all the bullets fell onto the floor, falling out of the cylinder before I even knew what was happening.

  “Of course” I mumbled to myself as I got on my hands and knees and tried to find them all.

  As I picked up two that had rolled near the wall I heard footsteps coming from outside. Was Sven finally back? Why didn't I hear his motorcycle?

  I slowly peeked out of the window to see a strange man walking towards the door of the cabin.

  I rushed over to the door and bolted the lock,hoping that he'd go away once he saw that he couldn't get in. He didn't look like he was a part of the Freedom Riders or the Empire State MC, who was he and what the hell was he here for.

  I heard him try the doorknob, muttering a “what the hell?” before trying again.

  “Is someone in there?” he called out as he struggled to try and open the door.

  I frantically began searching for the bullets I had dropped. I already had two but there were four more that I had lost.

  I heard him begin to hit the door with his shoulder as I found a third bullet.

  “If someone's in there you better open up” he called out as the banging on the door got louder.

  I couldn't find the other three bullets I had dropped, I would have to pray that I would either not have to use this thing or that I could hit him in the three shots that I had.

  I stood there with the gun pointing straight for the door, I hoped that it would be enough to scare him off.

  Do I say something? Do I tell him to back off and not come in? That I'd have a loaded gun pointed at him if he came through? This wasn't even my house why was I here?

  Finally the door burst open. I immediately cocked the gun and aimed right for the intruder.

  He saw the gun pointed at him and fell to his knees, shielding himself with his hands.

  “Oh God please don't kill me! I can go and leave and I won't bother you just don't kill me!”

  “Who are you?” I asked keeping the gun intently pointed at him. “Are you here to come and take me away because that isn't going to happen!”

  “Who am I? Who are you? And what the hell are you doing in my house pointing a gun at me?”

  “Your house? This is your cabin?” I said as he looked up at me from the floor. He had filthy hair and a beard that nearly went down to his chest. He was skinny, incredibly skinny, with long limbs that made him seem like he stretched on and on. He seemed like he was on something, and smelled like burnt plastic, but I didn’t have enough experience to tell what that meant.

  “Well… I squat in here, so it’s not my place legally but still. I was here for a long time with a few friends before some assholes scared them away and ruined the small business we were running out of here. I came back a few days later to see if those assholes had left and found this place in pretty good shape so I decided to keep squatting here.”

  “Oh really?” I said questioning if his story was real or not. “If you've been squatting here then why weren’t you here when I spent the night here the other day?”

  “There’s two cabins, the other one is a few miles away from here and is just as hidden as this one. I alternate between the two just in case those guys come back. They let me walk last time but I don’t think they’ll be as nice if they catch me back here. You must have slept here during the days where I was at the other cabin. I was hoping my friends would come back but I haven’t seen them in days.”

  He stood up and slowly took a step forward.

  “Don’t move!” I yelled out. “Even if your story is real I don’t know who you are and you have no more of a claim to this cabin than I do.”

  “Aww come on” he whined. I didn’t realize until that moment that despite the massive beard he couldn’t have been older than me by a year or two. “The other cabin doesn’t even have furniture in it, I sleep on an old fur rug in fear that those biker dudes will find me and put a bullet in me.”

  Bikers? Was he talking about Sven, Saul, and Barron?

  “Wait you weren’t running a small business out of here, you made meth in here didn’t you?”

  “Yeah but it wasn’t a whole lot, it was mostly just for my friends and to make a little cash on the side. We barely even knew what we were doing, my friend spotted one of the bikers lurking around the woods a
few days before they burst in and they all got paranoid and bolted. I stayed because I didn’t think anything would actually happen.”

  It was then that I noticed that he was distracting me with his talking while he slowly inched closer to me, I think he was trying to get within arm’s reach of the gun.

  “I’m not gonna tell you again, back up!” My palms were so sweaty that he could easily knock the gun out of my hands if he even got a finger on it. He started to back away, keeping his hands up the whole time. I didn’t want to shoot him, he didn’t even seem like he was that bad of a person.

  “Look” I continued “I’m gonna be out of here soon. I’ll probably never come back here again and I’m sure in a week or two you’ll be safe to do whatever it is you want to do in here. For now please just leave me alone, I’ll be out of your hair before you know it.”

  He sighed “alright, but you better be out of here when I come back.”

  It was a threat but I let it slide, I didn’t want to talk back with empty words that I knew I couldn’t follow up on.

  As he walked out of the door a thought crossed my mind. When Sven mentioned these cooks to me they seemed like they were supposed to be big times deals, able to make pounds of methamphetamine so that they could sell it to the Freedom Riders. That guy didn’t seem like a big time cook at all, he said so himself him and his friends barely even knew what they were doing.

  I ran out the door to ask him more but he had disappeared into the thickness of the trees. I looked around for a few seconds to see if I could catch a glimpse of him but had no luck. I heard the sound of the dirt bike starting up in the distance before speeding away, I could only assume it was the same one Sven and I used.

  “Wow, he actually stole it. Asshole…”

  Why were the Freedom Riders sending their guys out to take out small time cooks who could barely make enough meth for their own personal use? More importantly was this something that I should bring up with Sven?

  “No, I’m sure it was just a mistake they came here. Sven’s got too much on his mind already to be worrying about something like this…”

  I turned to go back into the cabin but heard Sven’s bike coming through the woods. Anxiety had turned my stomach into a knot. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I knew what was going to happen, he was going to take me to my sister and drive back off to his brothers. Probably to his death.

  How do you convince a man so stubborn? On some level I understood, this club had been his whole life, but things had changed so much just in the past week alone. This wasn’t the club he knew, the Freedom Riders would probably end up killing him in a vain attempt to stop the already started war.

  Him and I could have left this all behind, we did all we could to right our wrongs. This war was mostly our fault but that was something that we would have to carry with us.

  He pulled up behind me and I turned around, we both stared at each other in complete silence.

  “I’m sorry Emma, I thought about it and I have to go be with my brothers. I can’t walk away from this.”

  I wanted to tell him that I was coming with him but I knew he’d never allow it, I wanted to tell him to come with me but I knew he had already made up his mind, I wanted to do everything I could to convince him but nothing was going to change. For him everything was set in stone.

  “We’ll be together when this is all over, I promise that Emma.”

  I’m not sure if he acknowledged how real the possibility of death was if he went back.

  “Don’t make promises you can’t keep Sven. Not when you’re about to walk right into a gang war.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  (Sven)

  We approached the gas station a few miles out of town, even from far away I could see that her sister Milly was the only person there. With how late it was I shouldn’t be surprised.

  I had enjoyed feeling Emma wrapped around me one last time as we rode, even though I knew she was angry at me she still cuddled with me from behind. She still ran her hands up and down my core and chest, feeling me as we rode out of town.

  I was making a mistake, I couldn’t get that thought out of my head, but I had to fix what I’ve done. I wouldn’t be able to be with her if I didn’t fix this, I couldn’t live with myself.

  As we pulled up to the gas station she slowly stood up and got off of the bike, running her hand tenderly along my back as she looked at me. She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek before pressing her forehead against mine.

  “Goodbye Sven, I love you” she said as she pulled away from me, walking backwards so that she could still look at me.

  “This isn’t goodbye, it’s see you later” I said to her.

  I could tell she wanted to cry, I could tell that she didn’t believe me when I said I’d be back. To her as soon as I drove back into town I would be dead and she would never see me again.

  I couldn’t take looking at her sad face, I couldn’t take knowing that I was disappointing her and breaking her heart by choosing to go back to the Freedom Riders instead of running off with her. That was just the way things had to be, for now, at least that’s what I kept telling myself.

  I pulled a U-turn, stopping to look at her one last time and wondering when I actually would get to see her again.

  I pulled the handle and sped out of there, leaving her behind. Even with the wind rushing past my ears I thought I could hear her call my name out. Or maybe that was just my subconscious telling me to go back to her.

  Chapter Thirty

  (Sven)

  I turned my light off when I got into town. I didn’t know what the situation was but I knew I needed to stay on the downlow as best as I possibly could until I reached the Riders.

  The town was quiet, not only quiet but incredibly dark. Only a few street lamps remained on, most of them seemed destroyed either from stray bullets flying or someone purposely putting them out.

  I could only assume that the Empire State Rollers had retreated back to the same motel that we killed John in. Who knows when they’d hit us next, hell maybe it would be a better idea to hit them first and catch them off guard. Not like Walsh would actually listen to any of my suggestions after all the bullshit that just happened. I never did get to hear what Barron and Saul were going to tell me about him, something about why he hated me and my ties to the brotherhood? How long did they know this information and why didn’t they tell me sooner?

  I stopped at a red light, admittedly an uncharacteristic decision by me but I didn’t want to bring attention to myself by running it.

  The light turned green and I slowly brought myself back to full speed, getting closer and closer to the apartment building where it all went down.

  I saw the building down the street, it seemed like it was completely empty. I approached slowly so that I wasn’t mistaken for an Empire State Roller and shot on sight but as I got closer I realized that it truly was abandoned.

  I pulled into the parking lot and looked around, it seemed like everyone really was gone.

  “How the fuck am I supposed to find them now?”

  I got off my bike and stepped on the ground into a puddle. I thought it was oil until I lifted my boot up and saw the red tint shining in the moon, filling me with guilt.

  I scraped my boot off on some nearby pavement and walked inside the building. It was completely silent, everything was trashed. There were bullet holes in the walls and even some signs of blood. I walked down the hall to see a trail of blood leading to Barron’s room and my heart skipped a beat. When I reached his apartment I saw bloody handprints all over and the door, the hallway carpet had been soaked in blood and made a disturbing slushing noise whenever I stepped on it.

  I took a deep breath and pushed his door open, seeing the puddle of blood leading inside and to the bathroom. I slowly approached the bathroom, the light was on and a little bit was peeking out from underneath the door.

  I put my ear near the doorway to try and listen to see if anyone was inside but it
was completely silent. I could smell the scent of iron coming from underneath the door. I grabbed the handle and swung the door open only to breath a sigh of relief.

  There was a dead man inside but thank god it wasn’t Barron, in fact it wasn’t even a Freedom Rider. I could tell by his tattoos he was a Empire State Roller.

  He was sitting on the floor leaning against the bathtub. Looks like he had gotten shot and left behind and just wanted a quiet place to pass away. His eyes were still open, I got on one knee and closed them for him.

  “I’m sorry” I whispered as I stood back up. I didn’t know this man, he wasn’t even in my club. but I’m sure there was no need for him to die. Damn shame.

  I walked back out of Barron’s room, as I entered the hallway I felt my phone begin to ring, the first time it rang since I got Emma out of the gunfight.

  I picked it up and was even more relieved to hear Barron’s voice on the other end.

  “Sven! Where are you?” he asked as I got closer to exiting the apartment building.

  “I’m at the apartment building looking for you all. Where are you guys? I need to meet back up with you and join the fight.”

  “The fucking apartment building? Sven you need to get out of town right now Walsh has guys looking for you, you need to get out of here and never come back.”

  “That’s not gonna happen Sven, I just need to get back to you all and explain myself. I can still do right by this brotherhood.”

  I walked out of the building to see two men standing by their motorcycles.

  “I told you if we waited here long enough he’d come back” one of them said as he crossed his arms.

  They were both wearing hockey masks similar to the ones me and the guys wore when we raided that house. They were minutemen just like me.