She picked at something on the arm of the chair, her eyes focused away from me.
"I don't know," I said. "I don't know what I'm doing anymore. I'm lost lately."
She looked at me, her gaze direct. "We're all lost."
"I didn't used to think I was," I said. "I used to think I knew where I was going."
"Death changes things," she said. "It alters our course." She looked up, tucked her hair behind her ear. The gesture was tentative, nervous, at odds with the in control version of her that I kept seeing glimpses of.
"Is that what happened to you?" I asked. "Is that what altered your course?" I wanted to scream, why are you with Aston?
It was cagey, the way she avoided saying anything about herself. She had this way of making me feel comfortable talking about myself and before I knew it, I was the one who had done all the talking. Each time I hung up the phone, I wondered where the time had gone. But I wondered if it was deliberate, if she deflected everything with me. It gnawed at me, that I couldn't find anything about her.
She shrugged. "You can't control your destiny," she said. "For better or worse, sometimes it chooses you."
"I felt that way once," I said. I sat across from her, my elbows on my knees, leaning forward, looking at the ground. Why the fuck did I feel compelled to talk to her like this, like she was a goddamned priest and I was a parishioner at confession? "After April was killed. The things I did, I thought they were my destiny. I thought killing the men who murdered her would give me peace."
"And now?" she asked.
How did I feel now? Like something was still missing. Like I no longer had a rudder. "Empty," I said. "It feels empty."
"A man without a home," she said.
Yes. That is what I had been missing since April died. It was the thing that Mackenzie must have sensed was missing as well, the reason that she felt so displaced. I just didn't know how to change it, how to feel that way again. Not with April gone.
I felt naked under Meia’s gaze, suddenly vulnerable. She seemed to have the ability to see right through me. It was how I'd felt before when she looked at me, only a hundred times more so right now.
"It is difficult," she said "To feel like you don't have a home -when you lose someone, and your family is taken away from you."
"You know how it feels to have your family taken from you," I said. It wasn't a question. I somehow knew she understood that loss. There was a reason she had no history that I could find. There was something terribly wrong that she wouldn't tell me.
She nodded. "You think I'm weak, being with Aston," she said. "You don't understand the story. I can't leave. I have to stay with him."
"Men like that don't stop hurting you," I said.
"No," she said. "I don't think he will. He may end up killing me." She said it casually. A statement of fact.
I rose to my feet, my breath short in my chest, the same as it was when I was gearing up for a fight, blood pumping loudly in my ears. "Then let me help you," I said. "Let me get you away from him. Why stay?"
She smiled, her expression sad. "He has taken something from me. Something very precious that I need to get back."
"I can help you," I said. I stood inches away from her, this intense feeling of possessiveness taking over me. Since April died, I hadn't had that feeling about anyone else, the need to have someone be mine. April had always been it for me, my refuge from all of the bullshit that inevitably came as part of the club. And from the storms that raged in my soul. I had told myself that there would never be anyone else who could make me feel the same way again, and the fact that I was feeling this way about Meia, a girl full of secrets, terrified me.
"No," she said quickly. "I said something I shouldn't have. I misspoke."
"You didn't," I said. "What does he have over you?"
"No," she said. "I'm beyond helping now."
There was something in the way that she said it that gripped me. I grabbed her by the arm, pulled her to me, my hand on the small of her back so that she was tight against me. Bringing my mouth down on hers, I felt her lips part. I kissed her gently, holding back even as I felt my cock swell in response to her tiny body pressed up against me.
And just like that, I felt an overpowering sense of guilt and shame at the thought of kissing someone other than April. At the thought of taking advantage of this girl who was in a bad situation. What the hell kind of man was I?
I must have hesitated, pulled back for a moment, and she felt it. "Hammer," she said. "I can't do this. Even if I wanted to."
She put her hand on my chest, pushed me gently away, and turned, walking toward the door.
"No one is beyond helping, Meia." I spoke the words to her back as she gathered her things. She paused in the doorway, not turning to look at me before she left.
"I am," she said. "I can't be saved, Hammer."
I stood in the garage, looking at the bike. It had been sitting there, unridden, since April's death. It taunted me, a reminder of the the way things used to be. Meia was right. I was a man without a home. There was nowhere I belonged. I was estranged from everything and everyone I used to hold close. It was grasping at straws, trying to find something, anything, that would ease the pain of April's death. I had been trying to find some solace.
And all of this fighting bullshit, this attempt to quell my rage somehow, well, it wasn't working. Because it wasn't what I needed.
I had been angry for so long. I had wallowed in my shit, unable to see a life without April, unable to see MacKenzie in front of me, the child who needed me.
All of the rage, all of the bluster and bravado, was bullshit. It was grasping at straws. It was doing what I could to get by without her.
This was something I needed to do. I was ready. I needed to confront the past, before I could go any further. And I was resolved to go further. Meia thought I would just walk away, that I would forget about what she'd said. But I couldn't just leave her to that monster.
And that meant I'd have to put the past to rest.
I pulled the cover off the bike, and tossed it the cement floor. All of the memories I had tried so hard to erase, to just put out of my head and pretend they didn't exist, came rushing back the moment I threw my leg over the seat and straddled the bike. She felt simultaneously familiar and strange underneath me, like some kind of long-lost lover. And that's what she was, wasn't she? She was my first love, before anyone else, even April.
When I heard her motor turn over, felt the rumble between my legs, my heart beat harder, anticipation building inside me. I wrapped the throttle a few times, and the scream from the pipes was ear piercing.
I steadied the bike underneath me and kicked back the stand, then stepped on the shift and clutched into gear. I paused for a moment, keenly aware of everything around me in that moment- the sound, the smell, the vibration of the engine. My heart was still racing, but I felt myself slowly release the clutch lever and simultaneously roll on the throttle. I rolled out of the garage, down the driveway, and with a shift and more throttle, I was gone.
I stuffed the fear down deep inside me, and let the other part take over. I couldn't let the fear control me any more. No more running, no more hiding.
No more chicken shit self pity.
I rode through the old part of Vegas, and I could feel myself begin to settle into the bike before too long, my body responding to the familiarity of riding again. It was blazing hot in the late afternoon sun, and the wind on my face felt only slightly cooler as I rode out of town.
I didn't know where the hell I was going. I just knew I needed to ride. I felt myself rolling along the 167, with its winding roads and expansive scenery, and I opened the bike up a little. She seemed to possess the same kind of pent up rage I had, and she responded gratefully to the extra throttle.
I missed this. I missed the feeling of freedom that riding on the open road brought. I missed having the time to settle in with my thoughts, to work out how I felt about things in my head. When April and I would
argue, back in the early days of our marriage, mostly the times when I was being a douchebag and I knew it, I'd head out for a ride and clear my head. I'd run through all the reasons why she was wrong - it would be a short list, usually - and then I'd start to admit to myself that she might be right. It seemed easier to do that on the bike, easier to clear my mind of my pride and stubborn will.
April knew I had to ride. She knew it was a part of who I was, even before I joined the club. It was a part of my soul.
Just like the club.
Tank had introduced me to the club. We’d met in prison. He had told me that the MC was the purest kind of family he'd ever had. That was true, at least it had been true before all the shit that had happened. It was the purest, most distilled sense of family I'd ever known. Hell, it was really the only family I'd known.
Of course, Tank was dead now, killed by that family.
I craved the sense of family that being part of the club meant. It was something I'd never had before the MC. My father sure as shit wasn't my family. He was a fucking sperm donor, some trucker - or at least that's what my mother thought. She wasn’t my family either - more concerned about getting lost in a bottle than anything else.
After I'd done that short stint for embezzlement, my options were limited. And I'd always ridden a bike, so when Tank vouched for me, it was a no brainer. By the time I was patched, that was it for me. April and I were lifers. We were married to each other, but also to the club. Back in the early days, before Mad Dog started to get greedy, life was good.
It was only later that things started going sour. And then MacKenzie was born, and everything fucking changed.
~ ~ ~
The background was a mixture of beeping and whirring and buzzing. April lay in the hospital bed, sweaty tendrils of hair around her forehead, holding MacKenzie. When April looked up at me, her expression a mixture of exhaustion and complete joy, I thought I would melt.
"Come on," she said. "Come hold your daughter."
I don't think I'd ever been scared so shitless in my entire life. There I was, this tatted-up biker, standing there in my fucking leather cut, the one that told the world I was a hardened criminal, and this thing that weighed 7 lbs 8 ounces was making me terrified. I hesitated, and stood there, my feet practically welded to the floor, just looking at April.
"I don't know," I said.
She grinned at me. "Get your fucking ass over here and hold your daughter," she said, her voice slurred from exhaustion. "Quit being such a goddamned pussy."
~ ~ ~
That moment, holding MacKenzie...it changed everything. We were different after that, April and I. Fuck, I was different after that. It sounds cliché - a changed man. But I was. I was loyal to April, always had been, back in those early days of our marriage - but not in the sense that I never got any strange. April knew I got some on the side, now and then, knew I partied hard at the club. She was okay with it, as long as I came back to her. But the day MacKenzie was born, all that shit stopped. There was just something about it that didn't seem right, that didn't fit with the man I wanted to be, the father I wanted to be to MacKenzie.
Same with the fighting. The fighting had always been a part of me. Shit, one of my earliest memories was of laying out a kid in the playground at school for calling my mother a whore. I was always a brawler, settled everything with my fists. That was something that never changed, my whole life, until after MacKenzie was born. I was a hothead, running my mouth, getting myself into trouble with other clubs, stirring shit up because I could. It was some destructive shit, the stuff I would attract.
Marrying April didn't calm me down. She'd married me crazy, and knew I was like that. But having that kid all of a sudden put everything in a new light. Stuff just stopped pissing me off like it used to. It started being too hard to be that guy, laying someone out because he made some smart-assed comment one second and then going home to have a tea party with my kid and her stuffed animals. MacKenzie saw through me, right from the very beginning, the way kids do. She knew when I was angry, and I didn't want to carry that shit around with me. I didn't want it to taint her.
So I stopped, got my shit under control. Stopped doing so much crazy shit with the club, didn't go around as much when things started going downhill. I kept up with the books and did my part for the club, but I knew shit was going bad at the club. I just didn't think it would ever go that far.
I didn't think it would ever affect April or MacKenzie. But it had, and in the worst imaginable way.
I pulled over someplace out in the desert, stood there watching the sun sink lower and lower on the horizon. The sudden drop in temperature was noticeable, but it was still scorching hot out. I could hear the bike tinging as it cooled off slightly, the only other sound was the soft gust of a breeze blowing past, and the crunch of gravel under my boots.
I didn't know if she could hear me or not, didn't know whether I believed in a fucking afterlife, the idea that April was looking down on me from heaven or some shit, but there were things I needed to say. So I sat out there alone in the dirt, talking to her.
"Shit's been so goddamned broken since you left, April. I don't know who the hell I am anymore. MacKenzie's lost without you. Hell, I'm lost without you. I don't know how the fuck to be a father with you gone..." I told her everything, how I'd been fighting again, grasping at straws, trying to do something - anything- that would ease the pain since she had gone. I told her how I'd felt adrift.
And I confessed - told her I was thinking about going back to the club that I'd broken from when they took her away from me. Told her that I missed the brotherhood, the feeling of family. I didn't have that anymore. Not without her.
And then I told her the final piece, the piece that I'd been afraid to put into words. "There's someone else, April. Someone I met. This girl. I don't know where it might be going - shit, probably nowhere - but I need your blessing, even if nothing comes of it. I don't want to be completely alone anymore, April." Even as I spoke the words, I knew they were true. I couldn't be alone anymore. It was killing me. I'd mourned April for years now. I couldn't spend the rest of my life in mourning. And I knew she wouldn't want me to. She would have kicked me square in the ass if she knew I'd spent this long all torn the fuck to pieces.
I pictured April shaking her head, her arms crossed over her chest and a look of mock disapproval on her face. "You better get out there and find yourself a good girl," she would say. It was something we'd half-joked about when we were married, what would happen if one of us died. I'd want her to move on, I'd told her, find someone else. She said she'd make sure he was richer than me, with a bigger dick. And I'd swat her on the ass and say she should go ahead and try to find someone with a bigger cock. Of course, both of us had always assumed we were talking about me dying. Not her.
"I need you to understand, April," I said, my voice breaking. "I need to start to let you go. I can't stay in mourning forever. I need you to let me go."
Later, almost as if I was on autopilot, I rode up to the clubhouse on the bike. I parked, dismounted, and looked at the sign over the door.
Inferno Motorcycle Club, Las Vegas
I inhaled deeply, looked around, and took it all in, the bikes lined up in the parking lot, a couple of brothers hanging out in front of the house, watching me. One of them threw a wave of acknowledgement in my direction and I nodded back. I wasn't expected to be back around here right now, I didn't have a fight scheduled for another few days yet. I walked up to the entrance with its double doors, pushed through and walked in like it was my own front door.
This was it. There was no going back, once I returned to the club. But I had to. I was lost without it. It was a life I had known for too long, a life I knew with April. The past few years, I'd gotten lost. I couldn't stay lost forever.
I stepped inside, and my mind was made. Ants sat on the edge of the pool table, bullshitting with a prospect. He looked my direction and his face lit up with a big, shit-eating grin. "Hammer," he said.
"Good to see you, man. You come by to check out the new Road Glide Skunk bought with his winnings?"
"Nah," I said. "I'm looking for the Geezer, if he's around."
"Yeah, man," he said. "He's back there in the office with Castillo, going over some business stuff. Give me a second and I'll let him know you're here." He turned and walked toward the back, then stopped and turned around. "Hey. Skunk mentioned you have an old chopped up Dyna you ride."
"Yeah, so?" I asked.
"Is that what I just heard out front?"
I nodded, and watched Ants recede back toward Geezer's little office. I realized the prospect had been staring at me the entire time. "What?" I asked, my voice sharp.
"You're Hammer?"
"Yeah, so what?" I asked.
He strode over to me, and I realized how large he was, well over six foot and thick as a tree trunk. He extended his hand. "I'm Pete," he said. "Pete Ketchum. Pleasure to meet you. Guys 'round here been calling me Swede."
"Swede, huh?" I paused. "You look familiar. Where do I know you from?"
He shuffled awkwardly, hung his head. "Tank was my older brother."
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