The Devils Bastards MC: Destiny Dallas Callaghan

by Kendra Plunkett-Witt

****

  Back at the clubhouse that night, Richmond approached Destiny. It had been a few hours since the beating off the end of the service road. Buster hadn’t been seen since and perhaps it was better Destiny hadn’t asked. Alec had given the order to roll out just moments after the bike and cut had gone up in flames.

  Destiny didn’t linger or disobey the order. She and Fabio led the pack out and they had returned to the ride. The Hellions, however, hadn’t been seen since.

  Richmond was alone in the clubhouse but Destiny would bet money one or two of his most trusted lieutenants stood guard outside. A day like today could wreak havoc on their club and challenges could arise.

  “Richmond,” Destiny said. She didn’t pity the president, wasn’t angry with him either, but she wondered how he stood with her.

  “Destiny, I just wanted to offer my condolences for what happened to your friend. I know she is a club sister to you. Buster… he was a rough and tumble boy but I didn’t think this of him…” Richmond sighed. “I thought having him in our ranks would help bring us up a level. But maybe this proves what the Hellions should have always been. Just weekend rebels. Stay just pure Harley enthusiasts if this is the type we bring in.”

  “It wasn’t your fault. Buster was the only one to blame. And maybe us. If our security had been tighter then perhaps things like this wouldn’t have happened. At least not on our ground.” Destiny pulled out a cigarette, her hands still shaking at the memory of her friend lying in the hospital bed. She lit it up and offered the pack to the Hellion.

  Richmond declined with a shake of his head. “It wasn’t your fault. You Callaghans try and take on too much responsibility. You take blame for problems that aren’t yours and for mistakes you didn’t make. It made your father a good leader but it got Austin killed and drove Houston from the club. You have to balance that weight, Destiny, and learn to ride with it before you take that gavel.”

  Destiny didn’t know what to say. The gavel wasn’t her birthright so she had no idea why everyone would just assume she would be granted it. When she didn’t respond, the old biker left the clubhouse.

  A thick cloud of smoke snuffed out all thoughts from Destiny’s mind for the rest of the night.

  11

  “Sit down, Anastasia, I got this!” Destiny called as she slammed open the lid on the washer machine and hurriedly threw the laundry into the dryer. Brooks, Anastasia’s baby boy, was crying from his crib needing a diaper change and the timer from the oven was going off.

  “Destiny, it’s been four days. I’m fine. Let me get the baby,” Anastasia whined and started to pull herself up off the couch.

  “Lay your happy hind end back down there. I got this,” Destiny said once more. Although whether she was trying to convince herself or her friend at this point, she really didn’t know.

  Destiny leaned over Brooks’ crib and scooped him up on her way to the kitchen where she turned off the oven and opened the door. The chicken casserole shouldn’t be that burnt, should it?

  Destiny didn’t see any smoke so she considered it a small victory and toted a still crying Brooks back to his changing station.

  “It’s okay, buddy. Calm down, I’ll have you cleaned up in no time,” Destiny told the baby. Anastasia had come home from the hospital yesterday. And yesterday Stella had taken care of the baby. Just like she and Kristy had done for the last four days.

  But today her aunts had a meeting with somebody at the store or something, so Destiny had volunteered to stay at the house with her friend and help out with the baby. She was a woman so it couldn’t be that hard, right? Surely somewhere she had some motherly, womanly intuition that would come out.

  Wrong! Destiny sighed and hurriedly unsnapped the little onesie thingy that Brooks was wearing and grabbed a clean diaper and the box of baby wipes. She started to take off the diaper and Brooks started to scream. Just as the doorbell rang.

  “Oh for Christ’s sake!” Destiny muttered.

  “I got it!” Anastasia shouted from the living room.

  “No you don’t!” Destiny shouted back. “They can wait until I’m done changing the diaper.”

  The doorbell rang three more times, one right after another and only intensified Brooks’ cries.

  “I’m going to bloody well shoot whoever it is if they ring that bell one more time!” Destiny finished removing the diaper. Oh good, just some pee-pee.

  Destiny hurriedly wiped him off and was soon faced with the task of re-diapering him.

  “Need some help?” she heard Fabio say from behind her and she nearly jumped a foot in the air.

  “When in the hell did you get here?”

  “I rang the doorbell but no one answered so I let myself in.”

  “It was locked,” Destiny glared. Fabio held up his pocket tools. “Jerk.”

  “You’re losing your edge, Destiny. Never figured I could sneak up on Double D.”

  “Well you try being on your A game with this… spawn on your hands.” Destiny motioned to the baby.

  “Be nice, Destiny! That’s my baby you’re talking about!” Anastasia called from the other room. Destiny ignored her.

  “Do you need some help?” Fabio asked.

  “Like you can do any better.”

  Fabio just shrugged. Destiny opened up the diaper and maneuvered it until it was laying how it looked it was supposed to go underneath Brooks.

  She fumbled around with the plastic tabs a few more moments before she noticed the baby was no longer screaming at the top of his lungs. Concerned that somehow she had managed to kill the baby, that perhaps it had passed out from lack of oxygen, her head shot up to look at the baby’s face.

  The baby was perfectly fine. In fact, it was making those cute cooing sounds that babies make when they’re happy. And Brooks was making them at Fabio! Fabio was tickling the baby’s belly and making faces.

  Frustrated that she couldn’t settle the baby’s cries but Fabio could in no time, Double D turned her work back toward attaching the diaper. Two minutes later Destiny had only successfully managed to destroy the diaper. She held chunks of plastic in her hands from where the sticky tabs had touched the wrong part of the diaper and had ripped upon her attempt to fix them.

  Destiny crumpled the diaper up in her hands and tossed it in the diaper trash can thing, frustrated, and pulled out another one.

  “Would you like me to do it?” Fabio asked.

  “What the hell do you know about diapering a baby?” she demanded.

  “I know that diapers are way too expensive for you to keep wasting them like that,” Fabio said as he took the diaper from her, all without losing Brooks’ attention or happy attitude.

  Destiny crossed her arms and waited impatiently while she watched Fabio. Convinced he would do worse than she had, she was sorely disappointed when he had diapered the baby in record time. And the right way, it appeared.

  Unable or willing to stand and watch Fabio redress Brooks, she returned to the kitchen where she yanked out the still-cooling chicken casserole and a plate and fork and toted it into the living room where she placed it as calmly as she could on the coffee table in front of Anastasia before tossing herself in the chair to pout.

  “It was one diaper change,” her friend told her as she straightened herself up so that she was able to eat.

  “So? I’m supposed to have some womanly instincts in me somewhere, right? Don’t women automatically know how to do this stuff?”

  Anastasia started to laugh. “Um… let me think. No!”

  “How come Fabio is so good at it?”

  Anastasia shrugged and pointed out, “He’s also not a woman.”

  “Well whatever it is, it’s managing to show me that I’m not meant to be a mother. Clearly it’s not in the cards.” Destiny pouted.

  “Did you want to be?”

  Destiny shrugged because she didn’t know what to say.

  Luckily, Destiny wasn’t forced to reply or come up with an excuse for her silence. Stella opened th
e door and relieved Destiny and Fabio of their duties.

  “Your father wants you two to meet down at the clubhouse now. You’re working tonight,” Stella said as she took Brooks and eased herself down into the chair next to Anastasia.

  Destiny looked at Fabio and Fabio shrugged. Great. That meant it was an Apache thing.

  ****

  Fabio and Destiny were the last two to walk into church. Fabio closed the door behind them and Drew stared her down as she sat in her spot away from the table. Apparently things hadn’t changed. To him, her loyalty was still a loose cannon.

  “Cochise called. We roll out of here around ten. Meet them off Gordon’s turn. Cochise crew is following an eighteen-wheeler, we trade off there and meet up with Fort Worth up the road, pass the trucker along until another Apache crew can pick them up north and take them to their final destination.”

  No one commented. No one asked questions. The room was tense and Destiny bit her lower lip.

  “What about the cops?” Destiny asked.

  “We shouldn’t have any problems,” Alec assured her.

  “And if we do, we can just call up your hubby Trent and get us out of it,” Drew muttered loudly enough that everyone could hear.

  “Why don’t you watch your mouth, you damn moron, before I beat the hell out of you!” Fabio leapt from his seat just before Destiny grabbed ahold of his cut and slammed him back in his seat.

  Drew jumped up from his seat too and Vat and Jay were in between him and Fabio in an instant.

  “Sit down! Now!” Destiny yelled, standing to her own feet. “You idiots want to fight over some stupid ass bullshit, you do it out of this church! This is insane. Fabio, calm your shit, it’s not your place to fight.” She glared Fabio down and he retreated deep into his chair. “Drew, don’t you ever. And I mean ever! Question my loyalty to this club. You want to remind this club that my high school fling is a cop, then let’s remind them that it wasn’t that long ago that you wore a badge yourself. But that fight happens in that barroom or somewhere outside these walls, do you understand that? If you don’t, you can get the hell out of this church and forget being a Bastard because Bastards have a sense of respect that you clearly don’t.”

  Drew locked eyes with her but he didn’t challenge her. Everyone settled back in and Destiny took her own seat, once more straightening her cut, and looked to Alec.

  “Now that I can continue,” he said slowly. “Any questions?”

  No one said anything so Alec slammed the gavel. Destiny was first out of the doors with Fabio right behind her. She didn’t say anything as she stormed through the clubhouse and out the side door. She jumped on her bike and headed out of the lot with Fabio staying on her heels.

  She rode down the highway, letting the years of memories stream by her. She clung to the handlebars of that bike, cranking the throttle and turning herself into something more than a Bastard.

  The wind whipped around her cut and through the tangles of her hair, biting at her face. She didn’t know how long it was that she rode. Past roads that she didn’t know by heart and finally she found herself cutting back. Somewhere along the line, the roads and miles stopped mattering and landmarks blurred together until she pulled past a gate.

  Wrought iron, it was no Texas cattle farm. She slowed down her pace. The road turned to gravel and wound through a field that was planted with no corn. Squirrels darted from her path and birds chirped in annoyance at the disturbance she had caused their peacefulness.

  She pulled into a spot shaded by an oak tree that had been here all of Destiny’s remembrance and for years before that. She killed the bike and removed her helmet.

  She pulled a cigarette from her cut pocket as she walked away from the Harley and pretended that Fabio wasn’t there. He would keep his distance for now and follow her down later—he always did. She walked a trail and crossed between slabs of slate and granite and concrete every few feet. Finally she came to the family plot.

  Her mother, father, and Austin laid there with plenty of room for more. Fortunately, or not so much, however you chose to look at it. Like everything else in the family, Stella and Kristy had seen to it that their graves were kept up. Flowers changed out with the seasons, always looking pretty as if this was a picnic spot instead of a cemetery.

  She flicked an ash and sat down on a cement bench that sat at her mother’s feet.

  To Brianna’s left was Wes. He always said no matter what that she was his best right hand. To her mother’s right was her eldest brother. Before it was through, Houston would be next to him and, eventually, Destiny next to her father. The whole Callaghan legacy in one patch of dirt.

  There was plenty of room here for families that Kristy was convinced that at least one of them would have when the family plots were purchased during the Black Pride war that took her mother. Always prepared. Always ready. For when disaster would strike, as it always did.

  It had been a long time since Destiny had sat with her family. She only came here when she was ready to fall apart. It had been even longer since she had shed a tear here. This was just where their broken remains lay. They weren’t here, she knew that. But sometimes that was the closest she could get to them.

  To the mother she had hardly known, her father who had borne her love for the patch, and the brother she was desperate for the chance to fill his shoes.

  Fabio ambled down slowly, taking his time.

  “Wasn’t sure you were ever going to turn back. I’m almost running low on gas,” he said, sitting down on the ground Indian style next to her and closer to Austin.

  “Sorry, you didn’t have to follow.”

  “Yeah. Right. You know no one rides alone like this.”

  “What do I do if Drew doesn’t let me patch?” Destiny asked.

  Fabio shrugged. “Go back to Fort Worth for now. Come back later or if all else fails, run Nomad for now. Eventually you will patch. I’ll follow you.”

  “You belong in Sweetwater; you haven’t been anywhere but Nomad.”

  “You belong here too. I will go with you. I will because I care about what happens to you. I felt as close with your brothers as if they were my own. But as close as Austin, Houston, and I were, we were… I was closer with you. Always. Hell, I would have married you if it was me, not Trent, back when Kristy almost got what she always wanted.”

  Destiny slugged him in the arm. “Shut up.”

  “I’m not lying, Destiny. I love you. Always have, always will. No matter what degree of love it is, I do. I will have your back wherever you want or need to go for this club and I will follow you.”

  12

  Destiny lay on her back staring at the ceiling of her apartment bedroom when she heard the bikes thunder out. It was just after nine. They were going to their detail. Alec suggested that perhaps she hold down the fort tonight. Fine by her.

  Her burner bounced around on the end table as it alerted her to a new text message. She didn’t keep names programmed in her phone very often, so this was just a number. But she recognized it. A mechanic from Fort Worth that she had forgotten to tell she was leaving. He was a friend of the clubs and nice enough looking. Great in bed. But hadn’t held her interest as anything more. She didn’t need relationships or anything outside of a joy ride.

  She didn’t read the text. Mainly because she didn’t want to explain her leaving town without telling him. And because she could use the excuse to blow off steam if he was a five-minute ride away.

  Her door opened without a warning knock. “Get up. Let’s go.”

  “Why aren’t you on your detail?”

  “Opted out. They didn’t need me anyhow.”

  “Has to be good money in it, Fabio.”

  “Money I have. You know that.”

  Her phone buzzed again and she reached for it but Fabio was quicker. He would read the message, she knew. “I think your boy toy misses you, Double D. You know, you should get your own personal phone. Get Snapchat. It would make the long-distance relationship th
ing go a lot easier. Sexting and all.”

  Destiny glared at Fabio. His grin was as wide and as mischievous as ever. “‘Course I don’t think it would work that great for your titty shots. Probably can’t fit all that in one frame. I could help you out though, you know. They have gotten quite a bit bigger since I saw them last.”

  Destiny lurched out of bed as he collided with her and tossed her back on the bed. She fought him but let him pin her wrists to the mattress. “I don’t recall you putting up much of a fight like this. In fact, I think the roles were reversed.”

  Destiny landed a knee to his stomach. “That was a decade ago. My tastes have much improved since then.”

  “I hardly doubt that. You were back with the Badge in a matter of days.”

  “Still acting sour about that, Fabio?”

  “Ach! My one true love! The sweetest virgin I ever took, leaving me for that prick?” Fabio put his hand to his heart in an attempt to feign heartache. “It took me years of mourning.”

  “Hours, more like it. Besides, I still bet money I was your first too. The only thing to explain something that sloppy.” Destiny looked in the mirror and picked up a lipstick that had rolled out of a make-up case. Gifts from the aunts in an attempt to civilize her. She opened the blood red color and painted her lips.

  “Of course it was sloppy. It was three a.m. in the back of a motorcycle trailer, we had both been drinking, and I knew I would get my dick cut off if anyone caught us. Mainly by your brothers.”

  “And yet you deemed it worth it?”

  “Every damned instant of the sixteen minutes we were in that hell heated oven of a trailer,” Fabio said. The two of them had never reminisced on that night so far back in their youth. At least not together. Destiny had let her mind wander to that night many times throughout the years. Though she would never admit it to Fabio. But he too seemed to recall it often.

  Feverish kisses. Him quite literally ripping the shirt from her body. Knowing she had someone that nearly every woman they crossed paths with wanted. She hadn’t been Fabio’s first. He was just weeks shy of twenty as she was just weeks into her sixteenth year. But she knew she had probably been one of his most special ones even to this day.