by Adair Rymer
“This is fine, thank you.” I managed a weak but genuine smile.
“Are you ready?”
What Miles did bothered me. Why was his sacrifice necessary? If we left right away maybe we all could have escaped. So before we put more distance between us and the Blue Angels, I needed to know, “Why did Miles stay?”
Hendrix sighed, his strained mirth dissolved and in a low voice he answered. “He did it for his ex-wife and kids. If he's dead, there'd be no reason for the Angels to hurt his family.”
The concept of that level of retaliation was so monstrous to me that my face tingled as I fought down the tears. I needed another moment before I was able to get back on the bike. Never in my life had I hated the Blue Angels more.
“OK,” I said, slipping behind Hendrix on the bike's leather seat. I felt a small piece of my heart fall away for Miles and another piece for Hendrix. In its place, that terrible hole was filled with something darker, something harder. I'd finally begun to understand what brutality really was, and what was truly necessary to survive in this world. “I'm ready.”
Chapter 8
Hendrix
Maya spotted the smoke first. Riding it, I'd noticed something was off with Miles' bike but we didn't have time to check it for damages with the Blue Angels from the casket warehouse on our ass. I'd been able to lose them and we'd just passed the state line into Utah when the heavy bluish smoke came pouring out of the bottom of the bike's engine.
It was getting late and there was no one on the highway so I pushed the bike as far and as fast as it could go. We were only about an hour out from Salt Lake City. If I could get Maya there then I could get her the rest of the way.
All the dummy lights on the instrument panels flashed urgently then clicked off, taking all the bike's power with it. We coasted down from just over a hundred and ten miles an hour. It was a struggle just to keep us up on two wheels.
We rolled to a stop just off the dark, dusty highway out in the middle of fuck-knows-where, Utah. I helped Maya off and looked the bike over.
“How bad is it? Is it something we can fix?” Maya asked.
The bike was fucked. One of the lines was severed by a bullet, and from the looks of it, it'd been leaking oil for a while. The motor was seized. We were lucky the goddamn engine didn’t buckle or explode at the speeds I was pushing it to.
“Fuck...” I breathed the word, putting both hands on the seat for support. This was probably the worst day of my life. And it wasn't nearly over yet.
“Hendrix?”
I put my hand up for her to wait. I couldn't answer her with words yet. Anything that came out of my mouth right now would've been harsh and strangled with frustration. Maya didn't deserve that. I needed a minute to cool off.
Robbie and Miles were dead. My plans for getting out of the club unscathed were fucking ashes in the breeze. We were stranded in a desolate wasteland of rolling hills. No streetlights and a cloud-covered sky robbed us of all but the faintest light. The stars even refused to shine for us. Even outside of my cell I was still in prison.
The frustration I felt burning inside me, that I was hoping would subside with a few quiet minutes to calm down, did the exact opposite. It seeped into my bones and boiled over. I seethed with aggravation at how little I was able to change the outcome; it radiated throughout my entire body. I could feel the anger swelling in my muscles and joints.
I was fit to burst. The pressure I felt was overwhelming. My vision went from black to red. The impotent rage I felt screamed toward a breaking point and finally vented with me, violently kicking the bike over and stomping the shit out of it. I shattered the mirrors, kicked the headlight out, bent the handlebars and ripped the Plexiglas windshield completely off then hurled it as far as I could.
I staggered a few feet away from the wrecked Harley, away from Maya, away from everything. My energy spent, I dropped to my knees. I stopped fighting and hung my head. The tears swelled from my closed eyes and dampened my cheeks.
The leather collar of my vest chaffed against the skin on my neck. I'd never minded the discomfort before. It reminded me that this brotherhood came with a cost and sometimes that cost was uncomfortable. Today though, that rough rubbing on my neck was too much to bear. Today, that cost was too high.
That cost was paid in blood and tears.
Maya's touch was so light that I barely felt it at first. Her soft hand lingered on my shoulder as if asking permission. When I didn't push her away, she walked around in front of me. I opened my eyes enough to see the outline of her lost-and-found jeans and her worn tennis shoes. I couldn't look up at her. Not yet.
Maya gently guided my head into her legs and slipped her fingers between my vest collar and the back of my neck. I could feel her warmth all around me. Felt like I was wrapped in a sunbeam. I closed my eyes and embraced that soothing warmth.
“My brother, Hayton, was put in a coma by a drunk driver when I was twelve. Every day on my way home from school I'd walk to the hospital to visit him. On the way there, I'd steal the funny pages out of a newspaper on someone's porch. I would describe the comic to him as best I could and then read him the captions.”
“Did your brother have a favorite comic?” Maya asked.
“No,” I said, coughing at the innocent question, which then turned into a dark chuckle. “Hayton was a few years older than me and hated those comics, especially Family Circus. When I got there, I would always begin by telling him, 'All you gotta do is tell me to stop and I promise I will.'
“My parents would beg and plead for him to wake up and that never worked so I figured if I could piss him off enough he'd have to wake up and tell me to quit it. I did that for six months. He never did. The night of December twenty second, nineteen ninety, around seven PM, his heart stopped and Hayton died.
“That was my first meaningful experience with death. Feels like death's been chasing me around ever since.
“Just tell me to stop...” The words I told Hayton floated from my lips like the whisper of ghost.
Mercifully, Maya said nothing, she just pulled me in tighter. The night of my brother's death was the last time I was physically consoled by anyone. Her arms wrapped around me were enough to soothe the sharpest burrs of my sorrow. Maya's embrace was the parting of storm clouds in a very heavy rain.
I never told anyone that story and I'd probably never tell it ever again. I wasn't really sure why I'd told it this time. It left me feeling exposed and vulnerable but maybe it was necessary. There was a small degree of relief in letting something like that off my chest. I imagine that's the absolution Catholics feel when they tell the priest their sins.
Maybe it was just budding trust. Maya outpaced everyone in the circuits she ran in my mind. I already liked the girl. Originally, she was just a breath of fresh air and a symbol of what life could be outside of my MC. After that, she was an obligation to a friend and now... she was something else entirely to me.
I didn't know fully what yet, but I was starting to actually care for her.
Beneath all my bullshit, I don't think I would've gone after her when Robbie died if she didn't mean something important to me. I'd like to think that I did it for my friend but I'm too selfish for that. I needed to rescue Maya because I needed her to be safe.
I sat there in silence with her by that endless, dark highway for a long time. It took awhile, but in her arms I found the strength to stand up and fulfill one last obligation to the club.
“Where are you going?”
“Stay here.” I touched her cheek to ward off her worry, then walked off into the flat, starless landscape.
It was hard to see, but I found my way. I wasn't sure what I was looking for but I knew I'd find it.
Before long I came across a patch of semi-loose earth and got to work. A shovel would have made everything much easier but there's no way I could've had the forethought to bring one. All I had with me was my knife.
I stabbed the earth to loosen the soil then dug the ground out w
ith my bare hands. It would take a little while and the going would be tough, but fortunately for me, this grave I had to dig would be a shallow one.
All this time I was trying to get out, to leave the club. I thought about Robbie, Tex, Miles, all the guys we lost to the Wild Boys, all the portraits of fallen members that hung on the grey wall back in the war room at our clubhouse... I was all that's left, a lost rider that just wanted to hang it all up, but instead was dragged into a desperate plan and a losing fight. In the end, it was the Coffin Eaters that left me.
“You boys remember why we started this drinking club on wheels?” I let my mind drift back to the four of us around the table in the clubhouse when both it and we were still shiny and new. “We were drunk and directionless, looking for new ways to stir up a little trouble on Saturday nights. Turns out others were like-minded, and before we knew it the Coffin Eaters was born.”
I stripped off my cut, folded the vest neatly then held it in my arms, just feeling the weight. I dragged my hand across the leather, one last time. There was so much history in each scratch and hole of that vest. Finally I laid it in the hole and buried it.
Standing back up I clapped my hands free of most of the dirt and said a few words. “To every man worth his salt, to each brother come and gone, to the reaper that rides for us all. May each man eat the coffin of the last so that the club may live on. Rest easy, you ugly bastards and save me a beer in hell.”
It wasn't much of a eulogy but it would have to do.
Sands shifted on the ridge above me. It startled me into reaching for my gun. I quickly relaxed my hand when I registered that it was Maya.
“That was really nice,” she said.
“I thought I told you to wait for me.”
“I did, but you were gone so long that I was worried you had been eaten by wolves. I'm a city girl. There's a shelf life on how long I can be left by the side of a highway in the middle of nowhere before I start to freak. You're lucky I let you out of my sight for as long as I did.” She stated with feigned indignation.
It was damn near impossible to be mad at her. The little biker-hating princess was genuinely concerned about me. It was a hell of a feeling. How long had I been gone for? I had to leave Tex's cell phone at the warehouse to avoid being traced with it. Compassion settled into her voice as she asked, “Are you alright?”
I looked up at her slender outline on the hill above me. Her presence alone was already making me feel better. Robbie, where the hell did you find this girl? “Starting to be.”
“You did a number on that bike but I managed to find a blanket in one of his side boxes.” She held it up triumphantly.
“Now we just need a basket and some ants and we can have ourselves a proper picnic.”
“I was thinking more of a camp out, especially being that I haven't seen so much as a headlight in the past hour.”
“Yeah, we're out there. C'mon down, let's set that up.” I walked up toward her as she carefully navigated the hill in near pitch blackness.
The sand beneath her shifted and Maya lost her footing. She let out a surprised squeak as her foot abruptly slid forward and threatened to betray her. It wasn't too steep of a grade and the soil was soft enough that she wouldn't have been hurt much if she fell but I moved in to grab her anyways. It was automatic for me. An impulse. It would have taken longer for me to realize that she'd be fine than it would've been to actually catch her. I dashed up the hill and snatched her out of the air right as she pitched forward and really started to panic.
The momentum shift of her in my arms toppled me over too. We tumbled the last few feet together, rolling out at the bottom in a jumbled mess. I managed to take the brunt of it, positioning myself to have her land on top of me and not crush her. The blanket she brought had wrapped itself around us.
I laid there a second, slowly easing into a smile. My life was a maelstrom. It was a roller coaster of horror, sex, violence and drugs. This... whatever this was... was completely alien to me. Never have I been wrapped in a blanket at the bottom of a hill with a beautiful lawyer after our only ride out of nowhere had been destroyed. This was a first for me and firsts were hard to come by nowadays.
“I take it there aren't many sandy hills in downtown Saint Louis?”
“I think we paved over most of them.” Maya wriggled and eventually poked her head out from the folded fabric.
I didn't know if Maya was just a welcome distraction from the pain or if she was the staples and duct tape that my heart needed in order to mend. It was hard to let that grief go, at least enough to enjoy anything good, especially when that hurt was so raw, so fresh in my mind. My vest, the bleeding, open wound of my recently buried past, was only a few feet away.
How do you set something like that aside and look past it? My club and my closest friends were dead. I liked Maya a lot, but how the hell could I justify enjoying myself with her?
I asked Robbie that once, just after a friend of ours was killed. He'd lost a lot of friends in the service and a few more out of it. He had a girl in each arm when he replied to my question. He said that we feel an obligation to the dead. We grieve because we feel that they deserve our full attention. That they'd somehow want us to keep them on our minds. But, really they're just gone, they don't want anything from us. And if they did, and were worth grieving over in the first place, then they'd want us to not be in pain when we thought of them. Let the memory of the dead enrich our lives, not make them shittier than we already make them ourselves.
That's how, I thought. I wasn't trying to find a way to distract myself with Maya and forget about my pain. No, I would honor those I'd lost by not letting that loss destroy me, by embracing the good things in life and not pushing them away.
Maya, in this moment, was the best thing in my life. Despite everything... No. Because of everything, I couldn't push her away. Not tonight.
“Is this a good spot for a blanket?” Maya asked with a hint of shyness, her hot breath brushed against my lips. Her face was only a few inches away. I let the rest of the world melt away. We might as well have been floating in space. There was only her and me.
Her slender body, draped over me, robbed me of my grief and my pain. I was tangled in her, and she in me. Either of us could have easily escaped if we wanted to, and although she stirred, she eventually sank back down and pressed herself all the more tightly against me. She matched her breathing with mine. I could faintly make out the whites of her dark, almond eyes. We were one form.
I shifted enough to get an arm free and swept her silky hair over an ear. Maybe I imagined it, but even now I could just barely pick up the faintest notes of lilacs on her skin. It was quickly becoming my favorite scent.
I wanted to live in that moment with her forever. I wanted to steal it and tattoo it across my flesh so I could never forget her.
My filthy hand grazed her cheek as I cupped the side of her face and pulled her into me. Her wide, full lips crushed into mine. The last barriers of my resistance shattered. Tomorrow, I'd see to it that Maya was safely on her way to San Francisco and out of my life but tonight...
Tonight, Maya, the fallen Blue Angel, would be mine.
Chapter 9
Maya
I didn't know what to think when I crested that hill. I figured it had to be something to do with mourning. Then he caught me when I slipped and... I hadn't planned on any of this. Hendrix seemed like he was in so much pain when he left me. Who wouldn't be, with the losses he'd suffered today? That's why I went after him. I just wanted to console him, to let him know that I was willing to help him. It was the least I could do.
I was also a little scared as well. I wasn't joking about that whole being left alone out in the middle of nowhere thing. I was raised in a city. The wilderness, although incredibly lovely, was also very intimidating. The sheer size of it all...
Hendrix had saved my life several times over now but it still struck me as funny that I'd somehow come to associate him, a murderous biker, with safety
. He pulled me out of the fire that was his normal lifestyle. By virtue of being near him, I'd given up my sense of security. Intellectually, I understood all of that, but I couldn't change the way I felt. I did feel safe around him.
“Is this a good spot for a blanket?” It was a silly question to ask a man wrapped up in a blanket with you. I guess I was trying to diffuse whatever this was because I didn't know if this whole situation was a good idea, considering what he was probably going through and what I had just been through with that psycho, Ricky-tick.
Still, pushing myself away was so difficult. I wanted him, almost beyond words, and especially after every time I thought about him coming back to rescue me. Wrapping my head around just how much he had to give up for me made my heart swell to bursting. No one had ever done anything like that for me before. Ever since then, thoughts of him invaded my mind with the force and consistency of gale winds in a deadly storm.
I needed to stop myself before it went too far like last time.
I prayed that it would happen with Hendrix eventually but on some other day, not now. On a day that wasn't so full of death or near death or almost rape or so much loss or...
When would that be? This normal day. I was almost killed a few hours ago and there was still so much left of the trip. We were dirty, beaten up and stranded in a near hopeless situation that we escaped from by the skin of our teeth.
There may never be an ideal time for me and Hendrix. We may never have our perfect moment, if there even was such a thing. Right here, right now. This might be all we get. How could I possibly give that up? I let my arms give way and let his darkness and warmth take me.
I took a long, deep breath and let all of my doubts float away. I gave myself to him completely. I would let him decide what came next.