by CM Genovese
“Yeah.”
“Who is she?” she asked.
“A story for another time.”
“Fair enough.”
She pulled her head away from me, looked down at our naked bodies, and laughed.
“Look at us,” she said.
“Might as well go another round,” I joked.
She laughed. “So I can fall apart on you all over again?”
“You should get cleaned up and get some rest. You still have to work tonight.”
“Yeah, I guess I should go to bed.”
She stood and covered her pussy and her tits with her hands, suddenly shy in the open living room with sunlight peeking in from around the window blinds. I lay back and closed my eyes, giving her the privacy she needed. Her feet padded away. For a second, I considered getting up and joining her in the shower, but I drifted off to sleep. Sex always exhausted me.
This time, I didn’t wake up to a blowjob. My phone buzzed at a quarter after three in the afternoon. It was a message from Tayla: When can we meet? Our son would like to see you. I would like to see you.
10
While waiting for Carla to get ready for work, I made a few phone calls. Kinsey, an ex-military mechanic buddy of the club, owned an auto shop in Anchorage. He would take care of getting Carla’s car towed to his shop and get it fixed. She’d have it back by the next day. Next, I phoned BP and set up security for the pub for the day. Oosik would be there at five, when Carla was scheduled to arrive. Then I texted Tayla: Meet me at 5:30?
One of the best things, and sometimes the worst, is the late setting sun of Alaska summers. With fall rapidly approaching, the sun didn’t set until at least ten o’clock at night, closer to eleven. A 5:30pm playdate would be like meeting at noon anyplace else.
A few minutes later, Tayla texted me, “Looking forward to it.”
My emotions were all fucked up. It must have been clear I had a lot of shit on my mind because Carla stepped out of her bedroom, ready for work, and asked, “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I lied. “Let’s get you to work. I’ve got a few things I need to take care of. Your car will be fixed by tomorrow.”
“What if it’s something big, like a big deal?”
“Trust me. Whatever’s the problem, you’ll have your car back tomorrow.”
With that, she followed me downstairs and got on the back of my bike.
When we arrived at the pub, Oosik was already inside, seated at the counter, flirting with Kale. He had a thing for college girls, and it seemed quite a few had a thing for bikers ever since motorcycle club romance books became so popular.
If women understood how fucked-up our lives really were, they wouldn’t fantasize about a life on the back of a bike. We’re not flowers, puppies, and white picket fences. We’re pull your pants down and fuck you up against the hood. We’re grip your ponytail and drive in balls deep. We’re beer drinking, fist fighting, guns blazing, pussy ravaging bikers. Pirates on two wheels.
From my view in the parking lot, I watched the young woman flirt with Oosik. She slapped his large bicep playfully and twirled her hair around one finger. She was in for a surprise. He might break her in half. I hoped Carla came to her rescue. Oosik had a way with women. A way with getting them into janitorial closets and back offices. The place didn’t matter. If the woman was willing, so was he, and Kale was a pretty one.
“Thanks for the ride,” Carla said as she climbed off my bike.
“No problem. I’ll get someone to keep an eye on you tonight.”
“Thank you. I’m sorry things went down the way they did.”
“I’m not. I had a good time. You’re a beautiful woman and you know a few tricks.” I winked at her and she smiled.
“I’ve learned a few,” she replied.
As she walked through Paddy’s front door, I sped away, off to see my son. Off to see the woman who tormented my every damn thought.
By this time of the evening, even with school out for the summer and the sun still beating down overhead, kids should have been sitting down at the dinner table not standing on street corners. Yet, there was a young boy waiting at a bus stop as I turned into a residential neighborhood that served as a shortcut to the park.
He was a few street corners ahead of me, but I could see him clearly enough. No older than twelve or thirteen, he was more interested in the phone in his hand than anything else around him. More than likely he was playing a game because he smiled and moved around quite a bit, like he was winning the game one second and losing the next.
My sights were on the boy, wondering what kind of parents would let their kid catch a bus all alone at this hour. Sometimes the late-setting sun messed with people’s common sense. Fishermen often stayed out all night drinking, forgetting they had to work in the morning. The sun shiny evenings fucked them up. As long as it was daylight, everything was safe. Everything was chill. Everything was right in the world.
This kid’s parents could have been victims of this mentality.
I was coming up on him when, from a side street on the left, a familiar black limo rolled through the stop sign and turned left onto my street, moving into my path. The horn-like mirrors seemed even more menacing in the daylight. It felt like the driver of the car was letting me know it had free rein and there was nothing I could do to stop it. It could come out at night or it could come out during the day.
The kid at the bus stop continued playing the game on his phone, oblivious to the fact that a predator was driving right up beside him.
I blared my horn, hoping to snap the kid out of his trance-like state, but I was too late.
As the car slowed down next to the bus stop, the rear door opened, and a nun wearing a cream-colored uniform stepped out. Or something resembling a nun. It moved quickly to the boy, scooped him up in its arms, and turned back to the car.
“Hey!” I yelled, honking my horn again.
I sped up and raced toward the car. The kid didn’t fight. He didn’t scream. He didn’t react much at all as the nun threw him into the backseat and disappeared into the car behind him. The door slammed shut and the car sped off.
My bike was faster, at least it should have been.
The black limo gunned it and whipped around the next corner. I followed, trying to figure out what I would do if I caught it. Would I jump off my bike and rip the rear door off its hinges? I couldn’t shoot holes into the car without possibly hurting the boy.
My nightmare came back to me. The one where Caleb was taken by the black car. Who were this kid’s parents? Their son was gone. They’d taken him. And they’d never even know how it happened.
It was my duty to catch this car, to save this boy, and to make the driver and his or her nun partner pay for taking him in the first place.
No matter how fast I went, the car seemed to drive faster. It blew through stop signs, ran a red light, and kept flying at a speed I couldn’t quite comprehend. I was on a fucking Harley and my bike was fast. Yet, this old-fashioned car was faster.
I honked my horn as I followed the car through a busy intersection. Cars to my left and right, vehicles that had the right of way, skidded to a halt and blew their horns as I illegally drove through their paths. A second later and I would have gotten sandwiched between them all.
As I accelerated and the car seemed to slow down, its rear window rolled down slightly and the clawed hand I saw so long ago, on the night Holly was murdered, came into view. Its fingernails tapped against the glass, and I knew it was a warning. I was too close.
The car slammed on its brakes, and I did the same, screeching to a halt behind it.
A horn blared somewhere behind me and jolted me awake. My bike was about a foot away from slamming into a telephone pole on the side of the street. Behind me, a man driving a cement truck honked wildly.
“Buddy! You okay?” he called out.
The black car was gone.
Impossible. It was right here. I was just about to –
I
was going to save the kid. I was so close. Where the hell did the car go?
“You almost hit that pole!” the cement truck driver said.
“Yeah,” I replied, barely above my breath.
“Jeez, man. You need to be careful. Lay off the sauce.”
“It’s not that,” I replied, but I wasn’t really talking to the man. The words were coming out, but my mind was on the line of cars in front of me. They were stopped at a red light. There’d been nowhere for the black car to go. Cars were lined up at the upcoming intersection. It had simply vanished behind them.
If it was there at all. Was I imagining it? No, I couldn’t have been. The boy. Where the fuck is the boy?
The black car was gone.
“Take care of yourself, man,” the cement truck driver said as he rolled up his window and followed the cars going through the green light.
I remained parked in front of the telephone pole. I was so close to the thing I could reach out and run my hand over it. Something had tried to kill me. Here I was thinking I was driving toward the rear bumper of the car and it was a fucking telephone pole.
The run-in with the black limo had me feeling out of control. Like nothing was what it seemed. Had a kid been taken? Or was I daydreaming? It wasn’t like me to lose sense of myself. I considered telling Tayla we’d have to meet some other time, but it wasn’t like her to message me out of the blue like this. We had our scheduled visits. Unscheduled ones had never really existed before. I was worried there was some kind of emergency, so I drove on to the park, but the black car stayed at the forefront of my mind.
It was so real. It had to be real.
When I arrived at the park, Caleb and his sister were playing with some other kids on the wooden playset. I heard Caleb yell out, “The ground is hot lava! You can’t touch the sand!”
The innocence of small children was so admirable. I hoped my son would never grow to feel like the whole world around him was hot lava. That was how I felt sometimes. He would be different. He would grow to see the world in a different light.
Looking past Tayla, who sat on the bench like she always did, Caleb was in focus leaving his mother in a bit of a blur, and I considered going back to my bike and riding away. Me not being around might be the best thing for that kid. It would definitely be better for his mother. With me out of the picture, she could focus on her relationship and even if things didn’t work out with him, she could concentrate on taking that next step and moving on. She was gorgeous, smart, and so kind. Men all over Alaska and everywhere else would line up for a chance to sweep her off her feet.
But I didn’t walk away. I strode toward her and plopped down next to her on the bench.
“You look tired,” she said.
“I think I’m losing my mind,” I admitted.
“Life?”
“Something like that.”
“I hear ya.”
“You okay?”
“I don’t know, Pipe.”
Her hand moved over to mine and this time instead of only brushing my knuckles, she grabbed hold of my thumb and squeezed tightly.
“Maybe if you held my hand for once,” she said, “I’d feel more at ease. I’d feel better about these thoughts I’ve been having.”
“Maybe if I held your hand?” I asked, feeling a bit confused and aggravated.
I’d done so much more than hold her hand last time. Six fucking years ago I tried with her. Yes, she was fucking married. I understood that, but the way she cut me off…
But did she cut you off? For six years you’ve been able to see her. To see your son. Despite the fact she was married. She could have told you to piss off, but she’s been one of your best friends for six fucking years. Best friends at a distance… but still, she’s been there for you and you’ve been there for her.
I couldn’t stop arguing with myself. What was right? What was wrong? Who gave a shit about any of it? I’d been thrown through a motel window, angry fucked Carla, almost ran into a fucking telephone pole, and worse than all that was the feeling the woman I loved more than anything on earth was showing me signs that she might love me back. I was fucking terrified of her. She could absolutely wreck me. I felt like I was losing my mind.
“Tay, what’s going on with you?” I asked. “You’re really fuckin’ with my head.”
“I just can’t anymore. I don’t know.”
“What don’t you know?”
“I look at John and I try to see the man I married, but he’s hurt me so damn much. Every word out of his mouth seems fake. He lies about even the most ridiculous shit. I asked him to pick up onions the other night when he went to the store. Instead of simply telling me he forgot, he told me they were out of onions. They weren’t. I know because I was there an hour before and I’d forgotten. There was a fucking mountain of onions. Today, that mountain was still there.”
“Maybe he went to a different store.”
“He didn’t. That’s not the point anyway. The point is he doesn’t know how to tell the truth.”
As much as I couldn’t stand the bastard, I understood his thought process. He probably felt like it was easier to lie than to admit he’d forgotten and have to argue about it. Still… a lie was a lie, and it seemed the good captain couldn’t find the truth from all his lies.
“Has he hit you again?” I asked.
“No. He’s pushed me around a bit, but he hasn’t actually hit me. He’s still very aggressive though. He’s angry all the time. And we don’t make love anymore.”
“Tayla—”
“We don’t. Not at all. My vibrator has become my best friend.”
I had to laugh at that. She knew everything about my sex life and I hardly knew anything about hers. The subject made me uncomfortable. Thinking of her naked body beneath the captain’s made me nauseous.
“I don’t even think about him while I’m using my vibe,” she added.
Don’t say it. If you do, I don’t know how I’ll handle it. Please don’t—
“I think about you,” she said. “About that night we had. How I rode you on the couch and how you took me on the floor. And about the other times. We were pretty good together.”
“We were dreaming,” I said, hating myself for saying the words. I wanted so badly to embrace her and admit she was right, but this wouldn’t be good. “We were two selfish assholes living out a sexual fantasy.”
“We were good together,” she insisted. “You know it. I know it.”
“And you chose him,” I said, yanking my hand away from her.
“Pipe.”
“You chose him, Tayla, and it’s kind of fucked me up ever since. I was good at fucking women and not giving a damn. Sure, I’d fucked married chicks. I’m no saint. But I never had a kid with one.”
“Pipe, I was scared.”
“So was I. I hadn’t planned on you. And I hadn’t planned on all the fucked-up emotions that would come with you. I wanted you. All of you. I told you that. I told you I’d make you my woman.”
“Stop,” she begged.
“And you chose him.”
“Pipe… I’m sorry.”
“I can’t right now, Tayla.”
“Just hear me out.”
“You’re going to confuse the hell out of our boy. He thinks I’m his fuckin’ uncle, Tay. His uncle.”
“I know. I’m so sorry.”
I stood and turned my back on her, watching the kids play in the park. I hadn’t expected to be so angry all of a sudden. I should have loved that she was showing me attention, affection, and admitting she had feelings for me still, but I knew nothing good could come from this. Caleb would get hurt. His sister would get hurt.
“I should have chosen you,” Tayla said, and her voice cracked. She was crying behind me, and I wanted nothing more than to hold her, kiss her, and wipe away her tears. But I didn’t budge.
“You didn’t,” I said as I left her there on the bench and made my way back to my bike.
As badly as I wante
d her, this couldn’t happen.
11
A week passed, and I hadn’t heard from Tayla. I felt bad about it, but I also knew she wouldn’t hesitate to get in touch if she needed help. I couldn’t get her off my fucking mind though. A million questions ran through my head. What if I’d been honest about how badly I wanted her? What if I’d turned and kissed her on that bench? Where would we be now?
Carla was doing great with the pub. Her soon to be pub. With the MC backing her and her two Irish bodyguards still hanging around, she had the manpower she needed to start fixing up Paddy’s. It wouldn’t only be a diner that served beer. It would be a craft beerhouse. We hadn’t fucked again, and I knew that one time would be the only time. We’d become friends who’d had one benefit. Only one.
Tonight, overnight, several of my MC brothers and me would be helping at the pub. This was the night the bar top would be refinished, and we’d change out the lighting to give the place a livelier atmosphere. A few of the MC’s friends in the construction world were stopping by to lend a hand.
It was a late-night party of sorts involving bar food, beer, and buzzsaws.
Oosik sat at a booth, taking a break, with Kale on his lap. She leaned back against his chest and kissed him. Apparently, they’d been fucking. Carla plopped down in the seat next to me and planted a big, wet kiss on my cheek.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” she said.
“You know one way you could thank me,” I joked.
“Been there, done that.”
“Oh, yes, you have.”
We both laughed.
“Are they really fuckin’?” I asked, nodding at Oosik and Kale.
“Yes, and apparently it’s the best sex of her life.”
“Of her life? What is she, twenty?”
“Twenty-three.”
“I’m surprised she’s still in one piece.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard the stories,” she said.
“I’ve seen the aftermath,” I warned her.