by Cora Black
That set him off. She wasn’t scared? Well, you should be, Ben thought. If you have any brains at all. “You don’t know thing one about this business,” Ben hissed to Charlotte. “Not a goddamned thing. So don’t go around acting like you do just because you spent one day riding my coattails. Do us both a favor and fuck off.”
“Oh, is that right? You don’t want me around you today? That’s fine with me,” Charlotte shot back. “Noah!” she called over to the other side of the club.
Noah perked up, turning around with a big goofy grin on his face as he looked at Charlotte. Does he… like her? Ben wondered. He felt something burning in his chest at the thought, but then he decided to ignore it. Not relevant. Not right now.
“How do you feel about taking me along with you today on all your missions? I’ll stay out of the way, I promise.”
For a brief moment, Noah’s face lit up like a lightbulb, only to fall a moment later. He glanced over at Ben, fear evident in his eyes. “I, um, I’d love to, but I don’t know if it’s okay with the boss man. You know,” he said, gesturing over to Ben.
“It’s not,” Ben said in a hard, flat tone.
“Oh, fuck that, forget him,” Charlotte said, waving a hand to dismiss Ben. “He’s not the boss of you, Wally is.” She turned her head to face the others sitting at the bar. “Uncle Wally, can I ride on the back of Noah’s bike today?” she yelled out so her voice would carry across the bar.
“Uh, sure, sweetie,” Uncle Wally said back without turning his back to address her.
Charlotte smirked smugly and turned to Ben. “See? The boss doesn’t care.”
Ben muttered curses under his breath, but he plastered an exaggerated smirk on his own face to mock Charlotte. “Whatever. Try not to fall off the back of the bike since you’re riding with Hot Wheels over here.”
Charlotte turned to face Noah, and Ben heard her whisper under her breath. “What does that mean?”
“Oh, just that I go a little too fast sometimes, that’s all. I’m the newest one in Ben’s group,” he said. Noah was trying for a casual tone in his response, but Ben could hear his insecurity poke through, and for a second Ben felt a little guilty for mocking him. But just a little bit.
Ten minutes later, when all the boys had gathered outside by their bikes, Ben walked back over to Charlotte and pulled her away from Noah. “Hold on tight to him, okay? He slips sometimes.”
“What, you care?” she scoffed, although the effect of it was a bit diluted by how ridiculous she looked in Noah’s big helmet.
For some reason her attitude rankled him. Ben didn’t know why he was goddamned irritable this morning, but he didn’t have the time to stop himself. “I just don’t want to have to clean your body off the road,” Ben spat, marching away from Charlotte and jumping onto his bike. “Come on, guys. Saddle the fuck up.”
She wanted to ride with them, wanted to see the life? He’d show her the life, then, what it was really like. He’d hold nothing back.
***
Charlotte felt her stomach swoop in fear as Noah started up the engine and started practically flying over the road. She looked down to see the pavement whipping past them, but she had to stop a few seconds later or she was going to be sick.
“Where are we going first?” she yelled into Noah’s ear, trying to sound as relaxed as possible. As nice as Noah seemed to be—too nice, actually, way too nice to fit any kind of stereotype she had in her mind about MC members—she still wanted to seem tough and in-control in front of him. As far as he knew she was just a random girl, some non-biker chick that Ben had picked up somewhere, but there was that pride of hers that she just couldn’t let go of. The idea that anybody here thought she was weak set her spine on fire, and not in a good way. She had something to prove, and she was going to do it if she had to kill herself (not literally, she hoped) to do it.
All of her effort to sound secure on the bike was apparently wasted, however, because Noah didn’t respond. He must not have heard her. Charlotte repeated herself, basically shouting directly into his ear.
“What?” Noah yelled back.
Charlotte groaned to herself. It wasn’t worth the effort. “Never mind!” she shouted to her rider. She clutched onto Noah harder as he sped up again, shooting ahead of all the other bikers and taking a corner so sharply that Charlotte gasped like a scared little girl. She inwardly berated herself, relieved that the engines were howling so loudly that nobody could hear. Ben would have mocked her for sure. She couldn’t believe he was so fucking rude to her earlier. She told him last night that she wasn’t going to give up on him. What did he think that meant? She wasn’t just there to fuck him. She was going to reshape his life, like she did everybody else’s, and to do that she couldn’t be afraid of any part of him, no matter how ugly.
In the back of her mind, another voice argued back. But maybe he doesn’t know what it’s like to have somebody really care about him. Maybe it feels like an invasion to him instead of somebody actually giving a fuck. Charlotte shook her head, dislodging the thoughts as quickly as they came. Fuck that. She wasn’t going to make excuses for him when he wouldn’t even have the nerve to apologize for himself. He was an asshole, plain and simple. Charlotte could work with that. Just because he was a dick didn’t mean she couldn’t help him.
Finally, they rolled to a stop in front of a dive bar, old-looking with several broken windows on the front side right above the entrance. Charlotte wondered what happened there, if it was the result of drunken bar-fights or gun violence or something else entirely. In any case, she was happy to be off Noah’s bike.
Ben jumped off his bike and strode toward the entrance of the bar without looking at her or addressing any of the men. So she guessed his brighter, authoritative attitude from yesterday was out the window. Goddammit. Charlotte supposed it had been too good to be true as a starting point.
Charlotte was probably supposed to stay outside, even though there was nobody around to entertain her, but she went ahead and followed the men into the bar, staying near the back of the pack in case it was a major faux pas.
“Where’s the stuff?” Ben asked as soon as Charlotte walked in through the threshold of the bar. There was a huge group of bikers waiting for them. It immediately felt less casual than all of the interactions from the day before. Nobody was drinking. Everybody was just staring at each other with frowns on. There was no music in the background to cut the tension. Charlotte immediately felt the hairs on her neck and back stand at attention, and some part of her wondered if it wouldn’t have been better for her to wait outside.
No. Fuck that. Don’t retreat into yourself. You can do this. Just sit and watch, she coached herself.
“The stuff is with us,” one of the older bikers, a guy with a long grey beard, said to Ben.
“Yeah? I know that. Where the fuck is it?” Ben demanded. Charlotte wondered why he was being so aggressive. Weren’t they doing a deal with these guys? Didn’t that mean they were a friendly club? Why did everybody seem so uncomfortable?
One of the other men in Ben’s group, a guy that looked to be in his mid-thirties with huge muscles, stepped forward, but he didn’t say anything. Charlotte figured he must have been there to look intimidating.
“Where’s the money?” the old biker from the other gang said before turning to the side and spitting on the ground. Gross.
“Money’s with us,” Ben said in a mocking tone of voice. “Oh, that’s not a satisfactory answer, huh? Gee, I wonder how that feels.”
“You got a big fucking mouth, boy,” the guy said, stepping forward until there was only about a foot separating him and Ben. But Ben didn’t shrink back. Instead he squared his shoulders up and lifted his head to stare into the taller man’s eyes.
“Yeah, I do,” Ben agreed. “You gonna show us the stuff or are we taking our business elsewhere?”
The older man clicked his teeth but nodded his head back to one of his boys, who stepped forward holding a long skinny cardboard box. �
�Shit’s in here,” he announced.
“Open it,” Ben demanded.
“Show us the money first,” the older man insisted.
“Open the fucking box first,” Ben said back. Why the fuck won’t he just show a little bit of the money, Charlotte wondered. Was this some kind of power play or were they worried the guys were aiming to steal their cash and kick them out of the bar?
The circle of other bikers started getting up off of their seats and walking forward, slowly but surely toward the Titans. Charlotte instinctively sunk back into the nearest corner, feeling fear climb up her chest until her face heated up. She probably went beet red, but luckily nobody was looking at her. All the bikers were locked in an apparent staring contest with each other, jaws set hard and feet slowly moving forward. Even Ben’s men started walking ahead, closing the space between the two gangs.
“We doing this?” the big muscular guy standing next to Ben asked.
The answer came almost immediately, with one of the other bikers running forward and yelling loudly as his fist crashed into Ben’s face. Charlotte’s hand flew up to her mouth to stop the scream that threatened to ring out from her throat.
A second later, Bens’ boys launched forward as one, all crashing into each other at the same time, legs and arms flying out in every direction. Charlotte slinked back even further, trying to disappear into the shadows while the smashing of wood and the crunch of human bodies got louder and louder, the men’s panting filling up any empty spaces in between the cacophony of their physical attacks. She tried to strain her eyes to see what was going on, who was winning, but it was all one huge blur, just an amorphous blob of limbs pushing and pulling each other to and from the ground. There was no way to tell who anybody was. For all Charlotte knew it turned into a free-for-all where all the men were fighting every other individual in the bar, regardless of their affiliation. How could they even tell which side everybody was on in this mess?
And for that matter, what the fuck was going on? There was barely a verbal argument before it erupted. Charlotte had no idea why the hell this was happening. She felt like an anthropologist furiously scribbling down mental notes about the behavior of some foreign culture, some entirely different group that operated according to their own specific rules and customs.
Charlotte saw an opening between the bodies that would lead to the exit and ran into it quickly, rushing to the opposite side of the bar. In the far corner, just inside the entrance, stood a few boys that Charlotte recognized from Ben’s group. One of them was the guy that disrespected Ben the previous evening, Axel. He was just standing in the corner, an unlit cigarette hanging from his lips. One of the other Titans, Don or Donnie or something like that, was huddled up next to him in the shadows, making a mean face. Charlotte wondered why they weren’t in the fight, backing up their brothers. They noticed her, but they made no move to say anything or acknowledge her presence in any way.
Looking at them watching and smoking, Charlotte got the sense there were two types of bikers. There were the ones who knew they were tough, and therefore didn’t have to act like it, and then there were the ones who went around swaggering like criminals. Axel and Don were the second type. She didn’t feel intimidated by them, even if they did snarl at her and try to make her feel uncomfortable. She wasn’t willing to give them the privilege of making her shrink up.
Within a few minutes, the fight seemed to slow down. Some of the men were lying on the floor, while others from both gangs were draped over the bar stools like wrung-out towels. There were maybe a half dozen men still fighting, but their blows were coming more and more slowly, and their long panting breaths and squeaking shoes filled the room instead of the crashing noises from before. Ben was still up fighting, his fists coming faster and harder than the other men, but when he turned around Charlotte saw that half of his face was covered with blood. Panic struck her right in the stomach, and she couldn’t stop her legs from moving her back across the bar. She stepped in between the huge men still fighting, pulling Ben away from the fray.
“All right, all right, enough, boys!” she yelled out. “That’s enough.”
She didn’t know if it was shock, or exhaustion, or if her voice really sounded like an authority figure worth listening to, but all of the men stopped moving and froze where they stood, staring at her holding Ben back. Ben squirmed in her arms, trying to break free, but he must have been worn out from the fight because he couldn’t seem to struggle out of her arms.
“Did you have fun, guys?” she asked the room. It was meant to be a bit sarcastic, but one of the other gang’s bikers, a young guy with blood dripping out his nose, piped up and said, “Yeah!” with a bright smile across his face. Charlotte couldn’t keep herself from returning the grin.
In fact, she started laughing, right in Ben’s ear, and before long it caught on, all the old men starting with low titters and finally progressing to full-body laughter, some of the men cradling their ribcages as they chortled and turned to their brothers to bump fists or give friendly shoulder pats.
Somehow, as if her old parole officer magic had taken control of the room, she felt like she held the reigns in this situation. She cleared her throat, causing the men to stop laughing immediately and turn to look at her. “Can we do business now, gentlemen? I mean, really. You have the drugs, they have the cash, you both came here today looking to make a deal— So let’s make a fucking deal. Blood’s already been spilled over this. Let’s make it worth it.”
She could see some of the younger boys look at each other skeptically, and for a second she was terrified that another fight was going to break out and this time she wouldn’t be able to slink away effectively. But the old guy, the leader of the other gang, walked over to her and spoke up, his voice hoarse from all the panting he’d been doing while clobbering Ben’s face.
“Lady’s got a point, fellas.” He reached into his pocket and revealed a medicine bottle. It looked like any regular bottle of standard-issue pain capsules, but he screwed open the top and emptied its contents into his palm. Charlotte was shocked to see plain, boring old marijuana in his hand. All of that for pot? Fucking pot? She thought for sure they were fighting each other over something more serious, like cocaine or heroin.
“You got it all?” Ben asked, his voice still hard and combative, like he was prepared at any second to break out of Charlotte’s grasp and beat the old man to an even bloodier pulp.
The old guy nodded. “You have my word. You got all the cash?”
Ben spat blood onto the floor before struggling in Charlotte’s embrace to reach into his pocket and toss a pile of hundred dollar bills to the ground. “It’s all there,” he said, his voice now a normal tone.
The leader of the other gang whistled, high and sharp, and two of the boys opened up the cardboard box from before to reveal bushel after bushel of weed. Then two other guys came forward with another box, then a third. “We got a deal here?” the old man asked.
Ben nodded shortly, turning to his boys and directing them to pick up the boxes. “Go ahead and take them to the club, okay?” he said, and the men hobbled out of the bar with their precious cargo.
“I guess we’re done here,” Ben said, finally pushing Charlotte’s arms off of his body. She stepped back into the shadows, letting him step forward to shake the old man’s proffered hand.
“You put up a good fight, son,” the guy said, gesturing to the large bruise that was beginning to purple on his face.
“Not so bad yourself,” Ben returned. Charlotte had to stifle some laughter into her fist, but luckily nobody noticed. All of this macho post-fight stuff was so ridiculous. It sounded like they were trading pillow talk. But at the same time, she could respect it. The men got out their aggression, wherever the hell it came from, and then afterwards left all of those negative feelings behind. It was like a really therapeutic session of counseling. You get out your crying, you get out your yelling, and then afterwards you’re able to hug it out and move on with your lif
e, free of the bad stuff that had been holding you back. Charlotte felt closer to all of the boys, like she finally understood how they ticked, at least a little bit.
The boys filed back out of the bar, much more slowly than how they’d marched in. Some of them were heavily bruised, some were limping a little, but most were okay, just tired and sweaty. Charlotte was heading back over to Noah’s bike when Ben cornered her and pulled her aside. Oh, great. Here it comes.
“Why the hell did you do that?” he said in a harsh whisper.
“What? Break up the fight?” Charlotte asked innocently.
“Yeah, getting in the middle like that. I told you to stay out of my shit. Why couldn’t you just listen to me?” Ben wasn’t raising his voice, but Charlotte wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him this pissed-off before. His face was deep red. Was he… embarrassed?
Okay, time for a mea culpa, even if I don’t mean it, Charlotte figured. “I’m sorry I interfered with your authority. I know you would have stopped it eventually, but I figured I’d speed up the process, you know, save everybody some unnecessary bruises.”