“Suzanne, we need to talk,” I said.
“Okay,” she said as she looked up from her plate.
I pressed my elbows onto the table and rested my chin in my hands. “So, while I was gone, did you and Steve ever become more than friends?”
Her eyes shifted downward slightly. “No.”
Bad question. Lead her into it Jacob, just like an interrogation.
“Explain your most intimate encounter with Steve,” I said.
“What? Why?” she asked.
“Some of the guys I ride with said they’ve been seeing you two together a lot,” I said flatly.
“We’re friends,” she responded.
I nodded my head. “I realize that. Entertain me. Explain your most intimate encounter with him.”
“I can’t believe you’re asking me this,” she said.
“Well, I am,” I responded.
“Our most intimate encounter,” she said.
“Well, you know, we met for coffee, and we met for dinner, just to talk while you were gone. He comforted me, Alec. He’s a great friend to us both. Uhhm, I’d say,” she paused, and her eyes immediately darted to my left side and slightly upward.
“Well, we hugged on several occasions, and he kissed me several times, but not kissed me, kissed me. You know, on the cheek,” she said.
She’s lying.
“What did he typically wear?” I asked.
“Wear?” she asked.
“Yes. What did he wear? You know, typically.” I asked.
“That’s a weird question,” she said.
Her eyes shifted to my right and upward. “Normally he wore his scrubs, but sometimes he wore jeans and a tee shirt. Mostly his boots. I can’t believe you’re asking me this.”
Well, that was truthful, at least.
I didn’t know to what degree they had been intimate, or if they even had, but I did know she was lying about their intimacy. To what degree she was lying would be hard to tell. As I sat and studied the woman I absolutely adored, my blood pressure increased with each tick of the second hand on my watch.
“He ever stick his cock in your mouth?” I asked.
She glared at me and her mouth went agape. “I can’t believe you asked me that.”
“And I’m not surprised you didn’t answer,” I said as I stood.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked as she stood and crossed her arms in front of her chest.
“You lied to me,” I said.
“What? Lied to you? I can’t believe…” she began.
“Suzanne, you know that I’ve been trained to interrogate people, right? You realize I can tell when you lie? When I asked what was your most intimate encounter, you made up everything you said. You lied. Now, I’ll ask you one more time, have you ever had his fucking cock in your mouth?” I asked in what she had always described as my mean voice.
And she began to cry.
“Please don’t do anything to him,” she said as she began to sob.
“God fucking damn. Did you fuck him?” I asked.
Her eyes fell to the floor. “Please, don’t do anything to him.”
I couldn’t believe it. I could almost dismiss it if she had fucked some random stranger one night in a hotel while I was gone. But to fuck my best friend, and while I was fighting for the same freedoms that let her be the independent woman that she was…
As my head began to spin and my mind immediately went to violence as a means of resolve, I mentally admitted I had been gone for twelve years on and off, and I fully understood the time I was away had to be extremely tough on her. I needed to be understanding of the difficulties she went through, not quick to condemn or react.
“Alright, listen. Whatever happened, happened. It’s over. Never again. We can get through this. We can,” I said, more in an effort to reassure myself than to reassure her.
I folded my arms in front of my chest and gazed down at the floor. As she continued to cry, I provided no comfort, only serious thought on the matter before us. As I shifted my eyes up toward her face, I had very little sympathy for how she felt. I was sure I felt worse, for many reasons.
“Do you love me?” I asked.
“With all my heart,” she blubbered.
“Well, that’s all we need. We’ll make this work. I’ll talk to him…”
“Don’t hurt him,” she begged.
“I’ll talk to him, that’s all. But you are done seeing him, meeting with him, everything,” I said sternly.
“Do you understand me?” I asked.
She nodded her head.
I inhaled a deep breath and cocked one eyebrow.
She continued to sob. “Yes…Yes, I…I understand.”
“No dinner, no coffee, no secret meetings, no nothing,” I said.
“Okay,” she murmured.
That night, as I stared up at the ceiling of our bedroom, I wondered just how separated from me she had become in the twelve years I was at war. Regardless, I convinced myself we could get through it. Because in the end, I still loved her.
And love was the most powerful thing in my arsenal.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Fall 2012, Wichita, Kansas, USA
Two weeks after my discussion with Suzanne, she called me stating she was going to be late from work, and explained that she was on her way to get something to eat. As we spoke on the phone, I recognized the music in the background as being Steve’s favorite indie rock artist, The Weeks. Knowing Suzanne’s car didn’t have satellite radio, and that local stations didn’t play that particular artist, I questioned her as to whether or not she was with Steve at the time.
An oh my God, he knows we’re together whisper followed, and that was all it took.
I regretted being as considerate as I had been regarding her relationship with Steve. I felt used, cheated, betrayed, and alone. After completely losing my composure in the telephone conversation, I warned her to never come back to the house we had lived in.
After gathering my weapon, sat loading the magazines with bullets. With each round of ammunition, my mind went to thoughts of each of them, and what I felt they had taken from me.
I pressed another round into the half-filled magazine.
This one is for the day I carried you from the treehouse with the broken arm.
With my jaw clenched and my mind wandering to thoughts of what I perceived to be justice, I pressed another round into the magazine.
This one is for believing you were the woman I could spend the rest of my life with.
I grabbed another bullet from the box.
For allowing you to call me a true brother. You’re no brother of mine.
And another.
Teaching you something I truly loved, how to ride a motorcycle. I’ll make sure you’ll never ride another.
And another.
For sharing something as sacred to me as sex with you.
I grabbed another round and pressed against the bullet in the top of the magazine. Incapable of pressing the bullet into the device, I stared down at the rifle magazine. It was clearly completely full.
But I had many more reasons for detesting each of them for deceiving me.
Armed with my rifle, ammunition, knife, and a carton of cigarettes, I drove to his home and parked in the street across from his residence. I sat and blankly stared at her car as my level of anger slowly rose to a point of being unhealthy.
No one is worth your sanity, Jacob. Just walk away.
I had sent a text message to her and to him, and left them both voicemail messages. In the texts messages and in the voicemail, I explained that if I saw either of them through an open window, I would kill them. I further warned if any police arrived, I would kill them, and that the blood of the officers would be on Steve’s hands, as calling the police would be his choice.
Now in the middle of a waiting game, I recalled a lifetime of friendship Steve and I shared, and not only how we used to do everything together, but how he considered joining
the Marine Corps with me.
I tossed my cigarette butt out the window and onto the pavement, alongside the other two dozen just like it. I checked the rearview mirror as a car drove past, and blew the smoke out the window and into the night air.
Our friendship, even as children, seemed to be a lie. Everything we had learned, experienced, and shared led to the event that had me sitting at his home with a rifle, ready to kill him at first sight.
I lit another cigarette and studied the home. All of the windows in the front of the house were in my view, and were dark. The interior lights were now off, and had been for some time, but I had my doubts the two occupants were sleeping. After having sat and quietly waited for either of them to show their faces in a window for over eight hours, I was tired of the aggravation that was building inside of me.
I chuckled to myself, knowing I had not only the knowledge – but the ability – to enter the home, kill them both, and leave without so much as a trace. I took a long drag from my cigarette and considered why I had chosen not to.
I exhaled the smoke, tossed the butt out the window, and stared down at the pile of cigarette butts. It was apparent I had no intention of killing them. I had a habit, not unlike many combat Marines, of policing my cigarette butts, leaving no trace of my existence and no DNA.
The littered street was proof that subconsciously I had not only let go of Suzanne, but that I had not intended to harm them, only to express my inner anger and disappointment in what I felt they had done to me.
Controlling a person’s love, I decided, was impossible. If a woman could fall in love with me, who was to say she couldn’t fall in love with someone else? It was quite possible she had actually fallen in love with Steve, and if that was the case, for me to stand between them would be selfish, shallow, and no better of an act than what they had done to me and my marriage.
I reached over, picked up my phone, and sent a text message to them both.
I’m filing for divorce in the morning. Enjoy your lives together. I will not harm you as long as you never intentionally cross my path.
I pressed send, lit another cigarette, and gazed down at the proof of my existence. As I laughed to myself as to what they must have been feeling, I pulled away, knowing my future life would be an interesting one. At least, I decided, I would have the ability to move about the earth freely.
I realized I would always have to return to Wichita to see my father, but I had serious doubts I would be able to stay, considering all things. As large as the city was in population, it was still reminiscent of a small town, and I knew myself all too well.
Killing my former best friend and ex-wife wasn’t something I really wanted to do.
At least not unless I had to.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Spring 2014, Austin, Texas, USA
Eighteen months had passed since my divorce from Suzanne. Thoughts of the war still lingered in my mind, stuck there permanently like an ugly stain on the cloth of my life. My once clean mind was now littered with bits and pieces of recollections of the war, screaming Marines as they took their last breath, and the eyes of the men I had killed as they held on to the hope of being able to be saved from the permanency of the very death they hoped to cast upon each of the Marines they fought with.
I had no regrets over what I had done, but the constant replaying of events in my head told me my subconscious mind viewed things much differently. My time had been spent, entirely, riding my motorcycle and being as free as I believed any citizen of the United States could be. Tied to no one, bound to nothing, and living off of my military retirement and combat pay, I rode with my newfound brethren, my MC brothers.
Although I made no effort to contact Suzanne or Steve in the time that had passed, from time to time I would catch sight of them at their favorite coffee shop. Each time I did, my temper flared slightly, fueling my desire to get out of town. A club ride to Austin, Texas had been scheduled for a few months, and as the date approached, I found myself itching to make the ten-hour trip by motorcycle.
The motorcycle club I rode in decided to look into starting a new chapter in Austin, Texas, and while we were in the area, planned on looking for a clubhouse. As we rode north on Interstate 35 on our way back to the hotel at the end of the weekend, it wasn’t a potential clubhouse that caught my attention, it was a billboard at a local gym advertising a fundraiser for amateur fighters. The same gym was advertised in a flyer for the bike rally we planned on attending the following weekend, and after noticing the sign, I decided to I wanted to see if the gym was open.
Riding in the front of the group right beside the president, Erik, I raised my hand and motioned toward the sign. He nodded his head and signaled for the group to slow and then motioned for everyone to exit the highway. As twenty of us pulled into the parking lot of the small gym, the sound from our exhaust was deafening.
After parking under a light pole I got off the bike, stretched my legs, and gazed at the gym. A Harley sat in the parking lot beside the front door and at least some the lights seemed to be on in the front of the building, although the entire side of the building facing us had no windows, we decided to see if they were open for business. I glanced at Teddy, tilted my head toward the door, and walked up to it. After checking the handle and finding it unlocked, I pulled it open.
In the summer, I typically rode with my leather vest and no shirt. In as good of physical shape as I was when I was at war – or maybe even better – I would have described myself as an intimidating man. The man who stood on the other side of the door when I yanked it open however, was an absolute monster.
Wearing a pair of sneakers, cargo shorts, and boxing gloves, he stood beside a petite woman and glared in my direction. His upper body and arms were covered in tattoos, which certainly wasn’t anything new to me, but his presence told me he was no amateur to boxing or fighting.
“What can I do for ya, Brother? We’re closed, we were just locking up,” he said as he cocked his cleanly shaved head slightly to one side.
To make sure he fully understood I wasn’t intimidated by his size, I stepped inside the door a few feet and cleared my throat lightly as I flexed my chest. “Well, we rode into town for the ROT rally coming up. The flyers for the rally said you were having fights next week. I boxed in the Marines, and while we were at the bar I made a bet with the president of our motorcycle club. He’s boxed a little, and we’d like to see if there’s two spots open.”
He glanced over his shoulder at the woman who stood beside him, nodded his head slightly, but didn’t respond.
“To tell you the truth, we didn’t think anyone would be here. We were just going to see if we could find the place and saw the scoot in the lot. You ride?” I asked.
He nodded his head once. “Yep.”
Man of few words, huh?
I folded my arms in front of my chest and grinned as Teddy stepped up beside me. “So, have any spots left?”
“Yeah, we got some paperwork to fill out in the office, but it’s locked. Can you come back in the morning?” he asked.
I nodded my head and lowered my arms. “We’ll be back in the morning. Can you save me two spots? One of the other fellas said he’ll fight if there’s another spot. Kind of an inside bet with the club. Bragging rights. Hell, if you ride, you know how it is.”
He nodded his big bald head. “I’ll tell the boss. His name’s Kelsey. There’s at least two left for sure, ain’t had much traffic on it yet. What’s your name?”
I extended my hand. “My name’s Alec Jacob, but I don’t really go by that. You ride, so you call me either Train or A-Train.”
He reached toward me, realized he was wearing boxing gloves, and chuckled a light laugh. “I’m Mike Ripton, you can call me Ripp. Pleasure to meet you, A-Train.”
I glanced around the gym and nodded my head. It was small, but it was extremely tidy. It reminded me of the gyms at the Marine Corps base in Camp Pendleton. “Alright. Well, it’s a nice place you have here, Ripp. We�
�ll leave you to it. Appreciate the help.”
I turned around and pulled the door closed behind me.
“So, you and Doc going to do some boxin’, huh? Hell I’d get in that little ring and fight, but I ain’t the kind of fucker that follows rules. Probably get my big dumb ass tossed out on my ear if I tried it,” he said.
I glanced over my shoulder toward Teddy. There was no doubt in my mind that he was a tough man. Hell, I’d seen him in a few fights. But he had no finesse, no style, and no formal training. He was just a big brawler who did his best to protect those he cared for and what he believed in.
I, on the other hand, needed to get into a fight just to keep my sanity. Being in a good fight was similar to being at war. It kept my adrenaline level up, gave me a little excitement, and allowed me to appreciate the mundane pace of my day-to-day post-war activities a little more. With absolutely no excitement in my life, I yearned for something to keep me on edge.
The violence of a fight was miniscule compared to the violence of war, but the same principles applied. The adrenaline, excitement, and uncertainty of a fight allowed me to believe – if even for a short period of time – that I hadn’t stepped so far away from the war I desperately missed.
“So what did they say?” Doc asked as I climbed onto the seat of my bike.
“Said to come back tomorrow. Seems they’ve got a few spots left, but there’s still time to back out,” I said with a laugh.
Erik was a massive man, but built like a natural athlete, not a bodybuilder. He was big, muscular, and physically fit, but he didn’t look like a gym rat. I’d never seen Erik in a fight, and had only heard stories about his quick fists and keen eye. He boxed his way through college, and fought in the golden gloves arenas, but it wasn’t something he yearned for.
He rolled his shoulders and flexed his chest. “Back out? That’s not going to happen, Train.”
I flipped the switch on my hand controls and started the bike. As the engine came to a roar, I tossed my head toward his bike.
Hard Corps (Selected Sinners MC #7) Page 7