by Nicole Fox
“You know, Ranger, sometimes I wish that was true. I’ll be sittin’ in my apartment, wondering what it is normal folks are doing right about now while I’m cleaning my pistol, and I’ll get to thinkin’ that’d it’d be something sweet to take a break from that, to go to mini golf or down to a diner and talk about the newest comic book movie with my friends. And then I’m walking down the street and I see one of these guys looking like he just had his lunch money stolen from him and I’m glad I am who I am.”
“But not with Allison, you’re not,” Ranger points out, smiling. Smiling because he has me. Smiling because I’ve got no way out. Smiling because he’s got me boxed in all from all sides. He knows he’s right, the bastard. The smile spreads across his cheeks. “With her, you want something else. You want to be that normal guy walking down the street, the one who knows how to talk to women beyond just grabbing them and dragging them closer. That’s what you forget. Most men have to learn a thing or two about how to treat a lady, since they don’t have club girls throwing themselves at him all day long.”
“Yeah, well … I reckon I’ll work it out.”
He finishes his cigarette, tosses the butt to the ground, and stands with his thumbs looped through his belt and his Stetson shadowing almost his entire face: everything but the lower half of his smile. “Maybe you will. I’m not saying you won’t. All I’m saying is that when it comes to ladies like that, you can’t just treat them like they’re there to fuck you. They don’t take kindly to it.”
“Is this coming from all your dating experience?”
He raises his hands. “There’s no need to get defensive about it. I’m just telling you the truth.”
“All right.” I turn away from him, pull on my bike helmet. “Tell me the truth later. I’ve gotta get going.”
“For your date.”
“You’re a fuckin’ teenager.”
I ride away. I don’t want to think about what he’s said, at least not overly think about it to the point where it will throw me off my game. Because he’s right: I’ve never had to have a game before. I’ve never had to think about how to approach a woman, what to say. The pathway between bar and bed has always been a matter of just taking her there, and then she’ll do whatever I want. This is different.
I stop outside her house and go up to the door. I wish I had those flowers on me now. All I’ve got is a nervous fuckin’ grin.
She answers, wearing shorts and a tank top with her hair styled around her face. She looks damn hot, standing on her tiptoes and still lookin’ up at me. “Hi,” she beams.
“Hi.” I nod. “Shall we get going?”
“Am I riding with you?” she asks.
“If that’s okay with you. You’ve got leathers and a helmet, ain’t you, Al?”
She pouts. “Yes, I have a jacket and a helmet. Wait here.” She leaves and returns a few minutes later wearing leather pants, a leather jacket, holding a helmet at her side. “Let’s go, then.”
“Have you got your piece?”
“My … piece? Do you mean my motorbike?”
I laugh, a surprise one that just bursts out of me.
“What?” she snaps. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Your gun, genius.”
“Oh, no. Wait here.”
“No.” I touch her arm. She shivers, I think, and looks at me with widening eyes. She bites her lip. “We’ll use mine.”
She nods shortly, her bangs shifting on her forehead. “Okay.”
I climb onto the bike and she climbs on behind me, wrapping her hands around my belly and holding tightly onto me. I’ve ridden with women on the back of my bike before, but it’s always made me feel uncomfortable, like they’re intruding on my private space. This is different. I like riding with Allison, the feel of her right behind me.
She flinches at the pop-pop-pop of gunfire as we approach.
“It’s so loud,” she mutters.
“They tend to be,” I agree.
“Yeah.”
Silence stretches between us. I can’t think of anything to say. We walk into the range without talking again.
“Howdy, folks,” the man behind the desk says. He’s an old fat cowboy-hat wearing man with an American-flag T-shirt and a signed baseball mitt hanging on the wall behind him. He tips his hat at Allison. He has a tattoo of an American flag on the back of his hand and a bullet scar down his forearm. “Ma’am. Allow me to invite you both to the wonderful, the magical, the unbelievable world of firearm training. Two booths?”
“One,” I tell him. “I wanna teach her a thing or two.”
“One it is. You have some experience with shooting there, big guy?” He glances at me. His gray beard shifts as his lips tremble. Maybe he thinks it’s a stupid question.
“Just a little,” I say, hoping to diffuse some of the awkwardness.
“Well, here you go. Let me show you to your booth.”
The man shows us to a booth right at the end of the line. As he leaves, and Allison is busy studying my gun, the man winks at me. “Hell of a place for a date,” he says, too quietly for her to hear.
I just nod, not sure what else to do. He’s right. This is one hell of a place for a date. Now I have to try’n find a way to smooth talk her, or flirt, or whatever the fuck it is regular folks do. Nine-to-five folks do this shit all the time, this dating shit.
“This is the safety, right?” She turns to me.
I leap forward, grabbing the barrel of the gun and facing it away from me. “Rule number one. Never point your gun at somethin’ you don’t mean to shoot.”
She smiles up at me. It’s a shy kind of smile, but it’s got some wicked in there too, the same way she looked at me when she pulled her shirt over her head. “How do you know I’m not going to shoot you?”
I just say nothing. I open my mouth to talk but all that comes out is a growling laugh. I need to stop thinking so much. Talking with Ranger was a mistake.
“Come here.” I turn her around and stand behind her, reaching my arms around her and grabbing the gun with her hands beneath mine. I press myself forward, her body flat against mine, my cock going hard against that tight ass the second it touches it. “Okay. Look. These are called iron sights. You use ’em to aim. You need to hold the gun tight enough so it doesn’t go flying when you pull the trigger, but not so tight that it breaks your goddamn arm from the recoil. Strong, but flexible. That’s better. Now turn the safety off. The switch there. Yeah, that’s it. Why’nt you try’n shoot that target there?”
I stand back and watch as she takes a couple of shots, her hand going all over the place from the recoil. I laugh, step forward, hold her hands again. “No, like this. Look.” I guide her hands to the target and then pull the trigger for her. Then I let her hand go up a little, but correct it soon after.
“I think I get it,” she says. “I have to let the gun do what it wants to do when I pull the trigger, but within reason. I don’t want it going crazy or anything like that. We want to keep it as safe as possible. Right?”
“Safe, sure. But you also want to be able to hit what you’re shooting at. It’s rare that one shot does it, at least for a newbie.”
“A newbie.” She turns on me with a flirty look on her face. But not one that means she wants to fuck. Which leaves me hanging, really, ’cause that in-between space is pretty damn confusing to me. “Is that really how you want to talk to me? No, don’t answer!” She giggles, waving her non-gun-holding hand. “You’ve offended me now. Yes, that’s right, you’ve absolutely offended me and now you’re going to have to spend years and years trying to make it up to me.”
“Are you really a little diva then, Allison?” I take a step forward, staring down at her. Her cheeks are flushed, just like they were in the apartment. Her lips are slightly parted.
“Well, I can be.” She flutters her eyelashes like a cartoon character. “But you might want to step back when I’m holding this big gun.”
After the shooting range, we go back to
her neighborhood where I’ll try’n teach her how to ride her motorbike. I push it out of the garage. “I’ll tell you somethin’, this must be the rustiest goddamn bike I’ve ever seen. Let me give it a onceover and make sure it’s safe to ride, at least.”
“Okay.” She stands just off to the side, toeing the ground, leaving grooves in the grass. “Thanks. It’s good that you don’t want to—that you care enough.”
“Sure.”
I’ll never understand how a man can be inside a woman one minute and then feel strange about meetin’ her eye the next. I fix up her bike as best I can. “It won’t be winning any competitions but it won’t be committing any murders either.”
“Great.” She walks over to me, places her hand on my arm, looks up at me with those same flushed cheeks. “I’m really grateful that you’re taking the time to show me this stuff, Granite. It’s really nice of you.”
“It’s no big deal,” I tell her, staring back down at her. I need to just try for a kiss. The sex can wait for later. If I can kiss her, then we’re getting somewhere. “The last thing I want is for you to go tumbling from this rust bucket ’cause I didn’t take the time to fix it up. So don’t worry about it.”
She keeps her hand on my arm. “I know, but thank you.”
I lean down then, more nervous than I should be. This isn’t my domain. I don’t kiss, not really, unless I’m kissing a clit or a nipple or a belly or a thigh. But the second I touch her lips, I forget what nerves are. I kiss her, hard, on the lips, losing myself in the hot-as-hell feeling of her, losing myself in the softness of her lips, the heat of her body. I pull her close to me, pressing my cock against her, rock-hard through my jeans. She moans, and then the moan lengthens, and then she makes a strange, almost-painful sound and steps back.
“Wait a sec,” she murmurs, breathing heavily. “Not here, baby. Just calm down for a second.”
“Sure.” I step back. “No, sure. Goddamn, you’re right. I don’t know … I reckon I’ve gotta get going, Allison. I didn’t mean to upset you or anything.”
“You don’t have to go.” She tilts her head at me. “I thought we were going to practice the bike?”
“Another time,” I call back, already on my way toward my bike. I sit on it, about to get the engine going when she jogs over.
“Are you sure?” she asks.
My heart is pounding like a fuckin’ teenager’s. She just wanted a kiss and I tried to fuck her right here on the driveway where her neighbors can see. “I’m sure,” I say. “I’ll see you soon, all right? Ride safe on that thing.”
Then I’m gone.
I stop at the end of the street and glance back. Allison is walking up the driveway, toward the bike.
Chapter Fourteen
Allison
“So how old are you, Al, really? Don’t fuck me around about it.”
I’m standing in the noonday sun with Jax squinting at me, arms folded like an angry teacher.
“I’m nineteen,” I say in my deep-Al voice. Then I kneel down next to the bike and scrub it with the sponge.
“You don’t look nineteen. I reckon they’ll be calling you the Kid if you ever get into the club for real.” I smile to myself: the Kid, what irony. “You look about twelve. Has anybody ever told you that before? Do you like washing bikes or something? You seem really into that.”
“I just want to do a good job,” I tell him. What I don’t say is that ever since Granite left me two days ago I haven’t been able to get that moment out of my head. I keep seeing him walking down the driveway to his bike after the rough kiss. I keep wondering if I should’ve reacted differently. “That’s the best way to get into the club, right?”
“Yeah, they like loyalty,” Jax says. “They like men doing what’s best for the club. They like it when you do what needs to be done and don’t ever embarrass the club. But let me tell you what they don’t like, little man, they don’t like it when a fella just does what he’s told all the time, when he might as well be a lapdog because he never says no.” He flips his cigarette around the back of his hand and catches it. He’s always doing that as he speaks. “Maybe you might make a good courier or a caddy for the boss if he ever gets into golf, but if you wanna be a runnin’, gunnin’ outlaw, you’ve got to be dangerous.”
“And what about you?” I stare up at him, face flat. “Are you dangerous?”
He laughs, whistles, twists his neck from side to side as though encompassing all the danger in the world. “I could tell you a thing or two about Jax that’d make your blood go cold, kid, but I don’t wanna give you nightmares.”
“Right.”
“There are two types of people in this world, Al, people who wash bikes and people who ride them.”
“I think you missed a third kind,” I say. “Because I rode in on a bike and now I’m washing one.”
“Don’t be a smartass.”
He wonders off toward the clubhouse. I get on with the bike-washing, wondering if he’s right, wondering if this could all be a waste of time. And then I think of Granite. My mind pendulums between the two, Brandon and Granite, and then settles on a stubborn oil stain on the chassis of the bike. I manage to scrub it off just as my cellphone rings.
“Yes?” I answer.
“Um, oh. Hello. I was hoping to speak with Allison, Brandon’s brother. Is this the right number?”
That’s when I realize I answered with my Al-voice.
“This is she,” I whisper, walking away from the clubhouse.
“Oh, right. Okay. Hello, my name is Dr. Hutchinson.”
I hear her words as though coming to me across a large gap: Brandon in a knife fight, laid up in hospital, a stab wound to the belly.
“I’ll be right there,” I tell her.
I get on my bike and ride away from the club, not thinking anymore, just desperate to get there before something terrible happens to him. “Death,” a voice whispers. It’s the growling on my motorbike made into a voice. “This is the end,” it hisses. “It’s all over now. I’m sorry, little girl, but you had a bad plan and it failed. You took too long. Now your older brother is dead, dead, dead, just like poor old Mommy and just like Daddy—probably, though we can’t say for sure, can we?”
I force myself to stop at the house first, change quickly into women’s clothes, and then go out to the car and drive the rest of the way. Everything feels like it takes too long, from traffic lights to pedestrians talking and laughing as they cross the street. At one point I almost snap at an old lady who’s dragging one of those shopping carriers across the road. I bite my lip. Finally, I pull into the hospital.
I rush up to the main desk, past patients and nurses to a tired-looking receptionist with dirty blonde hair and hollow cheeks. “Hello, how can I help you?” She says it like a zombie. I bet she’s been on shift for hours.
“I’m here for my brother …” I give her the information.
Her eyes widen for a moment, and then she says, “Yes, he’s upstairs on the fourth floor. But he’s … well, it’s a strange situation. His friends have decided to congregate outside his room. Normally we don’t let that happen, you know. Normally they have to wait in the waiting room, but the security guard wouldn’t do anything and when we called the police, they hung up. Said they were too busy for a complaint like that. How strange is that! Anyway, I just thought you should know.”
“Thank you,” I say. “You’re right. I should know.”
I’ve chewed two of my nails down to stubs by the time the elevator drops me on the fourth floor. I see what the receptionist was talking about straightaway. The hallway is filled with bikers, the same kind of bikers who filled Brandon’s house the last time I went to see him. Brass Skulls. I try to swallow my nerves as I walk over to them. I can’t let it show on my face. I can’t let them see how hard my heart is beating, as though its sole mission in life is to break my ribs.
Then the handlebar-mustachioed biker from last time turns to me. He walks over to me, a smile on his lips which
isn’t much of a smile at all. It’s more of a pained grimace. He looks me up and down and the grimace deepens. “Well,” he says. “If this ain’t fate throwing me a gift. Look at this.” He glances back at his men: around ten of them, all as rough-looking as him. “Have you come here ’cause you knew the fellas would be bored, miss? It seems to me the only reason you would’ve come down here dressed like that …” And he points to my bare legs in my shorts “… is to show the men a good time. Do you wanna take me first, sweetheart, or shall we speed things up a little by havin’ you take us three at a time? Can you do that, honey?”
I let my arms fall to my sides, standing how Al stands, not how Allison does. “I’m not here for you,” I say, voice as firm as I can make it. Though it’s harder this time, knowing that Brandon is not only in hypothetical danger but is in danger of dying, too. I feel tears rise behind my eyelids. I force them back. “I’m here to see my brother. If it makes you feel big and cool to talk to me like that, then fine. Say whatever you like. But get out of my way, please.”