Seasons of Change (Bleeding Angels MC Book 1)

by Stephens, Olivia

  Instead, I choose another contact and wait for the call to go through. I’ve been calling her over and over again, but Suzie doesn’t pick up her cell. I don’t know why I think now might be any different. And it’s not—all I get is a recording of a perky, younger version of the Suzie that I saw the other night in The Hideaway telling me to leave a message after the beep.

  “Hey Suze,” I say, “I just wanted to check up on you, see how you’re doing.”

  I’m simply repeating the same things I had said in my previous five messages that she hadn’t returned yet. “I really need to talk to you, so call me when you get this, okay?” I ask, wishing that I didn’t sound so plaintive and needy.

  She hasn’t shown up for her past two shifts and I’m starting to wonder if she’s ever going to show up again. George had pretty much said that if she didn’t make an appearance (and an apology for leaving us high and dry) in the next couple of days, then she wouldn’t have a job to come back to.

  He knows as well as I do that the waitressing job is the only thing that has been keeping her grounded since her mom left. It’s given her a routine, a reason for getting up in the morning, a sense of achievement as she was earning her own money. But Suzie had always opted for the easy option. If there was a way to pass a test at school by not studying and cheating instead, then that’s what she would do. If there was a way to earn money without working a 9 to 5, by maybe selling a little weed on the side, that’s what she would do too.

  I have no doubt in my mind that if she had found a way to stay afloat and gain protection… to live in this town without having to really deal with anything by dating an Angel, and getting so high she doesn’t remember what she does, then in my head I’m pretty sure that’s what she would do. I wish that it wasn’t true, but Suzie has proved me right more often than she has proved me wrong.

  I take another look at my cell, checking that Jake hasn’t tried to get in touch with me. But there’s nothing—no messages, no calls. Maybe the Angels had spoken to him as well, I reason with myself. Or maybe he was pissed with me for sneaking out in the middle of the night. Or maybe he felt awkward about the whole thing and didn’t know how to make things right between us.

  Or maybe he doesn’t care, the little voice pipes up. Now that he’s got his end away, perhaps he doesn’t really care about you at all. I know in my heart of hearts that’s not true, and all I want to do is run over to the body shop and talk to him, see him, hear his voice, touch his face.

  I stop walking and give myself a little shake, forcing myself to get to grips with what is going on. That is not an option. I can’t do any of those things. The only thing I can do is to stay away from him. I can’t even bear to think about what will happen if I give in to what I want rather than doing what I’ve been told.

  Come on Aimee, I tell myself, just man up and get this show on the road. I nod, agreeing with the voice in my head for once, and carry on trudging home in the dark.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The dream comes to me again; I know it so well that it doesn’t even really feel like dreaming anymore—it’s more like remembering. But each time I think about it, it feels like my memory of the actual events of that day six years ago are getting vaguer and vaguer as the dream takes over.

  I’m standing in the street as the police cars start whizzing by at a speed that doesn’t even seem possible. Their sirens are blaring and there’s a shout from the hardware store that there’s a standoff between the Bleeding Angels and the cops.

  I don’t recognize any of the people around me—there isn’t even a hardware store in that place on the street. All those are unimportant details that my brain has decided to forget over time, and I’ve peopled my dream with the first faceless individuals that I could come up with. In my dream I’m instantly transported to the outskirts of town and that is where things start to get really precise.

  I’m standing in exactly the spot that I was then, behind the barricades that the cops had set up to keep the public back. There are a few cop cars to the right, and to the left are what look like the entire crew of the Bleeding Angels MC, with Scar, their leader and Ryan's father at the front.

  Scar looks nothing like his son. Where Ryan is puny and dirty blonde, Scar is tall and dark. His arms are covered in tattoos and I remember that he was smiling the whole time, a creepy, lop-sided grin—the only thing that Ryan seems to have inherited from him.

  Things had all come to a head that night. Trouble had been brewing for a good long while, but in the heat of that summer night, that’s when everything went so horribly wrong. My dad was a Sergeant. He and Scar—whose name used to be Travis before he founded the Bleeding Angels—had been friends at school.

  But they had gone in two different directions. My dad followed his dream of becoming a cop, just like his dad; Travis had kept getting into trouble. He was in and out of juvie and, more than anything, he seemed to like the tough guy act. He liked knowing that people were scared of him. He liked being in control.

  Slowly but surely, as the years went by, the Bleeding Angels became more and more powerful in Painted Rock. Soon enough they started demanding protection money from all the businesses in the town. It was the last straw for the cops, and my dad had led the charge to go after the MC and clean up the town that he had grown up in and made a family in.

  The Bleeding Angels had been taking kids as they turned twenty for over a year by that time, but the cops hadn’t done anything about it because most of them were being paid off by the MC anyway. It wasn’t in their interest to do anything to piss off the hand that fed them.

  But the residents of Painted Rock had gotten behind my dad when he’d rallied them against the Angels, so that’s what brought us here, to this street on the edge of town—Bleeding Angels on one side, cops on the other. The cops, or at least the few who weren’t dirty, were trying to push the MC out of town and win back the land that they had taken away from us. But the police force were outmanned and most definitely outgunned. Anyone could have seen that, and I wonder if my dad had realized that before he did what he did next.

  In the dream, I remember the sound as shots are exchanged between the two sides. I flinch in the same way I had done then at the sharp noise of the bullets being pushed out of the guns. I watch as my dad exchanges some words with his partner and it seems like his partner is telling him not to do whatever he’s suggested.

  “Get out of here, Aimee,” someone says from behind me, and to this day I don’t know who it was. But I figure it was Jake’s dad, the same person that carried me home that night and broke the news to my mom about what had happened to the love of her life. A strong hand grabs hold of my shoulder but I wriggle free, squeezing closer to the barrier.

  “Daddy!” I shout, cupping my hands around my mouth.

  My father’s head whips around and finds me in the crowd. I wave at him and he waves back, smiling, and then makes a shooing motion like he’s telling me to get out of there. I wonder if, even in that moment, he had known what was about to happen.

  “I’m coming out, Trav,” he says, calling the leader of the Bleeding Angels by his “civilian” name—something that all the Angels hated.

  I suppose it’s because it reminds them that they came from somewhere, it reminds them of everything they’ve done to get to where they are now. I hope that it also makes them ashamed, ashamed for everything they’ve put people through.

  There is no response from Scar as my dad puts down his gun on to the bonnet of his cop car and holds up his hands to show he doesn’t have it on him anymore. “I’m unarmed,” he says loudly. “We don’t want anyone to get hurt, but we will defend this town.”

  There are cheers from the crowd around me. That feeling of pride that I had for my dad swells in my chest again, just like it did that night, only this time it’s tainted with a feeling of dread.

  “The Bleeding Angels have gotten away with too much for too long, and it ends here,” he continues, his strong voice booming out, and anoth
er cheer goes up.

  By this point my dad has walked around the side of the car and is moving slowly towards Scar, who is still sitting on his bike as if it was a throne.

  “We don’t need to resort to violence. We all want what’s best for the good people of Painted Rock,” my dad presses, “So let’s just all put down the guns and talk. We’re all reasonable people here; I think we can come to an agreement without anyone getting hurt.”

  I remember the winning smile he had on his face as the words came out of his mouth. My mother had always said that he could charm the birds out of the trees with that smile. I wonder if that’s why Scar hated him so much. Because he had got what Scar—or, back then, Travis—had so desperately wanted: he had won my mother. I don’t think the leader of the Angels had ever forgiven my father for that.

  “You got one thing right, Winters,” Scar says, his voice coming out rough and husky from years of chain-smoking. “It all ends here.” He reaches behind him and pulls out a gun, pointing it straight at my dad.

  “Now Travis, think about what you’re doing,” Dad says, stopping dead in his tracks.

  The cops behind him start to shift on their feet and get antsy, and I remember wondering what the almost imperceptible shake of his head to them had meant. With hindsight I realize he was telling them to hold fire.

  He didn’t want to spook the Angels by any of his men firing the first shot. “We’ve known each other since we were kids." He says. “Do you really wanna do this?”

  I wonder now if he really believed that the man standing in front of him had anything at all to do with the kid that was his friend all those years ago.

  The silence stretches out between them and I watch as the bikers behind Scar shift a little uncomfortably in their seats, looking at their leader for guidance, clearly thinking twice about what they’re about to do. For a moment it looks as though things could go a very different way—a way that would mean that my dad would still be around so I wouldn’t be dreaming about this shit, night after night. But in less than a second it becomes clear what’s going to happen.

  “Tell your boys to stand down, Sergeant,” Scar leers nastily. “Tell them to stand down and you get to live.”

  I gasp, holding my hands over my mouth at the words that come out of the biker, not really believing what is playing out in front of my eyes.

  “I can’t do that Travis, you know that,” my father says. “We are the law in this town, not you and your rag-tag group of delinquents. Running a town is about more than terrorizing its population and trying to bankrupt its businesses,” he points out. “Y’all have had your run of Painted Rock for too long, but it’s not going to go on any longer. I won’t let it,” he says confidently.

  Scar looks unmoved despite my dad’s impassioned speech. Instead, he looks around my father at the cops behind him, the few that weren’t on the MC’s payroll. “What do you say boys? Walk away now and I won’t blow a hole in your Sergeant here or in any of you. You’re not going to get a better deal than that tonight,” he finishes, looking around him at his crew of bikers as they chuckle together.

  “He’s bluffing, gentlemen,” my dad’s voice rings out. “Even Travis here isn’t stupid enough to think that he can kill a cop and get away with it.”

  I remember how confident he was, how certain of himself he was, and how sure he was that everyone, deep down, wanted to live by the same code of values that he did—the same core beliefs in what is wrong and what is right. Perhaps that was what got him in the end. That intrinsic belief that most people, when faced with the decision to do the right or the wrong thing, will choose the right. I guess Scar just wasn’t most people.

  “Wrong again, Sarge,” Scar replies. “I am that stupid.” He smiles. “And it ain't Travis. The name is Scar now.” Then he raises the barrel of the gun towards my father’s chest and blows him away.

  I remember the sound of the bullets flying through the air. The sound of them as they ripped through my father’s body. It’s then that the worst moment of the dream comes into play; it’s then that he half-turns, finding me in the crowd where I have been rooted to the spot, unable to move even if I had wanted to. He reaches his hand out to me as if he’s going to say something, but before he does, his eyes glaze over. His brown eyes that had always been so filled with warmth suddenly don’t look like his anymore. They look like they’re trapped behind a sheet of glass; like they can’t get out.

  “Now, any questions?” Scar asks after he has watched my father’s lifeless body fall to the floor with a thud without any expression at all, as if it’s something that he sees all the time.

  I don’t know what happens next, because my eyes are trained on the prone body of my father lying in the middle of the street as Scar continues to talk. As if what he’d just done didn’t matter.

  “Good,” he says, sounding at last satisfied. “Now run back to your little police station and take a leaf out of the book of your friends who stayed behind tonight, and don’t fuck with us. This is what happens when you do.” He pauses, presumably letting everyone take a good look at the pillar of community, one of the nicest men in Painted Rock, lying in the street, blood pouring out of him.

  “Take my advice,” Scar continues. “Don’t be a hero. Fall into line and carry on with your lives, watch your kids grow up, be there for your wife. Don’t die like a dog in the street, because you can be sure as shit that we will gun you down like one if you cross us,” he finishes, and then the roar of bikes start and the Nevada dust swirls around the crowd as everyone remains still, not daring to move, not daring to believe what they have just seen.

  Without thinking twice about it, I duck under the barriers and run towards my dad, kneeling beside him, feeling the wetness of his blood on my knees.

  “Daddy,” I remember saying. “Wake up Daddy. Wake up!” I shout at him, shaking him as if he were just sleeping or playing. Strong arms lift me up and take me away from him as I scream and bawl and kick out, trying to get back to my dad, not wanting to be parted from him, wanting to be there when he woke up.

  And that’s when I wake up. I’m covered in sweat, breathing heavily, and my heart feels like it’s trying to beat its way out of my chest. My throat constricts and I swing my legs out of the bed, planting my feet on the floor and putting my head between my legs, trying to control my breathing, trying to overcome the panic.

  It’s a ritual that I’ve been going through night after night for years, but this dream was different. I had never got this far into the events of that night before, I would always wake up at the moment when Dad reaches out for me, but this time I had seen it all—or almost all.

  The only part that was missing was that the aftermath. Bill carrying me to my home and my watching my mother fall apart as he told her what had happened. I remember kicking and shouting again and again, “He’s not dead, he’s not dead!” I refused to believe what was being said about the vibrant, wonderful man that had been my father.

  I struggle more than I have in recent nights to get my breathing under control. I keep feeling that crushing disappointment from when I realized the truth: my father had died, he’d been killed, and I’d watched him die in front of me. I still ask myself if there was anything I could have done.

  I was a thirteen-year-old kid but I rack my brain night after night, wondering if there was another way that things could have played out, a way that would mean my father was still here with us, a way that would make my mother the smiling, happy, beautiful woman that she had been before that night. But wishing never made anything so, and no amount of “should have” or “could have” on my part will bring him back.

  I reach out to my cell to check the time—it’s 3am and I know that I’m not going to be getting any more sleep. I also know that I have to do something; I can’t just lie in my bed, staring up at the ceiling night after night, waiting for something, anything, to happen.

  It has been twelve days since Ryan paid me the visit in the diner. Thirteen since I had l
ast seen Jake. I hadn’t called and neither had he.

  You would think in a town this small we might have even run into each other by now, but that hadn’t happened. We both knew how to find each other. He could have come to the diner, but he hadn’t. He is still the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last thing I think about before I go to sleep. He’s still the first person I want to tell when something funny, weird, or sad happened to me that day, but he’s the last person that I can call.

  I miss his face, his voice, his smile, his laugh, the way that his arms felt around me as I fell asleep that night in his bed. It all seems like a lifetime ago and, in a way, I wish that it was. Maybe then I wouldn’t still feel like my heart is being picked away, piece by piece. Tomorrow is his birthday, and then he really will be lost to me.

  There’s only one place that I can think to go at this time. Only one place that can provide any kind of comfort and peace at all, even if it’s the kind of peace that can only come from silence. I dress hurriedly, pulling my tight jeans on and slipping a t-shirt over my shoulders before I tip-toe down the stairs, not wanting to wake my mom up.