by Blair Grey
I knew it was a possibility when I signed up. But the reason I signed up was to protect the country, get out of town, and give it my all. In my mind, giving it my all meant my life, not my limb.
Never did I really think I would come home maimed. I thought I would either come home a whole man, or not come home at all. But when I took several bullets from an assault rifle to my arm, there was just no saving it.
And without both arms, there was no saving my military career. I was discharged with honors – and a shit ton of PTSD.
It pissed me off more than I could express when I thought about what happened, but now that I was home, all I could do was what Spencer had said: deal.
Spencer, another member of the MC, was doing his best to help me modify my bike so I could use it with the prosthetic. I was using a modified bike anyway, only riding with one arm, but he, and a few other guys from the MC, wanted to make it easier for me.
And, I wasn’t sure if that pissed me off or made me feel better. I didn’t want to be seen as the guy who needed the handicap bike. I held my own with the club, and that wasn’t going to change.
“You try dealing when you have one fucking arm and a fucking piece of plastic that’s trying to replace the arm that you lost!” I snapped. “See how you deal!”
“Look, man, I know that it fucking sucks that you lost your arm, but you can’t throw it around and think that it’s going to grow the fuck back. Do you want to ride or not?” he shot back.
He wasn’t the kind of guy to take shit from anyone. Perpetually pissed off himself, Spencer wanted to be in line for the role of leadership within the MC. But, we all knew that that position was going to Carl’s son.
Zach Painter had given us both a hand with the bike that morning. Though he and I were still on rough terms since what happened with him a few weeks before, he was still willing to give us a hand with the bike. Even that situation was enough to piss me off, however, and I knew I had to get in for a therapy appointment.
He dropped off the bike then left, letting me and Spencer take charge in what we were going to do with the handlebars.
Zach was a few years older than myself. We had known each other a bit before we went into the service, but when we ended up on the same ship, we really started to bond. He was more friends with another member named Aaron than me, but we both managed to make friends with Adam, who had since moved to the area and joined himself.
I thought of Zach as the big brother, or even the father figure, that I never had. He was there for me, he had great advice, and he was often one to say things like he saw them. If there was one guy I knew would tell me the truth no matter what, it was him.
Not to mention he owned the local diner I loved to frequent when I wasn’t working. There was a hot waitress there I loved to flirt with and food that was better than anything else in town. It made me feel better flirting with hot women who would return the gesture.
It was a real blow to my confidence as a man when I lost my arm, to the point where there were days when I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror. But, Zach was rebellious. Even as the son of our respected leader, he had chosen to get involved with the daughter of The Enemies MC.
He didn’t give a damn what it did to any of us, that was clear. His father nearly disowned him. In fact, he didn’t say a word to him for the better part of a month. I had been the one sent to tell him to pull his head out of his ass, but that hadn’t done any good, either.
Since then, things had been rough. I’d patched them up some, he’d patched them up some, but in the end, we both knew that we had to let time do its work, too. There wasn’t easy forgiveness for anyone in the situation, though I had to admit, I didn’t hate the girl he was dating.
She was nice enough, but she wasn’t a Folded Flag. I wasn’t sure if she was part of The Enemies anymore, but as far as I was concerned, if she was related to the leader, then she wasn’t welcome. Then again, it was even rumored that Zach was hanging out with her brother, too.
The thought of it pissed me off, like most things in life these days, but I tried to stay out of it. To me, it wasn’t worth losing the entire friendship over, even if he was one of the world’s biggest idiots.
I sighed, turning my attention back to Spencer. “So, if you’re such an expert, what do you think we need to do with this fucking thing?”
“I think if we set the strap over this way, you’ll be able to slide your hand in through here and have better control. This is just for steering,” Spencer said with a few screws hanging through his lips.
“Don’t call it my hand. I don’t have my fucking hand anymore!” I snapped. “That hunk of plastic is never going to be my arm, and that’s not my hand!”
“Call it whatever you want! Call it a fucking cane for all I care. My point is that you’re going to be able to put it in here and steady the fucking thing when you’re on the road! Geez, man, fuck off!” he shot at me. I rolled my eyes. I knew I should be more grateful for his help and less of a dick, but it was hard.
He didn’t understand what it was like to be in the military. He hadn’t ever been part of it. Sure, he might have his own fucked up past, but he had all his fingers and toes, and to me, that was enough to resent any of the help he was trying to give.
I always felt that he and the rest of the men who had all their limbs viewed me as lesser than them. Like I was the one who needed some sort of help, while they were all able to handle themselves.
It pissed me off, that was for sure, and it was difficult not to resent the entire MC.
“Look, why don’t you do what you think is best, and I’m going to grab a beer out of the fridge. Do you want one?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said.
There was a small refrigerator we kept in the garage, only filled with beer. I walked over and grabbed a couple before returning to where Spencer was tweaking the handle on the bike, then I sighed. There wasn’t much I could do with one arm, so I opened my beer and leaned against the tool box, trying not to feel as though he was fixing a wheelchair for me.
I sipped on the beer as I flipped through the social media I had on my phone. I wasn’t ever on much, but it was nice to flip through the pages and see what was going on with people I once thought were connections.
Some faces I wondered why I had on my list, others just popped up as people I might know. Then, I saw someone had put up pictures from the charity ride we had done a month before for the children’s wing of the local hospital.
Wonder if they got the guy with only one arm riding? Bet that would be rich. Caption it with something saying how nice it is to see the needy helping the needy, I thought.
I opened the folder and flipped through the photos, hoping there weren’t any close up photos of me. There were pictures of the riders as a whole, but anything that I showed up in was too far away or at the wrong angle to see that I only had one arm.
That made me feel a bit better, though it was really the photos of the kids in the hospital that caught my eye. I hated doing charity work. But, I had done it because that’s what Carl wanted. Then again, seeing all the smiling faces of the kids in their beds did make it a little more worth my time.
“Fuck!” I said. I nearly dropped my phone, flipping it three times with my hand before I got a good grip on it.
“Fuck’s wrong with you?” Spencer asked as he looked over.
“Nothing,” I lied. I went in for a closer look, trying to see if I really saw what I thought. My stomach tied itself in a knot when I confirmed that I did. It was that girl: the girl I’d never forgotten about. The girl who I’d spent that amazing three days with a few years back before I was deployed.
I’d thought about her often when I was overseas, wondering if there was a way she and I would ever get to see each other again. I wondered what she was doing with her time, what had ever happened to her.
The entire weekend, neither of us had really given the other any real details about ourselves, we just talked about the moment, and t
hat’s how I had wanted it. Now, she was smiling with a little kid in the photo. They were both looking at the camera, and though it wasn’t a good picture of either, it was enough to make my heart race and my palms sweat.
It wasn’t the fact that there was a kid in the photo with her arms wrapped around Jenna that bothered me, or even the fact that that girl had been at the charity event and I didn’t see her. It was the emblem that was on the shoulder of her jacket that caught my eye and made me taste bile.
She was one of them.
She was an Enemy.
4
Jenna
“Come on, baby, let’s get inside. It’s hot out here,” I said with a weary smile as I pulled Allegra out of her car seat. She wrapped her arms around me and we ducked inside the ice cream parlor.
The blast of cool air from the air conditioning system was welcome relief from the blazing heat that beat relentlessly down. It was hot, again, and though I knew it was my choice to live in northern California, I was getting tired of the lack of cool air.
It wasn’t hot all year round. In fact, there was snowfall just an hour’s drive away from us some of the year. But during the summer months, I felt like we were trapped in the middle of the Sahara Desert and may as well be riding camels.
But, between my busy work schedule and taking care of my daughter, I did take the time out of my day to break for ice cream whenever we could.
Today, we were meeting with Blaze, my older brother. Blaze had been many things in my life. He was my brother, he had played the role of my father when our actual father passed, he was my support system, and now he was a doting uncle.
In a way, he was almost the co-parent Allegra didn’t have in her life.
It was a complete change from how he was when he found out I was pregnant. At first, he was pissed. So pissed, in fact, he didn’t speak to me for a month. He gave me lecture after lecture about the whole thing – how could I be so irresponsible? How could I just hook up randomly like that? How could I let this happen?
Needless to say, it had been a problem for both of us. I was pissed off at the judgment I felt he gave me, and I knew he was pissed because he felt that I’d ruined my life.
At the same time, I also had no idea what I was going to do.
There I was, an eighteen-year-old young woman who didn’t have anyone to support me. The father of my child was gone, and as far as I knew, I was never going to see him again. We hadn’t exchanged any contact information, and he was going into the military.
Even if he didn’t get himself killed while he was serving, he was going to be gone for years. How the hell would I track him down, and at that point, did it even matter?
But then, things got worse between me and my brother again. Once he started talking to me about the pregnancy, he wanted to know who the father was. I wouldn’t have had any issue telling him – except for the glaring memory in the back of my mind of Nathan being a Folded Flag.
Sure, Blaze wouldn’t have been happy to meet any guy who got me pregnant, but the fact that he was part of the rival MC was enough to make him not only want to murder Nathan, but me, as well. I wanted him to accept my child, and I didn’t want who her father was to matter.
I was prepared to take on the entire pregnancy – and the idea of motherhood – alone, but when it got to the point when I really needed Blaze, he came through. It was subtle at first. He would start texting me and asking me how I was doing. Then, he started bringing me food and other things I needed so I didn’t have to go out.
After that, he started going to my doctor appointments with me, driving the car and making sure I was comfortable. He was the support system I needed, and I made it through. As difficult as it was, I made it through.
When Allegra was born, it was my brother who was there waiting for me outside. He was the proud man in the photos holding her when the photographer showed up, and he didn’t let anyone give me any grief over the fact that she didn’t have a father there for her.
He was all I could have asked for.
Now, Allegra was two years old, and she loved seeing her Uncle Blaze. We didn’t get to see him as often as either of us would have liked, but we still made time every couple weeks to get together and touch base. Since Blaze was still a very active member of the MC and I was struggling to make ends meet as a single mother, getting together had to be planned in advance.
“Uncle!” Allegra shouted when we walked in. I was glad Blaze was there already. I was worn out from the heat and my day, and I was ready to sit down.
“Do you want to go with your uncle and get ice cream?” I asked.
“Come here, pumpkin,” Blaze said as he took her from me. “You look tired.”
“I am tired,” I said. “Can you take her up front to get the ice cream?”
“What do you want?” he asked. He was holding my daughter above his head and she giggled.
“Pink!” she laughed.
“Cotton candy,” I said. “I think. I’ll just take something vanilla.”
“Great,” Blaze replied. “Sit down, and we’ll be right back.”
“Thanks,” I breathed. I sat and took a deep breath. As a single mother, I loved having a few minutes to myself to sit down and just chill out. It was hard running around, trying to wrangle a two-year-old when I was trying to relax after a long day at work.
But, as a mother, I had to make it happen.
“Mommy! I got pink!” Allegra shouted as she came bounding back to the table.
“Yes, you did!” I said happily. “Thanks.”
I took the ice cream from my brother, and the three of us sat down to enjoy it. Well, I was doing my best to enjoy it. It was hard to enjoy much of anything when I had to keep an eagle eye on Allegra. She was old enough to insist she sit in a regular adult chair when she still didn’t have the greatest of coordination.
“Do you want some?” she asked as she pushed the ice cream toward my face.
“I’ve got my own, sweetie,” I said in a tired voice. I knew how to smile when I spoke, however, that satisfied her. She was too young to know how hard it was for me to raise her on my own. Besides, it wasn’t her fault I had her when I was little more than a kid myself.
She was a happy child, and I was glad for it.
“That MC charity ride brought in so much money for the hospital,” my brother said. I knew it wasn’t going to be long before he started talking about the club. He knew that I didn’t care for it much. I never had, but it was even less important to me now that I had my daughter.
Without Dad in the picture and my time consumed elsewhere, I didn’t have the time to worry about what was going on with the club.
“That’s great,” I said. “I heard that it did well. I’m happy to be able to help those kids. I mean, I know what it was like to have to rely on the charity of others.”
“I know,” he said. “But there’s even better news.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. It brought a lot of good coverage for the MC. I mean, if Marcus could do these kinds of things more often, we’d be put in a much better light with the public than what we normally deal with. That would be freaking awesome.” He sat back on the chair and scooped a spoonful of the ice cream. “Can you imagine if we could make the same impression on society as the Flags?”
“I’m not sure why they get to be the heroes, anyway. They do just as much stuff as the rest of us.” I had to watch my language around my daughter. She was getting old enough to repeat the things that I said, and I didn’t want her to have my biker mouth when she was just a little girl.
“Because Carl gets to grab the attention for all the good things that go on, even if we are the ones behind it,” he rolled his eyes. “The guy knows how to work the system, and he does it well.”
“That’s stupid,” I said. “Really.”
“Yeah, you’ve got that right.” He crushed the carton his ice cream had been in before throwing it away. “But if we can turn the tables, we might have a bit better c
overage.”
“What benefit is that going to be for us?”
“It’s going to make it a lot easier for us to get into places without the entire town freaking out about it. If we play our cards right, we might even be able to expand the turf,” Blaze said. I knew he wanted to be part of that. He wanted to rise in the club, though he didn’t have much hope of ever being leader.
Then again, since Marcus’ daughter had run off with one of the Flags, the position was more open than it had been. Her twin brother, Vance, was in line, but if he didn’t want it – or if something were to happen to him – then it would be completely open to the top bidder.
But then, we didn’t see there ever being something bad to happen to Vance.
“Not a bad idea,” I said. I was only half listening. I hardly rode my bike anymore, anyway. I rode in the charity ride with them, but that was for my brother. He wanted me to represent our father since we were the only two family members left.
Though the entire MC felt like nothing more than an adopted family to me, I wanted to be there for my brother. He’d done enough for me through the birth of my daughter, I was willing to do something for him.
The truth was, however, he had my bike in his garage, and I didn’t really intend to use it again. The only reason I hadn’t sold it yet was because of the fact Blaze wanted me to keep it. If he didn’t care, then I would have been happy to sell the thing and use some of the money for the hospital bills I was dealing with.
The car that I purchased had been cheap, and it was far more sensible to use with Allegra than a bike. Hell, I never thought the day would come when I’d be making those kinds of decisions when I was only twenty-one years old. So many of my friends were still living it up, going to parties and doing their thing, not bothering with the heaviness of responsibility.
But not me. I was a mother with a two-year-old daughter at twenty-one. Instead of going out to the bar and having drinks until one in the morning, I was living like I was a fifty-year-old woman. I didn’t want to think about how hard it was or how unfair that made my life compared to others.