“
I appreciate you coming
in here to talk to me, but I feel like the biggest fool on the
planet, and this feels like a lecture,” I say. He lowers his phone
and stares at me, his expression still makes him look bored as all
hell.
“
You want to be Duke’s Old
Lady or not?” he says. The question makes me freeze. I don’t know.
It’s not something I want to think about right now. With every
fucked thing that’s happened today, I ‘d rather stick a fork in my
eye than to relive it all. Going for noncommittal, I shrug my
shoulders.
“
No really—turned down
some freaky as fuck pussy—don’t shrug your fucking shoulders,” he
says with a slight grumble.
“
I don’t know that I can
get over the shit he just pulled,” I say.
“
But before that?” he
asks. Before that everything was still fucked up. I told him he
wasn’t going to touch me again, and then I left. And before I
flipped out on him? It was only this morning, but it feels like it
was days ago, at least—and things weren’t exactly rosy then,
either. He came in with both barrels, caught me off guard, and was
a real jerk. Still, he’s funny and when he tries, he can be sweet.
And I know he’s always doing things for his mom even though he
doesn’t want to. That’s got to mean something.
“
Yeah,” I
say, “I do—or I did.”
Diesel cracks an arrogant smile and
says, “You sure? You hook up with him, you can’t ride my dick no
more.”
“
Please don’t take this
the wrong way, but I’m okay with that,” I mumble, feeling my face
heat.
Diesel just keeps on smirking and says,
“He’s an asshole, no doubt. But you think you can be an Old Lady?
That means you gotta remember that everything you do blows back on
him, and everything he does represents you. Gotta respect each
other in public. That’s all.”
“
I know the code, D.
That’s not the problem,” I say. I can feel myself getting more
frustrated with him as time goes by. “He claimed me—twice—and then
fucked another woman. In front of me.”
“
Told you, not cool. But
you do right and demand he does better. All you can do,” he says. I
look down at the pillow in my lap, and a yawn escapes me. My body
feels so heavy and rundown that once I stop really listening to
anything Diesel’s saying, all I want to do is sleep.
“
Lay down and take a nap,”
he says. “I’ll stay and make sure nobody tries to come in.” I’m not
sure where this side of him came from, but I could really get used
to it. I won’t let myself think it’ll last, though. I close my eyes
and lie down on my side, propping my head on the pillow as I let
sleep consume me.
Chapter 8
The car radio crackles
under the pressure to blast the new punk band that Jeremy insists
on listening to at an epically high volume. My head pounds with the
drum beat until I can’t take it anymore, and I reach over and turn
the volume down until I hear the click of it turning
off.
After seeing Duke and Dawn last night,
I may have wallowed in my sorrows a bit too long. Even though I
kept telling myself that it wasn’t getting to me, I couldn’t help
that it was.
“
What the fuck?” he asks,
irritation evident in his tone.
“
It was too loud,” I say
and use my free hand to rub my temple.
“
No, it wasn’t,” he says.
“You’re just being a bitch today.” I bite my tongue to keep from
responding. If I had a retort for every single one of his snide
remarks, our entire lives would be one big fucking argument, and
quite frankly, I just don’t think it’s worth it.
He reaches over and turns
the dial back up, this time even louder. One fucking trip to the
grocery store that he insists on going on and we can’t even have a
peaceful trip. This shit is ridiculous. Five months, I remind
myself once again. Just five months until he’s legal. Then I can
slap the shit out of him without child protective services crawling
up my ass for it. Not that I have the size or power to hurt him,
and not that I want to, but right now I’m thinking about it. I’m
thinking about it a lot.
A lot.
I have work later today,
but need to get the grocery shopping done beforehand because, in
Jeremy’s words, “We ain’t got shit” to eat, and he’s a hell of a
lot more pleasant when he can make his pancakes for breakfast—which
is part of the current problem. He didn’t get his pancakes this
morning because he eats like a damn trucker and blew through the
family sized box in under a week.
As we travel down Main
Street toward Safeway, a blue Honda Civic coupe swerves in the
right lane up ahead. It’s just enough to make me nervous, but not
bad enough that the driver’s done any damage yet. The car speeds up
dramatically and then comes to an immediate stop, causing the car
behind it to slam into its bumper. Directly behind the accident is
a wagon that swerves into my lane to avoid becoming the third and
thus creating an actual pile-up, effectively cutting me off. I slam
on my brakes, and my torso is thrown into the seat belt. The
surprise of the accident gets to me. The cars behind me approach
rapidly, giving little time to make a decision. Pushing aside my
near panic attack, I hit the gas and maneuver around the accident
and into the clear right lane ahead. As I pass the blue Civic, I
flip the driver the bird and scream at her even though I know she
can’t hear me over Jeremy’s own personal concert.
My chest heaves in
frustration and fear. Meanwhile, Jeremy’s gripping the “Oh Shit”
handle that rests in the curve between the windshield and the
passenger window. He looks over at me with wide, worried eyes. For
the first time in a while, I remember how young he actually is. Not
that I forget his age or anything, just that right now I see the
boy that tries so hard to be the man he isn’t just yet. He’s the
only family I have, and I’m the only thing he’s got that’s keeping
him from foster care—or the Stone house, but that’s not an
option.
“
Were you even paying
attention?” he gripes loudly enough that I can hear him, but just
barely, over the music. Feeling my temper not just rise, but
explode out of my chest and coat the entire car with its venom, I
reach over and turn the volume dial down so quickly that it
actually pops off—again—and half stare at my brother and half watch
the road.
“
Shut up!” I scream at the
top of my lungs. “Just shut your mouth! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”
With every word, my voice gets impossibly louder and more frantic.
I’ve worked myself into such a state that I nearly miss the Safeway
parking lot and end up taking the turn a little fast. My little car
jostles its way into the nearest spot, where I put her into park
and, with a heaving chest, stare at my brother. He opens his mouth,
but before he can say a single word, I yell, “I said shut
up!”
“
Okay,” he says. His eyes
are wide in surprise, and he raises his hands to the side of his
head. “Calm the fuck down. Shit. Just calm down. Are you on your
period or something?”
I can feel my eye twitching at the
question, and my hands tense around the steering wheel.
“
No, I’m not, thank you
very fucking much! But it is coming up soon, so keep that in mind
next time you try to mouth off to me or so help me God I might have
to choke you!” I scream in one long stream of words that overlap
and mesh together. An older woman walks past the car with a
disapproving look on her face. Catching her eye, I yell, “What the
hell are you looking at?”
The woman hurries up, huffing, and
crosses the parking lot at high speeds. Beside me, Jeremy whispers,
“Holy shit.” He says nothing more as I try my best to regain my
composure. I take several deep breaths, close my eyes, and focus on
the sound of my frantically beating heart.
“
Do you need Midol?” he
asks oh so quietly from the passenger seat. My throat constricts in
response, and my gut tightens with such ferocity that I worry I’m
going to make myself sick. I open my mouth to respond, but I don’t
get a single word out.
My phone chirps from the center
console. Removing my hands from the steering wheel I look over and
see that I have two missed calls and a new text message. The text
message is from Chel. DUKE & DIESEL. FORSAKEN PKG LOT.
HURRY.
The message makes little sense to me,
but I don’t wait long enough to let it soak in. Throwing the car
into reverse, I back up out of the space then throw her into drive
and peel out of the lot. I drive faster than I should back down
Main Street toward the clubhouse. Jeremy grabs my phone out of my
hand and reads the text message.
“
What does this mean?” he
asks. I shrug and find myself unable to speak. The phone chirps
again and Jeremy says, “Another text. It says HERE. NOW. from
‘Diesel’.” Swiping his finger across the screen, he brings the
phone to his ear and nods his head then starts laughing. It’s the
same laugh he had when I told him a few weeks back that his
principal means business about not graduating on time if he doesn’t
cut out the bullshit. It’s the same laugh he gives just before he
does something really awful. It’s this deep, throaty laugh that
tells me I’m in serious trouble and he’s going to enjoy every
moment of it. I don’t even ask what the voice mail he listened to
says. Just in case it’s something embarrassing, which I’m sure it
is.
Pulling into the Forsaken lot at a
crawl, I finally let it sink in what I raced over here for. Duke
and Diesel. What in the hell could those two be doing that would
require my presence immediately?
Realization dawns on me
why I’m here, and a sudden panic washes over me. Brothers don’t
fight over Lost Girls. They try to avoid fighting over women in
general. Forsaken is one of those clubs that takes care of their
own and that means all of their own—men, wives, whores, kids, and
associates. Though it’s a long shot to even consider it, I really
hope Diesel isn’t making a stink of the whole situation with
Duke.
Rounding the corner of the
shop, I find that the gates to the clubhouse parking lot are open.
With the tightened security it’s kind of a rarity to be able to
just pull up into the lot. A crowd has gathered near where the guys
park their Harleys, and, the closer we get, the easier it is to
hear the shouts.
“
Shit,” I say. Jeremy
leans forward in his seat. I blink at him, and realize only too
late that I’d sworn never to bring him here. I don’t want Jeremy to
see this life. It doesn’t matter what I do here because I can walk
away at any time. But what Jeremy wants—the patch—that’s for life.
There’s no walking away from that. Sure, guys will tell you that
you can patch out and cover your club ink and leave at any time,
but they lie. Once the club has you, and they know what your
weakness is, they’ll exploit it to further their own agenda. The
club couldn’t operate on such a tyrannical level if it weren’t for
its enforcers—the actual members of the club—who blindly follow
through with whatever fucked up shit they have to do in the name of
the club and protecting what they consider theirs. Just ask
Butch—my dad—what a member will do in the name of his club. And
it’s exactly that blind loyalty that wound my dad up in San Quentin
Maximum Security Prison that I don’t want Jeremy getting all gleamy
eyed over. I’ve seen it before at his age—with Ryan and Duke. They
glorified the club and the life, and they couldn’t talk about
anything else but being patched and what it would mean. I remember
them going on and on about pot, and pussy, and money. They talked
about the kinds of Harleys they would have and what they would
spend their money on, but they never talked about the death and the
sorrow, and all that the club leaves in its wake. Nobody ever talks
about that. They only talk about loyalty and family, but some
family they are. You either end up dead or locked up. There’s a
reason there’s so few older Forsaken, and there’s a reason the club
basically finances the town’s divorce lawyer’s daughter’s college
fund. These guys are only ever faithful to their patch. I can’t let
that become my brother.
So when I pull in and park, I cut the
engine and turn to face Jeremy. He almost looks like he just
stepped into a strip club with the way he’s eyeing the bikes and
all the leather cuts that huddle around in a circle. “Stay put,” I
say.
He won’t listen, but I have to
try.
Chapter 9
When I crawl out of the
car, the voices get louder and more pronounced. First, it’s Diesel,
saying, “Fuck you, man. You knew what you were doing.”
“
You
already
fucked me when you fucked Nic,” Duke shouts. The
crowd gets very quiet and backs up just slightly. I can’t hear much
as I approach, just the shuffling of boots on concrete.
“
One, you don’t know shit.
Two, that bitch Dawn was riding your dick like she was performing
at the fucking circus! You were out in the open,
jackass!”
Halfway to the crowd, I stop. I don’t
really want to be witness to this—but there’s not much I can do. If
I didn’t want to be part of this, I probably should have thought
that over before I broke speed limits to get here.
“
Did you or did you not
take my girl in a room last night? Duke asks, his voice
harsh.
“
You are so fucking stupid
it’s embarrassing,” Diesel snaps back.