The Killing Ride

by Michelle, Christine

  “What? No! You can’t move to New York!”

  “Well, I didn’t get it, so that won’t be an issue.”

  “Good, because I’ll be coming home soon, and I have news!”

  “I already know you graduated with your Masters,” I reminded her.

  “No, it’s not that. I met this really cool guy at a concert. We don’t have that explosive chemistry I had with my ex, but…” she hesitated, and I just remembered that I never actually met her ex, so I wouldn’t know what kind of explosive chemistry she supposedly had with him. I could almost picture her smiling through the phone though. “He’s great, and we’ve been hanging out. He invited me along on tour with the band Valhalla Rising. Can you believe it?” Her voice was squealing loudly as she mentioned the man.

  “Is he in the band? Aren’t they older?”

  “No, he’s not in the band. I guess they’re in their early thirties or something,” she mentioned. “This guy, Jay, is part of their security team, and the best part is that he’s actually from Charleston too! We spent the last few weeks of the tour together”

  “Oh, that’s cool. So, are you going to stay with him now that the tour is over?”

  “Yeah, isn’t that the greatest?”

  “The best, for sure,” I agreed as I took another drink that was offered to me by Bradford.

  “I know it’s not super passionate, but I don’t think he’d ever cheat on me. He’s looking for familiar and comfortable just like I am.”

  “That’s good, Lindsay.” I wasn’t sure why she was so concerned about cheaters. She’d never complained about any of her exes cheating on her. “I’m happy to hear that things are working out for you.”

  “Yeah, you too!” She offered, though it rang pretty false considering I had only told her about not getting a job. She hadn’t asked about anything else where I was concerned so I didn’t bother to tell her about my good fortune with getting some of my work shown. For some reason, I wanted to keep it to myself for now. If and when any of it sold, there could be a celebration.

  Chapter 7

  Homecoming

  J-Bird (Age 25)

  "Are you sure you don’t want to come along for the next one? It won’t be the same, but it should be a fuck of a lot of fun.” Phoenix lived for this shit. I could see why he preferred to stay a nomad. He didn’t lead the lonely existence I always thought nomads for the club led. Instead, he was more surrounded by people on any given day than any person I’d ever met. He had band members, road crew, other security guys, groupies, and true fans of the band as well as the big wigs that stopped in from time to time to make sure everything was running smoothly. There were always people around. He also never lacked for pussy when he wanted it. The tour was always crawling with willing women. I had gone through a few myself in the beginning until I started to see the resemblance of the groupies to the club whores of the MC. They were all made of the same stuff. The majority held that desperate edge in their eyes as they hungrily watched the bands and crew, looking for an in that might just end up being permanent. In other words, they were looking to trap a man with either their charms or a baby. It really depended on what their end goal was.

  Then there had been Dusty Rose’s bassist, Maci, who had decided that a friends with benefits situation could benefit us both. It had, for a while. Whenever their band was opening for Valhalla Rising, we would get together and scratch the itch. When she was gone, I mostly kept to myself.

  Dusty Rose had just jumped back on for the last few weeks of Valhalla Rising’s tour after a stint working in the studio on an up and coming album. Maci wasn’t the same when she got back.

  “What’s going on, sweet girl? Did the studio time put you in a funk? No adoring fans to get your motor running?”

  She mock pouted. “You know me so well,” she started to tease. Then she got this lost look on her face. “I saw Josh while we were there,” she explained. Josh had been her on again, off again boyfriend for a few years.

  “You two get back together?”

  She shook her head. “He was with a woman and she was pregnant.” She moved her hands out a good distance from her belly. “Like out to here, about to pop, pregnant.” She got lost in her own thoughts for a minute while the meaning of her words sank in. “She also had a ring on her finger and so did he.”

  “You don’t think he had already married her back when he was still messing around with you, do you?”

  “No. I think he was messing around with her then though. Had to be, considering the time frame, if that’s his kid.”

  “Damn, Mace, that sucks.”

  “Yeah, well,” she waved her hand in the air to push away the memories or whatever else was haunting her. “That’s the way things go in this business, right? No one sticks because it’s too tough to deal with the constant travel.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true for everyone.”

  “It’s true for you though, isn’t it?” I could hear the sadness in her voice as she asked the dreaded question. The one I hadn’t wanted to answer months ago when they left for the studio time.

  “This is just a temporary gig for me, Mace. You know that. I live in a little beach town on the east coast. You live in LA. How would that work?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe, I’d be willing to change things up. We make enough money I could fly out for studio time.”

  I smiled at her. “We both know we aren’t meant for anything more with one another than fucking and friendship,” I told her flatly.

  “I know. Just thought I’d try,” she suggested one last time. I just shook my head. “Okay then, don’t take this the wrong way, but I think the fucking portion of our connection needs to be cut off now too.”

  “I figured that out already, Mace.”

  “Good. Okay. Well, I have to get going and do… things,” she finally got out. I grinned at her.

  “No excuses needed.” She turned and took off, but I called out to her before she could get too far. “Mace!”

  “Yeah?”

  “He’s out there somewhere, waiting for you to stumble across him. It will happen, and when it does, everything will fall into place the way it was meant to.”

  She offered me a genuine smile then. “Thanks, Jay. I hope the same is true for you too.”

  As she ran off to go do her thing, I thought about that. Did I deserve to be happy with someone after all the bullshit I’d caused the people I was closest to in my life? I didn’t honestly think so. How fucked up would it be to end up with a fairytale ending the girls always go gaga over when my buddy couldn’t get his?

  The time on the road had helped my perspective out a bit. In the nearly two years we’d been touring around the world with Valhalla Rising, Dusty Rose, and sometimes The Infinite Everything, I had never gone home. There were times in the tour where the bands took a break and I simply followed Phoenix to another clubhouse somewhere in the country and hung out with those dudes. I missed the club. That much was obvious every time we pulled in and there was a kick to my chest at seeing some of the other men in their kuttes. I wanted to be a part of something bigger again, that much I knew. I just didn’t know if I could do that back at home. The thought kept me up some nights wondering if I’d ever be able to face down my family, or Toby’s for that matter, in order to return home for good. I was still living in this half-world where Jay existed, and J-Bird was a distant memory that was buried with his best friend.

  It wasn’t until I was overseeing the afterparty for the bands that night that a damn, down-home college girl woke me up and made me miss the hell out of everything I’d left behind. Her accent was the first thing to catch my attention. That’s not true, the first thing had been when she went to introduce herself to Sky, Dusty Rose’s guitarist who was known for her fiery temperament. The girl tripped and spilled some of her coke on Sky’s shirt which dripped down to her ridiculously high heels that I knew were also expensive as fuck.

  “What the fuck?” Sky yelped.
r />   “Oh, my word, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean…”

  “Shut the fuck up, you little simpering barbie. Look what you’ve done!” Sky shouted at her, fists clenched, and looking ready to brawl over a simple spilled drink.

  Sometimes, when working security, the people you have to save are the stars themselves. They think they’re gods and impervious to the rules of the rest of the world. One punch is all it would take for this girl to set up a lawsuit that would have her sitting pretty, so I stepped in.

  “Sky, why don’t you go see if you can get that cleaned up, or grab another shirt while I deal with this,” I told her as I put my body between her and the southern cutie that sounded like home.

  Sky rolled her eyes at me and stripped right out of the tank top she had worn on stage earlier. She flung it to the corner of the room where some assholes actually started scrapping over it, and she grinned at me. “Like what you see, security boy?” She asked snidely.

  “Not really,” I told her honestly. I’d never liked Sky. She rubbed me the wrong way from the moment I met her. Even though she had the world at her feet she still gave off the desperate vibe. She had harassed one of the guitarists from The Infinite Everything early on in the tour. The guitarist had a girlfriend that he was serious about, but Sky wouldn’t take a hint. I figured she was just the kind of crazy that was too much trouble to bother with, so I had steered clear as much as possible.

  “If you hadn’t been stuck so far up Maci’s ass, maybe you wouldn’t feel that way.”

  I only shrugged and turned my attention to the other girl. “Sorry about that,” I apologized.

  She just smiled at me. “We can’t all be from the south,” she told me. “Manners just aren’t the same everywhere.”

  “That’s the damn truth,” I agreed. I never realized how often I said sir or ma’am, opened doors for people, or just did polite ass shit back home because it was something everyone did. The first time I knew I wasn’t in the south anymore was when Phoenix and I were out riding, kuttes on, and I tried to hold a door to the restaurant we were entering for a couple of women before we went in to eat.

  “What kind of a biker holds doors for people?” One of them had asked.

  “Must be a poser,” the other had agreed.

  Phoenix hadn’t let me live it down, but damn, it was the first time I had basically been called a pussy for doing something I’d always considered normal for someone. I snapped out of the memory and looked at the blonde little thing in front of me. “It takes all kinds,” I told her. “You get a quick reality check when you leave the south and go somewhere else. Not everyone is like us.”

  She laughed again. “We are definitely our own brand of sweet tea!” She winked as she teased. Then she cocked her hip out with a hand on it and narrowed her eyes on me, assessing. “Where exactly are you from?”

  “Charleston,” I told her, forgetting that I usually had to tack on the state, because most people who hadn’t grown up in the south had no clue. That was something else I couldn’t fathom.

  “No way!” She almost shrieked. “Me too! Well, I live down closer to John’s Island.”

  “I was raised closer to North Charleston,” I admitted.

  “You go to North Charleston High?” Her question threw me a bit, but I shook my head, yes.

  “That figures. We might have known each other if we’d been a bit closer. I went to St. Johns.”

  “How old are you?”

  “22,” she answered.

  “I’m 25 now. You’d be closer in age to my best friend’s sister, Ever. She’s 23 now.”

  “Is your best friend here working with you too?” It was an innocent question. My heart started hammering in my chest and I damn near broke out into a cold sweat before I choked on the answer.

  “In spirit,” I finally told her. When she gave me an odd look, I elaborated. “He passed on nearly three years ago.”

  “Oh! I’m so sorry,” she said, and I could tell by her tone that she meant it. It wasn’t just lip service by someone who could give a shit less if the most important person in my world died. “I haven’t seen my best friend in quite a while because she got married young and then he died, we went off in separate directions with school for a while, and now she’s off doing her own thing. Seems like we keep missing one another these days. I really can’t wait to get back to town and see her again.” She waved her own words off as if they were gibberish. “I’m just glad that her husband committing suicide didn’t make her chose the same option since she has no one else, you know? I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t pick up the phone and know she’d be there, even if we had to play phone tag for a while to get a hold of one another.”

  “You’d feel hollow and like you aren’t sure if you can walk this earth the way you once did, because everything is suddenly tainted, and not quite right.” She moved in closer then and threw her arms around my middle, hugging me close to her. It was the first time since before Toby’s death that another human’s warmth started to seep in through the cracks, so I held on for dear life and refused to let go until Phoenix came over.

  “Hey man,” he started as he eyeballed the little blond who had her arms wrapped around my middle. I just shrugged at him. “Sky’s shooting her mouth off about you, so why don’t you just go ahead and take the rest of the night off. We have this covered.”

  “You sure?”

  “Positive. Might want to get her out of here too. Not sure who she came with,” he started to say.

  The blond in my arms turned and looked around, eyebrows scrunching up as she did. “Oh lord, I don’t even see the girls I came here with.” She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and started texting furiously while biting into her somewhat thin bottom lip. Then she smiled sheepishly up at me. “Well, I guess I’m going to have to catch a bus back to Charleston. Those little heifers left me high and dry.”

  “Come on,” I stated as I took her hand and led her out of the room everyone was congregated in.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Back to my trailer to figure out what we’re going to do to get you home.”

  “Oh, it’s not really your problem though,” she told me quietly.

  “No, but you’re from my hometown, I feel obligated to make sure you return to it safely now.”

  “Ah, my hero,” she fake swooned.

  “Shut it,” I teased back. “Let’s go, before Sky gets any ideas.” I chucked my chin over in the guitarist’s direction where she was busy glaring daggers our way.

  “She is really unhappy with me, huh?”

  “Nah, she’s just really unhappy in general.” The blond giggled, and it occurred to me that I didn’t even know her name. “I’m Jay, by the way,” I announced.

  “Oh, my word! Can you believe I’m doing something as foolish as wandering off with a complete stranger I met backstage at a concert?” She said this as if we were old friends and not at all like I was the complete stranger. It struck me funny, and I laughed loudly. She glanced over at me out of the corner of her eyes and then started laughing along with me. “I’m obviously crazy, but my friends call me Lindsay or Linds.”

  “Well, Lindsay, I promise you’re in safe hands.” At least I hoped I could keep that promise. I didn’t have the best track record on that front, but damn if I wasn’t going to try, because there was no way I was throwing this chick to the wolves tonight. It was almost like she was put here at this very moment in time to entice me back home to my roots. Maybe, just maybe she was also a bit of a test to see if I was worthy of returning.

  We spent the rest of the night just sitting at the little table in the RV a couple of the other security guys and I traveled in. They basically all ignored us when they came back at the end of the night and all the vehicles started rolling out.

  “I guess I’m going with you to your next stop,” Lindsay told me when we felt the vehicle lurch and then move again at a steady pace.

  “We have six more stops and then we�
�ll be ending the tour in Atlanta. If you want to hang out and experience something before going home and having to be an adult, you are more than welcome to stay. No strings,” I added at the end in order to let her know I was serious and not trying to pressure her into anything. She sat quietly contemplating my offer before I tacked on the rest. “If you don’t want to, I’ll pay for a bus ticket when we get to the next town and make sure you’re safely on your way back to Charleston.”

  “No, I don’t think I want that. How about I stick it out, and we take each stop as they come?”

  “That works,” I told her.

  “Good, and also, I don’t mind strings, Jay.” She batted her lashes at me and then scooted closer to me at the same time so the sides of our bodies and legs were touching from shoulder to hips then down to knees, and even our toes were aligned. I smiled at her as I reached over and tucked a stray hair behind her ear. I was honestly unsure of whether I wanted to go there with her. She seemed to be a sweet hometown girl, and I still had it in the back of my mind that she was the test of my worthiness that would either lead me home or keep me gone for good.

  “How about we put that part on hold for tonight. There’s nowhere private left on this rig for the night anyway.”

  She laughed then. “I didn’t take you for the private type of guy.”

  “Didn’t take you for the type of girl who would put it all out there for everyone else,” I countered, a little taken aback by the somewhat sudden change in her from sweet southern chick to groupie mentality. It was honestly jarring.

  “Touché!” She pouted and then grinned up at me. “Sorry, I just thought when you said I can have an experience before I go home that you meant a wild, rock and roll party time; but I like the thought that you weren’t going there even better.”

  “I didn’t say you wouldn’t have a wild time, Lindsay. I just said it wasn’t going to start tonight. Not unless you want to count the near-brawl you got in with Sky tonight.”

  She laughed then. “Lord! She would have wiped the floor with me.”