by Voss, Deja
I know she’s trying to be helpful, but she’s an outsider.
She’ll never be a patched member of the club, and she wasn’t born into this life like I was. She doesn’t understand that the club doesn’t turn me into someone who I’m not, but that I would do whatever it takes to protect that patch, protect my men, no matter what I have to do. The club IS who I am.
“I’m sorry. That sounds really rude of me. I’m making assumptions. I hope you don’t think I’m judging you. I’m not. Hell, what you do is admirable. But there’s gotta be a point where you just want to settle down and have a normal life with a normal man and not have to worry about this shit.”
“Ollie,” I say as my coffee pot beeps. I stand up to pour us some. I feel like I’m hungover, even though I didn’t drink a drop last night, my body sore from his on top of mine, my head spinning with more questions than answers. “Your heart is in the right place.” Her heart is in the right place, and she’s totally correct about what I want. But what I want is not what I get as long as I have my club.
“I hope so,” she giggles. “Lord knows I’ve had enough work on my chest. I hope they didn’t reach in there and move my organs around.” This girl and her boobs. I swear she’s obsessed.
“You’re really in love with those things, aren’t ya?” I smile, setting a cup of coffee down in front of her.
She picks up a brownie from the container and examines it, shrugs, and shoves a bite into her mouth.
“Some people buy books for college with their high school graduation money. I made the smarter investment for my life trajectory.”
“You’re awful,” I laugh. “Honest, but awful.”
Chapter 17
Brooks:
I’m not very talkative today, and Gavin picked up on that pretty quickly. It’s not that I’m embarrassed about what happened last night with Esther, it’s not that I don’t want to tell the world that I finally got the girl I’ve been chasing after my whole life.
It’s that I don’t have her. I had her. And those are two very different things. And it’s pissing me off. Something so close but just out of my reach.
“Why are you so fun today?” he asks, breaking the silence as we drive his truck down the muddy dirt road to the site of our first still. “Did you get in a fight with your left hand last night?”
I just turn up the radio. Looking at his face is irritating me. Hearing his voice is irritating me. Being near him, knowing he’s ok with letting Esther prostitute herself for the club, makes me want to punch him. I hate him right now almost as much as I hate myself. I let this happen to her as much as he did.
The goal for the day is to just make sure the stills are clean and functional and that the winter hasn’t done much damage to anything we didn’t pack up and put in storage. We drive down the rutted up old fire road, the branches of oak trees overgrown, scraping at the windows. We get out of the truck and pull back the tarp on the first still. I notice a hole in the side of the big metal drum that wasn’t there before, and I kick it with my boot.
“Motherfucker,” I bark, kicking it over and over. “I don’t know why we didn’t put this in the garage last fall like I said we should. Probably cuz you were so busy playing house that you wanted to half ass everything.”
“Dude, calm down,” he says. “We can patch it up. It’ll take four seconds. What the hell is your deal? If you got something to say, you need to fucking say it. I’m not a mind reader. You’ve been an asshole for the last two days.”
“I’m in love with your sister,” I blurt out in my blind rage. It feels so strange coming out of my mouth even though it’s been on my mind for my whole life. I want to yell it over and over again.
“You don’t think I know that? I’ve always known that. Everybody’s always known that.”
“We both let her down. Why didn’t we protect her when she needed us? Why didn’t we do the right thing?”
“We were kids, Brooks. We didn’t have any choice. That whole arrangement was my dad’s deal, and there was nothing we could do at that point in our lives to make it stop. I always hoped when she got older something would just change, but it just gets worse all the time. He has her convinced that if she doesn’t keep on whoring herself for the club that the club will stop existing. And for whatever fucked-up reason, she wants to keep us all safe and happy. She’s more loyal than anyone we’ve patched in.”
I pop the top off the still, and it looks like some critters used it as a hideout for the winter. It’s full of hay and fur.
“Yuck,” Gavin says, reaching for a shovel.
“Better than rattlesnakes.”
“What even happened?” I ask.
“Well, some dipshit took my advice and left this thing out to rot all winter long,” he grins wickedly. I swear this guy gets a serious kick out of himself. Maybe that’s why we get along so well. Still, I want answers, not slapstick humor.
“I mean with Esther. All I remember is she was here with us one day and then she wasn’t. Went off to live with your Aunt Mary. When she came back, she moved into that trailer and everything was just different. She wasn’t the girl we grew up with. You never told me what happened. You always avoid it. I need to know, Gavin. I need to know so I can make it right.”
“I don’t know how to make it right. And I don’t even know what happened. I know my freshman year of college she showed up at my dorm room looking like she’d been half beat to death. I asked her what happened and she wouldn’t tell me. She said she got in a fight, that I shouldn’t worry about it, that she just needed a good night’s sleep. She begged me not to call Dad. I tried to get her to stay with me until I could get shit figured out, but she disappeared again while I was in class the next day.”
“Why didn’t you tell me, Gavin? Why didn’t you call me?” I yell, grabbing him by the arm, enraged that he would hold back such a major detail from me.
“Because we were kids. You were finally getting your life back together after your old man died and I was trying to figure out what the hell I wanted to be when I grew up. There’s nothing we could’ve done that wouldn’t have made things worse for all of us.”
“You’re a selfish pig,” I say, my hands trembling, my face inches from his.
“She told me not to call you. She made me promise not to tell you. She didn’t want to see you ever again. You might be my brother by the patch, but she’s my real sister. It wasn’t my move to make. You think I don’t regret that shit? I regret everything about that point in my life. I regret ever leaving here and letting Moses fuck up my brothers and sister. But I was a selfish kid. I had to take care of me.”
I let go of his arm, this bittersweet sadness that I’ve held inside of me since the day that she left finally making sense. Finally I’m getting some answers, even if they aren’t the ones I want.
“We’re not kids anymore, Gavin,” I tell him. “We basically run a powerful motorcycle club.”
“Sort of,” he says.
“Fuck your dad. This is his fault anyway. It’s our turn to clean up the mess.”
“How do you propose we do that?” he asks.
“I don’t know. But if all these stills look as shitty as this one, we’re gonna have a nice long time in the woods together to think about it.”
“Good thing I brought some thinking sticks,” he says, pulling a joint out of the pack of cigarettes he keeps in the pocket of his cut for when we go out in the woods. Sloan would murder him if she knew he smoked, but what happens at camp is none of her business.
I fire it up with a long hard drag, letting the smoke fill my lungs.
Chapter 18
Esther:
The war room is dimly lit and filled with smoke. Everyone is in fairly decent spirits as of late. No real trauma or drama, which is kind of unusual, considering what kind of man our president, my father, is.
There’s only one looming situation we have to deal with right now, the fact that we need more ARs faster than we can pay for them. To stay
established as the go-to guys in the weapons game, sometimes we run into supply and demand issues. There’s a man who can solve our problems. A man who is rich and powerful, albeit disgusting and weird and everything I hate about my job. And I have a date with him this weekend.
I take my seat next to my father. It’s completely unprecedented to have a woman in the war room. I don’t have a cut. I don’t hold an office. I don’t know what my patch would say even if I did. Anything but whore.
Nobody likes to call things what they are around here.
Brooks is the last to show, and the way he slams the door behind him makes me cringe. He shoots me a friendly smile as he takes his seat across the table from me, our sergeant at arms, and I just smile back. We haven’t talked since the other night. What would we even say, though?
My brother Gavin, Misfits vice president, sits on the other side of my father. The other side of the long oak table holds Clutch, our treasurer, Heat, our chaplain, Tank and Red, our rough-and-tumble enforcers, Forrest, our road captain, and Austin, our secretary. Missing from the table is my little brother, Goob. The guys elected him tail-gunner out of pity and a need to give him a feeling of importance, but since he’s gotten clean, he’s been off traveling the country and finding himself. I miss the guy, but I know how tempting it is to run away from this life and never come back. He’ll randomly call me and tell me about his adventures, and I do love hearing from him. That empty chair makes me both sad and happy.
My father clears his throat, or at least attempts to before falling into a coughing spell.
“You gonna be alright, pops?” Gavin asks. “You want me to start the meeting while you light up another oxygen stick?”
He shoots Gavin his death glare. Gavin is pretty good at getting under his skin, especially during club meetings. It’s a good thing we all have to leave our weapons at the door before we come into this room, because I’m sure one day he’s gonna push just that right button.
“Alright, gentlemen,” he begins. I just sink down in my chair. Dad and I have already discussed the plan. Tank and Red and I are going to go to Pittsburgh and meet with Salazar. We booked two hotel rooms and we’re going to stay down there as long as it takes for me to secure seventy weapons on credit.
It’s risky, it’s dumb, and he’s not going to be happy about it, but I know I can make it happen. I know exactly what I need to do.
As my father explains the situation, I try to keep my eyes off of Brooks. I sip my beer, stare at the wall, look at my dad, look down at the floor. Being in the same room as him is making me nervous, nauseous, especially because the current discussion at hand is about the man I’m going to be sleeping with this weekend.
I’m not really paying attention, not really here. I know everything I need to know. I should’ve just stayed home and packed.
“I’m taking her,” I hear Brooks say. “I got business down there this weekend.”
I swing my leg under the table, looking for his shin. I don’t know what the hell he’s got up his sleeve, but he’s not going with me.
“Tank and Red always take me,” I say. “I want them to come. They know the drill.”
“They’re busy,” Gavin says. “Fight night at the Bucktail on Saturday. I need them to bounce.”
“We can go Sunday then. I have a routine. I need things a certain way,” I plead. By certain way, I mean Brooks nowhere near me. Not when I’m doing this.
It hurts me physically. He’s doing exactly what I feared, showing me that all we had was a fling and club business comes first. Showing me how little he cares about me or us or our relationship. This is a complete power move.
I hate him right now.
I grab a cigarette from my father’s pack and light it up. I stand up from the table.
“I don’t know why you’re making such a big fucking deal out of this,” Gavin grumbles.
I feel the rage coursing through my veins.
“That’s because you don’t do what I do. Maybe you and your best buddy can go without me. You can practice sucking dick on each other on the ride over.”
Nobody says a word, all eyes on me. Gavin catches my wrist in his hand as I try to walk past him, squeezing it. For a second, I see a flash of my father in his eyes, the way he’s almost sneering at me, his face dark, commanding.
“Do you really want to do this here?” he asks, his voice low.
I’m fighting back tears, and my dad just smiles, as if he’s proud of the way his son is manhandling me. I can’t let them see me weak.
“Brooks is taking you, I’ll be down with the van on Sunday to pick up the guns. You’re more than welcome to sit in on the rest of the meeting, but everything else doesn’t really apply to you, woman.”
I feel like I’m in some sort of fucked-up nightmare. Gavin never talks to me like that.
“Gavin!” Heat shouts. “Take your hands off the girl and watch your fucking tone.”
The men around me look so agitated. My crew. My clan. They look like they’re going to jump across the table and strangle my brother.
Everyone except Brooks.
He’s looking at his watch, staring at the wall, acting like he’s bored or something.
Everyone except my father.
He’s laughing, as if this is some sort of silly sibling rivalry playing out in front of him.
Gavin drops my arm dramatically, holding his hands up in the air.
“Sit your ass down, Esther,” Heat says. “You belong at this table as much as anyone else here does and if anybody objects to that, they can take it up with my fist later.”
I swear Gavin winks at me.
I don’t know what he’s up to, but I don’t read into it.
I will sit here for the rest of this meeting, but I will only be here in body.
In my mind, I’m going to be thinking of every possible way to make this the worst weekend of Brooks’s life.
Chapter 19
Esther:
I think I have everything I need for the weekend shoved into my little duffle bag on the back of my bike. Whatever, if I don’t have it, I can buy it when I get to the city. This would be so much more convenient if we were just taking the truck or something, but the thought of riding with Brooks for four hours is making my stomach turn, and I don’t even want to begin to think about what the ride home would be like.
I don’t plan on staying long. I’ll probably just go to sleep in my hotel room as soon as we get there, wake up, do my thing, and head back. He can hang out in the city as long as he wants. Do whatever it is he has to do down there. I only have one objective, and that’s get what the club needs and get myself gone.
I pull up to the clubhouse and park my bike. I light up a cigarette, a habit that I’m not too thrilled about picking back up again over the last few days, and suck down on it while I pace the parking lot. Between him and Salazar my lungs are not happy with me. This asshole needs to hurry up before I leave without him.
Morgan swings open the door of the clubhouse, her curly blonde hair looking more perfect than usual, her face painted on a little more dramatic than the norm. She’s wearing a leather halter top that leaves nothing to the imagination, and her jeans sit so low on her hips I think I can see her vagina.
“Hey, Morgan,” I say, only out of politeness.
“Ooh,” she squeals. “Can I bum one of those?”
“Whatever.” I shrug, handing her the pack. She fishes out a cigarette with her long red fingernails and lights it up. “Brooks should be here any minute,” she says. “I just got off the phone with him. He’s running a little late.”
“Ok,” I say, not really thinking too much of it. Morgan’s got her hands all over every guy on this mountain. I wouldn’t be surprised if she called each one of them every morning to see if they’re finally gonna let her go for a ride on their bikes. I hear the rumble of Brooks’s Harley coming from the other side of the hill.
“We’re gonna have so much fun this weekend,” she giggles.
&
nbsp; “Oh for fuck’s sake,” accidentally slips out of my mouth. He’s bringing a date? Is he trying to go the extra mile to piss me off? I jump up and put my helmet back on and straddle my off-white Road King with black roses painted on the tank. At least I’ll get to spend a little time with her between my legs this weekend. I’ll get to experience a little bit of freedom driving through the hills of Pennsylvania, slicing through the stiff summer air as I get as close to flying as I can without leaving the ground.
He pulls his bike up next to mine, but I just ignore him. I have my GPS set on my phone, even though I could probably do this ride by memory; better safe than sorry.
“HEY,” he shouts. I don’t even look over. I try to find something I want to listen to on the ride. Something I can listen to over and over again and just kind of tune out, but will still put me in the mood I need to be in this weekend. Sometimes I’m a Cardi B girl, sometimes I’m an Eric Church girl, today I’m a Pantera girl. “ESTHER!” he yells.
Seeing her on the back of his bike, her slimy tentacle arms wrapped around his body while she sneers at me through the visor of her helmet like she’s getting one over on me is enough to make me want to puke. Our clan always rides together, but today I’m flying solo.
I peel out of the parking lot and set out on my lonely journey across the state. Just me and my bike Veronica. Fuck the two of them. Actually, just fuck him, I think. She’s too dumb to know any better.
He knows exactly what he’s doing.
About two hours into my drive, I stop at a gas station to pee, fill up my tank, and grab a snack.
I check my phone while I’m pumping my gas.
Just Trust Me it says. From Brooks. I have nothing to say back. Nothing makes sense right now.
