Chapter 2
Haunting Images
Christina (Age 22)
“What are you working on so vigorously over there?” My best friend, Lindsay asked me.
I shook my head, not actually wanting to share with her. One glance in her direction, and I knew it would be impossible. I also knew she’d ream my ass again for going to the cemetery. She didn’t understand. It was the only place where I could let it all out and try to understand why every damn person in my life felt like I wasn’t worth their energy. “I was at the cemetery again,” I admitted. Her face immediately screwed up. This time it looked more like anger than pity or sadness for me though.
“Why the hell do you insist on going to see him all the time. He said it himself, in that damned note you refuse to get rid of. He didn’t even love you.”
“Harsh,” I hissed out at her. She had fussed at me time and again, telling me my visits to the cemetery weren’t healthy, but she’d never sounded pissed off about them before. “I needed to clear my head,” I tried explaining.
She attempted to peek around the canvas I’d been working on, but I shoved her back. “What the hell are you painting? His tombstone?” She sounded disgusted at the thought, and it was starting to piss me off.
“There was a man there,” I told her, trying to change the subject from Steven to something else.
“A man? At Steven’s grave? Who?”
“He wasn’t at Steven’s grave. He was a couple over. It’s just that the look on his face, when he noticed me,” I paused trying to collect my thoughts. “It was an echo of what was going on inside of me at the time. Like we were both shattered in the same way. All the guilt and anger and frustration I’ve felt about my parents and then Steven, I swear I saw it reflected in his eyes too. Then the rain started, and his image blurred enough that I couldn’t see any of that anymore. When his friends called out to him, I just took off.” I laughed then. “I can’t believe I jack-rabbited out of there, but he looked like he was coming to talk to me, and it was not the right time or place to be meeting someone.”
“Oh,” Lindsay offered cautiously. “I really need to see what you’re paining now. It’s him, isn’t it?”
I nodded my head. “I’m not ready to share him yet,” I told her. “When I am, you’ll be the first to know, promise.”
“Fine. I know how you get when you’re working on a project. I’ll let you finish it up, but then I demand you let me see!” I tossed one of the rags used to clean up any of my spilled paint at her, and she laughed as she caught it before it hit her in the face. “That wasn’t nice.”
“Neither was your reaction to me being at the cemetery,” I told her, point blank. No use in hiding how I felt about her reaction.
She sighed deeply; shoulders slumped as she put the rag down on my coffee table. “I just want you to get over it already.” She held her hands up to me, to stave off my initial reaction. “I know, you were married to him. I know you guys were together since you were 16, but he was cheating on you for most of that time, and almost your entire marriage. He doesn’t deserve your continued grief.” Her mouth twisted into an angry line after she spoke, and I watched as she grabbed the rag back up off the coffee table and started ringing it in her hands. A picture of her doing the same to his neck surfaced in an almost cartoonish comedic image. I stifled the laugh since it didn’t seem appropriate.
“What you don’t understand about me going there is that it isn’t just for him. My parents don’t have graves. The state cremated them both on my behalf and there’s nothing marking a place for them. I don’t just go there for Steven. I go there for my parents too, to ask them all why I wasn’t enough? Why I wasn’t good enough to stick around for?” I shrugged my shoulders. “I’m so angry at all of them, and sometimes it just builds up and I need to go yell at someone, but they’re all gone. I can’t yell at them. There’s no asking them the questions I want answers to. It’s frustrating, but that is why I go.”
“Aw, damn it, Christina. You know what each of them did has no bearing on you.” She came around the canvas and held onto me for a bit.
“It does though. I was in the center of it all for my parents and for Steven. Being his kid was a burden for my dad, and it drove my mom crazy. Steven was in love with someone else but felt trapped with me. We married too young. I knew it wasn’t right when we did it, but he was trying to prove to me then that I’d always have someone at my back.” As soon as Lindsay let go of our embrace, I maneuvered her back on the other side of the canvas. There was no rhyme or reason behind me wanting to keep cemetery man to myself, but I knew in my heart that I did not want to share him with my best friend.
“I get it now,” she told me as she patted my shoulder and moved where I guided her, back behind my workspace. She glanced around. “Are you really going to keep this place?”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I?”
“I just figured you would move out since Steven’s been gone so long. Maybe get rid of his things or something?”
I shrugged. “I haven’t decided what to do with them yet, and this is the only home I have.”
“You got an insurance settlement from his death though, right?”
I cocked my head to the side. I had never told anyone about the insurance Steven had left for me. Even though Lindsay was my best friend, I couldn’t tell her either. It just didn’t feel right. “How did you know about that?”
She blanched. “I just figured you guys would have insurance since Steven was such a planner,” she told me. There was a false air to her words that I couldn’t shake though.
“It wasn’t that much,” I informed her. It hadn’t been. Steven had left me with the $50,000 insurance policy he had taken out on the both of us when we got married. His uncle had suggested it, and oddly, he had presented it to me as a wedding gift when we married at 18. I remember him saying, “This is to show you that I’m serious and planning for our future. I won’t leave you alone with nothing if something should happen to me.”
It had been a sweet gesture, if a bit depressing as a wedding gift. I understood it though. My father’s girlfriend had taken everything belonging to him and run with it, knowing that I was his only next of kin. They hadn’t been married. Technically, he was still married to my mother. My mom had been struggling since he left her. We barely had a pot to piss in before she shot him and herself. So, there was nothing for me but a couple plastic garbage bags with my clothes and a few things I couldn’t part with in them, and a group home for the next five years of my life. Steven hadn’t wanted me to end up like my mom if something happened to him.
That was ours though. It was something I never shared with another soul, because I didn’t think anyone else would understand the sentiment. Also, because it wasn’t their business. At least, I hadn’t thought it had been anyone else’s business. According to his suicide note, he had intended for me to share that money with the baby he had made with another woman. Had one come forward, I would have given it all over to the child. I wouldn’t want for them to have to struggle the way my mom had with me when my dad left. I believe that struggle, coupled with her heartbreak, is what finally drove her to do what she did. I hadn’t touched a dime of the insurance money because I was still waiting for some stranger to come to me asking for help with Steven’s baby. I couldn’t tell Lindsay that though. She wouldn’t understand. Lindsay wanted me to forget I had ever been married to the man and move on as if he didn’t exist. Her favorite thing to tell me was, “He obviously wasn’t the love of your life if he loved someone else enough to die for them.” Harsh. True. Disgusting to think about. Yet, Lindsay would remind me every single time she found out I’d been to the cemetery. It was a good thing she was headed off to complete her master’s degree at USC in Columbia. I felt the break was much needed, even if she didn’t understand how insensitive she was being to me.
Chapter 3
Forgetting the Beat
J-Bird – (Age 23)
The clubhouse wa
s somewhere I didn’t want to be anymore. It brought back so many memories of Toby. We played here growing up and we promised one another that when our fathers’ time was up ruling the club, that we would take over together. It had been our plan since we were little kids watching the men of the club with envy and waiting for the moment, we could finally nail all the bitches they did. The club whores becoming available to us had been such a lure. The funny thing was, when we were finally old enough to use them the way we’d always dreamed of, it never appealed to either of us. Sure, we ran through all the girls from our high school and a few more besides, but we had already seen most of the men from the club run through the club whores there, and since we were older and able to see what was going on without the magical glasses of our childhood forcing us to idolize everything the men did, the allure dimmed. Neither of us were too keen on sharing the same bitches that our uncles were using. There were a couple of exceptions over the years. The bitch who took my boy out was one of them. Toby had been into a chick that wasn’t returning his advances at all, and after being rejected one more time, he used her out of frustration.
If only he’d known that one stupid decision to give in and use a club whore would cost him everything. Hell, if only I’d known. How many times had we heard our mothers complaining about the club bitches and how they didn’t belong there? If we’d had our moms’ backs sooner, would he still be here? I shook off the question, because there were no do-overs in this life. What was done was done. I’d give the world to trade places with Toby, but there wasn’t a soul out there that was willing to give me the option to do that.
A big hand slammed down on my shoulder and shook me a bit before I turned to see who it was. “Hey man, how’s it hanging these days?”
I had gone out on a three-week tour just to fuck off with Phoenix while he played base with a band he used to run with. They were just hitting up smaller venues, but it had actually been a good fucking time. I managed to get out of my head, get laid more than a few times, and just relax a little. Something I couldn’t manage back home and at the clubhouse.
“It’s fuckin’ lonely man,” I admitted. Phoenix had started in the Cedar Falls Chapter and within a couple years, he decided that the call of the road was too big a pull. He was one of the few nomads that the club had, and he preferred it that way.
“I imagine it would be without your other half here.” That’s what he’d always referred to T-Bone and me as when talking to the other one. Phoenix tapped the bar to get our newest prospect’s attention. I didn’t even know the punk’s name, because I hadn’t cared about the club, or pretty much anything, since we lost T-Bone. For all I knew they’d just brought him in while I was out of town for those few weeks. Hell, it honestly didn’t matter to me because every time I glanced around this place, it felt like there was a hole in my fucking chest and I might bleed out at any moment. Looking around the room, I noticed that everyone was keeping far away from me too. “That’s a hell of a fuck off vibe you’ve been putting off,” Phoenix told me as he glanced around too, probably noticing the same thing I had.
I shrugged my shoulders. “No point in pretending I want to talk to anyone here.”
“Then what are you doing here?”
“Came with Ever and Deck again. If I don’t show my face once in a while, they get worried and come drag me out of my place.”
“I have a proposition for you,” Phoenix told me as he helped himself to the stool beside me.
“What is that?”
“I’m heading out on the road, part of the security crew for a couple bands this time,” he hesitated, and when I thought he would tell me which bands, he didn’t. “It’s a gig I pick up once in a while, and one I think would work out well for you. Let’s get you out of here. You need a change of scenery like a whore needs a change of underwear.”
I nearly spit my beer out at that. I turned and grinned at the idiot. “You want me in on the security gig?”
“Paying job’s there if you want it, if not, come along for the ride. Either way, you get the fuck out of here, see some new shit, and work out whatever you need to work through in your head. You do it without your family up your ass about how long it’s supposed to take to get over your brother dying.”
I took a deep breath and then let it out, along with most of the tension that had been riding my shoulders. I had just been offered a lifeline, and I wasn’t about to turn it down. “When do we leave?’
“In the morning,” he told me. The rest of the tension fell away at the thought of leaving everything behind in just a few hours. “You down?”
“Yeah, man. I’m so fucking down,” I told him.
“Good. I’ll be back by with the truck and trailer at eight. I’ll meet you here and we’ll load up your bike with mine.”
“Thank fuck,” I hissed. It had been the only question I was about to ask him. Are we leaving our bikes behind? It made me feel good that they’d be going with us. I may have been contemplating abandoning the club and lifestyle, but I couldn’t breathe without my wind therapy. There was no way that could happen. “Don’t tell anyone I’m going,” I hissed out at him as he started to get up.
“You’re a fucking adult, brother. Tell who you want, and either way, it’s your business to do it.”
“It’s just that I don’t want them to try to talk me out of going.”
“Honestly, J-Bird?” He asked. I tipped my chin to him, an indication to go ahead. “At this point, I think they’d happily push you out the door just to see something breathe life back into you.” He didn’t stick around to see what I thought of his observation. Instead, he took off, down the hall to the room he’d been given when he showed up here a week or so ago. It occurred to me then that this might be a setup. Someone around here might already know I’d be gone by this time tomorrow, because they’d put Phoenix up to taking me with him. Part of me – a very small part – wanted to be angry about the interference. The rest of me didn’t give a fuck. I knew it for what it was. A lifeline. I had been dying inside since Toby went away. Seeing his grave again today hadn’t helped any. It still didn’t feel real. It felt like he was going to walk through the door any minute and I’d be able to chew his ass for going on a trip without me. I had to admit, I’d gone to see if fate would lend me a hand and my little fairy woman would be there again. Granted, I shouldn’t be pining after a woman I’d only seen once, and one who was crying over another man’s grave, but there was just something about her that called to me.
The thing is, despite the one little spark of life that the spritely graveyard girl had given me, and the reprieve I got last time I was on the road with Phoenix, Toby was ever present in my thoughts while I was here. Even when all that shit went down with Ever in the beginning, he hadn’t left my side. When it came out that I was wrong, he was pissed, but he stood by me and told me that we had both made a mistake. It didn’t matter that he’d questioned everything from the beginning. Didn’t matter to him that I drowned a little bit in the loss of his sister in my life due to my own stupidity. He was there when I needed him. He had been right up until we heard Ever tell the story of how she nearly killed herself as a result of what we’d put her through. That was when I’d lost my best friend and brother. I’d been grieving for our lost brotherhood and friendship long before he was put in the ground. His death just made that loss and grief a permanent thing that rode me hard when I had too much time to think on it. Sitting back and taking in the clubhouse always cemented that. There was nowhere else in the world where I could feel as close to Toby and as far away from him as possible all at once and it was damned confusing to my soul.
I pushed my glass away from me, back towards the edge of the bar where the prospect would pick it up and take it to wash and get ready for another brother or guest. When I looked up, my own eyes were staring back at me in the mirror that ran along the wall, the length of the bar. The dark circles under my eyes spoke volumes about how much I’d been sleeping. Rather, the lack of sleep I’d
been getting. Frown marks seemed permanently etched into my face too. Aside from a moment ago with Phoenix, I don’t think I’d smiled at all since I was called and told to get my ass to the hospital because T-Bone had dumped his bike. I made my way to pick up Anna and got her there still thinking I’d be tormenting the bastard about needing training wheels. Instead, I’d been greeted with the family, a grieving family, a broken family who didn’t know how to deal with his death any better than I did.
I stood and made my way out of the clubhouse and to the apartment I kept a couple blocks away. I left my bike and walked so that I could take in the world around me a little more before I left.
I may have needed the break away, but I knew I’d miss home like crazy too. The problem was, I would be missing a home haunted with memories of Toby, and I knew that even when it was time to come back, there would still be a void there that made home feel like anything but.
We rolled my bike up onto the trailer next to Phoenix’s, and that was it. The duffle I’d packed with clothes was already tucked into the back seat of the truck along with Phoenix’s shit. He had a guitar and a bass in there too. I thought briefly about learning to play, and figured what better place? I’d be on the road with a bunch of musicians. It would be one more thing about my life that was no longer tied to Toby. The thought was both heartbreaking and left me with a sense of relief. The relief, I felt guilty for though. What a mind fuck!
The Killing Ride Page 3
