Ink: Devil’s Nightmare MC

by Bourne, Lena

  Maybe that part of me was always right. I don’t deserve her.

  A year ago, I left her with barely a goodbye. A couple of days ago, I was willing to go to my grave—an unmarked grave—leaving her again after she forgave me, leaving her in a way where she could never find out what happened to me.

  I left her twice. Sure, I regretted it both times, but I did it anyway.

  She deserves better than that, and I don’t deserve her love. I don’t deserve her forgiveness. All I want to do is spend the rest of my life begging for it, but that’s selfish. I have no right to her forgiveness. No right to even ask for it.

  She’s long gone when I finally pocket the ring and ride off. Just like that first time she gave the ring back to me, all I want to do is get drunk and stay that way until I find a fight I can’t win.

  But the Devils will probably end up taking my life as it is, and besides, I owe it to them. So I might as well kill two birds with one stone and go pay up that debt.

  22

  Ink

  I’m halfway to the nastiest biker bar I know around here, aptly named The Nowhere. That’s literally where it is. They serve shit like Rattlesnake Moonshine, which has a fermented snake in it, and, oddly enough, that’s not even the nastiest drink you can get there. It’s a place you go when you have nowhere else to go. If someone there doesn’t end me, I’m sure the Devils will for disobeying another order. I was in exactly this same type of mood when I got my stab wounds that led me to join the Devils. My father had been buried for over a week, and I was still drowning my absence at his funeral in as much booze as I could hold down. To top it off, one of my fellow prospects at my uncle’s MC had just told me of the brothers who followed him to his grave. Until that call, I still had vague hopes that everything would settle down, and I’d be able to come home. That call dashed those hopes completely. My sacrifice, me leaving Julie, didn’t prevent further deaths, and I knew then that the things keeping us apart would never fade. I didn’t want to live to see that happen.

  So when I saw Ace get into a situation that wasn’t something he’d easily get out of, with a bunch of guys of the sort that grunt instead of speaking, and usually use their fists and knives to do most of their communicating, I didn’t hesitate to get involved. It wasn’t a fight either of us could win separately, nor was it something we could win together, but I figured at least I’d go out doing a brave and relatively selfless thing. Maybe I was just too much of a coward to go out alone. I’m not anymore.

  The last thing I remember of that fight is cold steel piercing my side. It went deep the first time, and even deeper the second, and I can still remember the cold of it if I think hard. When I woke up, I was in a clean room, my side aching but not too bad, and a guy who reminded me painfully of my father was checking my bandages. He had the same sun-leathered face, lines all around his eyes, and streaks of grey in his hair, as my dad. I figured I died and joined him wherever he was. But eventually I realized I hadn’t died, and that Doc was not my father. After I told him my whole sad tale, the Devils took me in as one of their own without me even asking them too. Apparently me helping out Ace in that fight was enough proof I was worthy of being one of them, and now I’ve proven how wrong they were to trust me.

  I’m not the coward afraid to die alone anymore, and I still know it’s the only way for me. Everywhere I go, shit follows me and gets worse the longer I stay. I’m cursed, or maybe just incredibly unlucky. Who the fuck knows? Who the fuck cares? The only thing I do know is that I don’t want to live without Julie in my life. I’ve tried it before and it didn’t take.

  My phone vibrates against my heart. I always kept it in my breast pocket, so I’d feel it when she called me if I was out riding, or otherwise away from her, and that habit returned on its own after we reconnected.

  I break hard, sending gravel flying then raining down against me as I pull onto the shoulder.

  “Julie,” I say as I pick up without even checking the screen. It’s her, it’s gotta be her.

  “It’s Hawk. Where the fuck are you going, Ink?” he sounds annoyed, bordering on angry.

  “Nowhere,” I reply. It’s technically more true than it sounds and it amuses me to know that. A couple of hours from now, it won’t matter one way or another where I am. I won’t be anywhere. So I guess I’ll still be nowhere.

  “Get back to the bunker, right the fuck now,” he says, and I’m shocked to find out he can give orders with the best of them. “I warned you not to do anything stupid and here you are, leaving town. That’s stupid, Ink. Cross doesn’t trust you completely yet, and you know we will find you wherever you go.”

  “I’m going to a bar called The Nowhere,” I say. “And that’s my last stop.”

  He sighs. “I get it, your woman’s not in the mood to hear any more of your excuses, but I’m sure you knew that before you went to see her today. We had no choice but to take away your phone. You know that and in time you can explain it to her too. She’ll come around.”

  He’s talking like he knows what happened between me and Julie, and I know no one was near enough to overhear us. A second later it clicks.

  “So you have been listening in to my conversations, since you gave me back my phone?” I say.

  “That’s another thing that had to be done,” he says, no trace of an apology, or even shame in his voice.

  “So if me and her were fucking right now instead of me leaving town, you’d be listening to that?” I ask, my blood rising in anger at imagining it, even though it’s very far out of the realm of possibility now.

  “Not for enjoyment,” he says and this time he does sound almost apologetic.

  “Not at all, was the answer I was hoping for,” I snap. “But it doesn’t matter now.”

  “Stop with the dramatics, Ink. Cross was ready to put a bullet between your eyes the moment you came back. It took me a long time to convince him to give you a second chance, and the constant eyes and ears on you were the only way to make it happen. If you get any further out of town right now, no amount of convincing is gonna make him give you a third chance. So come the fuck back here, sit tight and do what you’re told, and wait for that girl of yours to come around again. If she took you back after a year, she’s gonna do it again after a week.”

  “What if she doesn’t?” I ask, keenly aware of the bottomless reservoir of hope I have for this to happen, based on exactly that kind of logic. That hope’s always there, no matter how angry or fatalistic I get. It’s probably why I get that way. Because I know that the only way I’ll ever stop loving her is if I die.

  “She will,” he says with a certainty I know he can’t have, but I want to believe him, so I kinda do.

  “Now come back here,” he adds. “We’ll need you tomorrow.”

  “For what?” I ask and he just laughs.

  “Let’s just say, you’ll get yet another chance to prove yourself to Cross. And this one will probably do the trick.”

  He’s not gonna say more on the phone and it was dumb of me to ask.

  I stay on the side of the road for a good while after he hangs up, thinking of nothing and everything. But it’s not until I get back on the road, riding to the bunker that I finally make the decision to live.

  Living is better than dying.

  That way there’s always a chance that Julie will take me back, and always a chance that we’ll manage to clear up all the obstacles holding us apart for good. However small, the chance exists while I live, and that’s better than being dead without any chances.

  * * *

  Julie

  I didn’t drive far after I left him in the parking lot. The shaking in my hands soon took over my whole body, and my eyesight was getting too blurry to see clearly from the tears I don’t want to shed over Ink. I cried myself raw so many times over how it ended between us, that it ended between us, and the fact that I couldn’t stop loving him. I’m still not sure I can. But I’m determined to try.

  I didn’t intend to go far. Just t
o the beach by my house, the one we never went to while we were together, and the one I’ve been coming to a lot since we broke up. To think, or not to think. Mostly to be alone. The waves breaking at this beach are just high enough to make swimming annoying, but not good enough for surfing. It’s also not long enough for running and not secluded enough to offer any type of privacy, so most of the time only people who want to be near the sea come here. Usually they read. Some sit and stare at the water like I’ve been doing all afternoon, and many afternoons before this one.

  The sun’s set now, and the winds picking up are quite cool. I’ve long since wrapped the towel I brought to sit on—the one that’s always in my car because I come here often—around my shoulders. I should leave soon and get the rest of my plan for my future underway.

  I’m going to finish packing and leave town tonight, the way I planned to do before Ink came back and disrupted it. That’s the only way forward for me, and as much of a plan as I’ve been able to make. Life will unfold the rest. I see that now, just as clearly as I saw it before he reappeared for one last magical week. I’m now sure that was God or the universe giving me the chance to say a proper goodbye to him before we part ways forever—the goodbye I was denied the first time he left me.

  There are all sorts of little twinges of doubt going off in my mind and in my heart, as I go over all that again, but my rationality is winning over them all. I love him and I always will. But the pain of losing him again is too much for me to bear. I go crazy when it happens, I lose touch with reality and have a very hard time clawing my way back to normality. I’m afraid if I let it go on too long, if I hold on to the hope that he’ll be back for too long, I might sink so deep into insanity, I’ll never come out again. It’s like taking a breath and diving deep into the ocean, then drowning on the way back up, because you didn’t save enough air for the return trip. Leaving him now is my way of saving enough air and not drowning.

  As for the papers and land deed I stole from my dad, I’ll give all of that to Ink’s mom before I leave. She says she wants nothing to do with it, but I think his family should be given another chance to make that decision, this time armed with more than just fear of more loss. Maybe I’m completely wrong about all that, maybe Ink is too, but maybe not. His family has always been kind to me and always made me feel like I belonged, no matter how obviously I never did, and this will be my way of giving back.

  But after that, I want nothing more from him, his family, or from mine. We made such a mess of everything—together and separately—and the only thing to do now is end it and go on like it never was.

  I guess maybe that’s what he was thinking when he left me the first time. We didn’t talk much about what went through his mind then. Now I don’t want to know his thoughts anymore.

  I just want to get over him.

  But no matter how hard I focus on that goal and nothing else, I still can’t find the strength to stand up and start walking down the path to achieving it. So, I’ll just sit watching the waves roll across the sand, reflecting the starry sky, until I do.

  23

  Ink

  Cross is supervising the loading of two tarp covered trucks with large crates when I arrive back to the bunker. He gives me a very hard and appraising look as I pass him, which continues after I greet him. It’s boring a hole in my back as I enter the building. Knowing for a fact that he would’ve ended my life, if Hawk hadn’t interfered is unsettling to say the least. While it was just something I thought was the case, it was easier to process. I know he had no real choice, I do know that, but it still means I’m a nothing and a nobody to him, when it comes right down to it, and there’s no feeling good about something like that. But I already don’t feel good about a great many things in my life, so what’s one more?

  When I resolved to live after that first near-fatal stabbing, I decided to just roll with it, whatever it was at the time. I figured I’d keep doing that for as long as it took for things to get normal again. Fake it until you make it type of logic. Clearly, I made some bonds along the way, tight enough to save my life as it turned out, and that’s nothing to scoff at and not something to take lightly. That’s what my father always taught me and my brother, and it’s how he lived his life. I shouldn’t have forgotten.

  It’s your honor you take with you when you go, was one of the last things Dad said to me before I left town and everyone I knew behind. And there’s no honor in suicide, no honor in leaving brothers who trust you and depend on you behind. I should’ve remembered that more clearly before I almost did it, and I won’t forget it again.

  I won’t forget Julie either. I’ll keep trying to get her forgiveness. I owe her that much, and, maybe, I owe it to myself too.

  But not tonight.

  The bunker is mostly empty, which is odd, since almost forty brothers were here when I left earlier today. I suppose that means the weapons deal hasn’t gone down yet, or there’s another one I don’t know about.

  Hawk steps out from one of the rooms lining the basement hallway I’m walking down. “Good, you’re back.”

  “Yeah, your words found a home in my mind,” I say, and that’s pretty much the extent of the talking I still want to do today. To anyone. It suits me that no one’s here.

  He nods. “We ride early tomorrow.”

  I’m curious as to where we’re riding, but not enough to ask. I’ll find out when I find out. So I just nod too, and pass him on my way to my tiny room. Maybe I’ll sleep, maybe I’ll think about calling Julie, hopefully she’ll call me.

  It’s not likely that any of those things will happen. She hurt me today. I deserved it, but she hurt me with her coldness and her refusal to even listen to me. She didn’t even consider giving me another chance. I saw that clearly in her eyes. She was determined not to give me a chance. After all these years, my worst fear of what would happen that first day I sought her out so we could meet, has finally come true. I guess things do run in circles. I wonder where ours will go from here.

  Her refusing the ring hurt me most of all. I figured offering it to her again would thaw at least some of the ice she clearly built around her heart.

  I’ll try again. And again. For as long as it takes.

  But not tonight. I’m still too raw from her coldness, which will make anything I say to her too angry.

  And I’m done messing things up with her and then making them worse while trying to fix it. That much I know.

  * * *

  Julie

  The phone ringing wakes me. It’s light out, but the sun’s not up yet. A cramp in my neck as I get up to get my phone makes me curse, and my whole body’s stiff from spending the night on the sofa. The call’s probably from Ink and I’ll just end up hanging up on him, so this painful trek to get it is pointless. I’ll turn off my phone as soon as I cancel his call, because he won’t stop calling until I pick up. I won’t tolerate a repeat of yesterday, because I’m done with all that. I have to be.

  It’s not him though, it’s my dad, and the disappointment that starts deep in my belly and suffuses my whole body surprises me with its strength. I really wished it was Ink calling. But it’s better this way. I asked him to leave me alone. Why should I be mad that he’s following my wishes?

  I debate not answering my dad’s call either. Today is the day I leave and never come back. All my stuff is already in my car and the only reason I’m even still here is because I thought I’d get a little rest before hitting the road, after I did one final check of the apartment. That was at just past midnight, and it’s almost seven thirty now. I fell asleep for real, which is probably for the best. As is me telling my dad I’m leaving. I’ll have to do it eventually anyway, and this is as good a moment as any.

  “Yes,” I say as I pick up.

  “Julie,” he says in a terse tone. “You have to bring those papers to the office today. I need them back.”

  I sigh, regretting picking up the phone now. “No, Dad. I’m giving them to Josie Cooper. She can decide if she w
ants to give them back to you or not.”

  She just might give them back without a fuss, but I won’t tell my dad that.

  “No, Julie,” he says and for some reason he doesn’t sound angry, he just sounds sad. It baffles me. Maybe I’m only hearing that, because I’m sad and it colors everything I hear and see and think.

  “Yes, Dad,” I say. “And I’m leaving town today. I don’t know when and if I’ll ever be back. You can lease this condo out if you want, I won’t need it anymore.”

  This place is the company’s and I never really considered it my home. It was just easier to move in here than find and furnish my own apartment after Ink left and all my plans for the future got cut down. And it’s close to the beach.

  “Julie, what are you talking about? Where are you going? What will you do?” There’s still sadness in his voice, but now it’s joined by panic and frustration.

  “Bye, Dad,” I say and hang up, because I told him and now there’s no need to talk anymore. I’ll call my Mom and my brother from the road and say my goodbyes to them later.

  I don’t leave right away. I shower first and drink a cup of black coffee, which is pretty much all that’s left in the apartment by way of food. Then I realize I’m dawdling, because I’m waiting for Ink to call. I expected him to start calling last night already.