Riding On Fumes: Bad Boy Motorcycle Club Romance (The Crow's MC Book 2)

by Cassandra Bloom

  There’s no stomach-god up here, I taunted, dumping another cluster of jerky into my open maw. Just diarrhea-inducing devils!

  I started laughing at my own thoughts, but I lost track of the mess halfway through and realized too late that I was crying. My hand tipped and sloshed cotton candy vodka on the grass. It occurred to me that the jagged corner of torn plastic from the jerky bag was digging into the exposed skin at the base of my throat, where the bag had come to rest after I’d let my hand fall across my chest. I did nothing to save the alcohol or relieve myself the discomfort.

  “How’d it get this far?” I asked again, sobbing around the words. “God-fucking-damn, Anne, what… what am I even doing?”

  I let my head fall back, slam painfully into my dead wife’s tombstone, and then just forced myself to stare up at the sky. It was clear and peaceful up there, and a part of me felt like if this were a book or a movie there’d at least be clouds. The weather always reflected the hero’s mood, didn’t it? Wasn’t how this was supposed to work?

  You’re no fucking hero.

  Stories don’t follow the lone soldier, cowboy; there’s no chemistry there, no motivation. Even Tom Hanks got a volleyball.

  “Least I had you, baby…” I said, surprised at how my tongue seemed to drag on the words, slurring them already.

  Fuck me… how could I already be so—

  I eyed the bottle and, despite the decent splash I’d lost in the grass, realized I’d drank more than half the contents already.

  Well, I mused, momentarily self-aware to a debilitating degree, that certainly explains this!

  The thought was punctuated with another wave of vomit, tasting every bit as toxic as my words to Mia had been earlier.

  I deserve this, I thought, letting the seemingly unending projectile stream of throat-destroying bile tear past my lips. And THIS!

  I finally slapped myself again. I was overdue.

  My hand came back sticky and wet, and I saw blood on my fingertips. Captivated by the sight, I studied it. I realized after a long, confusing moment of gray that I was falling in love with my blood, and I pressed my thumb into it, relishing in the tacky way it seemed to cling to me. It made me feel alive and wanted.

  I puked again, shorter this time. Finished, I wiped with the back of my hand.

  That, too, came back sticky with blood.

  Blinking, confused, I wondered where the red was coming from. After a long moment of inner debate, I tested my lip and discovered a decent gash along the bottom corner.

  “Well,” I said, letting my chin sink into my chest and whispering at my sternum, “the broken bottle giveth and the broken bottle taketh away.”

  Then, collecting a fresh smear of blood on my thumb, I rolled it across the sweating, liquor-streaked outer surface of the glass bottle. A morbid mockery of a thumb print stared back at me, deformed and already streaking.

  “Littering is a crime,” I muttered, then threw the bottle into the distance. I flinched a little as I heard it smash in a chorus of enraged tinkles against some distant slab of resented concrete. “Public drunkenness is a crime,” I went on, feeling a fresh wave of sick coming and feeling it would be an ironic statement to precede the puke. No puke came. “Figures,” I whimpered, kicking out at my motorcycle, feeling that some act of violence might ease the pain in my heart, and having my boots flail harmlessly short of the chrome. “M-mur-der is… a crime,” I drawled on, beginning to thud my head rhythmically against Anne’s stone and appreciating the pain and growing headache for what they were. “And… and…” I began to giggle to myself, “and prostitution is a cri—”

  The vomit finally came.

  The force was enough to have me scrambling onto the my hands and knees. Pain and suffocating nausea had me certain that the only way to not choke to death on sickness was to practically slam my face to the very ground my wife was buried under while frantically waving my ass up at the sky.

  Here I am, God, I thought, still sobbing and puking all over myself. If ever you truly wanted to stick it to me then there’s no better time than now.

  But the hand of God—or the dick of God; whichever—did not come down upon me. Instead, the puke-stream ran dry and I hurled the unfinished bag of jerky into the distance to be mulled over by cemetery critters at a later time.

  “Anne!” I sobbed, finally turning back towards the stone and throwing my arms around it. Never had I been made more aware of what a piss-poor representation it was to its source. Hard, jagged, and unfeeling; I craved a warm, understanding body and this was what I got.

  It wasn’t what you had.

  “I know…” I stammered, “I know. I fucked up! I… I always fuck up, but—”

  Do you believe?

  “Do I…?”

  Mack’s words, dipshit? Do you believe there’s truth in them? Do you believe Mia was using you? Manipulating you? Do you think that’s who she is?

  “I…” I stumbled, feeling my drunkenness target my equilibrium, and I toppled back, away from Anne’s grave. I more heard than felt the remnants of broken glass crackle against the back of my leather jacket. Stupidly, I let my head fall back with it, later realizing how thankful I should be that I didn’t bury a shard of cotton candy-laced liquor bottle into my scalp. “I don’t…”

  You don’t know. You never know. Never bother to know. This isn’t another stereo, Jason; this is Mia! Now stop asking yourself what she thinks of you and start asking yourself what you think of her.

  “I… I love her,” I admitted, suddenly wondering who I was admitting this to. “I fucking love her so goddam much.”

  Then why should the rest matter?

  Why?

  I blinked at the question.

  Why should it matter if Mia loved me? What sort of stupid nonsense was that? What good was loving somebody if—

  “—if they don’t love you back?” I finished aloud.

  You were happier loving her; happier with her beside you; happier with her.

  “But if it’s not real then—”

  What’s real to you, Jason? You’re crazy, remember? You still make yourself happy with digitally remastered shitty sci-fi flicks and anything to do with vampires despite thinking sci-fi’s for geeks and being scared shitless of vampires. All because your dad loved those shitty flicks and because your mom loved anything to do with vampires. Does that mean those things aren’t real to you either?

  “That’s different,” I grumbled.

  Why?

  I said, “Because I want her to love me.”

  And you’re so certain that she doesn’t? Just because some douche-nozzle claiming to be her brother says so? And so what if he is her brother? Why were you so quick to believe what he said?

  “Because it makes sense,” I said matter-of-factly, certain I’d just won this bizarre debate with…

  Makes just as much sense that he’s wrong if you don’t look at facts like a whiny little bitch. And, again, who cares? If you feel happy having her around and she’s willing to stick around because you’re rich and safe then aren’t you both winning?

  “Not… what I want…” I drawled, suddenly feeling very, very tired. Even with sleep dragging me out of the moment, I found myself struggling to identify the other end of this strange conversation.

  You’d think you’d be used to not getting what you want by now, dipshit. Would it be so wrong to take what you can get? Assuming, of course, that this all isn’t complete nonsense? Assuming, of course, that Mia doesn’t actually love you back?

  “Better… of two evils,” I mumbled, and then immediately wondered why.

  But so long as she’s out there, that mystery source went on, she’s in danger. And that you know to be true.

  As sleep wrapped its bony arms around me and dragged me down with the rest of the eternal sleepers, it suddenly occurred to me that Logic, Defense, and Neutral had gone and fused themselves into something bigger and more mature.

  I drifted off thinking of baby bones and cotton can
dy-flavored blood.

  ****

  I’d been here before.

  But I never thought that I’d be here again.

  I’d thought—I’d hoped—that Mia’s involvement in my life was enough to…

  Car horns. Roaring asphalt. Pounding heart—my heart!

  I was here, and, like it or not, I had to ride.

  I was here, and I had to be there; I had to get there!

  Everything—my everything!—counted on it!

  On my old bike, a toss-away Honda with a clanking exhaust and worthless shocks, and peaking the needle. It still wasn’t fast enough. Piece of shit was never that fast to begin with, but on the night I needed it to be even halfway decent it was a miracle I got it over fifty.

  Not that it matters.

  I didn’t get there in time.

  And I never would.

  Blacktop pavement. Blacktop sky. Even the edges of my vision were going tar-black; tears streaking the only thing that wasn’t black: the flashing blues and reds tailing me.

  Cops.

  Fuck them.

  I might’ve been inching along at a pitiful and painful sixty-three, but they’d still never catch me. Not on that night. And not on any of the times I came back to it.

  Sixty-three miles-per-hour…

  I told myself I might’ve made it if I’d reached sixty-five, but really I was lying to myself. Best case scenario: I might’ve wound up watching it happen. Still, I told myself—as I’d keep telling myself—that I could’ve done something.

  Sixty-three miles-per-hour…

  I knew that because of the pursuing officer who’d tried to make the speeding charges stick. He’d said I was doing sixty-three in a thirty-five. He’d said I’d run stop signs, screamed through red lights, endangered other motorists, and even nearly run down a pedestrian making use of crosswalk. He’d said all this while I watched a mortician’s gurney roll on squeaky wheels from my home; a round, familiar bump swelling upward at the halfway point. I remembered thinking that she always looked better on our bed and under our sheets, but the sight was oddly serene all the same.

  Then I caught sight of a few red dimples as they kissed the bleached whiteness of the sheet and began to grow, expanding across the clean cover and staining it. Then I was screaming, shrieking in blind, raw terror, and clamoring to make it to her side even as they were hoisting her into the back of the…

  … the back of the…

  Christ!

  Somebody’d called it a “meat wagon.” They hadn’t known I’d heard, but they’d called it a “meat wagon”…

  It took me a long time—too long—to realize I was being held back; held down; held away from going after her.

  Then, assuring them I was fine—“I’m good. I’m cool. I’m… I’m cool.”—they let me up again, loosing me onto a world that wasn’t quite level; let me stand up on a ground that wasn’t quite flat. In my mind, I could still see the spreading stain across the plain white sheet of my life, and standing seemed downright impossible.

  Then the cop said “sixty-three” again.

  He said “sixty-three,” and I punched him.

  I heard “sixty-three” echo in my mind, watched the words marry the vision of the spreading stain, and suddenly I knew—fucking KNEW!—that if I could turn that cop’s face into hamburger I might turn the clock back a few minutes and coax that fucking Honda to do sixty-five, maybe even seventy. If I could just beat every last “sixty-three” out of the face that had been assigned to the badge and gun I might never have to see those stains at all.

  Then I was being held again. Then I was being beaten.

  And—sweet Jesus!—nothing had ever felt so goddam good in all the world!

  Then, too soon for anybody’s liking, some cop with an actual brain between his ears tore his buddies off of me, reading them the riot act about the scene we’d all just rolled up to—“Chris’sakes, you assholes! That’s the man’s wife! His wife! And, in case you fucking nitwits can’t see for shit, either, that wasn’t a Thanksgiving dinner she was carrying in her belly, either! Get the fuck off him before you get the whole force sued!”—and I was alone with nothing but the emptiness.

  The emptiness and…

  And a voice.

  The voice!

  Over the din of everything else, I heard my name.

  “Hey! HEY! Jace? Jason Presley? That you, you son-of-a-whore?”

  None of the cops seemed to notice the random figure standing amidst the chaos until they all heard that last part.

  I guess they figured very few people would be throwing around words like “whore” in the middle of a scene like that.

  But then, just like that, they were all looking.

  I was a bit late to look, and maybe that’s what saved my life.

  Suddenly, Mister “Sixty-Three”—likely trying to make up for his fuckup—was coming at me like a bullet.

  No…

  Not like a bullet. I suppose it was the bullet that was coming at me like a bullet. The bullet was faster. Of course. Cop could’ve been an Olympic runner—could’ve been running sixty-three miles-per-hour—and he still would’ve been too damn slow. But the sight of all that uniformed authority barreling at me gave me a start; nearly knocked me right on my ass without laying a hand on me. And that was how a shot that should have built a lovely little retirement home right in my heart was, instead, forced to settle in the meat of my shoulder a few inches off.

  “T-BUILT SENDS HIS CONDOLENCES, PRESLEY,” the shooter had cried out at me as he was dragged away towards a flashing Cruiser. “THE CROWS IS DEAD! LEARN IT, KNOW IT! THE CROWS IS DEAD, PRESLEY, DEAD! THE CROWS… IS… DEAD!”

  Turning away from my would-be murderer, I watched the “meat wagon” holding everything I’d known as my life pull out and begin to put distance between us.

  “The Crows is dead…”

  “The Crows is dead…”

  “The Crows is…”

  The Meat Wagon’s brake lights burned, it rolled to a lazy stop at the end of the road. There, seeming to tease me, it lingered—it’s right blinker winking knowingly at me—and it finally turned and vanished into the night.

  There, at the end of the road, standing where the “meat wagon” had been waiting a moment earlier to wink at me, her ghost stood.

  She stared back at me.

  She held her round belly in one hand, supporting its great weight and all the potential it represented.

  She waved—a casual, lazy gesture aimed more towards the home we’d built and everything we could have had than at me.

  She stared back at me… but she did not smile.

  There’d be time enough to smile at me from the end of the road in the years to follow. But nobody smiled on the night that they died.

  Nobody.

  “The Crows is dead…”

  “The Crows is dead…”

  “The Crows is…”

  That’s what I should have been hearing echo in my mind—what I always heard echoing in my mind at this point—but…

  But it wasn’t.

  Not this time, at least.

  No, what I heard was something different; something worse:

  “Mia is dead…”

  “Mia is dead…”

  “Mia is…”

  And then the Village People began to sing in the background.

  ****

  My back screamed at me as I shot upright. I was distantly aware of the merry tinkling of broken glass as it lost its grip on the back of my jacket and fell back onto discarded shards of their cousins. Pins and needles assaulted my left leg; I’d fallen asleep with it crossed under my right, and I was paying for it now. Though I had no way of knowing if I’d slept this way or if I’d done this subconsciously upon awakening, but my fists were clenched—they were ready for a fight. Every bit of me was ready for a fight.

  But I woke up to a calm evening.

  The sun, lazy and drooping, was in the early stages of considering sleep. There was some col
or to the sky, but nothing so intense as to warrant any dramatic emotional response, good or bad.

  I’d come out of an old dream with a new, terrible twist that had my nerves feeling like tiny barrels of nitro ready to blow…

  And the entire fucking world was staring back at me like I was a crazy person for it.

  “Great…” I muttered, struggling to unclench my hand—a personal fight in-and-of itself—so that I could wipe the filth of sleep from my face. Sweat-caked brow, crusty eyes, and a crust of dried snot and settling drool around my mouth and nose. Had I been crying in my sleep? The pad of one thumb backtracked to the corner of one eye, found a few still-damp trails of salt-crystals cutting through the no-doubt grimy surface of my cheeks and sinuses. Yes, yes I had been crying.

  Some deep, snickering part of me seemed to say, I told you so.

  Then the Village People began to sing at me.

  I squinted, recalling the bizarre closing to my terrible, terrible dream, and suddenly wondered if I was still trapped in sleep. Awareness dawned on me like a slug crawling across my face, slow and slimy and discomforting, and I slapped a palm across my brow, embarrassed, as I reached into my jacket and retrieved my still-ringing phone.

  Because of course my ringtone for Danny was the Village People.

  I cut off the song just before the second half of the letter sequence in “Y-M-C-A” and grumbled something that didn’t have any meaning even to myself.

  Danny said, “The fuck did ya just say?”

  I didn’t have it in me to admit to him that it sounded an awful lot like “condolences” to me. I barely wanted to admit it to myself. “Nothing,” I groaned, only slightly more coherent this time, “What is it?”

  “What’s it always, kid? Business,” he asked and then answered back. “S’only fuckin’ thing get my cute ass callin’ ya when I should be cruisin’ for a little twinky action.”

  I decided it was better not to ask if he was referring to snack-cakes or skinny gay guys. Knowing Danny, it was a bit of both. Ignoring the subject in its entirety, I said, “Meet you at the shop in…” and trailed off, figuring it was better to let him decide how much time he needed.

  Danny told me he needed no time, because he was already there.