“You got my fuckin’ keys?” he asked, it took me a second to translate though because it came out more like yougotmyfugginkeys all mashed together.
“Yeah man, right here, I’m here for you brother! Let’s get you home.” He reeled back on his seat and I reached out and grabbed for his shorter, more compact frame to keep him from going off backwards.
“Have a drink with me Squick!” he cried.
“Nawww man! I gotta drive!” I called with a laugh. He looked at me dubiously, his hazel eyes more brown than green in the murky bar light as he squinted at me.
“I really fucked it up dinnit I?” he slurred and despite his intoxication his expression sobered.
“Naw man, it’s cool, I’m here,” I said not quite understanding what was up.
“Naw. She’s all tore up and tattered and ‘s allmyfault!” He slipped off the bar stool and stood and I grabbed onto him when he tottered. Dude was the kind of drunk that was un-freaking-real.
“C’mon man, let me take you home,” I turned to the bar, “Hey Jimmy! He all paid up!?” I asked.
“Yup! Been payin’ in cash as he goes all night. Thanks for comin’ to get him,” Jimmy waved us off and I stooped, slinging one of Ghost’s arms over my shoulders.
“Okay buddy. Time to go home!” I led him out to the parking lot out back and scanned the cars and trucks a little helplessly.
“Thanks fer comin’ man. You’re a good kid…” he was mumbling against my shoulder.
“No problem Ghosty, now which one is yers?” I asked shaking him a little.
“Tow truck,” he blurted and it was in that way that yep, he doubled over and heaved. I winced as the smell of vomit and whiskey wafted up from the ground and hit me full in the face. “Oh God that’s much better!” he blurted and threw up some more. I clenched my jaw and didn’t say anything for fear that I would join him if I opened my mouth. Thankfully he was lower to the ground than me and had good aim. He managed to miss me all together. Maybe his being a sniper had something to do with that.
“Okay buddy, the tow truck it is. Come on.” I half walked, half dragged him over to a black tow truck at the back of the lot. I prayed as I went through three or four keys and damned near shouted in triumph when one fit in the passenger door and turned the lock. Ghost was going in and out on me and he was too heavy for me to lift on my own. I just needed to get him in the damned truck. I got the door open and helped him heave himself onto the bench seat. I slammed the door while he was still trying to right himself, careful that I wouldn’t catch any of him with it. I let myself into the driver’s side and held my breath. Thank you Jesus! It was an automatic. I didn’t know what I was going to do if it had been a standard shift. I could have driven it, but I just wasn’t very good with them and really didn’t want to fuck up dude’s clutch.
I tried the key I’d used in the door in the ignition and it wouldn’t turn over. Fuck. I tried another, and another, same result.
“Come on man!” I muttered under my breath. Ghost had like a million fucking keys on his ring.
“Is that one.” He stabbed a finger at one of the keys with a blue marker on it and I tried it. Sure as shit, the engine turned over. I sighed.
“K dude, where do you live?” I asked. Ghost drunkenly raised an arm and waved vaguely in a direction.
I hung my head, “Club house it is man.”
At least I knew it’d be open, that there were beds and that maybe Dragon would be there. I pulled out onto the street and drove, Ghost had his head leaned up against the passenger side window glass and was mumbling to himself.
“She’s like this flag I saw in Iraq man… bein’ pulled in the dessert wind, snapping and sounding all angry, tattered, almost in shreds but proud. You know? Because she’s our flag!” He pounded his chest awkwardly at the word ‘our’ his hand dropping limp into his lap. “Good ‘ol U.S. of A. stars ‘n bars! Tried and true,” he chuckled. “Truest bluest eyes I ever seen… all my fucking fault…”
I frowned, “Dude, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said ruefully.
“Sapphire eyes!” he half shouted and I jumped and looked at him. He blearily looked back at me and I couldn’t help it. I cracked up.
“You are fuckin’ lit, yo!” I laughed.
“I shoulda kilt him the first time. I didna kilt him in time…” He rested his head back against the passenger glass and then smacked his head against it hard. I rolled up to a stop light and grabbed his jacket’s arm and pulled him more upright to keep him from banging his head against the glass again and again.
“Dude Ghost, you’re starting to freak me out man,” and he was, his ramblings growing darker and more morose by the second. He wasn’t making sense but at the same time his words were laced with a depth of emotion that had me sinking into a deep foreboding dread.
“I shoulda been there Squick. I shoulda been the one not him.” He closed his eyes and I think he passed out. I have no idea what the fuck… I drove to the clubhouse to the sound of Ghost softly snoring and pulled up into the steep drive. Dragon and Data’s bikes were out front and I breathed a bit easier. I parked the truck near the door and went into the clubhouse. I looked up and put my hands up and swallowed hard.
“The fuck you doin’ here?” Dragon grated and pointed his Browning skyward. I breathed out slowly and closed my eyes.
“Dray called me, told me to go pick up Ghost from The Spot,” I said.
“Where is he?” Dragon asked looking past me at the door which hung open behind me.
“Passed out in the truck.”
“Put yer damned hands down,” Dragon waved his gun at me grinning and I dropped my hands to my sides and smiled.
“You scared the shit out of me,” I said with a nervous laugh.
“You!? What the fuck you think I was thinkin’? You’ve never been in an MC turf war but I have,” he cleared his throat, “Last time we had cars or trucks come by a club house unexpectedly…” he didn’t finish, instead he said, “Well never mind that. Let’s go get our boy and git him to bed.” Dragon followed me out to the truck and gave a low whistle.
“Yeah I know, right?” I said when he went up to the passenger side door.
“Boy got himself tore up from the floor up.” Dragon tsked, “You were right to bring ‘im here.”
“Yeah well I’ve only been out to his place the once for that barbeque. No fucking idea how to get out there in the dark,” I told him. Dragon opened the door to the truck and Ghost slumped and fell halfway out. Dragon righted him and got under his one side, draping Ghost’s arm over his broad shoulders.
“Get his other side.” I moved in and got Ghost’s arm up around me. He reeked like a distillery and I grimaced. I stooped and we dragged Ghost between us, the boots of his steel toes barely scraping the floor between us. It was awkward as hell for me, being so tall, but I managed.
“Where to?” I asked.
“It’s a good thing we got some of these rooms finished,” Dragon grunted and we went back into the sprawling complex of rooms that made up the club house. It was true we’d been working our asses off since the failed summer lake run to get the rest of the club house in shape. We needed the space. Dragon and Dray had been going out on runs to try and talk some of the outlying chapters and Sacred Hearts nomads into patching over into the mother chapter to bolster our numbers.
Things remained tense with the whole Suicide Kings situation. They’d been quiet… too quiet and Dragon called it the calm before the storm. He’d done this sort of thing before and so he would know best and so when he spoke we took it to heart. It made for a darker and grimmer atmosphere and I guess I couldn’t blame him for jumping at shadows. It was at this point that I felt like a total fucking moron because like a bolt from the blue, everything that Ghost had been rambling about fell into place.
“Wonder what had his panties in such a wad,” Dragon said and with a final heave we flopped Ghost onto a simply made queen sized bed in a sparsely furnished spare roo
m. I straightened and stretched.
“Shelly,” I said and Dragon cocked an eyebrow like he wasn’t really surprised.
“Those two have had a thing for each other since they laid eyes on the other. Never could figure why he wouldn’t tap that.” He lifted a shoulder in an indelicate shrug.
“Well come on,” he said, “Let’s get his boots off and leave him to sleep it off.” We set to work silently letting Ghost’s steel toes hit the plain gray office style nondescript flat carpet.
“Good enough,” Dragon declared and we left the room. We’d left Ghost on his side, head propped on his arm. If he puked he wouldn’t drown in it. I’d still be checking on him later. This was not my first drunk watch since becoming a prospect.
“Suppose you’ll be needing a room tonight too, take the one there,” Dragon indicated a room directly across the hall.
“Thanks,” I said softly.
“Don’t mention it Prospect,” he said waving over his shoulder. His ponytail long and dark, cutting a black line down the middle of his tanned back to tickle the top of the equally black butt of his gun sticking out of his waistband.
“Hey Dragon?” I asked impulsively.
“Yeah boy?” he turned and rubbed a hand over the dark whiskers on his chin, his almost black eyes cutting back in my direction and burning a hole in my face.
“Is it really that bad?” I asked and waved a hand to indicate the gun. He looked me over and gave a grudging nod.
“Reaver killed their President, boy. That’s not something any club can, or will, let slide… No matter what thing the man done to deserve it.”
I nodded and looked back in the direction of Ghost, “What do we do?” I asked.
“Well we can’t kill ‘em all, so we wait. We wait to see what happens and we hold our ground. Why, worried about yer rainbow hide?” he asked but his eyes and smile were kind when he asked, taking any accusations of cowardice out of the question.
“No. Not mine,” I answered him honestly, thinking of Aaron, of my brothers who I really did consider my family even though I was still just a prospect. Dragon’s eyes narrowed.
“He’s fine for the time being. Come out here and have a drink. Seems to me you got some troubles of your own on your mind.”
I nodded and followed him out to the common room. Dragon indicated a chair at a two person table and I dropped into it. He looked me over one more time and nodded sagely.
“Think this calls for the good stuff.” He went behind the bar and grabbed two glasses and a bottle from underneath and came back. He set the glasses on the table and a bottle of Jose Cuervo Reserva de la Familia between them. My eyebrows went up.
“Kid,” he drawled uncapping the bottle and pouring, “I like you.”
I watched him carefully and waited for him to say more… expecting there to be a ‘but’, I mean it sounded like there was a ‘but’ hanging there, thick and as tangible as smoke would be curling under the low barroom lighting. Thinking of which, Dragon shook a cig out of a pack from the table and put it between his lips. He lit up and took a solid drag, holding the pack out to me. I put up a hand and shook my head politely.
When he didn’t say anything I prompted with a querulous “But..?”
He sighed, “We all got secrets boy. We all got pasts and we all come from somewhere and for the most part we all accept that about one another. We don’t pry unless it’s required and we don’t butt in where we don’t belong. Take Ghost in there,” he waved in the direction of the back room with the glowing end of his cig.
“Whatever is eating at him had him tie one on but good tonight, but you don’t see us badgering him about it,” he leveled me with a look and picked up his tequila and sipped. I did the same. I wasn’t usually a fan of it, but this shit was good! Going down smooth as butter.
“Yeah,” I said.
“But I bet if we asked him he’d tell us what was what,” Dragon said.
“Probably,” I agreed, because that was how it was. You weren’t supposed to hide things from your brothers. Guilt swirled in my chest, just behind my breastbone and the bitter taste of my lies and falsehoods choked me and turned the fine tequila I’d just drunk to ashes in my mouth. I knew what was coming… The silence hung too thick and full between us. Pregnant with so many things unsaid.
“You really going to make me ask?” he sniffed and took another drag on his cigarette, jettisoning twin streams of smoke from his nose, so much like you would picture his namesake doing. He sighed resigned, the silence having stretched for eons between us.
“Okay. Have it your way boy,” he stubbed out his cigarette and made to get up, and I just knew that this was it. That this was the end of me and being a part of this MC if I didn’t speak up, that it was officially the end of the line and I either put up or shrugged out of this prospect’s cut here and now and I didn’t want that… I didn’t want to let go of the club but terrified as I was about coming clean I had to. It was now or never and so I just blurted it out,
“I’m gay!”
I felt the tears rise hot and fierce, my vision blurring with them. Dragon looked at me and sank back into his seat and waited, but I was waiting too. For the look of disgust, for the screaming and the yelling, for the accusations and recriminations...
“Well it’s about time,” was all he said and I choked, hard. I wasn’t supposed to cry! Fuck man. Biker’s didn’t cry, my father’s son was not supposed to be some pansy assed faggot! And it was that last thought that had my shoulders rounding and my head bowing. The tears fell free and I fucking cried, big, wracking, shame filled fucking tears and waited for the first blow to land.
It landed all right, just not in the way I expected. Dragon’s hand fell onto my shoulder and gripped it through the leather of my prospect’s cut and jacket. He shook me back and forth gently and said, “Easy boy. It’s all right,” and his voice didn’t hold any malice or reproach. Just a gentle, steady, rock solid support which just made me come unglued even harder and then Dragon, the President of the Sacred Hearts motorcycle club did something completely unprecedented.
He hugged me.
Chapter 5
Squick…
“You all right?” he drawled after I’d settled down some. I was sitting back in my seat. Numb. He pushed my unfinished glass of tequila toward me and I stared at it for a long minute.
“Put that down,” he ordered and I obediently picked up the glass and swallowed. The alcohol burned going down my raw throat and I welcomed it like I welcomed the bite and sting of the needle. I sniffed.
“Been holding that in a good long while, yeah?” he asked and I nodded mutely, afraid to speak. It seemed Dragon was content to do all the talking for now.
“You’re coming up, boy. You and Zander both, but that’s not why you told me. I can see it plain as day. You asked me if it was really that bad with The Suicide Kings and you was thinkin’ of somethin’, what was it?” he asked.
I sighed. It was out now. My dirty little secret and I didn’t know what it meant for me or for my standing with the club but Aaron was right. I felt lighter, freer somehow and whatever happened next I didn’t want to think about but I felt like maybe I could deal with it.
“It wasn’t a something, it was someone,” I sucked in a breath. This wasn’t something… I mean if it were Ashton or one of the girls sitting here this part would be a whole hell of a lot less awkward.
“Jesus Christmas boy, just spit it out!” Dragon chuckled and I blushed.
“I met him a couple of nights ago, at the shop… he came in for a tattoo and,” I struggled to find the words. I didn’t know how to talk about this with anyone.
“Boy, I’m old… You tell my boy Dray I ‘fessed up to that I’ll deny it,” he lit up another cigarette, “You met a boy you thought was a hot piece of ass am I right?” I choked on a laugh and nodded.
“We hit it off, turned out he’s um… like me,” Dragon sighed.
“Someone, I’m betting yer daddy, did a number on
you didn’t he?” he asked and it was a lot kinder than I ever thought Dragon capable of.
“I uh, I figured it out when I was around fourteen. Came out to my parents and sister when I was fifteen. My dad kicked my ass out,” Dragon snorted like he wasn’t really surprised and I winced, “Was homeless for the better part of a year when this guy, a tattoo artist named Rusty took me in.”
“Did he know?” Dragon asked and poured me a little more tequila.
“Yeah, but we never exactly talked about it,” I told him what Rusty had told me and about the general don’t ask/don’t tell policy and Dragon shook his head with a sigh.
“You know you’re going to have to come out to the rest of the guys’ right? I’m not going to do it for you,” he said and I swallowed.
“Yeah I kind of figured,” I said somberly.
“You’ve been dealt a real shitty hand Squick.” I bowed my head.
“You know how I got that name?” I asked. Dragon arched a brow and I took it for what it was, his silent way of saying ‘No, but why don’t you tell me?’
“Rusty started calling me by it and I asked him why. He told me it was because of what I was, it wasn’t for him and it squicked him out.” I sighed.
“Sounds like Rusty was a pretty flawed individual,” Dragon said.
“Yeah, I didn’t get it. He took me in, fed me, clothed me, gave me a job, taught me all kinds of shit and how to get by and survive. Treated me like the kid he never had but he always kept me at arm’s length because of what I was. He was like the father I was supposed to have in all things except that one area you know?” Dragon nodded.
“Closer than the one you were born too,” he observed and I nodded rapidly.
“By a long mile,” I agreed.
“You understand that none of those people were your real family don’t you?” he asked.
“Family doesn’t do that. They accept you whole heartedly, one hundred percent for who you are. They love you, but don’t always like you. They fight with you and drive you nuts like nobody’s business but an outsider comes ‘round fucking with you, then real family is right there beside you until the outside threat is over,” his deep dark eyes bored into my own as his words sank deep.
Masked & Miserable: A Novella of the Sacred Hearts MC (Book 3.5) Page 5
