by Nicole Fox
The leaves on the trees in the patch of woods were just starting to turn fall colors. Chopper found a nice level spot and spread out the blanket he’d brought, weighing the corners down with rocks. Then he set the basket in the middle and unpacked its contents. Plastic plates, plastic cups, an array of fancy sandwiches. It was all store-bought — Chopper knew he was no cook — but he hoped Kelsey would approve nonetheless. She stood at the edge of the blanket, looking around at the little spit of nature surrounding her. A tiny breeze lifted the edges of her hair.
“It’s so nice here,” she said quietly, her voice full of awe.
“Yeah.” Chopper finished laying out all the picnic things and leaned back to admire his handiwork. “I grew up not too far from here, maybe a mile south. I used to come here when I was a kid and just kick dirt around ‘til I wasn’t mad anymore.” He laughed. “Sounds stupid as hell now, doesn’t it?”
She stepped onto the blanket and folded her legs underneath her, surveying the spread. “I’m impressed, Chopper.”
He leaned over and pressed his lips to her temple. “Me too, honestly. I’d like to pretend I made it myself, but … I didn’t.”
Kelsey giggled. “I don’t care. I’m just glad we get to be outside for a while.”
“I was thinking you could use some time out of the compound.” He picked a sandwich out of the assortment and bit into it.
She watched him fondly. “And some time with you. Not that I don’t enjoy the time we get together, but you know what I mean.” She winked. He grinned.
He felt like they were the only two people in the world.
Chapter Eight
Kelsey
She found the idea of a date both funny and endearing coming from Chopper, and the feeling was only magnified when she realized he’d planned a picnic in the woods. Sitting across the blanket from him, nibbling on a chicken salad sandwich and listening to him describe a rather stark childhood in the countryside, Kelsey felt as if she were starring in a work of period fiction. The notion made her smile to herself; he was hardly the stereotype of a dapper gentleman love interest, but if his sleeves were rolled down, he might be able to pass.
“What are you smiling at?” he asked her playfully.
“You,” she said.
He shook his head, a little chagrined. “Probably because you’ve been listening to me rattle on forever about an old farmhouse. Tell me something about you, Kels. Sometimes, I don’t think I know you very well, and I want to change that.”
Kelsey tilted her head. “What do you want to know?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Everything. How did you end up at the bar where we met? How did you meet Spike?” He paused. “Why were you so far into the Mongols if you hate him so much?”
Kelsey paused, a bite of sandwich halfway to her mouth. She felt foolish for allowing herself to be blindsided by that question; it was only a matter of time before Chopper asked. He had always seemed to know intuitively that she did not belong in motor clubs, that she had different reasons for being where she was. On the day he brought her into the Outlaw compound, she was sure he intended to get to the bottom of those reasons. She’d been prepared to fight him all the way. But he had chosen to focus on her connections to Spike instead, and then her pregnancy had sidetracked everything into a peculiar little eddy of self-contained happiness. Kelsey had almost let herself believe that he’d forgotten how strange it was that she’d turned up in close affiliation with Spike.
No such luck. And she was running out of ways to avoid the subject. The last thing she wanted was to reignite old flames of paranoia and mistrust. She’d really grown to care for Chopper, and she was willing to admit that she’d become accustomed to the idea of him as a father to their baby. Somehow, their awkward relationship, which had begun as a strictly-business arrangement, evolved into something more meaningful than that — how much more meaningful, she wasn’t sure.
Maybe after the baby was born, Chopper would realize how much babies cry, how hungry they were, how they needed their diapers changed. He might hand her a ticket and a packet of bills and say, ‘Remember our original deal? That’s the one I want. Good luck,’ and send her packing to some remote location. Or maybe whatever spell she had woven to charm him would simply wear off, and he’d revert to his old and dangerous ways. These were all things she thought when she was lying awake at night, staring into the shadows on the ceiling.
But in the daytime, when she could look into Chopper’s eyes, she had to believe that he was there to stay. Even if he kept the Savage Outlaw empire after the birth of their child, even if he ran drugs and stole bikes to feed into his chop shop, she had to believe that Chopper was in it to make a life with her, for better or worse. And if she wanted to help, she’d have to cast aside her own reservations and open up the way that he had. There was only one real dark spot in the center of Kelsey’s privileged life, and it had finally come to the surface. She had thought that when this time arrived, she would be hesitant at best, unable to articulate her pain at worst. But she scooted closer to Chopper, until he put his arm around her, and it was like the invisible chains around her heart just broke.
“I had a younger sister,” she began softly. “Her name was Hannah. She was my best friend.” Kelsey had never gotten into the habit of talking about Hannah in the past tense; every word stung like a fresh wound. Locking Hannah firmly in the past felt like killing her all over again, and Kelsey could barely bring herself to do it, for the sake of her grasp on reality. Once she solved the mystery of Hannah’s death, she thought that might make it seem more normal, but that hadn’t happened yet.
“When she was twenty, she was walking home from a party, and a man mugged her on the street. After she gave him her money, he shot her in the head.” Kelsey paused. The next sentence came out very quietly. “She died there, before the ambulance arrived. In the news clip, you can see them load her body into the back of the ambulance, and she’s already covered up. You know, like they do. But we still had to identify her.” She felt the familiar lump forming in her throat and did her best to clear it away. “Maybe you can guess the rest. The police were able to link the crime to a member of the Mongols, through numerous witness accounts, but the case went cold and an arrest was never made.”
Chopper looked down. “Most of them go like that,” he said.
She barely heard him. The words poured out of her, as if she was in a trance. “I was 23 at the time, barely out of school and working my first reporting job at a tiny local station.” Her eyes drifted to his face, a small smile on her lips. “You know what I was doing stories on? New swings at the playground. It was that caliber of news. But then I got transferred to a station in the city, and that’s when I started talking to crime reporters and hearing about their workload. I started learning about the statistics of solving crimes, and how the likelihood goes down every day. By then, we were going on a year with no progress on Hannah’s case, and I just got crushed by this wave of hopelessness and desperation. That’s when I started thinking I’d do anything to find the truth, or even just a lead to get things moving in the right direction.
“It took another year for me to actually make something happen. I was in the running for an anchor position at the station downtown — the big one. It would’ve been a life-changing career decision if I had taken it. But I was afraid of stability. I thought that if I let myself settle down and have a shot at happiness, my sister would fade away and be lost forever. And it seemed selfish of me, to stop looking for her so I could live the kind of life she’d never get to. The whole thing drove me a little crazy, I think. I ended up taking a leave of absence, and after that I started hanging around the biker bars, looking for an in.”
Kelsey took a deep breath and let it out. “That was Spike. I thought that if I could get close to them and learn what they know, I could finally find out which one of those fuckers killed my baby sister. But I didn’t. I didn’t find out a single goddamn thing. And now it’s been another year, and
here I am, pregnant and in the middle of a brewing club war.”
“Holy shit,” Chopper said.
Kelsey looked at him and realized she was crying. “I’ve never told that whole story before,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I always thought I wouldn’t be able to. It’s so hard to talk about Hannah. In some ways, it’s harder to talk about how I failed. I hatched this crazy plan because I really thought I would be able to help somehow. I threw away everything I had before. I’ve lost touch with the rest of my family, telling myself the payoff would be worth it.” She smiled grimly. “But the joke was on me. There is no payoff. Just a new life where nobody ever even knew my sister was real.”
“I know, now,” Chopper said. “And you know what else? I can make those bastards pay.”
She stared at him for a long time. A fresh wave of tears spilled over, rolling in great pearls down her cheeks. Chopper wiped them away tenderly with his thumb. “The fucked up thing is that I don’t even know if I want that anymore,” she told him. “I used to think a lot about what I’d do when I found the creep who killed Hannah. I used to have dreams about it. I used to tell myself that I didn’t care what happened to me afterward, as long as I got to avenge her.”
She put her hand on the rounded peak of her stomach. “But now that’s not true. And I’m relieved, but it hurts too, in a way. I can’t help but feel that there’s nothing I can do for her to make it right.” She sniffled. “It’s dumb. There’s never been anything I could do. Even if I found the guy and made sure he died or rotted in jail, she’d still be dead. I’m still going to live the rest of my life without her. That’s the part I can’t even imagine.”
Chopper pulled a napkin from the basket and handed it to her, watching her wipe the runny makeup off her eyes. He wanted to say something, to be of some comfort to this beautiful woman in the midst of the raw grief he had triggered, but there was nothing to say. All of his words, no matter how heartfelt, would ring hollow, because he had participated in the same vicious cycle. He and his men had caused uncountable griefs like Kelsey’s, and they had experienced them too.
For the first time in a long while, he thought of Ray, whose parents had been notified of their son’s murder the same way Kelsey had been notified of her sister’s. He knew for a fact that Ray’s murder was unsolved, because the cops never dared probe too far into MC affairs — or money made them turn a blind eye. He suspected there was a city cop somewhere who knew exactly what happened to Hannah Jones, but who would keep his mouth shut forever because some Mongol financed his new SUV. Many times, he and his Outlaws had raged against this system, then turned around and exploited it for their own personal gain. But never had he so clearly seen the reality of the pain it inflicted. It made him want to shrink away from Chopper and become Jesse Slater again, a country boy who’d only dabbled in pot and could never think of destroying another human being.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured gently, smoothing Kelsey’s hair. All his whirling thoughts remained unspoken, yet expressed in those two words. He didn’t think she would ever understand. He didn’t think she could. Nor would she get what it was like to know that everything he saw and felt was impermanent. Perhaps the guilt and resolve to be better would linger for another twenty-four hours, or maybe even forty-eight. Eventually, those moral revelations would fade into the background of the life he always lived. He’d sit in the war room with Red and Hoss and plan strategic attacks on Spike’s incoming drug shipments. He’d tell his boys to use whatever force they deemed necessary. He’d tell them not to worry if the Mongol they were beating didn’t get back up. Not because he didn’t feel for Kelsey and her family. Not because he didn’t think it was unfair that her sister happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was just a dog-eat-dog world, and those were the rules.
Kelsey blew her nose into a clean napkin, wadded it up, and rolled it toward the center of the blanket. Chopper hadn’t spoken for a long time. His eyes were trained on nothing; he was obviously far away. She wondered what he was thinking about. What kind of chord had her story struck with a man like him? It was impossible to tell, and she decided not to ask. Chopper could, at times, be brutally honest. She didn’t want to chance having to face that in her fragile state. But now that the crying storm was past, she felt like a weight had been lifted from her chest. She’d been carrying that burden for so long that she forgot it was there. Kelsey turned her face into the gentle breeze, closing her eyes as her hair rippled back
The spell was broken by the sound of erratic, muffled snapping. Chopper’s eyes snapped back into focus, and he looked at her. “Did you hear that?” he mouthed.
She nodded. Her stomach twisted on itself. The sounds came closer, and she began to make out voices above the breaking noises — twigs, she realized. Someone was walking toward them. Chopper beckoned her close. “Stay here,” he whispered. “No matter what.” He pressed a soft kiss to the top of her head and got to his feet, moving out toward the source of the voices. Before he reached the line of trees, two unsteady figures burst into Kelsey’s line of sight. She let out a yelp of surprise, and they wheeled toward her, weaving with every movement. She saw the Mongol patches on their jackets before she saw the knives in their hands.
“There you are, you bitch,” slurred the one closest to her, lurching forward. “Spike said he wouldn’t let us in if we came back without you, so you’re comin’ with us.” He was met halfway to the blanket by Chopper’s shoulder, and the two of them fell to the ground, grunting and struggling. Kelsey tried to keep track of the blade, but she couldn’t. She felt sick.
When the other Mongol fell on Chopper from the opposite side, she hurled one of the weight-rocks at him. The stone struck him in the leg and knocked him off balance just enough for Chopper to sweep him onto his back. One of the Mongols began to bray in a wild, fearful voice; the next time Chopper raised his arm, she saw blood running down his wrist. He had a knife of his own in his hand, and Kelsey couldn’t stop herself from imagining the sight of him plunging it into the chest of the man beneath him. “Stop!” she shouted. “Stop!”
By the time the scuffle finally ended, Chopper’s shirt and jacket were soaked with blood, and the two drunken Mongols had crashed off into the underbrush toward the reservoir, each coughing and spitting teeth. Kelsey got up and ran to Chopper. She thought that all the blood had come from his attackers, but to her horror, she discovered a long rip in the chest of his shirt. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. “Oh, my God, Chopper! You got cut!” She guided him toward the blanket, trying not to panic.
Chopper was calm as ever. “Relax, babe,” he said. “I’ve had worse. It’s no big deal.”
“Ugh!” Kelsey rolled everything into the picnic blanket and picked the whole bundle up in her arms. “Just shut up and get in the car. I’m driving us back.” He tried to take the blanket from her and she glared at him. “You’re not carrying shit, Jesse. Get in the car.”
He raised his eyebrows and did as she said, leaving his seatbelt unbuckled. Kelsey dumped the blanket in the trunk and got behind the wheel. She wasn’t used to being in the driver’s seat after years of city living, but once she pulled out on the road, it didn’t take her long to get the hang of things again. She tried not to look at his wound as she drove, gluing her eyes to the road ahead.
“It’s okay,” Chopper kept saying. “I’m fine.”
“If that looks deeper than a scratch after I clean it up, I’m taking you to the hospital,” she said.
Chopper shook his head. “I’ll call my doctor and have him come out if he needs to. Safer that way.”
“Will you tell him you got in a knife fight in the woods?” Kelsey asked.
“He won’t ask. That’s why he’s my doctor.”
# # #
Back at the compound, Kelsey laid Chopper out on the bed and went to work on him with a warm, damp cloth. She was intensely relieved to find that he was right; the cut was very shallow and needed only to be washed and bandaged. He wasn’t a fan of th
e disinfecting process, but Kelsey told him very firmly not to move, and to his credit, he did his best to obey. When she was done patching him up, she took a moment to admire both her handiwork and his chiseled physique. “Don’t ever scare me like that again,” she scolded gently. “I thought you were going to bleed out.”
Chopper feigned great hurt. “Come on, baby,” he said. “Have a little faith.” He put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her down into a deep, hungry kiss. The sensation of her hands on his body had ignited a familiar craving. He wanted satisfaction.
She pushed him away, very carefully. “No way, Chop. You’ve just survived an injury. These are not optimal circumstances.” Kelsey bit her lip. “But you do look good, even with that slash down your chest.”
“Aren’t nurses supposed to be comforting?” he asked. She moved around to his side and he pressed his lips against her neck and collarbone.
She quivered slightly. Her resolve was weakening. “I think they take an oath that means they can’t do things like have sex with their patients.”
“Oh.” Chopper pushed up the hem of her shirt. “Guess it’s a good thing you’re not a real nurse then.” His fingers caressed the swell of her pregnant belly, then walked their way up to the lower edge of her bra. Kelsey sighed, relaxing into his touch. The hormones made her want him all the time, and she’d learned by now that if Chopper wanted something, he damn well was going to get it. She made a mental note to be careful of the bandage.
