American Hellhound

by Lauren Gilley

  He thought of Maggie’s sweet face sitting across from him on the kitchen floor, and started again. “You guys know I’ve been wanting to open up a garage – here, on club property – for a while now. I still want to, and I think now’s a good time. Some of the shit that’s been happening on deals lately” – he glanced at Roman, saw him wince – “ain’t good. We need a backup plan; we could make money fixing cars and bikes. Capital” – thank you, Mags – “we could invest in other places.”

  He tapped page one in his lineup. “This is my plan. I’ve already talked to some contracting firms and gotten estimates for the construction, already picked out a location on the property. If we run promotions, take out ads, we could turn a profit in the first year.”

  Graciously, James said, “Walk us through it, son.”

  And so he did, gaining momentum as he went. He recalled everything Maggie had hammered into him, all the line items and eventualities, ROI, ideas to grow the business. Some interested gazes fastened on him: Hound, Bruno, even Desi. Justin stared glassy-eyed into his coffee, but that was normal. Collier smiled at him and flashed a covert thumbs-up.

  Duane was the one he couldn’t read. Though his uncle had told him to bring this to the club, he sat slouched back in his chair, arms folded, the picture of disinterest…unless you bothered to notice his eyes. Dark and sharp, they cycled constantly around the table, judging the reactions of others.

  By the time he finished, Ghost was wired like he’d snorted a line, wet with flop-sweat, skin vibrating.

  It was silent a few beats.

  Then Hound said, “All of us are good with engines.”

  Bruno nodded. “My neighbor’s always asking me to look at his old Camaro. I don’t charge him, but I could. We could.”

  “We’ve got tons of space,” Desi said, grinning. “Why not use it, huh? I’m in.”

  Sampson said, “Bro, you thought this up?” He gestured to the plans being passed around the table. “When’d you get smart, huh?”

  “You’ve got my vote,” James said, and Ghost breathed in inward sigh of relief. “I think it’s high time we diversified.”

  “You do?” Duane asked, tone mild, flicking a glance to his VP.

  “Yeah,” James said, exhaling smoke, and if Ghost didn’t know him so well, he wouldn’t have caught the touch of resistance in his voice, that little bit of push-back. He felt indescribably thankful for James in that moment, for sticking up for his idea, but a little scared, too, because arguing with Duane never turned out well for anyone.

  Collier said, “We gonna vote on it? I’m ready.”

  A chorus of agreement moved around the table.

  Duane stubbed out his cigarette, fixed Ghost with a bored look, and said, “What about a loan?”

  Ghost’s stomach turned over. “What?”

  “A loan. You can’t break ground and build a building without a big chunk of change – one you ain’t getting from me. If you want to run this legit, then you need a legit loan. Where’re you gonna get it?”

  His entire plan hinged on Duane’s cooperation. This was to be a club business, and he’d taken for granted that, if everyone was board, he could use club funds to build.

  He felt the blood draining from his face, cold and tingly all over, the heat intensifying in his armpits. “I…”

  “Well?” Duane prompted, smile touching the corners of his mouth. “I’ll give you the green light, but you’ve got to come up with the money somehow.”

  His heart was racing, painful in his chest. “I will,” he said. “I’ll get it.”

  He was so fucked.

  ~*~

  Maggie shut her locker and found Cody’s face waiting on the other side of the door. “What?”

  He grinned.

  “What?” Maggie repeated, already turning away. She didn’t know what he wanted, but she was ninety-nine percent sure she didn’t have time for it.

  He snagged the edge of her jacket – it was the one Ghost had given her to wear to the party, and it smelled of him: cigarette smoke and sharp cologne, road dust – and held her in place. “Hold up, wait.” His smile was even wider.

  Maggie twitched away, the jacket sliding from his fingers, and stared him down. “What, Cody? I’ve got to get to class.”

  “Is it true you’re shacking up with a Dog?”

  “Don’t believe everything you hear.”

  “But aren’t you?”

  Students passed in laughing, chattering groups, voices bouncing off the locker faces. Maggie noted several girls shooting her nasty looks; not only was she now the resident whore, but she was standing here with Cody. Leave him alone, their gazes said. Keep your slutty hands off him.

  Hilarious. Like she wanted anything to do with this sixteen-year-old doofus and his razor-burned face.

  She sighed. “Yes. Happy?”

  His eyes bugged. “No shit. Really?”

  “I thought you already knew,” she said, tone nasty. Whatever. She was tired of everyone’s obsession with her love life. Since she wasn’t a cheerleader or part of the popular clique, she’d always been blessedly invisible. But now she was an oddity, a freak show spectacle, and all because of her living arrangements.

  She wanted to blame it on teenage stupidity, but her mother was proof that people who cared about the personal lives of others never changed.

  “Whoa, look, you don’t gotta be all mad,” Cody said. “I just wanted to know.”

  “You just wanted to know,” she repeated.

  “Yeah.”

  “Because we’re such good friends.”

  “You used to be nicer, Lowe, damn.”

  She felt a little bad. A little.

  But then he said, “But…I mean…” He scratched the back of his neck and glanced at the passing students, lowering his voice. “Since we’re friends, I was wondering…”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t even let me finish.”

  “What, you want drugs? Sorry, I’m not a dealer,” she said flatly. “Try getting them the old-fashioned way.” She turned away while he was still sputtering for her to wait and just listen.

  She had just reached the water fountain outside her history class when a hand closed around her arm. It let go when she whirled, but still, it frightened her. More than it should. Before Ghost, before meeting Duane and Roman, she wouldn’t have thought much about a boy’s strong hand taking hold of her like this, but now, she read the veiled threat of those kinds of touches.

  “What?” she snapped.

  Cody lifted his hands, palms toward her. It’s okay. “I just wanted to ask you something,” he started.

  “Cody.” She closed her eyes a moment, willed herself some patience. “Please just leave me alone.” When she opened her eyes, he was staring at her with dropped shoulders and a guilty face. “What do you want?”

  “A little bit of weed,” he said in a small voice, holding up his thumb and forefinger a hairsbreadth apart.

  “No.” She shook her head. It was only ten a.m. and she was exhausted already. “Why would you even ask that?” And then, growing angrier by the second, “I’m an honor student. I volunteer at the retirement home. Just because I’m dating Ghost, I’m suddenly a drug dealer? Jesus. No. I can’t get you any. Don’t ask again.”

  “Okay, okay.” He looked sincere. As sincere as he was capable of looking.

  “Tell your friends.” She was still worked up and wanted to vent. “I don’t use that stuff or sell it. Got it?”

  “I got it. Yeah, okay.” He backed up a step.

  The crowd was starting to thin, kids disappearing into classrooms, lockers slamming shut.

  Cody risked a grin. “Damn, girl. I told you to get ruined, and you went and got ruined, huh?”

  She sighed. “So they tell me.”

  She wouldn’t have thought anything else of it – Cody was harmless, after all, comparatively – if she hadn’t walked out of history an hour-and-a-half later and found Vince Fielding waiting by the water fou
ntain.

  “Shit,” she said, and tried to give him the slip, ducking between two girls and hustling toward her locker.

  He’d seen her, though, hurrying after her. She almost kept walking, all the way down the hall and into the restroom, but her life was enough of a mess as it was and she needed to swap her books. Damn it. She took a deep breath, braced herself, and watched him approach from the corner of her eye.

  “Maggie,” he said when he reached her, breathless. “Hey, hold up.”

  She dumped her history book and snatched up chemistry and English.

  He said, “Your parents–”

  “I’ve said all I care to say to my mother,” she said, “so kindly butt the fuck out of my family life, Vince.”

  But of course, Vince being Vince, he didn’t take her oh-so-subtle hint. “Everyone’s been saying,” he started with a cringe. “They’re worried. Like, really worried.”

  “They’re worried about what everyone’s been saying. Shocker.” She shut her locker and turned toward her next class, a clear dismissal.

  Vince rushed around to get in front of her, walking backward, tripping over his own feet. “Maggie!” he pleaded, voice getting high. “It would really mean a lot–”

  Six months ago, if someone had told her she’d be intentionally rude to Vince, she wouldn’t have believed them. Different than Cody, but harmless in his own way, or so she thought. But now, she was just done. “Get out of my way,” she said, elbowing past him.

  “Maggie, your dad!” He grabbed at her arm. “He’s really worried! Please, it would mean a lot if you talked to him.”

  She paused and he blinked at her, hopeful, adoring.

  “I will say this once,” she said. “One more time, and after that, I’m going to punch you in the damn face.”

  He blanched.

  “Stop talking to my parents. Stop talking to me about my parents. Stay the hell out of my business, Vince, and mind your own.”

  ~*~

  “We’ll figure something out,” Collier said.

  Ghost snorted. “We?”

  “You know I’m behind you on this, brother.” He sent him a smile he probably meant to be encouraging.

  Ghost was in a state of self-pity that couldn’t be helped by kindly encouragements. Collier could be supportive – could even be sincere about it – but he had a job at a real garage. Jackie had a job. He was staying afloat and he couldn’t sympathize – not fully.

  He’d put his mask up on his forehead when he was done spraying, and pulled it off now, chucked it into the plastic caddy a few feet away. The driver’s side of the Monte Carlo sparkled, slick and shiny with fresh paint. At least he’d accomplished something today.

  “Duane wants to know you’re serious.”

  “He’s a dick.”

  “And he’s a dick,” Collier agreed. “He’s just fucking with you. Don’t let it get to you.”

  He snorted again. He wondered sometimes why anyone who wasn’t the nephew of the president would join the club. He knew – everyone in this crew had closets full of skeletons, arrest records, daddies with big ham fists and mamas who’d never bothered to kiss their bruises. Misfits, outsiders, freaks – they’d never belonged anywhere…until the club. So Ghost understood, he even agreed with them, but more often than not he couldn’t imagine submitting to Duane’s rule if you weren’t his last living blood relation. If he hadn’t raised you, withholding love and warping your brain with every smile.

  “Hey, Maggie’s here,” Collier said.

  Ghost turned to see his truck pulling in at the gate; the sun through the windshield caught Maggie’s golden hair, illuminated Aidan’s pale face. The sight of them made his stomach hurt. He wanted to climb in the cab with them and drive, just drive away, away, away, from every damn one of their problems, find some backward Appalachian town where no one knew who they were, nor held any strong opinions about them being together.

  That wasn’t an option, though. He was Duane’s nephew; he was a member of this club.

  It horrified him for one brief moment, that knowledge. That he was stuck, that anyone he loved would be stuck with him. But then Maggie opened her door, and Aidan came spilling out, shouting, “Daddy!” And he felt resolve settle through him, bright, strong-and-shiny like new steel, shoring up the weak places where he doubted and worried and wondered. It was Duane’s club, yes, but it wasn’t just Duane’s. It belonged to all of them; it belonged to Ghost, in a way. He was set to inherit it, and damn if he wasn’t going to make something of it.

  He wiped his hands on his jeans and found that once he started forcing a smile, it turned true.

  Aidan barreled into him, babbling excitedly. “Daddy, Maggie said we could get pizza, can we, can we please?”

  “Sure, bud.” He raked his disheveled curls off his forehead so he could see the bright spark in his eyes. Even if she hadn’t done anything for him personally – and she had – Maggie had made his kid happy, and she deserved an award for that.

  She walked up behind Aidan at a reasonable pace, her smile more reserved. “Hi, Collier,” she greeted, and then her eyes came to Ghost, full of all the sparkle she was trying not to project. “Hi,” she said again, lower, softer. Just for him.

  Maggie Lowe was proof positive that maybe, just maybe, God didn’t hate him as bad as he’d always thought.

  ~*~

  “It looks great,” she said, gaze seeking out the Monte Carlo through the big plate glass window again.

  “You sure you haven’t gotten attached to my truck?” Ghost teased from across the booth. When she glanced at him, he was giving her that crooked smile she’d come to love so much, half-cocky, half-unsure. Most of the time he looked at her like he couldn’t believe she was still here.

  “No offense to the truck, but no. Definitely not.”

  “Car snob,” he said with a chuckle, lifting another slice of pepperoni onto his plate.

  She grinned. “Yeah, and who made me that way?”

  “Just some asshole.” He shot her a wink.

  Maggie rolled her eyes and caught sight of Aidan beside her, mouth full of pizza, eyes wide and moving from her face to Ghost’s, back and forth, mystified.

  Ghost didn’t like to talk about his ex – Maggie knew her name was Olivia, that she had high ideas of herself, and didn’t give a damn about her son. Ghost had said they fought, that by the end that was all they did. Aidan, she realized with a pang, wasn’t used to this kind of flirtatious banter. To be fair, Maggie wasn’t all that familiar with it either, though her parents never fought. Her house was full of quiet meals and polite chitchat.

  “Aidan, your dad thinks he’s hilarious,” Maggie said with another, more exaggerated eye-roll.

  Aidan giggled.

  “Wait.” Aghast. “You don’t think he is, do you?”

  His giggles turned into snorts. “Sometimes.”

  She feigned shock and he erupted into bright peals of laughter, that good little-kid stuff that left you breathless and lightheaded. The kind of laughter that bubbled up in a person’s soul and altered their entire worldview.

  When she snuck a look across the table, Ghost’s expression was warm, thankful.

  And then it dimmed.

  “Here, kid.” He dug a handful of change out of his pocket and slid it across the table to Aidan. “Go try your luck with Ms. Pac-Man, alright?”

  “Yes!” Aidan snatched up the quarters and launched himself from the booth, barely dodging a waitress as he sprinted for the machine.

  “Will he be alright by himself?” Maggie asked, frowning.

  Guido’s Pizza had been around since her parents were dating, and it looked its age: musty carpet, Formica tables, rips in the vinyl booths. The pizza was the best, though, and there were always kids over at the arcade games set up next to the bar – Maggie suspected the design allowed bartenders to keep an eye on things. She’d played the games herself when she was Aidan’s age, her parents glad to send her off with a handful of quarters so they
could have a little adult time. But now, watching Aidan clamber up onto the stool, she wondered the sorts of things she’d never wondered before: would he be safe? Were there child predators in here? Was some bigger kid going to pick on him?

  Damn, she was thinking like a parent.

  “We can see him,” Ghost reasoned.

  “Yeah.”

  He pushed his plate to the side and reached for his beer. “I made the pitch this morning.”

  She’d known he was going to, but hadn’t wanted to ask in front of first Collier, and now Aidan. While they ate, she’d managed to talk herself back from her nerves and forget about it. But they returned full force, her stomach as jittery as if it was her project and her club.

  She set her half-eaten slice back down on her plate. “How’d it go?”

  “Everyone was on board.”

  “Babe, that’s fantastic.”

  He held up a hand. Let me finish. “Duane said he won’t give me the startup money. I have to go get a loan.”

  Her dinner settled heavily in her gut. “What?”

  His smile was thin and humorless. “Guess I gotta buy a suit and take my ass down to the bank or something.” He groaned and scrubbed a hand down his jaw. “Fuck, I don’t even have a credit card – I have no credit. Nobody’s gonna give me a loan.”

  “But…it’s going to be a club-owned business. The club’s going to earn the profits, so it only makes sense for the club to put up the money.”

  “He says it’s my plan, my risk – my money.” His brows jumped for emphasis.

  “But he told you to pitch the plan to everybody. He said–”

  He cut her off with another miserable smile. “Welcome to life with Duane Teague, sweetheart. He’ll fuck you over every time.”

  She bit down on the inside of her cheek to keep from responding, but then couldn’t help it. “What an asshole.”

  “Pretty much.”

  Her face felt hot with agitation, her pulse too quick. She sat back in the booth and stared through the window a long moment, gaze tracking aimlessly across the parking lot, the cars sitting under the streetlamp. Traffic moved past on the road, a parade of headlights. People getting off work, going home to their families. Families with similar problems, no doubt, but right now, the quiet murmur of dinner conversation around them, Maggie felt like she and Ghost were on an island together, stranded, and that not one person was willing to throw them a flotation device.