Today & Tomorrow

by Susan Fanetti

  And this was why it was hard to spend time alone with her father, as much as she did love him. Everything they talked about, everything they did, was filtered through the screen of It. Stage four lymphoma.

  “I told you I want to live everything I can. I’ve never had a boyfriend. I don’t even know if Nolan could be that, if he even wants it—or if I even do. I just had a good time with him today. He’s nice, and he’s hot, and he wants to see me again. Let me have this, Daddy.”

  “I don’t want your heart broken. It’s fragile enough as it is.”

  That wouldn’t be so bad, she thought. People had heartbreak. It was part of life. She pulled his hand from her face and walked away. “Please.”

  “I love you so much. So very much.”

  “I know. I love you, too, Daddy. Let me live, okay?”

  He stared at her, his sad eyes growing desolate. “I wish so much that you could, Analie.”

  She had no answer for that. Nobody did.

  FIVE

  Nolan pressed himself tightly against the decaying stucco wall and closed his eyes, taking a second to breathe and center. Then he opened his eyes and left cover, bringing the AK up to his shoulder and aiming as he moved. He fired a short burst just as the Rat realized he had someone coming up on him and began to turn. The Rat’s shoulder, neck, and half his face evaporated in an arc of blood and bone.

  That was Nolan’s fourth kill since he’d come to SoCal, ten months ago. Knowing the Rat was dead, he didn’t even give him a second look. Instead, he did a check for his brothers and found new cover.

  Gunfire and shouting fill the air, but Nolan’s survey of the scene told him that the Horde were wiping up the field with the Rats. They hadn’t stood a chance. He grinned. This ambush might finally shut this Rats charter down. And if the rest of them knew what was what, they’d take their lesson and sit down. Because the Horde had La Zorra and the Águilas cartel behind them.

  They’d been coming back from a border run drop when Hoosier had pulled them off to take a call. Dora Vega, known as La Zorra, the leader of the Águilas, had had intel for them: a Dirty Rats meet with one of their suppliers. The cartel had taken care of the supplier, ensuring that the Rats would be alone at the location and expecting friendly company.

  Looking at the bodies on the ground now, with the fight over and the Horde beginning to mass in the center of what was nothing short of a battleground, Nolan thought they might well have wiped out the charter.

  Hoosier scanned the bodies at their feet. “Head count.”

  “We’re whole, Prez,” Bart answered. “All accounted for. Deme took a knock to the head, but he’s up.”

  “I’m good,” Demon called out. Nolan turned and saw him and Muse coming from inside the building. One whole side of Demon’s head, to his shoulder, was red and wet with blood, but he was moving like he was okay.

  Hoosier looked him over. “J.R.’ll need to sew you up when we get back. You good to ride?”

  “Yeah. I’ll stick something in my helmet, soak up the blood.”

  Hoosier nodded, but not like he was agreeing with Demon’s plan. More like he was distracted and barely acknowledging that words had been spoken. “What we just did could force a truce with the whole Rat organization. Or we just declared war on them all. Let’s hope for the first one, because the second one’s a fuckin’ mess.”

  Again, he looked down at the reddening dirt. “Alright. Let’s get this here mess cleaned up. Muse, you head home with Deme—keep him close. Nolan, A, Jesse, Lakota—start digging. Shovels’re in the van. The rest of us, let’s prep the bodies.”

  He kicked the arm of the body of a fat, older Rat with a long, chaotic, grey beard and longer, more chaotic grey hair. The charter president, Manson. “I want his kutte. Burn the rest of them with the bodies. Make it snappy.”

  Nolan went to the back of the van, set his weapon down, shed his Kevlar vest, and got to work.

  ~oOo~

  It looked like Hoosier was getting what he wanted. The Horde and the Rats were setting up a meet for a truce—one that included leadership from all players. There were a lot of moving parts. In the meantime, a cease-fire was in effect.

  Nolan had never served in the military, but sometimes it seemed to him there wasn’t a lot of difference between military and one-percenter culture. Maybe that was why, or because, so many men in kuttes were vets.

  While those negotiations were underway, things were quiet around the club. A couple of days after that last fight, Nolan was hanging out in the Hall, co-opping a shooter game with Sherlock. His phone buzzed in his pocket during a battle; he ignored it until they got through it and could pause. Sherlock went to the john. Nolan pulled his phone out.

  Analisa. Usually she texted, but this had been a call. There was a voice mail. He stared at the notification, spinning his ring on his finger, trying to decide what to do. He hadn’t returned a text from her in two days.

  He wasn’t avoiding her. Not exactly. He didn’t want to avoid her; he missed her. But the past month had been intense in a bunch of ways, and his head was fucking with him.

  He’d seen her five times in the month since he’d met her. It felt like not enough and too much. He liked her. A lot. Which wouldn’t be a problem, except that he was hot for her, too. And he felt fairly sure that made him an asshole. She was dying, and it was getting to the point that all he could think of was getting her naked.

  He’d taken her to get her tattoo and piercing. The tattoo, he’d watched her get—more than watched. She’d given him her phone, and he’d recorded it for her movie. It wasn’t much of a tattoo: two stars, one inlaid in the other, with the words We are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands circling the stars in script. Right between her shoulder blades. It had taken a couple of hours, mostly for the script. Nolan had spent those hours thinking about how pretty her back and shoulders were, her freckles heavy over her shoulders and then fading out by the time they got to the bottom of her ribs.

  He loved those freckles. Far too much. Her pale, pale blue eyes, her sun-dusted skin, her blonde hair, her long neck—all of it. The more he got to know her, the more gorgeous she became.

  She was thin; her ribs and the beads of her spine showed through her fair skin. But she hadn’t reacted at all to the tattoo machine, not even when it was right on her spine. When he’d asked if she was hurting, she’d laughed.

  She’d gotten the piercing right after the tattoo, and for that, she’d taken her phone from him and shooed him away. He still had no idea what she’d gotten pierced; when he’d asked, she’d laughed again and called him a perv.

  Which was clearly true. Seriously. Who went sniffing after a sick girl? A perv, that was who.

  He spent some time at night, every night, imagining where her new piercing might be.

  Since then, she hadn’t told him any more of her list, and as far as he knew, she hadn’t crossed anything else off. He’d taken her for a ride up the PCH. They’d spent a day with her playing tour guide for him around L.A. He’d had a couple of family dinners with the Winters.

  It was so weird that he’d been hanging out with Donovan Winter. Donovan fucking Winter. He’d spent one evening talking at great length about motorcycles, Donovan asking question after question as if he were honestly interested in the things Nolan knew. Donovan fucking Winter. Who’d turned out to be a cool guy.

  Her brother was cool, too, and almost exactly Nolan’s age. Nolan’s geek side had gotten buried since Havoc’s death, but standing in Tris’s room, seeing hand-painted D&D and Warhammer figurines, shelves of fantasy novels and comics, and an impressive game and film collection, his inner geek had risen from the dead. Analisa had walked by the open door and rolled her eyes at them.

  So, no. Nolan didn’t want to avoid her or any of her family.

  Not until that ambush on the Rats a couple of days before. They’d killed seven men—all that had remained of the most-local Rats charter. Then they’d burned and buried them, standi
ng around a deep grave and watching until the fire had consumed everything it could. The smell of cooking flesh had been so strong that Nolan had wondered if they’d attract man or beast to the scent.

  Nolan had killed one man himself. That in itself didn’t fuck with him; he was getting used to killing. None of what they’d done had caused him much concern.

  And that was what was fucking with him. On the ride back to the clubhouse, his mind had been loose in his head, teasing at whatever thought it wanted, and the thought it wanted was this: he was a killer. Even more, he didn’t care.

  He still didn’t care. But he cared that he didn’t care.

  And, God, he wanted to talk to Havoc about it. He knew Havoc had killed, too, of course he had. Multiple times. Nolan needed his father. He needed to know how to be a good man and also be a man who could blow half a man’s head off and not give a shit.

  There were other people he could talk to; he knew that. Badger. Show. Even Bart, who’d spent the past ten months trying to stand in for Havoc. But Nolan hadn’t known much of Bart at all until he’d come to SoCal, so he’d never be more than a brother. And Show and Badger still saw him as a boy. He knew what they would say. Come home. Get away from the question completely. Come back home.

  He couldn’t. Not until he had an answer.

  Staring at his phone, he wondered whether a man who couldn’t answer that question was the kind of man who should be accompanying a dying girl through the end of her life.

  Or maybe, because she was dying, it didn’t matter. He could pretend to be what he wanted to be. Who he was didn’t need to touch her in the short time she had. She needed a friend. He needed to be a good man. Their needs seemed to mesh.

  So he listened to her voice mail. And then he called her back.

  ~oOo~

  “Your father is going to kill me. He’ll pull out his Dix Turner moves, and they’ll be finding my pieces all up and down the coast. Or he’ll just send that tank he calls a bodyguard after me.”

  Analisa laughed and handed Nolan her helmet. “Dix Turner is pretend, and those were dumb movies. You’re a big bad biker. This is a big bad biker bar. It’s your element, right?”

  “Sure. And also the very place he told me never to take you.”

  They were standing outside an unassuming building across the Pacific Coast Highway from Malibu Beach. The front of the building and the sides of the road for some distance were full of parked motorcycles. This bar was well known and popular. Several movies had been shot here, in fact. The exterior, anyway.

  They were here because Analisa wanted to cross something off her list. She wouldn’t tell him what, only that she needed to do it here. He hoped it was ‘sit quietly, have a drink, and cause no trouble,’ but somehow he didn’t think so. Her secret list was still mainly a mystery to him, but it seemed to be her ‘rebel’ list. At this point, he was just along for the ride.

  “Okay. Let’s go in and get you a drink. Then maybe you’ll tell me what it is you want here.”

  It was still fairly early; the sun hadn’t sunk into the ocean yet, though it was big and pink and ready to go under. He had some hope that the crowd here would still be mostly tourists and wannabes, who’d be behaving themselves, drinking their beers and taking their selfies.

  Speaking of selfies, Analisa was carefully documenting their evening at the biker bar. When he noticed some unfriendly looks, he put his hand over the lens and pulled the phone down.

  “Careful, Ani. A lot of these guys aren’t into having their picture taken. You’re better off doing it like you did your piercing—just some before and after shots. Okay?”

  He still hadn’t seen her piercing, he still didn’t even know where it was, but he’d asked whether she’d filmed the whole thing. No, she hadn’t.

  “You are a buzzkill. Just so you know.”

  “I prefer to think I’m a lifeguard. What is it you want from this? I can’t help if I don’t know.”

  Her only answer was a coy grin. Then she leaned on the bar, and the bartender, a round, older guy covered in ink, leaned on the other side. “Getcha somethin’, sweetness?”

  “We want shots. Lots of shots. What’s good here?”

  The bartender looked at Nolan, his eyebrows high on his wrinkled head.

  Nolan ordered, since Analisa obviously had no clue what she was doing. “Couple shots of tequila—top shelf.”

  She wasn’t drinking age, but this bar wasn’t going to card a girl who’d come in with a guy wearing a patch on his back.

  They got their shots, and Analisa lifted hers up high. “To a long and healthy life!” She tossed it right back—but then didn’t swallow. Her cheeks puffed out with expensive tequila, she made a bizarre face, and then finally forced it down.

  “That was disgusting.” She gasped and slammed her empty shot glass on the bar. “I want another. Hey—you didn’t drink to my toast!”

  Nolan shook his head. She’d been acting weird since he’d picked her up. And he hated that toast. Had she meant it to be a joke?

  “What’s goin’ on, Ani?”

  “Drink with me. Please drink with me.”

  He did the shot and set the glass down. The bartender filled them both again, apparently thinking that Analisa had ordered a second round. Nolan disagreed, but she picked one up and tossed it back, this time swallowing right away.

  She still made a face after, though. “God! Do people actually like this stuff?”

  “Ani…have you ever been drunk before?” Maybe that was the thing on her list. A drunk girl, he could handle.

  “Yeah.” Oh. Damn. “On wine. And I’ve been stoned out of my head on weed and almost every painkiller invented, but I’m not sure that counts.” She nodded at the full shot glass on the bar and then gave him that grin that looked like she was up to something. “Do your shot.”

  “Tell me what we’re doing here, first.”

  “Nope. Not yet. If you’re not gonna shoot that, I am.” She reached for it, but he beat her to it and tossed it back. When he set it down, he asked the bartender for a couple of Budweisers.

  When she got her beer, she swiveled the barstool and leaned back against the bar, her eyes scanning the room. He watched her.

  She was wearing jeans and boots—he hadn’t seen her in anything else, maybe because they always rode his bike, which had a new bitch seat—and a dark blue top that had some kind of metallic threads running through it. The neck was wide, barely staying on her shoulders, showing a lot of her prettily freckled skin. She’d been wearing her leather jacket, but she’d shrugged it off and had spread it over the barstool, so she was sitting on it now.

  There was a live band, and it started its first set while she was surveying the bar. When ‘Mustang Sally’ kicked into gear, she turned to him with a grin. “Ooh! I love this song! I want to dance!”

  Without even waiting for him, she jumped off her barstool and ran to the small space in front of the stage that served as a dance floor. In the times Nolan had been in this bar, the only dancers had been women looking to get noticed. But that was absolutely not going to be Analisa. He didn’t dance—fuck, he really, truly, did not dance—but he set his half-finished beer on the bar and went after her.

  Maybe ‘make sure my father wants Nolan dead’ was on her list.

  She was out there alone, swaying energetically to the music and already getting noticed. Nolan went to her and put his hand on her hip, drawing her attention to him. She turned and put her arms over his shoulders, smiling up at him. Her eyes were a little unfocused. As thin as she was, and as inexperienced with liquor, she was a lightweight. Two shots and half a beer were doing her in.

  He leaned down and put his lips to her ear, trying to ignore the way she pulled herself tightly against him as he did. “Let’s go after this song. There’s nothing for you here.”

  She turned her head so she could speak in his ear, too. The scent of her filled his head, and he clutched her closer without fully realizing he’d done so.


  “No! I want to be in a bar brawl. I want to start it if I can. And get arrested.”

  Stupefied, he pulled back and stared down at her. She grinned up at him, her expression somewhere between innocent and greedy.

  “Are you fucking serious?”

  She nodded.

  “You’re insane. No. No fucking way. We’re leaving.” He set her back and grabbed for her hand, but she yanked it away. Then, with a gleam in her eye that was unlike anything he’d seen from her before, she slapped his face. Hard. Before he could recover from that shock, she charged and pushed him. He only took one step backward, but that step sent him into a guy carrying two pitchers of beer and a stack of glasses. Nolan knew this because he and the guy ended up wearing both pitchers of beer, and the glasses shattered on the floor.