Fading Hope

by Carter Steele

  “Drive by?” I asked.

  Brock nodded.

  “We’ve decided that we’re going to go ahead with our typical Friday night party tomorrow,” he said. “It’s one thing if Vulture is still running around and causing trouble in these parts. It’s another if this is just a small-time petty act. We’re still going to hunt down the assholes who did this, but I don’t think any of us are worried.”

  “I’m not,” I said, which probably came across more flippantly than I meant it to. “If they wanted to do more damage, they could have. This just seems like the equivalent of giving someone the middle finger.”

  “Exactly,” Brock said. “So are we going to see you tomorrow night then? You can bring your girl if you want.”

  I snorted at that. First of all, this was what Brock had brought me back? To ask me if I wanted to invite “my girl” to a club party? The very notion was laughable. Like I needed a naive prospect or Zane to try and corrupt Caroline.

  No, he brought you back so the prospects and club members could see that you came back and that you care.

  Fine. That’s fair for tonight. But this isn’t sustainable. I can’t be in and then out and then in and so on. I need to be all-in or all-out.

  “I’ll drop by, yeah,” I said. “But Brock, it’s not going to be for a party. It’s going to be to talk to you.”

  “About?”

  “About my future.”

  Friday Night

  “So what’s up?”

  Brock pulled me aside after the first batch of girls had shown up, the better to minimize the likelihood of someone eavesdropping and interfering on us. I had wanted to speak to him before, in the pre-party prep, but as he had pointed out, I wouldn’t have really wanted Parker or someone else to overhear us and crack a joke.

  I had thought all day about how this conversation had gone. I had actually started to think about it last night. I got to bed around two in the morning, but probably due to stress, I had only slept until eight in the morning. But now that it was here, now that Caroline and I had spoken, I didn’t have much doubt about what I would wind up saying.

  “Brock, you have to realize, I had the time of my life last night. And I didn’t even bring my bike. I—”

  “Wait, back up,” Brock said. Of all the things that I would wind up saying that would shock him, I didn’t think the fact that I had not taken my bike would most cause him to reel back, but maybe I wasn’t as connected or close to my own club as I had thought I was. “You didn’t bring your bike? Why? You know how women love the bike.”

  “Yeah, but it’s getting to the larger point. You know I’ve never been into this club as much as you have. You are the president, you idolized Dad, and you’re going to give your life to the club. That’s not me.”

  This was far from the first time we’d had this conversation. But Brock knew there was a tension building that he didn’t want to acknowledge, one that was only going to have release with the one thing he probably didn’t want to give me.

  “For the record, I realized I missed the bike. You are right, I should have ridden that. But otherwise, I didn’t miss the club. I love you as family, but the club? It’s not me. It’s not—”

  “Hey, what are ya two idiots doin’ over here?” Parker said with a belch as he came over and slung his arms around the two of us. “The hell, Landon? We got a whole lotta sexy bitches in here and ya just chattin’ away with ya brother, as if—”

  “Parker!”

  Brock’s voice was more than enough to get Parker to step back.

  “That’s enough. You got yourself a girl. Landon will get a girl on his terms. Go party.”

  “Alright,” Parker said, trying to save face as he turned away.

  But the damage had already been done, and to me, he had already proved my point. I wasn’t offended by what Parker had done, but that sort of crass, in-your-face behavior just wasn’t something that particularly interested me. And I knew if Parker knew of the rest of my interests—reading, traveling, other cultures, just learning, period—he’d never stop mocking me.

  “Appreciate it,” I said.

  “You’re still my brother first and foremost,” Brock said. “I don’t like what I’m hearing about you and the club, I never have, but I still love you and support you as a brother.”

  “Glad someone here does,” I said, probably sounding more bitter than I had meant.

  A brief silence fell as we looked back at the party and at Parker swigging a beer before saying something to the playboy of the club, Zane. The party, as usual, looked like a giant shitshow. Club members and their girls, even this early, were already drunk and making out. A couple of the members could barely stand on their own two feet. I wasn’t going to stand there and be holier-than-thou by saying that I would never partake in such a festival, because I certainly had.

  But remembering what last night had given me and what today had opened up for me in the future told me that this wasn’t what I really wanted, at least not going forward. I wanted something like what Caroline seemed to promise, or at least someone like her. I wanted someone I could travel the world with and explore my intellectual curiosities with, not someone who would make for a great fuck and nothing else.

  I’d had plenty of great fucks. They were nice for the moment, but they were temporal and quick. At most, maybe I got a couple of dates out of them, but I never got anything long lasting.

  Some might have said I was too young to be having these feelings, but I didn’t think so.

  “So with all this said,” I said. “You said that the threat wasn’t something you were going to respond to. Clearly, this party demonstrates that. So how are you going to counter them?”

  I was probing to see what sort of drama we’d be facing as the club from now until the end. Brock just sort of half-heartedly shrugged.

  “We’ll probably roll out to Las Cruces and El Sorino at some point. Bang some drums, you know how it is.”

  “I don’t mean that,” I said. “I mean crush them. Ensure that we don’t have any rivals. Make it so we don’t have anything to worry about.”

  As soon as I saw Brock’s reaction to my words, though, I knew there really wasn’t much of any hope.

  “Honestly, we’ll probably always have a rival, Landon. We’re an MC. Think of the type of men that join an MC. They aren’t diplomats. They aren’t peace-keepers. Even in our own club, we have a bunch of dudes that would fight and do whatever it takes to get their way. We’re not as bad as the Anarchists, but we aren’t exactly church-goers, either.

  “And as a result, that’s going to encourage others to fight us. It’s what men do. So if you’re asking me how will we make it to ensure we don’t have rivals? We won’t do anything because there’s nothing that we can do.”

  So that was it, then. There was nothing that could be done because human nature was human nature. Us Kings might as well just accept that so long as we sat on the throne of Romara, we’d always have people coming at it to try and knock us off.

  Well, that settled it, then.

  “Brock, I appreciate the honesty, but this is making me realize something, and there’s no need to delay any longer.”

  “What’s that?”

  I didn’t swallow or display any sign of nervousness or hesitation. I knew the veracity of my words before I spoke them.

  “I want out.”

  4

  Caroline

  I didn’t want to sound like “that girl” but given that it was past dinner time and Landon still hadn’t reached out to me, I couldn’t help but fear that maybe he was ghosting me.

  It would have fallen in line with his typical withdrawn self from before. He’d say whatever it took to get people to stop talking to him, and nothing could get him to open up. Once he got into his little rut, it was all but impossible for anything other than time to get him to say something.

  So I grabbed a glass of wine and sat in front of the television, settling on watching an Indiana Jones movie on
TNT, but mostly for the sake of having background noise. I wasn’t much a movie watcher in the first place, and the disappointing news that was Landon not reaching out to me wasn’t going to help matters.

  I kept checking my phone through the first glass of wine before realizing that perhaps having that right by me was not going to do any favors for my stress level. So as I filled up my glass for a second round of wine, I left my phone by the wine bottle.

  Unfortunately, I wasn’t done after two. I went to pour a third, and curiosity got the best of me. I checked my phone.

  And wouldn’t you know it…

  “Let’s meet up now if you’re free. Know it’s prompt but it is Friday, after all.”

  See what you get for being “that girl?”

  “Definitely!” I wrote back. “Come by my place.”

  I sent him my address and put the wine back down, not exactly wanting to get any drunker than I already was. Emotions were doing plenty enough to cloud my judgment; I didn’t need alcohol to get in the way. Especially since I prided myself on being emotionally stable thanks to my upbringing, not someone who would constantly lose their mind.

  He wrote back “OK” shortly after. It seemed a little distant and a little cold, but I told myself that I had lost the right to read anything into how he wrote his text messages. After all, he had his own issues to deal with at the club, and so long as those issues didn’t affect what we were trying to build, it would be fine.

  And then my phone rang again. But this time, it was from Mom.

  “Hey, Mom?” I said.

  “Hi, sweetie,” she said.

  I could already tell by the tone of her voice this wasn’t necessarily going to be a happy call. There was something that tinged her words that left me nervou.

  “Hey,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  “Well,” Mom said, reinforcing that this wasn’t going to be fun. “This morning, you may have noticed that I was a little bit distant. There was something that I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t want to until it was finalized. And now that it has, your father and I wanted to let you know that we’re moving to Arizona at the end of the year.”

  What?

  “Huh?”

  “It’s been a decision we’ve been contemplating for some period of time, but the truth is, we feel like we’ve made the right choice. There are a myriad of reasons that went into this.”

  I let her explain what they were, but I didn’t really pay attention. I had gone numb from the news—I’d moved back to Romara in large part to be close to family. And now, suddenly, my family was moving away?

  What was going to keep me tethered to Romara if my family wasn’t?

  The only obvious answer was my business, but that could have easily been moved. I was a one-girl shop; I didn’t even have a secretary to screen calls. I suppose a less obvious answer would have been Landon, but depending on how things went tonight, that could wind up being nothing more than a passing fancy that wouldn’t exist when the clock struck midnight.

  “I know it’s a lot to take in, and—”

  “Can we talk about this later, Mom?” I said as I heard the distant rumbling of a motorcycle approaching. “I gotta go somewhere.”

  “Oh, of course. Maybe you can join us in Arizona.”

  That maybe may turn into a probably at the rate things are going. I hung up the phone, now suddenly forced to reckon with the fact that I may not even be in Romara in a few months.

  I wasn’t dependent on my parents by any means, but I didn’t want to imagine a life where I lived several hours away, if not a flight away. I cherished being able to drive over there on the spot. I couldn’t really say that there were many other people in Romara that I was even friends with, let alone close to.

  I was self-conscious about it at times, sure. There were definitely days when I told myself that I needed to be less attached to my parents, but if family wasn’t everything at the end of the day, then what was?

  I heard Landon cut his bike outside my place. Get a grip, Caroline. You have until the end of the year, anyways. This isn’t something that needs to be rushed.

  Be present. Isn’t that what you get on Landon for? For not being so present and thinking about the past and letting things affect him?

  I tried to force a smile to myself, having heard somewhere that forcing yourself to smile would make you naturally feel better. Unfortunately, that advice seemed to be full of shit right now.

  I stepped outside, locked the door behind me, and turned around.

  And you know what?

  I couldn’t say that all of my concerns snapped away instantly. I couldn’t say that seeing Landon was like an instant panacea that cured all of my worries and fears.

  But goodness, it felt mighty good to see him. Now, when I smiled, it was genuine. Now, when I thought of the night ahead, I wasn’t nervous about how I’d act, but I was nervous in the best way possible.

  “Hey you,” he shouted up to me, still straddling his bike. “Come on down and hop on the bike.”

  He sounded relieved, far looser than he had the previous night. I was obviously very curious to hear why, but the immediate reaction was to mirror him. If he felt light and happy, then I felt light and happy.

  “No car tonight, eh?” I said, in no rush to be anything other than smiling.

  “Nope,” he said. “Much as I appreciated you letting me drive you down, I missed the hell out of my bike. And I think after you take a ride on this thing, you’re going to feel the same way.”

  “Really,” I said, coming up and feeling the bike with my hands. “I thought you wanted out of that lifestyle?”

  Landon shrugged.

  “I can not want the lifestyle and still want the bike,” he said. “It’s sort of like someone who gives up sports but still keeps their basketball. Just because they don’t practice every day and play competitively doesn’t mean that they don’t enjoy shooting hoops at the local park.”

  “Wait, there’s no difference between shooting hoops and riding a motorcycle?”

  Landon chortled as he sat up, opened his seat, and handed me a helmet.

  “Apparently not,” he said. “But I feel really good.”

  “Then I feel great,” I said. “Where are you taking me?”

  “That depends,” he said. “Have you ever ridden a bike before?”

  “Yeah,” I said with a smirk. “A bicycle.”

  Landon sighed as I laughed and squeezed my arms around him. He just shook his head in bemusement.

  “You’re ridiculous.”

  “No, I have not,” I finally said as my laughter died down a bit. “Why?”

  “Hmm. How do you feel about riding a motorcycle? Do you trust me?”

  “Of course.”

  That was a little oversimplified. I did trust him, but I really hoped that wherever he was going didn’t involve high speeds or sharp turns. It was one thing to try something new like a bicycle, where I had complete control. It was something extraordinarily different when I had no control and gave everything to Landon.

  “Then I know where we are going.”

  That sounded awfully confident…

  “Where’s that?”

  Landon tuned the engine on, instructed me on how to wrap my arms around him and how to lean, and then turned back to the road.

  “Oh,” he said, as if he had magically forgotten to answer my question. “The beach again. I want a mulligan on last night.”

  “What!”

  But before I could protest, he had gunned the machine forward, drawing screams from me that started as fear but slowly morphed into excitement.

  I had to admit, had he told me beforehand that he was going to take me on a ride to the beach, I probably would have asked for something closer. Taking a bike to the highway felt like we were daring death to take us today.

  But by the time we got to the actual highway, I wasn’t just unafraid. I was having an absolute blast. I whooped and hollered the whole way, squeezing Landon e
ven though he couldn’t turn around and acknowledge me.

  There was just something so powerful about the bike and its speed that it forced me to surrender control and accept that Landon held my life in his hands. Rather than terrify me, though, it was incredibly liberating. It let me take in the sights of the Los Angeles night, the sounds of the air blowing past us in speeds over eighty miles per hour, and the smell of Landon and the oil of the bike.

  And that didn’t even include the rather pleasant touching I got to do by wrapping my arms around his tight core and abs.

  Yeah, this is much better than taking the car. Safer, maybe not, but not like Landon is trying to kill us. This tradeoff… I’ve never experienced anything like it!

  The drive was exactly the same as the one from yesterday, but it was both far more enjoyable and seemed to go far faster. Part of that, I was sure, was just because of the speed Landon was going, but part of that was just how time flew. I didn’t have to kill it with small talk or the radio; I just fell into the zone, feeling the world go by.

  When we got to the beach and I had dismounted, I could still feel the tingling in my body from my legs to my hips to… yeah, to there.

  “That was unlike anything I’ve ever felt,” I said as I went in for a hug on his side.

  Landon chuckled as he threw his arm over me, embracing me without reservation.

  “Yeah, I think this date’s going to go a little better this time.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, Brock and I had a talk.”

  “Oh yeah? What happened?”

  His next words didn’t surprise me from an expectations level, but they did surprise me on a timing level.

  “I asked out.”

  “And? How did Brock take it?”

  5

  Landon

  One Hour Before

  “You want… out,” Brock said, repeating what I had said back to him.

  “Yes. I want out. If this cycle is just going to go on forever, if the constant petty battles, violence, and senseless power struggles are just going to result in endless trouble, I want out.”