He sighs. “I can’t have a parole officer showin’ up on a job site.”
Fuck.
This goddamn day.
“Big George is so fuckin’ stoked to have you up at the Autowerks,” Charge chimes in. “He misses your dad.”
Yeah. So do I. Shit, I miss Big George, too. He was the one who gave me my road name. My dad was a welder, and when I was born, Big George took to calling me Scrap as a joke. The name stuck.
“Still, I’d rather be outside.”
“Hey, you want fresh air and sunshine? Have a prospect push the car out in the front lot. Work out there.” Forty’s face is dead serious.
“That’s some fuckin’ redneck shit, Forty.”
“Well, I am a fuckin’ redneck, ain’t I?” He raises his flask to me, and after a moment, I lift my near empty bottle. Charge and Heavy join in, and the mood eases up.
“We got you all set upstairs.” Charge changes the subject. “My old lady Kayla decked it out real nice. New mattress. Flat screen. It’s got an en suite.”
“What the fuck’s ‘en suite?’” Forty asks.
“Shitter attached to the bedroom.” Everyone looks at me. “What? We had HGTV at Wayne.”
“You get all the channels?”
“Hell, yeah. HBO. HEPC. All of ’em.”
The conversation goes right stupid from there, and much later, the sun comes up, turnin’ the room mellow gold, swirling clouds of cigar smoke thick in the air. There’s a burn in the back of my throat from the whiskey, and the laughing, and even though my ribs ache and my knuckles are busted to hell—even though Crista Holt don’t want me and ran from me scared—there’s a lightening in my soul.
I’m home with my brothers. Things changed, but not that.
About seven or eight, when everyone’s stumbled off to find themselves a place to crash or some willing pussy, I sober up and decide to take a ride down the Emmorton Road. It’s a great riding road, long stretches where you can open up that lead into wicked twists, winding through tall corn fields and gnarled woods, hardly any signs of life except the farmhouses set off way back.
It’s been ten years, but the road’s the same, smooth despite the patched-up asphalt, no yellow lines, no shoulder. Last time I rode this way, I was a young man. I ain’t that old now, but I feel ancient. Petrified like wood turned to stone.
I was a kid when I went inside. I thought like a kid. It took getting jumped by five Aryan Brotherhood assholes, five dudes bigger and meaner and more fucked in the head than anyone I’d known before, to make me a man. To teach me the truth in what my dad had told me a few months before he passed.
In the middle of a shady wood, where the road takes nearly a ninety-degree angle, I pull off at the old Calvary Baptist church. The building’s been shuttered since I was a kid. My mom used to drag me here with Grandma Allenbach on Christmas and Easter. I hated it. No heat in the winter, and too many strange ladies fussing over me. The church built a new place over in Shady Gap shortly after Grandma passed, and they’ve let this place go to rack and ruin.
I back in to the parking lot, lower the kick stand, and make my way behind the church to the small graveyard. Someone’s been mowing here, but they ain’t put in too much effort. High grass grows at the edges of the clearing, and brown leaves lie thick on the ground.
The Allenbachs are at the far end. Grandma and Pops have proper stones, but all we could afford when Ma passed was a marker. When Dad went so sudden, the club bought a nice headstone with room for both their names, but no one ever thought to take Mom’s marker away. It’s flat between the two larger stones, edged in clumps of grass the weedwhacker missed. I crouch and start with that.
This could be a sad place, a sad moment, but it ain’t. It’s peaceful out here. It smells musty, like living things.
I trace Ma’s dates with a finger. She was twenty-six when she died. Five years younger than I am now.
It was cervical cancer, caught much too late. Comin’ up, we didn’t have money for doctors unless you were on death’s door. By the time Ma felt bad enough to spend the money, the cancer had worked its way to her lungs and bones.
At the end, she spent all her time in bed, propped up, mostly unconscious. I’d get home from school, grab my comforter and a snack, and make myself a place at the end of the bed, turning the TV to cartoons.
When Dad got home from the garage, he’d stomp into the bedroom, kiss whatever old lady had been watchin’ Ma on the lips and send her home, and then, covered in grease and dirt, he’d climb into bed, boots still on. He’d bark at me to “Turn that shit to wrestling and get me a beer.”
Ma would rouse a little, nestle into his side, and bitch at him for getting her sheets filthy. He’d pat her shoulder, kiss her forehead, and say, “Go back to sleep, baby. It’s all handled.”
A few days before she died, she wanted him to take her to the back porch. We lived in a shitty little rancher down on the flats, but the view from the back wasn’t bad. There was a patch of woods and soybean fields.
Dad carried her out, and sat out there for hours, cradling her on his lap, whispering some shit to her that I couldn’t overhear while he chain-smoked, holding his cigarette to her lips every once in a while.
After she passed, and we buried her here, he’d ride us out every so often. He’d always say, “Fuck. Should’ve stopped for flowers.” But we never did. We’d stand here for a time, silent, as if we were waiting for something. Once, not too long before he had the heart attack, he broke the silence.
“How old are you now?”
“Thirteen.”
“Old enough, I guess.”
I didn’t know for what, and I didn’t ask.
“You know, boy, people act like a man is a man ‘cause of what he can do.”
“Yeah?”
“That ain’t it, though. A man is a man ‘cause of what he can bear.”
I didn’t say anything. What would I have said?
“A man can bear anything if he don’t give in under the weight.”
It wasn’t until I got locked up that I understood what he meant. When my face was slammed into the concrete of the yard, and I saw ten years looming in front of me, day after day of pacing a cage between sudden, brutal fights for my life, that I understood what I needed to do to survive. I couldn’t give in to the weight of it all. I had to bear it. And I could do that ‘cause of Crista Holt.
Crista don’t understand this, but I been living for her for ten years already. Shit, longer than that even. I’ve borne what can hardly be borne, for her. I ain’t walkin’ away ‘cause shit ain’t easy.
If I don’t love Crista Holt, I don’t know what I am. It’s that simple.
And I guess, since she can hardly stand the sight of me, it’s that fuckin’ sad, too.
CHAPTER 6
CRISTA
I back into a spot at the far end of the parking lot of Finnegan’s Ice Cream. It’s early in the day, too early for Finnegan’s to be open. I’m the only car in the lot. I leave the engine on, but I put it in neutral and yank up the emergency break.
My heart quickens, and a cold sweat breaks out all over my skin. I tug the zipper of my hoodie to the very top, pull it forward so my face is totally hidden.
The empty lot is spooky, but this early in the morning is a good time to watch the gas station across the street. It’s morning rush hour, so there’s lots of activity on Gracy Avenue. I watch the action in my rearview. They’re busy like always.
Not many places that have full service anymore, but this place does. Lots of Buicks and Lincolns pull up real slow, older drivers taking the time to chat up the guy working the pumps, causing cars waiting for the self-service lanes to back up onto the road.
There’s a lot of honking. Each time, my stomach leaps into my throat. I’m jittery, but okay. I’m handling it. Every minute or so I pop the glove box and check the Beretta.
After this, I’m gonna drive out to the Autowerks. Deb needs me to pick up payroll for her. It’s been a week since Scrap�
�s party, and everything’s more or less gone back to normal. He’s tried to talk to me a few times while I’ve been workin’ the bar. I try to think of something normal to say, fail, and end up giving him a beer and that’s all. Last night, he didn’t bother and bailed as soon as he saw me. Spent his evening sparring out by the fire pit.
Everyone’s started shooting me half-dirty, half-pitying looks. Boots got drunk and asked me why I’m busting Scrap’s balls. I’m not. I’m embarrassed and tongue-tied, and I have no desire to make it worse, which is the only thing opening my mouth can do. Besides, it’s no one else’s business, even though everyone’s making it theirs. Ernestine tried to get me to take Scrap a plate of brownies from her the other day. When I asked if her legs were broken, she swatted me upside the head, and Grinder said, “See what I have to deal with? She’s fuckin’ violent.”
Now Grinder’s gonna be stinking up my place for at least another month, minimum.
The man pumping gas lunges for a squeegee, and from pure instinct, I startle, dragged out of my head by a jolt of adrenaline. The seat belt engages and digs into my neck, hard. Damn. My nerves are shot. Not like they’re usually solid, but this is bad, even for me.
I ride the panic, let it ebb away, and watch the guy wash the windshield of an F150. Cars come and go. People duck into the convenience store, come out with coffee. A mechanic shows up and tugs open the bay doors. I gulp and acid scores my throat. I should have popped a Tums before I came.
I make myself keep looking. You can see inside the garage. Two cars up on lifts. The concrete floor. The workbenches.
The man at the pump waves up the next car, leans his scabbed elbows on the open driver’s side window to chat.
My body fights me—heart sputtering, legs jiggling so hard my knees hit the steering wheel—but I make myself stay put. Five minutes is counting down on my phone.
Last time I came to watch a man pump gas was when Dad told me Scrap might be getting out. I didn’t have to force myself to stay that day; I had to make myself leave.
I wonder a lot about what Dr. Ang would say if she knew I did this. She’s big on exposure therapy. She’s always talking about how I could go to the bookstore in Pyle. Baby steps. Start by getting in the car. Don’t force it. Keep trying. Go a little further each time.
It’s weirdly soothing to listen to her describe how you can very slowly work yourself up to go to a bookstore. I’m never gonna do it—I know it, she’s got to know it on some level—but hearing about it is really calming.
Dr. Ang thinks my anxieties have become full-blown phobias because I’m not “doing the work.” She also says I have PTSD. Depression. Body dysmorphic disorder. She’s probably right. That’s not why I am the way I am, though, why I stick to the places and people I know. I do that ‘cause I’m not stupid.
Stupid is people walking through life believing nothing truly bad will ever happen to them. I mean, everyone knows about death. No one’s surprised by the unavoidable bad shit, but I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about getting thrown into the back of a car when you’re walking home from school one day, and then knowing, from that moment on, the exact joints where your body can tear easy, and where your bones will hold you together when your muscles are sliced apart.
That can happen.
So I’m not stupid. I know every entrance and exit in every place I go. I know which windows can be unlocked and how. Which I can fit through. Which I can reach, and if I can’t, where there’s a piece of furniture I can move for a leg up.
I know where the guns are kept. Where the gun safes are, what the combinations are. I know which drawer the wrenches are in and where the tire iron’s hanging. I know which closet has the baseball bat, which side of the bed it’s tucked under. I know where the phones are. I know where I can hide. I know all the ways to and from the businesses and the clubhouse, when stores along the way are open, the side streets, the alternate routes. I know this garage like the back of my hand.
I know that most of the time, I’m relatively safe, and I also know that can end at any time. The people I love are relatively safe, but all it’d take for that to end is for me to slip, blurt out the secret I keep like moldy Tupperware shoved in the back of the fridge, the ugliness I can’t bear to think about, and I can never, ever confront.
So instead, I check my perimeter. Guarding this life that everyone thinks is so fucking small, and Scrap Allenbach might think is pathetic, but that I know is fragile as hell, balanced on the point of a needle.
My phone beeps, and I jerk against the seat belt again. Damn. I swipe the alarm off. My body’s jacked up, but it’s a familiar feeling. I figure I’ll relax by the time I get to the Autowerks. I switch on the radio and search for something loud and angry. I find Megadeth, and I blare it until I pull into Big George’s and park by the offices.
They’ve got all four bays open and working, and there’s a good number of vehicles waiting for service. Wash is bending over an engine, and through the glass pane of the office, I can see Big George shooting the shit with Grinder and a man in a suit.
“Business is good. It’s all good,” I tell the knot in my stomach. Ease up. Cut me a break. Everything’s fine.
Big George waves when he sees me, but he stops me halfway through the door.
“Crista! Deb said you’d be over. I got the payroll almost ready. Give me five. Do me a solid, though?”
“Sure thing.”
“Can you run out to the hanger and get me the keys with the Lexus fob?”
I guess Big George and Grinder’s legs are both broke again. “Sure thing, boss.” I wave and head out back.
The hangar is a huge outbuilding set off behind the garage, well away from the main road. The bay opens in the back, facing the woods, but there’s rooftop ventilation so the bay doors don’t even have to be kept open. The hangar’s where the boys work on the custom mods.
Some are projects for rich guys who don’t want anyone to see their shit before it’s finished. Some projects are cool little extras—Batmobile-type shit—for truly shady individuals from way out-of-town—as in Bogota or Moscow. That’s how Steel Bones put their one percenter days behind them. Quality workmanship and the kind of discretion you get from brothers who’d die for each other without question. There’s big money in the ability to keep your mouth shut.
I probably shouldn’t know as much about it as I do, but like I said, Mom’s the real bookkeeper, and since she’s always got me doing her grunt work when the bar’s slow, I hear a lot of shit.
I duck into the hangar through a side door and head for the wall where they hang the keys. There’s not a lot going on today. Wall’s trying to show Bucky something under the hood of a Hummer H1—they wave when I come in—and the only other vehicle is a sweet Indian Big Chief, the kind Steve McQueen rode. It’s hot in the hangar. The bay door is down and the fans are off.
Which explains why Scrap Allenbach’s not wearing a shirt when he comes out from the storage room with a bottle of water.
My whole body freezes and a wave of a heat crashes through me at the same time.
Oh, there’s his shirt. Hanging from the back pocket of his jeans. At least these pants don’t look straight from the store shelf like the ones he has been wearing. There’s some grease on the thigh.
Scrap’s got really solid thighs.
What the fuck am I doing? I’m checking him out. Shit. Did he notice?
He did. He’s frozen in place, too, staring back, a drippy water bottle hanging from his hand. We’re a good ten feet apart, but it feels like no distance at all.
His hair’s mussy, as mussed as hair as short as his can get. He’s sweaty, too.
“Hey.” He seems to shake off the spell, and twists the cap of the water bottle. He chugs. His Adam’s apple bobs. He looks like a commercial for Gatorade or a gym or something. I can’t stop staring.
My hoodie suddenly feels really thick and scratchy.
“I’m just—” I point at the key rack. “Big Geor
ge wants the Lexus keys.”
Scrap’s brow furrows. He closes the distance between us. “The Lexus ain’t in the hangar. The keys are up in the main office.”
Oh. That jerk. It’s another set up.
I see Scrap realize it at the same time. His mouth curls into that chagrined half-smile, and he glances down. “I’ll remind George to mind his own business.”
I shrug. I bet Mom had a hand in this, too. She was asking me the other day how Scrap was settling in. As if she thought I should know.
“Well…I guess I’ll—” I point behind me to the door.
“Yeah.” Scrap’s smile is gone. That tight, give-nothing-away expression he’s been wearing returns.
I should leave. There’s nothing stopping me.
But maybe it’s the residue from this morning at the gas station. Maybe I’m feeling crazy brave ‘cause I lasted the whole five minutes without pissing myself.
Maybe it’s the morbid curiosity that’s been riding me lately, the kind that makes you stare when you drive past a wreck on the highway, even though you know you’re an asshole for gawking, and all you’re doing is hassling everyone else and making shit worse.
Maybe I just want to be here a little longer, feeling these weird squishy feelings float around in my belly.
“Can I ask you a question?”
Well, that fixed Scrap’s face. His neutral expression is gone, replaced by a wariness. His eyes go bluer, and he flexes his jaw, nervous-like.
“Anything.” He says it so serious.
A shiver zaps down my sweaty back. He means that. Anything. All of a sudden, whatever I was going to say flies out of my mind, and words just tumble out of my mouth.
“When you found me? With Dad and the others?”
“Yeah.” His chest is rising and falling slow, as if he’s breathing deep on purpose, while he waits for me to go on.
Oh, shit. I’m going to ask about that? I guess I am.
“Did I say anything?”
For a long moment, he stands there like a runner at the starting line, that same kind of full-body tension. Eventually, he seems to come to a decision.
Scrap: A Steel Bones Motorcycle Club Romance Page 6
