by Trent Jordan
“Don’t go.”
He put his arm out on my leg and grabbed it. It wasn’t a forceful grab, but it was definitely a grab meant to stop me in my tracks.
“Please. I’ve been thinking about how badly I fucked up. Please. Forgive me.”
Christ. Just get out of here and go.
“I do forgive you, Shane, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to take you back,” I said. “You had your chance. It was fun in parts. I broke up with you for a reason. I’ve stayed away from you for much stronger reasons. And while I’m happy that you’re… apologetic, let’s say, I’m not going to do anything more. Good luck.”
“You can’t! I apologized!”
I stood up now, ignoring Shane’s awkward touch. I could feel the eyes of the bartender on me, and that wasn’t doing anything to help me feel better. If anything, I was becoming more nervous that Shane was going to go beyond touching me in “acceptable” spots.
“Shane, do not reach out to me again. I know people that can make your life very miserable if you aren’t careful.”
“My life is already hell, Thea. You’re the one thing that can make it better. Please!”
I just brushed by him. I felt him grabbing me, and I yanked away. The bartender yelled at Shane, but Shane wasn’t listening to him. Neither was I, for that matter—I was just trying to get the hell out of Shooters.
“Thea!” he continued to shout, following me into the parking lot. “Please!”
I picked up my pace to a fast, brisk walk. I turned around to see him matching my pace. I opened the door and tried to get in, but then he pulled me away. Now it was getting violent.
“What the fuck are you doing?!?” I said. “Get it through your fucking skull, Shane. There is nothing you can do to make me change my mind. Because of you, I lost my job. Because of you, I became a motorcycle club whore. Because of you, all I have left are my self-made film aspirations. Do you get that? I lost everything because of you!”
“Thea—”
I was left with no choice.
I slapped the shit out of him. I slapped him so hard, he staggered backward. His hand immediately went to his cheek as he rubbed it, trying to numb the pain.
“What the hell, Thea,” he said.
But there was something much more worrisome about him than his words. It was his tone. He didn’t sound desperate anymore.
He sounded pissed off.
“I tried to do this the nice way.”
I made a dash for the car door again, but Shane enveloped me in a bear hug and lifted me off the ground.
“No! No!” I screamed.
I kicked my legs as hard as I could, but Shane just squeezed harder and harder, making it much more difficult for me to breathe and kick. I had my arms trapped, so I couldn’t use them at all. I just kept wailing my legs as best as I could, but nothing was working.
And then, in the faint distance, I thought I heard something. It didn’t stop Shane, but I knew it would soon. I just had to hope it was the sound that was of my salvation and not a cruel prank by fate.
It was the sound of a motorcycle.
Butch
As soon as I got home, I put my phone on airplane mode. I didn’t want any communication with the outside world.
The last few days, despite my outwardly neutral appearance, had marked some of the most difficult ones that I had ever dealt with at the club. Officers struggled to decide on the best course of action. Four more members left to join Pink Raven with the Gray Reapers. Lane alternated between admitting he had to reach out to Cole and wanting to shoot him right in the face.
The whole thing left the environment at the repair shop and the headquarters frazzled and on the verge of fistfights and chaos. We barely managed to cover our shifts at the shop, oftentimes having to just not eat for long periods. When people saw each other in the clubhouse, they didn’t speak so much as silently be in each other’s presence, having either a stress drink or a stress smoke.
And what was never said, but what was very much on the front of everyone’s mind, was that the group benefiting the most from this splintering wasn’t the Gray Reapers.
It was the Fallen Saints.
In fact, we weren’t even tracking the Fallen Saints right now. Patriot hadn’t heard anything from Kaitlyn, which I supposed meant nothing had changed, but they couldn’t have missed out on the fact that we’d killed Red Raven ourselves. They had to know that this would fracture us. They had to know that they could sit back, recover with a smile on their face, and put their hands behind their head and stretch their feet out.
And until we got ourselves together, there was nothing we could do to annoy them, let alone annihilate them.
I bore the least amount of confrontations, but I probably got the most side glances. I should have, in some sense. I was the one to put a bullet through Red Raven’s skull.
But even I had my limits for what I could take.
And as I slumped onto my couch in my apartment, as Lucky bounded over to the couch and jumped up on it and me, I couldn’t help but wonder if the supposed redemption I had found was just yet another example of how the only life skill I had was creating more chaos and death in this world.
“I don’t know, Lucky,” I said with a very long sigh. “I don’t think anyone can handle me. I don’t think anyone should have to handle me.”
Least of all Thea.
Speaking of things that are fraying.
I had no intention of reaching back out to her, honestly. It had nothing to do with liking her or disliking her. I liked her—too much so, probably. Maybe she was right that I needed to be nicer to myself, but she wasn’t right about one thing or at least hadn’t noticed it. Being around me inevitably brought hurt and chaos.
I was around my ex-girlfriend. I killed her brother. I was around the Black Reapers. I killed their secretary and eldest member. I would be around Thea. Who would I kill then?
Damn shame, too. She was the only one that looked past my size and my presence and saw Brian Young.
Actually, better. She wanted to see past Brian Young, to the real me.
But I wouldn’t let her.
Lucky licked my face, and I snorted and patted the small dog as it yipped at me.
“I know, I know, I can’t be acting like a bitch like this,” I said. “After all, you’re the only one that hasn’t gotten hurt by me.”
Which probably means, knowing how things go for me, I’ll accidentally run you over with my motorcycle. I cringed at the horrible thought, not so much because of how grotesque it was, but because it probably had a better than average chance of happening.
“I wish I knew how not to hurt, Lucky,” I said. “All I know how to do is hurt. What would life be like if I knew how to do things besides hurting others?”
It was a question that was impossible to answer. I didn’t know. The nicest thing I had ever done in my life was… what? Keep Thea away from the others so only she could sleep with me? And then steal her camera? Some asshole I was.
“I guess I was put on this world to be a sort of dark vigilante,” I thought.
So be nicer to yourself about it and accept it.
The thought sort of bubbled out of nowhere, and it didn’t come in my voice. It almost sounded like Thea’s. What if… what if I did just that?
It was a question worth exploring if, for no other reason, I was at my lowest point in a long, long time; I didn’t really have anything to lose.
So, for the hell of it, I accepted that I was a killer, a man who was very adept at hurting others.
I didn’t just think, “I am that.” I thought, “I am that, and I accept that.”
I thought of how I had killed my ex-girlfriend’s brother, how I didn’t even say their names for the longest time, knowing how they’d trigger old memories.
But when I accepted myself, their names came to mind instantly.
Sophie. Luke.
Sophie, the first girl I had ever seriously loved.
And Lu
ke, the first man I killed, Sophie’s brother, a man who hated me but loved his sister.
And there was no changing what I had done. I had to accept that I could not bring Luke back. I had to accept that I had caused Sophie a lifetime’s worth of pain.
I had to accept I could not fight the darker side of me, either. That was a part of me that was never going to change.
But rather than fight it… I really did need to embrace it. I didn’t need to embrace it and become the villain of this universe, but I did need to become a sort of antihero, a sort of man who would never be good in the everyday world but could fight fire with fire.
The more I thought about it, the more, strangely, at ease I felt. It was like I had finally found the role I was meant to fulfill, even if it wasn’t exactly something that I was overly enthused about filling—but at least it was a role I could do.
“You know what, Lucky,” I said with a chuckle. “If I can be the antihero, maybe that’ll be my good contribution to the world. I’m no tortured angel, but I could at least be a good demon.”
I looked at my phone. I thought of all the people still depending on me. I thought of Lane—and how because of being that demon who tried to help others, I had saved his life and his girlfriend’s life. I thought of the people in the club whose life I had saved because of my actions. I thought of Thea and how I would have to protect her at some point.
The very thing that made me such a terrible person could at least provide some measure of redemption. A hero? No. Redeemed? Not fully. But enough that the world would be net better from here on out?
It was worth striving for.
I took my phone out of airplane mode and put it to the side for a moment, giving it a chance for the text messages to catch up. I turned to Lucky, picked the tiny dog up, and kissed him.
“Thanks for always being here, buddy,” I said. “I might just go crazy without you.”
I reached for my phone. I had a message from Thea. My eyes narrowed. I was going to be late for a club meeting, but I didn’t give a shit.
“I’m going to a bar right now in Santa Clarita called Shooters. Give me a reason not to be there.”
Time to be the antihero.
I sped like a maniac down the highway toward Santa Clarita. If she was going to a bar out there, there was only one reason—for a date. It wasn’t going to be a business meeting at a place called Shooters, that was for damn fucking sure.
And I had to say, I couldn’t even fault her. If she was going on a date, with the way I had acted the previous few days, she deserved to think I’d abandoned her.
But none of that mattered right now. What mattered was that she had asked for a reason to rescue her. I didn’t need one. I just needed her OK.
After exiting the highway, I could see Shooters come into view. The place was visible from afar, and there were only about four cars in the lot, all of them spread out equally. I saw Thea’s car.
And then I saw someone lifting her off the ground and carrying her to what had to be his car.
When I saw that, it was like all conscious thought shut off. The rage that I felt was very similar to the rage I had felt all those years before when I committed my first murder. Turning off this level of rage was impossible—I was, quite literally, bloodthirsty.
I didn’t stop in the parking lot so much as I did just peel in and use friction to stop my tires. I put the kickstand down and hopped off the bike in one motion and ran over to the man, a paunchy kid who couldn’t have been older than his mid-twenties. Unless he had a gun—which, given that this was California, was almost a certainty to not be the case—he was going to die.
And even if he had a gun, I’d still kill him.
He saw me and tried to hurry over to his car, but he was no match for me. Even if he’d gotten in his car, I just would have punched my way through the glass and ripped him out of the seat with my hands. I caught up to him about five feet from the car and pulled him back. Thea fell to the ground, which only pissed me off even more.
If the asshole couldn’t even hold her well enough to make sure she landed gently, there was going to be a whole lot more pain coming his way.
I grabbed him by the shirt collar as he raised his arms. Unfortunately for him, his flimsy, flabby arms against the power of my right fist was no contest; it was like driving a steel bolt through a wet paper towel. I made solid contact with his jaw, staggering him backward as his gums bled.
“The fuck, man? I’m sorry! I’ll leave her alone!”
But I was far from done. I walked up to him, raised my leg, and kicked him square in the sternum, knocking the wind out of him and sending him sprawling against the sidewalk. I walked over, grabbed him by the collar, and punched him again.
By now, he had no strength left to defend himself. He was a free target.
He was going to die.
I raised my right arm. BAM! I landed it right on his eye, which practically swelled shut on the spot. His nose was cracked out of place. He had already lost a tooth. I landed another punch with my left arm.
And then another with the right.
And then another with the left.
And another.
And another.
And another.
He was barely breathing at this point, more gargling on his own blood than he was actually breathing. I figured a couple more good punches would do it.
And that’s when, just before I delivered my next punch, Thea wrapped her arms around me and tried to pull me back.
“Stop!” she cried with tears in her eyes.
It was all too evident that she’d been yelling at me for several seconds beforehand. I had gotten so caught up in the moment, in my carnal lust, I hadn’t heard her at all. I had no idea of anything that she had done in the previous few seconds.
“What are you doing, Brian?!?” she said sobbing. “Do you really want to do this again? Do you really want to kill him?”
“He was going to kill you!” I snapped.
“No,” she said. “No, he wasn’t.”
He was… he was fucking…
I had to believe her. She knew better than me.
“You’re better than this, Brian,” she said with a wavering voice. “You’re better than a cold-blooded killer. Rise above that. You saved me. You’ve done enough. He’s not going to come back to me.”
I glared down at the bloodied, swollen face. Whoever this asshole was, he was barely recognizable from the man he had been just moments ago.
But that wasn’t what kept my gaze.
What kept my gaze was the fact that it was as if I could see the face of Red Raven and, to an extent, Pink Raven on it. It was but a few days ago when Red Raven’s face had turned into a blood-soaked, bullet-filled crater. I could too easily imagine doing this kind of damage to Pink Raven or to this asshole. It wasn’t hard for me to be a killer.
And what if you rose above that?
What if, instead of giving in to what’s easy, you do what’s hard? You pull back. You don’t fight.
You make your point, and you let them learn. They’re not going to fight back.
I looked up into Thea’s eyes. She was still sobbing. I didn’t think she had any idea if I was actually going to finish killing this boy or not. She had good reason for having her doubts.
Do you want to be a better man?
Or do you just want to be the ruthless demon you think you are?
Be nicer to yourself. It’s what Thea had said.
You can be better.
I rose, stood over the kid, and waited until he looked into my eyes.
“If you so much as ever come near her, and I mean ever within a fucking mile,” I said, annunciating every word. “I will find out where you live. I will come to you in your sleep. I will wake you. And I will kill you very slowly and very painfully. If you are in pain right now, just think of how much pain you will be in if you contact this woman again. Do you understand?”
The man could barely mutter a grunt or a nod. B
ut it was enough.
“Do not fuck with me, and do not speak to her ever again,” I said.
With that, I led Thea back to her car, putting a hand on her back. She didn’t really respond—I think she was in too much shock to do so. She’d finally seen the darkest side of me in action.
It was a hell of a thing to try and come back from.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner,” I said when we got to her car.
She was still in shock, unable to respond. She didn’t need to stay here, what with that asshole still lying on the ground a few feet away. But I didn’t want her driving without guidance.
“Follow me home,” I said.
She looked into my eyes. She didn’t respond, but I had enough hope from her gaze that she was going to listen to me. I kissed her on the forehead, gently put her into her car, and ran over to my bike. I revved the engine and drove out of the lot far slower than I ever had. I looked over my shoulder. Finally, she was following me.
I couldn’t really say that I felt great about what I had done. But maybe that was the point of the antihero—what he did served the greater good.
No matter how shitty it made him feel.
Thea
I was in shock.
I couldn’t believe it.
Brian had almost killed Shane.
He would have killed Shane.
I would have witnessed my current romantic interest kill my ex-boyfriend.
I may have believed Brian before, but I had failed to realize how serious he was.
And now, I had to follow him home.
The nervousness had nothing to do with trusting Brian; in a fucked up way, even though he had shown me he was capable of awful violence, his willingness to come to Santa Clarita and rescue me was one of the nicest things anyone had done for me, even if his actions were horrifying. I knew that I could trust him if my life was ever in danger, and like a mother bear to a bunch of cubs, I just knew that he would never hurt me, even if he killed someone else without blinking.
No, the danger was in the fact that I really did feel like I was in a state of shock. I was less driving as I was just trying to stay attached to the rear of Brian’s motorcycle; everything else was a blur. I couldn’t process other cars around me, or my speed, or the weather; I could only see the motorcycle and follow it.
