“Okay, Ray. Do what you have to do but don’t flush your dream job down the drain just to rush home and take care of us.”
“I won’t. It’ll be okay. Jerry will understand; he’s a down to earth type of boss,” I lied again, knowing damn well as soon as I informed him I was leaving, I wouldn’t have a job waiting for me when I returned. At this point, I didn’t care. I could always find another job, but no one in this world could ever replace my dad.
“Are you sure?”
“One-hundred percent. Everything will be fine on my end, Mom. There’s just no need for you to worry about me right now.” I reassured her, breathing another white lie of comfort into her ear. On a general note, I hated lying. Right now wasn’t any different, but what else was I going to say? Mom, I’m leaving my job and have no fucking clue what I’ll do for income. The answer was no. I wouldn’t tell my mom I was dropping everything to rush home for them. It wasn’t what any good child did once they grew into adulthood, much to the contrary. Parents spent a good deal of their lives giving everything they had to ensure their children had everything they needed—any parent worth a shit anyway. It was the morally right thing to try and take care of your parents when they couldn’t quite care of themselves anymore. It was the law of nature, so to speak. All of this made sense to me, but to someone else, it might be a foreign concept. Other people didn’t matter in this situation. For me, nothing else held importance, only my parents and their well-being. After all the madness settled, I would be left to collect the shambles of my so-called-life, and then I would figure out my next move. But for now, it didn’t matter. I had to get to them. Any second I wasn’t with them was wasted time.
“Just as long as you’re sure,” she weakly said, sniffing back the new wave of emotions that hit her.
“I am.” Once again, I deceived my mom because it was a necessity, fully aware I was fucking over everything I’d work toward in the past seven years, and yet, not caring about it.
I wished it had been Wren on the phone wanting to talk about something trivial, but I now realized, she more than likely didn’t want to mindlessly chitchat and wanted to find out how I was handling things. Wren had probably talked to Mom first, so I texted her.
Me: Dad is sick.
Tears of regret streaked down my face as I stared at those three bold words on the screen in my hand, and my bottom lip quivered as I tried to keep it together in the shop. A soft sob left my mouth, and I covered it behind my cupped palm, pushing the shop door open and running into our breakroom. Walsh was right behind me, no doubt searching for an explanation. None of my coworkers had ever seen me cry—not too many people had, actually. I avoided it at all costs since I wasn’t a dainty crier. When I cried, I sobbed. It was as if once the tears finally broke free, the amount that fell made up for all the times I refused to shed a tear.
“My dad’s cancer is back,” I told him in an almost inaudible tone, trying to compose myself. Maybe if I talked about it, I could calm down. Perhaps it could make sense as to why such a good man had cancer not once, but twice. I guess it was possible his body had the disease all along and we didn’t know about it.
“I’m sorry,” he said in a similar voice and took a seat at our table, pulling a seat out for me to sit beside him.
The phone vibrated in my palm, and I glanced at it.
Wren: I know :( I tried to catch you before you left for work, but I had to keep Bologna for Logan, and lucky me, he found a rat. Ham just wanted to play with it…Never mind. I’ll tell you later. How are you doing?
A laugh bubbled through my body and then another. The first came at the thought of my best friend having a rat in her apartment—she was terrified of them. The second because those two were the only people in this world who would name their animals after lunchmeat. Bologna was Logan’s horse of a dog, and Ham was Wren’s black cat.
“It’s funny?” Walsh looked at me over the black square frames of his glasses and kept his attention on me.
“Yes. Well, no. This is.” I dropped into the blue plastic chair beside him, setting my phone in front of him.
“Does Wren…uh, you know?” He pinched his thumb and pointer finger together and hit an imaginary joint.
Another laugh shook my body and quickly left as I swiped away the remaining tears off of my cheeks. “No.”
“No? Her ham is playing with a rat that bologna found,” he pointed out and shrugged, forcing a fake smile. “I mean, I’m not one to judge, I smoke, but hell, that’s a little farfetched even for me.”
“Ham is her cat, and Bologna is her brother’s dog,” I explained, typing out a reply to Wren and began planning what would have to be done before I could leave for Ohio.
Me: No fucking clue, but I’ll be there as soon as I can. You have a rat?
Wren: Apparently. Huge fucker, too. I’ll be here when you do
.
2
Crow
“Diablo, I gotta be somewhere, so can we please move this shit along?” I loudly muttered over the rattling of the chain as he cut it in two, and I ran my rough fingertips over my beard. He glared at me, catching the lock in his palm as it released from the chain.
“Fucking man up, Crow. We have to get this shit done. They crossed the line this time. These motherfuckers owe us these guns, even if they don’t think they do. They’re ours. They should have kept up their end of the deal, and we wouldn’t be taking the whole lot. Oh well, c’est la vie.” Diablo smiled, pulling a rag from his pocket and rubbing his prints off the silver metal before tossing it into the grass.
“I know. The fuckers screwed us over. These are our guns, no question. But if your slow ass doesn’t hurry up, this is about to be a solo mission,” I snapped out of frustration, questioning Ghoul’s decision for sending me on such an important trip with a careless shit like Diablo. He was my brother, and I trusted him with my life as I did with any of our other brothers, but Diablo wasn’t my first choice for an accomplice. Hell, he wasn’t even my second in line for the job. I would have taken any other brother from the Royal Bastards MC. He was too impulsive and unpredictable for my liking. I heard Jameson was headed back to New Orleans, I’d give my left nut to have him by my side or the right for Koyn from our Tulsa Chapter to be here. Fuck, Sleeper and Sledge would have been perfect for this job, but they were on the road somewhere between here and West Virginia moving Roane’s Old Lady’s shit.
Diablo was notorious for being loud as fuck and couldn’t diffuse a situation to save his life, hence his road name. He hadn’t gotten it for being the best in situations such as this. More often than not, he went into things with guns blazing and always left a fucking mess behind him. He was the type to shoot first and ask questions later. Maybe that was why Ghoul chose him as my second for this; Diablo was a sharpshooter, spook veteran from the army. It could have been we were the perfect combination of reason and chaos, but in my opinion, the two of us gave the very definition of disaster to the dictionary.
Our now rival MC, The Dogs of Chaos, had taken the guns we were supposed to split fifty/fifty and ignorantly stored them all at the same location we’d agreed to do so in the first place. The problem was, it was their warehouse, not ours.
The plan had been that after Sledge, Flashman, and Circuit headed the truck off at the West Virginia/Ohio line, The Dogs were to grab the goods and meet up with us later. The problem was, they never showed. After the whole debacle went down, it came to light that their state boss decided to keep the guns for their brothers and cut our club out of the deal. That didn’t go over well with any of us Bastards, so here I was with the loudest mother fucker on the planet doing a B&E to take what was owed to us, trying to keep his ass in check so I could go to a funeral I wouldn’t be very welcomed at.
“Remember what Ghoul said, grab what we can and then get the fuck out of dodge,” I quietly reminded Diablo as he slowly stepped into the warehouse behind me. Flipping a switch to his right, he waited for something to happen. Clearly, he hadn’t been pa
ying too much attention when we met with The Dogs since they told us the switch didn’t work; therefore, I didn’t stand around like a dumbass or look up expecting lights to brighten.
“Yeah, Crow. I got this shit. Quit trying to be my mom and pull the truck up.” He laughed, plucking his keys from his pocket and adjusting his fresh cut. It hadn’t been too long ago that he was patched into the Bastards, so he took every chance given to bring attention to his leather. It might have impressed the club whores and even the prospects, but it did nothing for me. I had almost three years on him in the club, and my cut was so worn, it didn’t even smell like leather anymore. It had more of a lingering scent of exhaust and booze to it. It was seasoned, unlike him or the leather strapped over his torso.
“I’ll get the truck but remember your place, Diablo,” I barked, instantly pissed that he had the balls to call me his mom, even if I knew damn well his point was more than valid. I was over hesitant and filled with anxiety. None of it was related to what we were doing, though. We would get the guns and not run into a problem, and if we did, we would handle it. I didn’t give a shit how many motherfuckers had to die, the job was finished when I left.
Hell, the reason I was on edge had nothing to do with our club. If I was being honest with myself, it had everything to do with my past I was willingly throwing myself into the damn middle of after working so hard to get away from it.
Ray was back in town. Of course, she was. Her dad had died, and it was his funeral I was in a rush to get to. I didn’t know if I was nervous about seeing her or her dad’s lifeless body, but I refused to face that dilemma right now. I had to stay on point for our mission. When a dumbass wasn’t focused, that was when mother fuckers wound up dead. I planned to wreak havoc on this world for at least a couple more years, so I cleared my head of everything apart from the here and now. I would deal with the rest of it when I had to, but until then, it was an out of sight out of mind type of thing. It had to be.
“I know. I know. You’re the VP, and I’m just a peon, but we’re brothers all the same. I’m in this shit with you, brother.” He clapped me on the back and smiled. “Fuck the world, right?”
“Yep. Fuck. The. World.” I tried to stop the smirk as it crept onto my lips, but I couldn’t. He was right. Fuck the rest. I was here with my brother and the remainder of the world and its occurrences didn’t matter at the moment. We had a job to do, and we would get it done. It was as cut and dry as that, regardless if I was nervous as fuck to see her. The fact I had counted the days that had passed since we’d last spoken wasn’t important right now. What I had to focus on was keeping my brother and me alive and bringing back the goods that rightfully belonged to the Bastards. The rest of the world would just have to fall to the wayside because first and foremost, I was a Royal Bastard, and then I was Logan Williams. Even though my legal name was rarely spoken anymore, it didn’t matter, there was still a past, and a long story that came along with it—one I didn’t revisit often because it wasn’t exactly who I was anymore. There was a thing about a person’s past, it didn’t matter what amazing or shitty things you did to create a future, there would always be someone from your past to tug you back into it. Some people easily forgot yesterday, and some still lived in the days most had forgotten.
“You get the cage.” I chuckled, dropping his key ring into his open hand and pulled a crowbar out of the exposed toolbox beside me. “You’re right. I am the vice, and if anyone is taking lead on this one, it’s me.”
“There he is,” Diablo admired, turning to leave me and get the vehicle.
“What do we do with this place?” Diablo asked, loading the last crate into the back and closing the doors behind it.
“Board up the windows and torch that mother fucker!” I shouted. “No one fucks with the Royal Bastards. This will make them remember that!” I grabbed a gas can, flipping the lid open, and doused everything surrounding me.
“Damn straight, brother. Damn straight,” he repeated, pulling a matchbook from his pocket, and a deep sadistic laugh left his body. “Nobody fucks with the Royal Bastards.”
3
Ray
I hated this day, but I think that I hated myself even more. Despite how fast I dropped my life and moved back to Ohio, it wasn’t enough. Mom let me know dad was bad, but she hadn’t been exactly forthcoming with all of the information. She told me it was cancer, but not that the doctors had basically said it was inoperable. The fucking disease had spread its poison throughout his entire body and had taken over most of it. Maybe he could have tried radiation, but we learned that would have been meaningless for him at that point. It was only an option for someone it the earlier stages of the illness, not at the end, which was where he was.
Dad’s body was tired and riddled with something modern medicine had yet to find a miracle cure for. The thing about cancer was, once its necrosis began, there was typically no stopping it. For him, there wasn’t an option to take a pill for seven to ten days to heal him—a luxury too many of us have when we go to see the doctor and tell them that we feel like we were dying. My dad actually was dying. He was too far gone to be saved.
I’d been here for a little over a week, and he didn’t recognize me during the majority of the days spent with him. He had moments of clarity, though. Those were the times I would cherish and cling to on the hard days. The days when I wanted to give up but couldn’t let myself crumble. I hoped it was how I would remember him instead of delirious and fragile.
We talked as if our world wasn’t being destroyed with every second that passed. He told me he was so proud of me and loved me more than anything. He asked about my job and how I liked living in Kentucky. I didn’t have a chipper answer at first but wished to see him smile, not bring him down with me, so I lied. The first lie led to a second, and before I was aware of it, I had created an entire fictitious life and didn’t stop until we were both satisfied. I told him my life was great and couldn’t wait for Mom and him to visit during the summer, knowing it was doubtful he would see the sunrise again and definitely would not be here during his favorite time of the year, spring. When he mentioned my love life, I said I was happy that my career kept me too busy to date and rarely thought about the fact that I lived alone, although it was something I thought of every night before my eyes closed. Of course, he knew me well enough to realize the answers I gave him held little to no truth, but he didn’t punk me out on it. Therefore, I kept painting the beautifulness of a perfect life that I lived for him. He wouldn’t get to see how my life turned out, and neither of us could begin to guess where it was headed, but we both liked the story I told.
When he faded out of reality, I whispered lies of my wedding and how he had to catch me from falling as he walked me down the aisle. I told him he secretly hated the guy I was marrying, but only because he didn’t think the guy was good enough for his little girl. Dad tried to laugh at that one, but it came out as a faint noise accompanied by a bright smile.
“Course he isn’t.” Dad grinned, and his eyelids blinked slowly while he attempted to fight the drugs coursing through his veins. “Nobody will ever be good enough for my Ray.” He barely forced the words out of his lips before soft snores took their place.
“Tell me more. What about Momma and me?” He quietly encouraged without reopening his eyes.
“We all drive Hummers.”
“No!” His eyes flickered open momentarily with excitement and were fast to close again. “Ferraris.”
“Okay, Dad.” I laughed and shook my head, another small giggle piping through my lips. “We all drive Ferraris, and I make so much money, we live in a fucking castle with all the works. A private jet and butlers.”
His eyebrows rose high on his forehead when I cussed, but I hadn’t expected less. Actually, I was selfishly hoping it would pump a little fire into his body and remind him how to fight. I needed him to fight, but it was a losing battle. I wasn’t an idiot. You couldn’t ask someone to switch positions in the middle of a war after they�
��d been shot while standing guard on the frontline of duty. That was basically what I was doing, asking the impossible from my dad. I wanted to witness him being the only person to recover without any treatment…that I knew of anyway. The rest of society and their anomalies didn’t matter to me, they weren’t my dad. In the end, the heart-shattering devastation was that it didn’t matter how much we both wished for none of this to be real, it was. He was slipping closer to death with every word we spoke, and it didn’t matter if either of us wanted it. He was dying, and I would keep living without him.
It was funny, people who weren’t apt to lie frequently did in times like this. I was no different. I couldn’t bear the thought of telling him I regretted moving away a little more each time I entered his room. I wouldn’t breathe the truth that every constriction of my heart hurt more than the last because I’d spent so much time away from them. These talks were limited, and I never knew from one minute to the next if I was talking to the real dad or if it was the drugs speaking for him.
A nurse explained the morphine would help him rest, and he wouldn’t be in as much pain. When his breathing was fast, I noticed they gave it to him more than when it wasn’t. Seeing all of the tubes and wires connected to the man who taught me to ride a bike and throw a right hook was never something I thought I would live to see. It was definitely a sight I hoped I wouldn’t. On the last day, we both felt it coming. He waited until Mom left the room and opened his palm for me to put my hand in it.
“Rachel Charlene. My Ray of sunshine,” he paused, and his chest rapidly heaved as he caught his breath, exhausted from the short sentences he spoke. “Promise me you’ll take care of her. I know it’s a lot to ask, but I don’t think I can keep up my end of the bargain anymore,” he panted in a very weak voice, and his light blue eyes filled with tears of shame. He was never one to quit anything, much less admit defeat, but here he was doing exactly that. I wanted to hate him for giving up, but it would be selfish to do. He’d fought for so long. Honestly, I had no clue how long he’d struggled to keep his life on this earth, battling the death rapidly pulling him into the afterlife. I was ashamed that I didn’t know how long he had been sick. I should have asked more than I had, but I didn’t, and it was something I would always regret.
Bad Like Me: Royal Bastards MC Ohio Chapter Page 2
