by Aiden Bates
Ballast’s door swung open, and Raven and Logan walked in, shoulders knocking together. They were two beautiful opposing portraits: Raven pale and angular in a white long-sleeve shirt and pants to protect him from the sun, Logan’s skin tanned and tinged pink, his hair full and shiny, streaked just barely with gold. Refreshed and healthy. His jeans were snug and his tank top hung loose on his lean frame, accentuating the sharp cut of his collarbones and muscular arms. The bruises on his jaw, neck, and arms were a garish yellow in their final stages of healing, but he was laughing.
Glass shattered across the room, snapping my attention away.
Jed cursed. He glared at Logan with bloodshot eyes like it was his fault that he’d dropped his drink.
“Christ, Jed.” Siren rushed over with a broom and a dustpan, shoving it at him. “Clean up your fuckin’ mess and go sleep it off.”
“You think I’m your maid?”
“No.” Siren grabbed Jed’s ear and pulled it hard until he squealed with pain and stood up. “I think you’re a brother who is responsible for his own mess.”
Raven muttered something in Logan’s ear, and Logan exploded into a peal of laughter.
Our eyes met. Logan bit his lower lip between his teeth. My fantasy from just hours earlier slammed to the forefront of my mind and blood rushed to my cock. Would he kiss like he did in my imagination—licking into my mouth, biting at my lips like he couldn’t get enough? Like he needed an edge of pain with the pleasure?
He wanted it, same as I did. I could see the heat in his eyes, and it branded me like a tattoo gun.
“I don’t know how he convinced Raven to hang out,” Gunnar groused. “I didn’t think that kid ever left his basement.”
Raven took Logan by the wrist and tugged him forward. “Come on, let’s shoot some pool. No one will play with me anymore, since I always clean up.”
“No, you don’t,” Gunnar said.
“It’s because I understand geometry,” Raven said. “Unlike these neophytes.”
As Raven marched Logan past me at the bar, Logan opened his mouth as if to say something, but then closed it, and smiled at me instead.
11
Logan
I woke up late in my room in Ballast. Sun streamed in through the windows.
The night before rose warmly to the surface of my memory. Gunnar and Blade had joined us at the pool table. We’d had a few drinks, Gunnar and Raven had sniped at each other as Raven dominated the game. Blade had lingered close to me, a cold pint of beer in his hands and his eyes never leaving me when I set up and eventually screwed up shots.
“Are you losing on purpose?” Raven had squawked when I missed yet another easy shot.
“I wish,” I’d grumbled.
That was when Blade had sidled up behind me and rested his pint on the edge of the table.
“Like this,” he’d said.
He’d stood behind me, his legs bracketing my thighs as he gently laid his hands over mine and maneuvered them on the pool cue. My breath had stuttered as his had ghosted across my ear. Heat and strength had radiated off him and I’d had to tense my muscles to resist the urge to press back against him.
Then, together, we’d lined up the shot, and the eight ball had rolled neatly into the corner pocket.
“Not so hard.” Blade’s voice had been low in my ear.
Just the memory sent a rush of arousal through me. I’d almost broken then. If he’d stayed pressed against me just a moment longer, I couldn’t have resisted turning around and dragging him into a kiss. Luckily for me, he’d stepped away and drank the rest of his beer in one long swallow, then had disappeared to get another round.
The closeness had affected him as much as it affected me. I’d seen it in the stiff line of his shoulders as he walked to the bar, and then the burning heat in his gaze when he’d returned to the pool game.
The status of my car hadn’t even crossed my mind as we’d played pool. This was dangerous. I was getting way too comfortable. I was letting my guard down.
What would Blade do when he found out who I was? When I first arrived in Elkin Lake, I’d feared what the club would do if they found out I was the son of the Viper’s Nest president. I’d feared they’d beat me, rob me, or try to extract information from me.
Now, I just feared being turned away. Intuitively I knew that’s what would happen. Blade wouldn’t hurt me—he’d just turn me away.
Why did that possibility scare me more than the threat of violence?
It would be better for both of us if I just got my car back and left before anyone found out who I was. Then, whatever this thing was between us, it could be a fond memory I carried into my new life. When Mom died, I thought I’d never find acceptance again. All I hoped for was a place to get away, work, and make some sort of simple life on my own. Now I’d gotten a taste of what it might be like to be accepted and included. To be wanted.
I wouldn’t ruin it. It’d hurt to leave—but at least then he’d remember me fondly.
I pushed away the arousal. It didn’t do me any good to waste time fantasizing. Giving into this, even in the privacy of the room I was staying in, would just make my departure harder.
Outside Ballast, Blade was waiting for me as he had every morning since I’d arrived. He wore his leather jacket half-zipped against the slight chill and a knit beanie over his loose hair. He smiled when he saw me and my heart jumped in my chest.
“Morning.” Two paper cups of coffee steamed in his hands.
“Are we not going to Elkhead?” I tugged the sleeves of my sweater down. The brisk air woke me up, but did nothing to dispel the internal heat that built whenever Blade fixed his gaze on me.
“Nope,” he said, and offered me one of the coffees.
I took it gratefully and wrapped both hands around it and inhaled the rich smell. “Thanks.”
“Thought we’d do something more fun,” he said. “If you’re cool with that.”
He could probably talk me into anything if he tried hard enough. That realization scared me—I really had to get a grip on my willpower if I wanted to get out of Elkin Lake without disaster. “Depends.”
“Nothing crazy. It’s nice outside. Thought we could have some coffee in the clubhouse backyard.”
That seemed safe enough. At the clubhouse, there wouldn’t be any chance of running into roving Vipers. There’d likely be other Hell’s Ankhor members around, so I wouldn’t be totally alone with Blade. I agreed and tried to ignore the flush of warmth in my cheeks when Blade grinned like he’d won the lottery.
Blade had the truck with him, not his bike—for me. He’d planned this. We drove the short distance between Ballast and the clubhouse. Blade drummed his fingers on the dash and hummed along to the radio while I sipped my coffee.
The clubhouse stood just outside Elkin Lake proper, between the town and the lake. Private, but not overly secluded. Blade pulled the truck into the gravel lot next to a row of sleek chrome motorcycles. The clean red brick stood in stark bright contrast to the green landscape and clear sky behind it. Like something from a movie, or a dream.
The Vipers’ clubhouse was a dilapidated flophouse in comparison. This clubhouse was taken care of.
It looked like a home.
I suddenly, viciously missed Luke. He’d never had a home like this. I didn’t know where he was now. We hadn’t spoken in so long, but my recent nightmare had reopened the part of my heart that never forgot our childhood years together. Could our lives have gone differently if we’d grown up in a place like this with a club like Hell’s Ankhor?
Blade caught me staring. “I know, it looks kind of suburban, doesn’t it? But it’s the right size for us. Been our home base since the club’s founding.” He motioned for me to follow him on a well-trodden path around the exterior of the house and into the backyard.
The backyard was immense and well-tended; it wasn’t fenced in but the grass was neatly mowed and the yard delineated by the trees growing around the sides. Two immense oak
trees stood side-by-side in the yard, each with a large hand-painted target mounted on the trunks. A few picnic tables stood near the back door, and logs surrounded a fire pit.
“Pretty nice setup.” I followed Blade to a picnic table. I hopped up and sat on the table.
Blade rummaged around in a box near the back door, and returned with a few beat up hatchets. “Want to do some throwing?”
“This was your fun activity?” I asked. Blade tossed one of the hatchets into the air and it spun, catching the mid-morning light on its edge. As it fell, he caught it expertly by the handle. My stomach knotted slightly with anxiety. When it was just the two of us, I sometimes forgot the reality what being a club president entailed. He was skilled with weapons. He handled the hatchets with so much ease it scared me. Regardless of how Blade treated me—he was still a president. He still had a duty to defend his club by any means necessary.
Same as my father did.
Nausea turned my stomach. I set the coffee aside.
“Sure, it’s like darts,” Blade said. He stood in a well-worn patch of grass, eyed the target carefully, then swung the hatchet over his shoulder and released it. It spun through the air and embedded in the target just shy of the bullseye. “Dammit. So close.”
Despite the edge of fear, arousal still rose in me watching the smooth motion of his body as he threw the hatchet.
“Wanna try?” Blade said, holding a second hatchet out to me, handle-first.
“You ever hit anything besides the target with these?”
Blade, still holding the hatchet out, peered at me thoughtfully. “Occasionally someone will try to play when they’ve had a little too much to drink. It’s been released backwards instead of forwards and flown into the clubhouse before. But never a member, no.”
“Yet,” I said.
“You probably just jinxed us.” He shook the hatchet at me. “Try it.”
I stared suspiciously at the hatchet. “How’d you learn to do this?”
“The founder of the club taught me. Ankh, the previous president.” He flipped the hatchet in his hand and gazed at it almost wistfully. “When I first joined up at eighteen. I was kind of a troublemaker, grew up kind of rough. I had all this pent-up energy. Ankh noticed. He brought me back here with a couple pocketknives, then took out his own knife and threw it so it embedded into that tree all the way to the handle. The targets weren’t up then.” He smiled at the memory. “I asked him how he did it, and he said, ‘Practice.’ Then he left me out there just chucking knives until I got it.
“I must’ve been out there for hours. And when I was finally satisfied with my progress, all that extra energy, that anxiety, was gone. Since then it’s been a way for me to just calm down for a few minutes, you know?”
He missed Ankh. It was clear in the small, sad smile on his face. It still made me nervous, handling the weapons, but at the same time, I understood what he meant. It required focus. It required you to let go of the other things that were bothering you. I could use a little bit of that.
I took the hatchet from his hand and stood where he had stood. The target seemed impossibly far away. How had Blade covered that distance so easily? I pulled the weapon back over my head and hurled it overhand with all my strength. The hatchet spun through the air and hit the tree above the target, handle-first, and bounced harmlessly into the grass.
“Nice distance,” Blade said, impressed. “Not easy to throw it that far.”
I rubbed my shoulder. “I think I pulled something.”
“Nah, you’re just warming up,” Blade said. He stepped away from the picnic table and stood behind me, then slid his hand over my shoulder. “Where’s it hurt?”
The weight of his palm through my sweater was enough to soothe the soreness. “I don’t know,” I managed to say.
He moved his palm in soft, pressured circles over the back of my shoulder, then up to the tense line of muscle on top of my shoulder and at the crook of my neck. As his chilled fingertips brushed against skin near the collar of my sweater, I suppressed a sharp inhale. I couldn’t help but flicker my eyes closed at his touch. The gentle yet firm pressure eased tension I hadn’t realized I was carrying.
“Feel better?” Blade asked in a low, rumbling voice.
How could he handle a weapon so expertly and then touch me with such gentleness? My head tipped forward slightly and his fingers pressed into the tense muscles on the back of my neck.
My phone vibrated hard on my leg, wrenching me back into reality. I shifted away from Blade’s touch and fished my phone out of my pocket. It was my father’s number on the screen. Ice-cold fear instantly washed away any warmth I’d felt.
“Everything okay?” Blade asked.
“Hang on,” I said. “I’ve got to take this.”
I darted around the corner of the clubhouse, checking over my shoulder to make sure Blade didn’t follow. I stared at the screen for a long moment. Was it worse to answer now, or let it go to voicemail? If I didn’t answer, would he send someone after me? And if I did answer—what if Blade heard?
I just couldn’t say anything to Dad. But if I let him know I was alive and compliant, I could buy a little more time. I answered the phone.
“Paddy.” My father said my name like it tasted foul. “Update.”
“Going well,” I said. “Not a great time.”
“Why haven’t you checked in? What have you got?”
“Can’t say,” I said through clenched teeth.
“Oh,” my father said. “I see. You can’t speak. They’re around, aren’t they? You’re infiltrating?”
“Yes.”
“You have any information for me?”
“Not yet.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yes.”
“Pick up the pace, then,” my father growled. “Or we’ll have to reconsider the terms of our deal.” He hung up without saying goodbye.
I leaned back against the cold brick wall of the clubhouse until I stopped shaking. When I walked back to the picnic tables, Blade had thrown all eight hatchets in the box into the targets and was in the midst of retrieving them. He jogged over and surveyed me with concern. “Something wrong? You look a little pale.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Just cold. I need to get back to my room—do you mind?”
“No problem,” Blade said with some confusion. “You need help with something? What was that call?”
“It was nothing.”
He clearly didn’t buy it—but he didn’t ask any further questions. Just the press of his lips into a thin line revealed his concern.
I didn’t leave my room in Ballast for the rest of the afternoon. Nerves chewed at me. That was too close of a call at the clubhouse. If I had answered without recognizing the number, or if Blade had heard our discussion, he would know the truth of who I was. The guilt of the lie weighed heavily on me. It wasn’t just my own fate that bothered me now—taking the call in front of Blade had hurt. Keeping the truth from him hurt. And I wasn’t just lying to Blade. I was lying to Raven, and Maverick, and Priest, and Heath—all these people who had done nothing but treat me with kindness.
And I was drawing the Vipers directly toward them.
Would it be better to tell him?
No—impossible. I had to leave.
If I did tell him, though…
What if he didn’t turn me away? What if he helped me escape the Vipers, instead?
I shook my head at myself. That was a ridiculous idea. I couldn’t go from one club directly into another. Whatever was happening now—it would change. Clubs would always be violent.
Unless Priest was right, and Hell’s Ankhor really was different.
I couldn’t take that risk. Not when I was so close to freedom.
But.
I had to tell Blade. I wanted to tell him. I didn’t want to be a sleazy liar like my father. Even if it ruined whatever we had between us—I should tell him the truth.
I was jerked out of my thoughts by a
sharp knock on the door.
“Logan?” Raven’s voice called through the door. “Brought you a sandwich.”
As soon as he said the word ‘sandwich’ I realized how hungry I was. I swung open the door gratefully to find Raven standing empty-handed, angular and elegant in a long-sleeved white shirt.
“Tricked you,” he said with a grin. “But there are sandwiches downstairs at Ballast. Come on, a little bird told me you’ve been hiding out all day.”
Raven’s lure of food worked, and we ate downstairs in Ballast. The bar wasn’t crowded, but was still busy, with Siren working the bar and a few other members and citizens hanging around. One of the members, a broad-shouldered man with a flat, ruddy face, kept casting mean looks at us. The same guy who’d stared me down my first night in Ballast. Something about him was still strangely familiar, but for the life of me I couldn’t place what it was.
After we ate, Raven dragged me, as expected, into another pool game. It was the perfect sport for him. He couldn’t stand still, especially not in a crowded bar, and his keen mind was always running four or five steps ahead of everyone else’s—I’d gathered that just from the few days I’d known him. Pool gave him a way to channel that energy.
“Can I ask you something?” I asked, leaning on my pool cue.
“Sure.” He didn’t take his eyes off the shot he was lining up. “No promises on answers, though.”
“Why do you stay here, in Elkin Lake?”
Raven took his shot and missed. He straightened up and looked at me curiously. “They’re my family. Why wouldn’t I stay?” His tone was gentle, like he was probing me for information instead of the other way around.
“I don’t know,” I said with a shrug. “I guess… You’re not really…”
“The biker type,” Raven said, nodding. “Right. These guys aren’t really a lot like me.” He looked at me, and the ‘but you are’ went unsaid.
I shrugged and started lining up my next shot.
“Once I finished my degrees, I’d been away from Elkin Lake for about six years,” Raven said. “What with the computer science undergrad and then the master’s. I had some good opportunities over in San Francisco for a job, but the more I thought about it, I thought, why do I want to leave the club behind? What’s my motivation here? What do I have to prove?”
