Silver Biker: The Silver Foxes of Blue Ridge

by L. B. Dunbar

  The men who frequent this place are my family now. I should have been the one to leave the area, but I’ve always been a sucker for this place. It’s one reason I joined the search and rescue crew and put in to remain here. Six years ago, I had even more reason to stay local.

  “How many have you had?” Bear mutters to me. He’s a big man, looking a bit like badass Santa or a polar bear. Then again, our president Justice looks the same. Large, burly men with rough voices and rougher pasts are the norm here. The past does not discriminate by size or stature, though. I fit in with my silvering hair, slimmer build than these men, and an ugly history.

  “Lost count after one,” I tell him, tossing back the next shot of whiskey, which looks like I’m holding two in my hand. I’ll be crashing here tonight unless some poor soul takes pity on me and drives me home.

  Home. The house I had with my family. Evie and . . . I can’t go down that path. I need to stick to only one memory at a time, and tonight is Evelyn.

  She wants a divorce? She’s going to give me something first because I’m a fucking selfish man.

  A large hand claps my shoulder, squeezing hard once. I hate to be unsuspectingly touched, and I equally hate surprises, so I turn with fist raised, ready to punch whoever has his hand on me.

  “Simmer down, little brother,” Giant mutters to me under his breath. Since the brewing company joined forces with my club on a fundraiser for the upcoming community center, my eldest brother has been popping in here more often. Him and that damn fool woman who started everything—Janessa Cruz.

  “Did you know Evie is back?” Giant asks, not mincing words as he helps himself to the stool next to mine.

  “I did.”

  “Did you see her?” Giant questions, staring at my profile while I keep my eyes forward.

  “I did.”

  Silence passes between us as he orders a beer from Bear. I don’t need to face my brother to know what he looks like. His eyes match everyone else’s in our family—a strange mix of gray and brown, like weathered bark. I’m the odd man out, and always have been with my blue set, but it’s even more than a pair of eyes. My eldest brother has thick hair and a matching beard, bordering on charcoal gray but still plenty dark, unlike my hair, which is short to my scalp, dusted with more salt than pepper, and when I let my whiskers grow, it all matches.

  “Gonna talk to her?” Giant finally asks. I shake my head, not certain if I’m answering Giant or trying to clear my thoughts of my wife with another man. Tapping the shot glass on the bar, I’m still waiting for Bear to give me another pour.

  “James,” Giant addresses me.

  “Ranger,” I snap back at him. He knows I go by Ranger in this room, in this club, in this town. I no longer want to be James Harrington, the pitiful fuck who lost everything. I’m Ranger. A lone ranger for that fact.

  Giant ignores my correction. “What happened?” Giant might be quiet, the silent brooding type, but he’s observant. We’re close in age, back to back in school, and once tight until I fucked it all up.

  “I saw her.” Explanation complete.

  “And . . .?”

  I kissed her. God, I fucking rammed my tongue into that sweet mouth, wiping it clean of anyone else, and then kissed her again, reminding her of how we once were—hungry and needy.

  She can’t possibly kiss him like that, can she?

  “She wants a divorce.”

  “Fuck,” Giant mutters under his breath. A beer bottle appears before him, and he wraps a hand around it. Lifting it for his lips, he takes a deep swallow, drowning in his thoughts.

  I know the feeling, man.

  “What’d you say to that?” Giant asks after breaking from the long pull. My gaze follows the lowering of the bottle to the bar top before I answer him.

  “I agreed. With an ultimatum.”

  “Jesus,” Giant hisses. Then he chuckles. His hands double tap on the bar edge, and he laughs. “You are my brother.” He guffaws.

  What the fuck?

  “That’s how I met Letty. I threw down a challenge, and she accepted.” Letty is Giant’s soon-to-be second wife. His first one died. Sweetest girl ever but quiet and demure. This new girl has really opened up my brother. I bet they’re having crazy good sex. That’s the only thing I can think of that will put a smile on a man’s face like the one he wears whenever he mentions his new woman.

  I used to smile like that.

  “Yeah, well, your Letty and my Evie are not the same women. Evie rejected my suggestion.”

  “What’d you ask for?”

  “I want her to sleep with me.”

  Giant chokes, and another explicative hisses from his lips. “Well, she is your wife, but man . . . you’ve been separated for what, five years?”

  “Six,” I correct.

  Giant chuckles. “I can see where that might be a problem.”

  “How difficult is it to sleep with your fucking husband? We did it all the time before—” I stop myself short, knowing exactly how difficult it was after. After everything went to hell. I’ve remained in that hell while Evie moved on.

  “Dude, you haven’t been together in years. You want to win her back, then you need to woo her a bit.”

  “Fuck this shit. I’m not trying to win back my wife. I just want her to sleep with me, and then I’ll give her what she wants.”

  Giant stares at me. “Do you really want to divorce Evie?”

  I don’t answer him but feel the weight of his glare and the pressure of the next question. “Do you think she really wants to divorce you?”

  “She met someone,” I announce a little louder than necessary.

  “You haven’t answered your brother,” a deep, rough voice speaks from behind the counter, and I glance over the bar to see my new best friend and club president leaning against the wall highlighting various alcohols.

  “What do you know?” I address Justice. He’s been keeping a big secret, roping the club into this damn fundraising thing, and dragging my name with it all to keep himself in pussy. I scrub a hand down my face. Justice wouldn’t know how to a woo a woman. He’s the one duped lately.

  “Do you really want to divorce your wife?” Justice questions like Giant.

  “It isn’t about what I want.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Giant adds, and Justice nods his head once to agree.

  “Fine, what I want is to fucking sleep with my wife and then get on with my life.”

  “Good to know things haven’t changed.” The soft feminine voice turns our heads.

  Evie?

  Shit.

  “Evelyn,” Giant croons with his deep voice and stands from the barstool. Big arms wrap around my woman as he pulls her into him. She practically disappears under his large form, and she returns the hug with her thinner arms. Giant kisses her temple before releasing her.

  “You look beautiful, Evie.”

  “Thank you.” She blushes, and I wonder what my brother’s playing at, or why she’s flushed by the compliment. Evie is the most beautiful woman alive as far as I’m concerned, and she damn well knew it when we lived together. “I hear congratulations are in order.”

  My forehead furrows while Giant softly smiles. There’s that grin again of a sexually satisfied man. “Thank you, but who told you?” Giant turns to me, but I just stare at Evie. Her blond hair is pulled up in a ponytail. Her makeup done a bit. She looks too good.

  “I saw Billy at the Pub.”

  A disadvantage of living in a small town. It’s small. And us Harringtons are many.

  “What were you doing there?” I snap as if it’s any of my business or concern.

  “I wanted a drink.” She holds her head higher when she addresses me as though my speaking to her is beneath her. I am beneath her. I have no proper words for her. We don’t have anything left to discuss. I just want her in my bed one more time, and then I’ll let her go.

  “Bet Billy was shocked to see you. Probably hit on you.” My younger brother was insatiable for y
ears. He flirted with everyone, including my wife, just to piss me off.

  “Actually, I met Roxanne McAllister.” Ah, the bookstore owner who has tamed the wild man under me in birth order. “And he invited me to see your mother.”

  What the fuck?

  “I thought we could go together—”

  “Fuck no,” I bellow, my voice loud. “Not me. Not you.”

  Evie blinks at me.

  “Why not?” Giant asks on her behalf, but Evie knows. When I broke it off with her, I broke it off with everyone.

  “So he can move on with his life,” she mocks my former words. “How’s that working out for you, James?” she sneers at me, and I deserve her wrath. Her sass also turns me on, and I want to kiss the crap out of her again, right here in the middle of this bar. She’s mine. Only I can kiss her.

  “Seems to be agreeing with me, so what does it matter?” I immediately realize how unfair that sounds. She’s beautiful. She’s desirable. And she no longer belongs with me.

  “I’m outta here,” I say, rapping my knuckles on the bar and fumbling off the stool.

  “Whoa,” Giant says, reaching out for me.

  “Easy, Ranger,” Justice mutters from behind the bar.

  Evie says nothing. She just stares at me, giving me that look of hard steel just as she did back then.

  Like she did when I told her to get the fuck out of my life.

  I shove Giant’s hands off me and brush past Evie as I make a not-so-grand exit.

  6

  Hard Pass

  [Evie]

  I wake from the soft brush of fingertips across my forehead. My lids flip open, and I stare at the man sitting next to my curled body on the bed. Rolling my head on the pillow, I look toward the ceiling, taking a second to acclimate myself to my surroundings.

  How did I get here?

  I recall driving James home. Giant caught his brother before he face-planted into the front door of the bar. He’d been swaying as he attempted to walk away. I told Giant I’d take care of my husband. I’m all too familiar with him in this state—when he’s had too much to drink. Giant was concerned I wouldn’t be able to get James into the house, but to my surprise, James was lucid enough to stagger up the front steps and open his own front door.

  Our front door.

  I should have left him then.

  I shouldn’t have followed him.

  Once inside the familiar house, a Siberian Husky greeted us. James kicked off his shoes and tossed himself on the couch in the living room, and the dog yipped at him a few times as if chastising him for his drunken state. Then the animal made himself at home on the floor next to the couch where his master lay. The dog gave me almost a pitying look.

  I shouldn’t be here, I told myself repeatedly, but curiosity got the best of me. With James out cold, I’d decided to wander around. Same kitchen. Same dining room. Same everything, including this room.

  My eyes shift to James, staring down at me, as I lay on the twin bed. I feel like I’ve been caught where I shouldn’t be, yet I have every right to this bedroom.

  My vision drifts from him again, taking in the state of the space. Bright blue walls with white trim. Sunlight filtering through mini-blinds at half-mast. A shelf with sports trophies and pictures of friends. A poster for the Atlanta Braves. A computer monitor and keyboard on a desk too small for a growing boy.

  When I left, I took what I wanted from this bedroom. They were only trinkets—mementos of a life lived too short, but one filled to the brim. They were only things. They didn’t replace him, and they’d never bring him back.

  My eyes cloud. I’d cried last night when I entered this room. James hadn’t touched a thing. It was dusty and musty, but everything was still in its original place. He wanted to close the door and lock away time. I wanted to enter and surround myself in memories.

  “Do you think it’s okay to lie down on his bed?” I’d asked James’s mother.

  “I think you can do whatever you think is best to grieve.” That was Elaina Harrington. She didn’t mince words. She told me what I was going through without trying to sugarcoat it.

  I was grieving.

  Then.

  Now.

  I realize something covers me, and I notice the quilt over my body. My sister-in-law Clara made it for him when he was nine. It was a true work of talent and skill with fabric. More memories flood my head.

  Baby blankets.

  Baseball uniforms.

  Closing my eyes, I swallow hard, willing away the prickling tears. James remains seated next to me, not speaking. He didn’t have much to say when it happened. He would never have been this close to me then. Afterward, his rejection was almost immediate.

  “You didn’t call,” James finally says, his voice tight and wet. A soft tear leaks from each of my eyes despite my fight to control them. Slowly streaming down the side of my face, they collect in my hairline near my ears.

  I didn’t call.

  “You made a promise,” he adds.

  A promise that I would call each year on May seventeenth, and James would answer.

  I should scream at him that we made more than just the one promise. We took vows to love and honor one another, in sickness and in health, until death parted us. However, it hadn’t been one of our deaths that separated us.

  It had been the death of our son.

  He was twelve when it happened.

  He would have been eighteen in May—when I didn’t call James.

  I’m the one who should be angry. James could have called me. He has my number. It’s been the same one for nearly twenty years. The first year after we fell apart, I waited and waited and waited for a call from him.

  An apology.

  An explanation.

  Anything to hint he wanted me to come back to him.

  He never called.

  I broke first and contacted him when our son would have turned thirteen. He would never be a teenager. He would never fall in love, kiss a girl, or hold her hand. He would never go to high school or college or work a job. He wouldn’t marry or have kids or lose his heart to both a woman and future children.

  I lift myself to a seated position, toying with the yarn ties sticking out every so many squares on the quilt.

  I should argue with James, but I don’t have the energy. Six years is too long to harbor bitterness. It took me a year, until our boy would have been thirteen, to let go of the pain in my heart from my husband. The ache of losing our son will never disappear.

  “How are you feeling today?” I ask, ignoring his statement to me. James shifts, resting his elbows on his thighs. His head hangs while his hands clasp together between his knees.

  “I’m fine, Evie.” For the first time ever, he’s lying to me. There’s nothing in his voice. No tenor. No cadence. Just dull, unfeeling words. “What are you doing here?”

  “I drove you home,” I remind him. He shakes his head, not looking up at me. Two hands cover his face, and he swipes downward against his cheeks. The morning’s scruff scrapes against his open palms, sounding like sandpaper against his skin.

  “I meant, what are you doing in here?”

  Taking another gaze around the space, I give a weak smile. “Just remembering,” I say. Remembering when our boy loved a game involving a bat and a ball. Remembering when we took the photograph of the three of us on the ridge. Remembering when we first went fishing, and he kept the lure as a souvenir because he didn’t catch a fish.

  When I entered this room last night, I didn’t know how I’d respond. Would I break down into sobs? Would I feel hollow inside? Or would I smile at the memories? I did a bit of all three as I held the framed photo to my chest, ran a finger over a baseball, and smelled the quilt on his bed. I didn’t know what to expect, but I know what I felt after being in his room. His spirit is in my heart, and his memories are in my head, but he isn’t here among his things, this space, or our house. This is all a part of the past because there is no future for him.

  “I
don’t come in here,” James comments, straightening his back but keeping his hands between his thighs. He’s staring toward the window where specks of dust float in the air. There’s something magical whenever I see dust dancing in the sunshine. In my memories, there’s my little boy staring at the tiny puffs drifting through the rays streaming between the blinds.

  “It’s like heaven in my room,” he said as he’d been newly learning about Jesus and saw images of heaven in a picture book. His small fingers reached forward as if he could tangibly hold the unseen.

  “You’re my angel,” I told him. He was the only baby God graced us with, and that was an entirely different subject I didn’t wish to dwell on.

  “I can tell,” I finally address James. A huff of sarcasm fills my tone. The room is a shrine, and it’s depressing. Michael would be ashamed that we’d let time stand still on him. He’d want us to enjoy life, not wallow amidst the dust and stagnant air.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” James turns on me.

  “It means, it’s dirty in here.” I pick at the quilt one more time and let it fall back to my lap. “I’m going to clean.” I make to move, but James holds out his arm like a barricade at a toll booth.

  “Don’t touch anything.” His voice drops. He’s almost scary, but I’m not afraid of him.

  “This isn’t healthy,” I mutter. Mentally. Physically. This isn’t sane.

  “Our son is dead,” he bluntly announces to me as if I don’t know this fact.

  “Yes, he is, and he’d be so disappointed in us. His memories shouldn’t be buried under cobwebs. This room needs to be cleaned up and out.” I push at his arm, making it to my hands and knees in hopes to crawl off the bed, but I’m tackled and flipped to my back.

  “I said no,” James growls in my face as he presses over me.

  “And I said yes,” I snap back at him.

  His chest heaves over mine. His heart hammers through his T-shirt. I’m pinned under his body, and then he crashes his mouth against mine. His tongue seeks mine, opening me wider for his invasion. He angles his head to take more of me, sucking at me before returning to my lips again. I’m almost gasping for air, but my hands find his head, holding him in place, unable to allow him to release me. This kiss is anger, frustration, and fear. It’s I-hate-you and I-love-you and you-hurt-me all rolled into one, but I don’t know who’s saying which phrase.