Meant for Sin - Nicole Fox

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This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons--living or dead--is entirely coincidental. Meant for Sin: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Thunder Riders MC) (Beards and Leather Book 4) copyright 2017 by Nicole Fox. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission.

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Contents Meant for Sin: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Thunder Riders MC) (Beards and Leather Book 4) Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four Epilogue Books by Nicole Fox Born to Ride: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Midnight Hunters MC) (Beards and Leather Book 3) Built to Kill: A Bad Boy Hitman Romance (Moretti Family Mafia) Ride ‘Til Dawn: A Bad Boy Secret Baby Romance (Filthy Fools MC) The Traitor’s Baby: Reaper’s Hearts MC Filthy Nights: Demon Riders MC Filthy Sins: Sons of Wolves MC Knocked Up by the Killer: A Hitman Baby Romance Knocked Up by the Rebel: The Shadow Hunters MC Knocked Up by the Enforcer: Satan’s Legion MC Knocked Up by the Hitman: A Bad Boy Baby Romance Mailing List

Meant for Sin: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Thunder Riders MC) (Beards and Leather Book 4) By Nicole Fox

I’m nothing but a toy in the biker’s hands.

Nothing in this world comes for free. If I want Granite’s help, I’ll have to pay for it. But he’s only accepting one form of tribute: My bare body bent over his bed. ALLISON Everything happened too fast. One bad idea after the next, until I ended up somewhere I never thought I’d be: Bared in the lonely bedroom of a man who’s dying to break me. I can see it in his eyes – those sharp, predator’s eyes. So hungry and cold. Staring right through me. Stripping me, breaking me, teasing me, owning me. All while he stands in the entrance, with that taut, tatted body of his at complete ease. His hands are by his side right now, but in a moment, they’ll be on me. And I’ll have no choice but to submit. Because, as sick and twisted as this whole situation is, one thing remains true: I need him.

I need Granite more than I ever thought possible. I need him to help me rescue my brother from the clutches of a drug-dealing street gang that will kill Brandon if he ever tries to leave. I need him to keep me safe from the other brothers of the Thunder Riders MC, each of whom is more eager than the last to run their filthy tongues across my skin. But most of all, I need him to tame the fire that’s raging between my legs. I thought I was a good girl. But in Granite’s hands, I’m slowly learning the reality. As long as I’m here, I’m only meant for sin. GRANITE She’s terrified. Anyone could see that. Hell, I would be too, if I were a skinny, innocent little girl like her. There’s no one else here. No one to hear her scream or cry for help. No one… but me.

But that’s what happens when you choose to conceal yourself in lies and step right into a bikers’ den. This ain’t no carnival. It’s not a damn country fair. It’s an outlaw motorcycle club, one of the most ruthless around. Real sh!t happens here – there’s drugs, guns, girls, and more cash floating around than a little princess like her could ever dream of. And if you step outside the lines while you’re in here… you’re gonna get hurt. She thought she could lie to my face and use me and my brothers for her own purposes. But I saw right through that silly act. And I made up my mind, then and there. I’ll help this delicate angel – in return for something that only she can give me: Her complete and utter submission. There’s no saints in this clubhouse, darling. Around here, we take what we want – brand it with our ink – and let the whole world know it’s ours now. And that’s exactly what I’m about to do to her.

Chapter One Allison “I’m not going to stop calling you, so you might as well pick up.” I pace to my window and look down on the street at the kids playing baseball in the park and the older kids crouched near the bike shed, sharing a cigarette. An old lady walks her dog, giving the kids a wide berth, and the Texan sun blares down mercilessly. Several American flags fly from the nearby houses, although ‘fly’ is a generous way to describe these limp things. “End of message. Would you like to record your message again?” “Ah!” I snap, throwing myself onto my bed. My room is messy, clothes strewn everywhere, but it’s been hard to focus lately with Brandon skidding off the rails. I call him again. I keep expecting him to answer, but he never does; perhaps the mistake is thinking that he cares about his little sister more than his new friends. “Listen,” I say. Calm, I remind myself. “I’m not angry at you,” I lie. “I just want to talk to you. Don’t you think I deserve that? I haven’t done anything to offend you, have I? I

haven’t done anything to make you hate me, so why are you acting like you do? I don’t want to come by there. Really, I don’t, because I know you’d hate that, but what else am I supposed—” “End of message—” “Fuck!” I leap up and go to the window again, grinding my teeth. The old lady stares up at me with her mouth hanging open. She’s one of those old ladies whose hair has turned completely white but whose skin has turned completely brown, giving her a look of stark contrasts. “You do know that your window’s open, don’t you, missy? There’s no need to swear on a beautiful day like today!” “Sorry!” I call down, repressing the urge to swear again. I’ll call him for the last time, I promise myself. Then it’s time for action. “Listen to me,” I say, pacing the room. “I know you’ve had a tough time of it since Mom died, but that doesn’t mean you should just throw your life away. Remember when we were kids and you caught me with that bag of cocaine my friend gave me and you made me throw it away? You did that because you knew what was

best for me when I didn’t. Well, now I know what’s best for you. So please just call me—” “End of message …” I return to the window. There’s a layer of dirt on the window sill that is begging to be cleaned, but it can beg all it wants. “Hey, ma’am!” I call down into the street. The old lady looks up. “Yes?” “I want you to know I’m really sorry for swearing.” “Oh, well, that’s okay. You’ve learned your lesson. Just be more careful in future.” “Yeah.” I give her my widest smile. “That was really fucking stupid of me.” I go into the bathroom where I can’t hear her ranting and raving, stand in front of the full-length mirror for a moment—there I am, with long dark pixie-cut hair and wide green eyes and the look of a perpetually startled deer unless I consciously make the effort to change my expression—and then go down the stairs to the hallway. I pull on my sneakers and walk across my uncut lawn to my beat-up old car. It’s time to stop tiptoeing around

this problem. It’s time to do something. I drive to Brandon’s new house with a pit in my belly. This is what I’ve been dreading, but I suppose sometimes we have to face what we dread otherwise it’ll never stop scaring us. Yeah, right, like that isn’t just some justification. Maybe I ought to go wrestle a shark next. Brandon’s new house is a small two-bedroom on the other side of town, the once-red paint now discolored and flaking in the sun. The front yard is covered in my reason for staying away: around fifteen motorbikes, the big kinds, the biker kinds. Harleys and the like. The sorts of bikes men ride when they want to let other people know that they’re not messing around. I tie my hair back and practice my serious face in the rearview mirror. It takes some effort, but I can do it. It’s the face I use at work—when they deign to give me shifts—the same face I used in high school so that I didn’t stick out like a deer-faced thumb. I walk to the door quickly, afraid I might be too afraid if I take my time. My knock is firm. I make sure of that. From inside the house, rock music plays, shaking the walls, and men call out to one another. I can’t hear any words but it sounds like classic man-stuff, that jeering quality I’ve heard

from catcallers and men in clubs. The door snaps open so suddenly, I take a step back. It’s not Brandon, but a tall, wide man with a red handlebar mustache and a shaved head with a tattoo of a winged woman across his forehead and head; the naked body stretched around to the back of his neck. “What do we have here?” He tilts his head at me, appraising. “Call me a son of a bitch, ’cause it looks to me like a fine piece of ass has just waltzed right up to the door the second I was gonna come out and smoke.” In one hand he holds a bottle of whisky, a cigarette in the other. “Color me surprised, ma’am, but you surely are one fine piece of homegrown Texan ass.” Fear seizes me, crushes my speech, tightens my insides. I open my mouth; I close it. Words escape me. The pressure to speak grows and grows the longer he stares at me with eyes the same shade as his mustache. “Little princess, you really that nervous?” Ah, little princess. He couldn’t have chosen a worse epithet if he’d tried. It was what my deadbeat dad used to call me, before he decided that calling me anything at all was too much of a pain in the ass and skipped town.

“I’m not nervous,” I say, and it’s a miracle but I don’t sound nervous. I sound like I did back in high school when the cheerleaders would laugh at me and I’d shoot some insult back at them, despite my drumbeating heart. “I just don’t have the time or the patience to stand here having a debate with you about whether or not I’m here to service your needs.” I tip my head sarcastically. “Sir. So if you could be so kind to go and fetch my brother Brandon, I’d be very grateful.” He opens his mouth. Just at that moment a glass smashes, the sound so loud it overpowers even the blaring music. For a second, it’s like the smashingglass sound comes from him. “Whoa.” He raises an eyebrow. “Goddamn. I never expected that to come out of you. Shit. You’re lucky I don’t hit women, sweetheart, otherwise you’d be laid out like a fuckin’ pancake right about now. So Brandon’s your brother? I guess it makes sense that his sister wears the pants. He ain’t exactly the pants-wearing type. No. No, ma’am. He’s more of the doormat type, ain’t he?” He grins maliciously. “I’ll get your brother if it means that much to you.” He turns into the house. “Brandon! Some slit’s here to see you!” Then he steps around me onto the porch, drops into the only chair, and lights up his cigarette. My big

brother appears a moment later, wearing a leather jacket that is one size too small for him, his eyes as wide as saucers from all the drugs he’s snorted or smoked. His hair is normally brown and soft, but right now it’s shaved almost bald with a zigzag carving on top. He’s a short man, but he’s wearing biker boots with a heel giving him a boost to five foot ten. “Allison?” he hisses, glancing over his shoulder. He steps onto the porch and slams the door, looks at the other biker, and then nods to the other end of the porch. “Just … come on. What are you doing here? You can’t just show up like this.” I follow him to relative privacy. “I’ve left you several messages.” “Have you? Ah, shit.” He snaps his fingers. “My phone is dead. I can’t find the charger.” “But it rang to voicemail. It didn’t go to voicemail straightaway, like it does when it’s dead. It rang and then it went to voicemail.” “Maybe some phones do that.” He shrugs. “I’m not a phone expert.” “Cut the crap.” I step right up to him so that I’m

looking almost directly into his eyes. He’s normally my height but those heels give him an edge. “We both know that you saw me calling you and decided that you didn’t want to speak to me, so you let it go to voicemail. So why don’t we start off telling each other the truth and go from there?” “Look. I didn’t see the calls, okay? I don’t know what you want from me. You can’t be here. Look around.” He nods at the bikes. “Do you really think that showing up here like this is a good idea? Doesn’t that seem ridiculously dangerous to you? Because it should. It sure should.” “Well, you’ve just explained why I have to be here.” I put my hand on his shoulder. When we were kids and he was going through one of his phases, I could put my hand on him like this and something in him would weaken. Whatever mad fury had captured him would dissipate, not that he’s ever gone through a phase even remotely like this before. “If you’re in a situation that’s so dangerous your little sister can’t come by to visit you, doesn’t that tell you that you shouldn’t be in this situation, either? Listen to that, Brandon. You bought this place with the cash Mom left you, right, in her life insurance? At least that’s how you paid the deposit?”

“Yeah,” he allows. “And you’ve let them turn it into a crack den.” He takes a step back, hands raised like I’m attacking him. Maybe I am, though I don’t mean to. Controlling my tone is much easier with people I’m not related to. “Please don’t start on me with that melodramatic stuff. I know you like the melodrama, always have, but I don’t see how melodramatics are going to help here.” “Just listen to the way you talk!” I snap, grabbing him by the wrist. “You sound like some doofus college kid, not a hard biker or whatever it is you’re trying to be.” He snaps his hand away. The curtains behind him open quickly, somebody inside getting some light, and I spot guns laid out on the table and a whiteboard with the words Operation: Fuck Them Up written at the top. When the biker sees me looking, he shuts the curtains quickly. Brandon’s head snaps back and forth during the quick exchange. “You really can’t be here.” He takes me by the hand and drags me down the porch. I try to struggle but he’s stronger than me, always has been even if he is a twerp.

“You’re in some real trouble,” I tell him when we’re at my car. “They’re not planning a hunt in there, are they? Or some range-shooting? You know I’m not a huge gun nut, but I’m not an idiot. Something bad is going to happen if you stay with this gang. It’s simple, Brandon. Just get in my car and come back to my place: to our childhood home. Think of it like that. Coming home. And then we can call the cops and put all of this behind us.” His face twists. “You need to leave. Right now. I’m serious. This isn’t a joke. You can’t come by here and start talking about cops. Are you crazy? No, no. It’s time to leave.” A man the size of a bear walks onto the porch, with the hair to match. “Somethin’ wrong, Brandon?” he shouts. “If you don’t go now,” Brandon whispers, “you’ll get me hurt. And maybe yourself. Please, don’t be stupid.” “This isn’t over,” I tell him, climbing into the car. “Not even close. I love you and I’m not going to let you fuck your life up like this!”

Chapter Two Granite Mr. Ivarsson sits opposite me in his big chair behind his big desk. The whole office is designed to make folks sitting in my chair feel small, I reckon. I’m in a stool and he’s in a throne. The boss is a tall pale man whose dad was from Iceland, but he’s got a Texan accent just like the rest of us. His eyes are blue and his head is shaved. He’s twice my age, at around fifty but the only wrinkles he has are from the sun. His neck and cheeks are red; he never tans, the boss, only burns. Maybe a man like me ought to never get nervous, but I’m trying to move up in the ranks and a oneon-one meeting with the boss ain’t nothing to sniff at. “You did some good work on those punks at the strip club,” he says. “I will never understand how punks like that think they’re going to get away with pulling that shit. The Devil’s Horn crossroad is ours. At least that’s what any outlaw worth half a lick of shit knows. But then you get these out-of-town punks who think they can move in and sling heroin

to kids and the Thunder Riders MC is going to step aside and let it happen.” “Punks are punks, sir. I don’t reckon thinking figures much into it for them.” He smiles. From the back of his mouth, his silver filling glints. “That’s a truth if I’ve ever heard one. You’re doing well, Granite, damn well. You’re what —not even thirty?” “Twenty-seven.” “Twenty-seven. At your age you’d catch me calling my elbow my asshole, but you’re focused. I’m impressed. Tricking them like that was smart. An out-of-town deal, in the middle of the night, a shipment of heroin …” He claps his hands together. “And it all took was a rifle and some night-vision goggles. Where’d you get those things, by the way? I never asked.” “The Internet. Let me tell you, sir, that you can get anything on the Internet these days.” He reaches into his desk drawer and takes out an envelope packed with notes, pauses for a moment, and then takes out two more. “This is for doing the job.” He slides one envelope across: twenty grand.

“And this is for doing it clean.” He slides the second: forty grand. “And this is for making my goddamn day.” Sixty grand. “We need men like you in this club, men who’re gonna think shit through, men who can plan beyond just going in there and lighting the place up. I know what you wanna hear from me, Granite. You want me to promote you to officer. I think that’d be fair. But right now we’ve got too many officers and not enough men like you who can go out there and get it done. But keep working. You’ll make the cut.” I swallow. Apparently taking out a rival gang singlehanded ain’t enough. But I’m not about to show how I feel to the boss. That’d just be stupid. “Yes, sir. Thank you.” I leave the office and walk through the clubhouse. It’s mostly deserted at this time of the day except for a few old fellas and the pledge behind the bar. I go out into the parking lot, get on my bike, and ride. I stop at a diner on the way to the gun shop and call Ranger. The sun is shining and the diner is full of families and couples. It’s a Saturday and everyone’s got a smile on their face, even if the heat is like a furnace in places. “’Sup?” Ranger says.

“’Sup,” I echo. “You bringing that back?” “You call me on my busiest day of the week with that shit?” The diner is called The Range, with two American flags drooping in the windless afternoon and a picture of a man holding a frying pan the same way other men’d hold a gun. “Look outside,” I tell him. A moment later a skinny, teenager-lookin’ man presses his face against the glass. At first he’s scowling, but Ranger and I have known each other too long for that. He gets to smiling even if maybe he doesn’t mean to. “I can come out for a smoke break,” he says. “One single smoke break. None of your let’s-go-to-the-bar shit, Granite. None of your it’ll-only-be-for-one shit, because it’s never one. I’ve got a business to run here.” “Don’t act like you ain’t pleased for the chance to sit in this glorious Texan sun. This is a God-gifted day.” “Ha! When’s the last time you went to church?” I think on it for a second. “I don’t reckon there is a last time.”

“You know, the reason I was in the club for just six months is because I like the diner life. I like frying and ordering and managing and stocking and all that stuff. I know that’s a big fuckin’ surprise to you.” He shakes his head as he makes his way through the diner toward the entrance. “I know that makes no sense to a man like you. But …” He walks outside, a mop of dark back hair curling around pointy elf ears, stuffed under a Stetson hat. He’s right; he never would’ve survived the club life for long. “Afternoon.” He tips his hat, a real cowboy cliché. “My point is this.” He drops his phone into his pocket. “If you’re here on some club business, I’m not interested.” “You know you don’t have to give me that speech every time I come by, don’t you?” I step from my bike and we walk to our regular smoking area, behind the diner in the shadows. He lights up a cigarette and then offers me one. “I quit,” I tell him. “Goddamn.” He takes a long drag. “So you invite me out here for a smoke when you don’t even smoke. That’s just fucking classic right there.” “You love giving me shit. I get it, you mop-haired

bastard. But that don’t mean you’ve gotta go on repeating yourself until the end of time.” He laughs, the giggling I’m familiar with, the giggling that is just another reason he’d never make it in the life. “So what’s the deal?” he asks. “Nothing,” I reply. He goes to the rear fire door and runs his hand along the frame, which is bent and broken at the corner. He inspects it for a while the same way one of my brothers’d inspect his bike if it was giving him a hard time. “You can’t come by here in the middle of the day and tell me you haven’t got shit on your mind. You only come by here like this when you’ve got somethin’ on your mind you can’t discuss with your friends at the club. So don’t play games with me.” “You know, for a wannabe-cowboy-scrawnymotherfucker you sure do talk tough.” “Big men don’t need to talk tough. It’s for small men to learn how to make themselves seem bigger than they are.” “How fucking meaningful. Where’d you hear that?”

“Round the back of my diner, when I said it just now. Come on, Granite, what’s the rub?” “It’s not a big deal, man. I just had a meeting with the boss and I thought he was gonna make me an officer, on account of this job I did, this real big job, did it all on my own and he just pays me—pays me well, don’t get me wrong—and sends me on my way.” “You need a woman,” Ranger says. “I don’t wanna hear about your job or anything to do with the club, because the solution is going to be the same no matter what the problem is. You need a lady, Granite, just like I’ve got a lady. Marrying Maria was the best thing that ever happened to me. I don’t want to get all soppy on you, but love, connection, all that stuff. It ain’t a lie. It really does change you. And when we have a kid … you know we’re trying … when we have a kid, I bet it’ll change me even more.” “I don’t see how getting married will make me an officer any quicker than staying single.” “Listen. I’m no psychologist, but I wonder if you even want to be an officer. Well, you do, sure, but why? Just ’cause being an officer is the most

amazing thing that could ever happen to a person, or ’cause you want to feel like you belong? A woman you truly love’ll do that just the same.” “Goddamn. I’m not about to grab myself a wife, quit the club, and come work here washing dishes.” “No,” he agrees. “You could do any number of things. I’m sure you’d make a decent mechanic or a courier or a gym instructor or something like that. Anyway, don’t you ever get tired of the …” He flicks his cigarette to the ground and shrugs. He won’t say it aloud. I think he likes to believe that the darker aspects of my work don’t exist. “Doesn’t that other shit get to you? It got to me and I was never involved in it myself. I just heard about it. And it got to me plenty.” I stuff my hands into my jacket pocket. “You would’ve learned a trick if you stayed in the club long enough, Ranger. It goes somethin’ like this: anytime you feel yourself starting to ponder those parts of the life, anytime you feel yourself getting sentimental or squeamish or whatever the fuck it is, you go and get a drink or a club girl and lose yourself in it. Or you just close your mind to it. What good will going there do me, do any of us? We all do shit for our living we don’t enjoy. Don’t tell me you enjoy it when half your staff bails

’cause of some virus and you’ve got to wash those greasy pans yourself.” “But those pans aren’t covered in blood,” Ranger says quietly. “It was good talking. Really. But like I said, I’ve got a business to run.” “All right, man.” We bump knuckles and I get on my bike, following my own rule and not letting myself think on what he said. My mind tries to stray there just the same way a bike tries to stray into the next lane, but both can be controlled if a man knows how. All it takes is some skill. I go into the gun store, one of those places with a lone star out front. Johnny Cash plays from the office in the back and a lady stands at the counter, and damn if she isn’t the most beautiful piece in this place. She’s tall for a lady but not by much, with long brown hair styled at the front and sides but wilder at the back. It’s unique. I ain’t no hair enthusiast but it gets me looking. Her eyes are wide and green, I see when she turns at the ring of the bell above the door, and her body is tight. She wears shorts and a tank top and it gets my blood stirring. She turns back to the counter and I go into the back room to meet with my man, but not before

I catch some of her conversation with the guy behind the desk. “I don’t know what that is,” she’s saying. “I just need something to protect myself, to … just a gun. When people come in here and they’re not experienced with guns, what’s the one you recommend? I’d like to see that one, please.” I watch her for a moment She’s more nervous than a Brit I saw in a gun shop once, fingernails scraping on the glass.

Chapter Three Allison “He was the handsomest man you’ve ever seen? Is that even a word?” We sit in an air-conditioned bar on the outskirts of town, where there’s more dust than road but where the cocktails are cheaper and the bars less packed. Emma raises her eyebrow at me; her perfectly stenciled eyebrow. She’s twice my age and with that comes twice the effort in personal appearance. It must be one-thousand degrees but she’s still crammed into a pencil skirt and heels. We work together at the call center. People say she’s my adoptive mother, only half-joking. “Yes, it’s a word.” I take a sip of my piña colada and smile at her. “He was the tallest man I’ve ever seen, number one, but he was also really, well— built. He wasn’t like those guys you see who spend all their time at the gym, though. This was something else. He was built the same way lumberjacks are built, or—” “You spend lots of time with lumberjacks, do you?”

She tilts her head in that way that makes me want to slap and hug her at the same time. She’s on the skinnier side and sometimes her expression is cutting. Her dark brown eyes only increase the effect. “He was covered in tattoos too,” I go on, ignoring her. “Skulls and snakes and stuff like that, all over his hands and his neck. And he was wearing a jacket with a picture on the back, only it happened so quick I didn’t see the picture. His hair was short, his face was clean-shaven. He was … well, he was just handsome. His eyes were bright blue. They were really something.” “Okay …” Emma sucks on her straw like a real lady. “I don’t see how this excuses you for buying a gun.” “Oh, come on. The last time I checked this was still Texas.” “Don’t ‘come on’ me!” Emma snaps. Her face is playful, but it could tip at any moment. Emma’s expressions are always ready to go one way or the other, depending on where her razor-like mood takes her. “I know we’re in Texas, miss, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’ve never fired a gun, never owned a gun, never even touched a gun

as far as I know. And now what? You think you’re going to somehow use it to help your brother? How, exactly? Please explain that to me. Are you some action-movie star now? Are you going to charge in there with guns blazing? Sorry, are you going to charge in there gun blazing?” “I have the right to buy a firearm,” I say. “I don’t see that I need to be lectured about it. I don’t want to quote the Constitution but I will.” She rolls her eyes. “Look me in the face and tell me you’re not nervous about handling that weapon. No, don’t smile. This isn’t a joke. Look me right in the face and tell me that you feel confident you won’t harm yourself or anybody else carrying that thing around.” “I don’t have it with me now. I don’t have a what’d ya call it …” “A concealed carry thingy?” “Yes, that’s precisely it. A concealed carry thingy.” “This is so ridiculous!” she exclaims, drinking down the rest of her cocktail and waving for another. “We don’t even know the most basic terms, and you’re talking about fighting—”

“Please speak louder,” I tell her. “I don’t think the man in the moon heard you.” “Don’t you mean the man on the moon?” “No, the man in the moon. It’s an HG Wells book.” “Great. Maybe you ought to throw books at them instead of bullets, then.” “Ha, ha, ha.” “Yes.” She turns to the waiter, a teenager with acne who looks at Emma like she might be a dangerous animal. She tends to have that effect on men south of thirty. “I’ll have a Sex on the Beach, please.” She turns back to me. “I love you, Allison, I really do, so I feel like I’ve got to tell you how crazy I think this is. You can’t just run around with a gun you just bought and don’t know how to use and expect to do anything—well, do anything productive at all! Let’s just slow down with this, okay? Let’s think it through properly. Why don’t you give me the gun and we’ll think of alternatives?” I glance out of the window. Maybe, in a different reality, I would let her convince me if right at this

moment there weren’t three bikers out there, standing near the hood of a pickup and laughing and smoking. I thought I didn’t remember the patch on the back of that man’s jacket, but these men have the same patch. A man on a motorcycle with thunder and lightning clattering behind him. The Thunder Riders. An idea formulates and takes hold. It’s crazy, but not as crazy as buying a gun when I don’t know how to use it or facing down a handlebar-mustachioed biker. “Allison! Are you listening to me?” “What? Um, sure. Listen.” I drain the last of my piña colada. “I have to go, Emma. It was really great talking with you and I think you’ve been a big help. But …” I get up and leave before she can protest, at least before her protests can work their magic on me. When I get outside I look back into the bar to see if she’s going to follow me, but luck must be on my side today. She’s on the phone, talking in that way she does with her husband: gesturing with her beringed hand, furrowing her eyebrows, over enunciating each word as though he is not keeping up with her. I walk across the sun-scorched parking lot toward the bikers, trying to look as casual as

possible. They’re standing next to an ATM so I walk toward that, taking out my purse and trying my hardest to look like nothing more than a dawdling twenty-three year-old. The first biker is a short, chubby man with gray hair growing almost exclusively from behind his ears. But despite its limited place of origin, it reaches down to his shoulders. I christen him Gray-Ear. The next biker along is taller and younger, with a sharp nose and a tattoo of a dagger just under his right eye. He is Dagger. The third holds an unlit cigarette, sitting on the hood, legs spread out. He’s the youngest of them, perhaps still shy of eighteen. I call him the Kid. “You talk so much shit it gives me a headache,” the Kid says, flipping his unlit cigarette across his fingers. “There’s no damn way you spent a night with that Iggy Azalea or whatever her damn name is. You ain’t even seen her in concert. I bet if this big motherfucker showed up to see her in concert they’d turn him away on account of all the kids around.” “Yeah,” Dagger agrees. “Don’t talk shit, old man.” “Fine, fine.” Gray-Ear holds his hands up. “Maybe I didn’t fuck her, all right? But she did suck my

dick!” There’s a pause, the men stare at him, and then he lowers his hands. “All right, I’ve never met her.” “What about these Brass Skulls though, eh?” Dagger says. He stretches out like a lion, rotating his neck side to side. “What do we make of these bastards?” “What’s to make of them?” Gray-Ear retorts. “They’re a bunch of kids who’ve gotten too big for their boots, is all. The boss’ll put ’em down.” “Or get Granite to do it,” the Kid mutters. He doesn’t sound as carefree anymore. “Did you hear what he did to those punks at the strip joint? Goddamn, but that man’s got skill.” “True enough. I don’t care how it gets done, only that it gets done. These Brass Skulls are starting to really piss me off.” From the outside, I look like a woman calmly going about the process of searching for her bank card in her purse, tipping it upside down, kneeling down, inspecting it every which way, but inside my bones are cold. The Brass Skulls: Brandon. Brandon shouldn’t even be in the club, let alone involved in some kind of a war. He should be in rehab, or some

coloring-therapy session, or something else that is safe and disinfected. Not the dirty, bloody streets. “If it comes to war, it comes to war,” Gray-Ear goes on. “You lads are young. Maybe you don’t remember when Mr. Ivarsson’s father was in charge. Ivar could barely speak a word of English, but he had this friend who spoke English and Icelandic, and those psychopaths ruled like they’d crawled out of some volcano in Iceland. Why do you think they call him Mr. Ivarsson and not Bjorn? Bjorn is a strong name. Means bear, I think. It’s ’cause he’s got his father’s strength. He’ll stomp out these fuckin’ Skulls, and we’ll be the only MC this side of Austin. Just you wait and see.” “Listen,” the Kid says. “All I care about is that pink-haired club girl. What’s her name? Talia or some shit. She sucks like a vacuum.” “How’d you know what a vacuum sucks like, you sick freak?” Dagger mutters. “Do you know what’s making me real curious, fellas?” Gray-Ear’s voice lowers. “What’s that?” Dagger replies. “Why that girl there is taking so damn long with the

ATM.” I look up. All three of them are staring at me. The Kid hops from the hood of the car and walks casually over to me, toying with his cigarette all the while. “Can I help you, miss? It seems to me that my friend here, even if he does look like a skeleton in certain lights, has made a pretty damn fine point. You trying to get that purse off or something?” My bank card, I say. But no, I don’t. I open my mouth but all that comes out is a pathetic breathy rasp. I clear my throat. “My bank card. I’m just looking for it.” They don’t look pleased, least of all Dagger, who hovers his hand near his hip. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out he might have a gun there. An idea occurs to me. I stumble toward the wall, collapse against it, and then push myself off and struggle back to an upright position. They watch this performance with smiles or half smiles. “I had some tail-cocks … I mean cocktails in the bar over there, and I wanted to pay my friend back, so I needed cash and now …” I dive into my bag. “Oh, here it is!” I pull out my bank card. “I’m so sorry. I’ll be on my way now.” Over the Kid’s shoulder, at the very corner of my

vision, Emma steps out of the bar. I can’t make out her face from here because the sun is making me squint, but I can imagine it: hell writ across her features. I make to walk away, but the Kid steps into my path. “Don’t your friend need that cash?” he asks, grinning from ear to ear. “Sure.” It’s amazing how quick I am now that I have the proper motivation. I get the cash and walk away, hoping I walk tall and slowly and confident instead of scampering away like an insect, though that’s how I feel. “What the hell was that?” Emma snaps. She adjusts her bag. If all the fury of a person could be put into one movement, it would be that. “I just … I have an idea, Emma. It’s a crazy idea. If I explained it to you, you might call a doctor. But I think it might work.” “Maybe I should call the doctor anyway,” she says, squinting and not just because of the sun. “You’re scaring me.” I smile at her; I bet it looks half crazy, if not completely. “I’m scaring myself.”

Chapter Four Granite I ride into town toward one of the Thunder Riders’ bars. The place is called The Mermaid but the carving out front ain’t no Disney shit. It’s a fierce lady with fanged teeth and razorblades tied to her flipper, with breasts the size of beach balls and fuck-me eyes. All in all, it’s a confusing thing to look at and the bar owner has had several complaints from concerned mothers in the neighborhood. The place is packed wall-to-wall with Thunder Riders and club girls. The club girls interest me most of the time, but since seeing that fine piece in the gun store they don’t compare much. I don’t like this feeling, this funk, this whatever it is. Maybe I need a drink. “All right, fellas.” Jax, Dallas, and Michaels sit at the bar. Jax is still playing with that unlit cigarette. Ever since the little bastard quit, he hasn’t stopped playing with them, flipping them over and over his hand like he’s some

magician. Dallas stares across the bar calmly, the only sign that he’s feeling anything at all the twitching of his dagger tattoo when he sees a fine lady. Michaels sits hunched over, nursing a whisky, gray strands resting on his shoulder like coiled snakes. “I could’ve fucked her,” Jax is saying. “Oh, ’sup, Granite.” “Could’ve fucked who?” I wave to the barman for a drink. He’s an old guy with a milky eye; he knows to give me whisky. “Just some whore who was so drunk she couldn’t handle the ATM machine.” “Oh, right.” I take a sip and grab the bottle before he can take it away. Ever since I saw her, goddamn … I’ve gotta break out of this. I can’t let a mood like this come over me. “Let me ask you fellas somethin’. Why is it every tough son of a bitch biker outlaw motherfucker has been giving me eyes like I’m Christ arisen these past few days? A week ago, I’d walk into a room and fellas would say howdy and we’d get down to playin’ some cards. These days I walk in and it’s like I’m the prick with the king-size wheels or somethin’.”

Before anyone else can answer, Dallas’s cold voice cuts through the music. “It is because you did something that no man here could do, so they’re scared of you, Granite.” “Scared of me for taking out a few punks from a strip club?” “No. For the way you did it. We’ve taken men out before, but not like that. How many were there?” Michaels says, “Fifteen, twenty. Nobody knows for sure, only that it was a whole lot.” “And you took them all out with one magazine of an AK-47.” Jax is almost leaping up and down. “That’s something. That’s really something. I don’t care what anyone says, a man goes in with an AK47 and leaves fifteen bodies behind, that’s one tough son of a bitch.” “Fifteen men …” I smile to myself. It was actually five men and I used three magazines to take ’em out, which is impressive enough if you ask me. But if we didn’t exaggerate our stories we’d have nothing to talk about on nights like these. “What is it like?” Jax asks. The kid’s clearly drunk. He’s got those wavy eyes. “Killing a man, I mean.”

Michaels snorts and Dagger lets out a shaky breath. “Stop asking people that fucking question,” Dagger mutters. “Nobody wants to be asked a question like that.” “If you want to know what it’s like so badly, why’nt you pop your cherry?” Michaels grunts. Those green eyes, man, those wide green eyes, and that tight body, and the way she had of looking around like everything was new and exciting, and there wasn’t a hint of the club girl in her, the look that club girls have on their faces like they’ll do anything just to see what it feels like; they can be yours for a night but they’ll never taste loyalty, can’t help it. It’s not why the fellas pick them. But this lady, and she was a real lady— “Granite?” Jax is backing away. That’s when I realize I’ve crushed the whisky glass in my hand, whisky and blood mixing together on the counter. The barman rushes over and cleans up. He hands me a towel and I wrap it around my cut hand. “I guess my thoughts were someplace else, fellas.” “Stop asking him stupid questions,” Michaels

snaps, slapping Jax around the back of the head the same way he’d slap his grandson. “A man comes to a bar to relax and grab himself a lady, not to—” “No,” I interrupt, feeling mean. “I can tell him if he really wants to know. Come here, lad.” He walks over to me tentatively. I dart my hand out and grab his shirt, bringing my face close to his. “Think of the worst blackout drunk night you’ve ever had, the worse fuckin’ night, where you wake up and you can’t remember a goddamn thing about the night before. Think about that feeling when you wake up. You know the feeling. When you’re wondering what you did, who you did it to. Some horrible thoughts go through your mind in that moment, don’t they, kid? You start wondering if it’s in you to rape a woman, to kill a child. Hell, anything’s possible, right? You weren’t even there. So the shame hits you, shame for shit you didn’t even do, ’cause you believe you did it. And now try’n imagine that feeling a hundredfold, stacked on your shoulders every waking second of your life; and even when you sleep, it chases you into your dreams. That’s what it’s like to kill a man.” Only I don’t say any of that, I just think it, try to

make myself say it, and then eventually just shove Jax away and let out a boisterous laugh that’s meant to cover up my embarrassment. I came too close then to sharing something I ought never to share. “It’s like farting, kid. The fuck you want from me?” I laugh again and Michaels and Dagger laugh, even though both of them are looking at me with their heads tilted too. “I need a woman,” I announce, leaving them before they can say anything else. That’s a half-truth right there, needing a woman. What I need is that lady from the gun store, but a man has to learn to do without what he needs if he’s going to stay sane. So I’ll just force myself to get with a club girl, lose myself in the pleasure of it for a night. Maybe it’ll help me forget. I spot one at the bar, hair dyed bleach blonde, a silver ring through her nose, a stud in her eyebrow, and another stud in her lip. Her neck is covered in tattoos, just like mine, and she’s wearing a strip of cloth that might be called a dress and another strip that might be called a top. “Howdy,” I say, smiling at her, striving to turn on

the charm. She glances at me for a moment, then her eyes narrow, then her mouth falls open. “You’re Granite,” she says. “The Granite.” “I’m Granite,” I agree. “Why don’t we go find a table?” She nods quickly. We sit at a table in the corner where the music is quieter. I have a view of the whole place from here, since the table is up a small set of stairs. Bikers and club girls dancing—or bikers doing their best at dancing—a few kissing, a few doing more than kissing. A couple of fellas square up to each other. When people open the door to go out to smoke or to come in from smoking, a haze follows them, and after that a slice of sunlight. I sip my whisky. “… so I said to her, ‘You can’t talk to me like that, you little bitch.’ She looked all surprised, right, like she thought she could go around calling girls whores and nothing bad would ever happen to her. She had a real stupid look on her face.”

“Let me ask you something.” The whisky is hitting me now. “If I told you to come into the toilet with me and bend over the stool and let me fuck you right there, what’d you say?” She flutters her eyelashes like I’ve just recited a sonnet. “Well, it depends on how nicely you asked.” “Don’t that—I don’t know—don’t that seem a little dirty to you? Wouldn’t you feel like you needed to go home and shower after a thing like that?” “No,” she answers at once. “Not with you, Granite.” “I reckon I would, too, if it weren’t for …” I don’t finish the sentence, not even the thought. I’m being a rude asshole, is the truth of it, but I can’t seem to stop. “I’m just wondering what we want to happen with a thing like that. What do we think we’re gonna feel afterward? Happy?” “Happy?” She giggles. “Who cares about happy when you can have horny?” She places her hand on my leg under the table. She’ll slide it up now, right to my cock. But I don’t want that.

I move away from her. “Why’nt you go find another man tonight, doll? I’m tired.” “Wow.” She leans back, hands raised, mouth an O. “So you invite me over here and then tell me to leave before offering me a drink?” “Yeah.” I sigh. “That’s about the size of it. I know. Don’t tell me. Men are such jerks.” “You took the words right out of my mouth!” she snaps, leaping to her feet and making for the dance floor. I sit back a while, letting the whisky do its work on me. Then she walks in, only she doesn’t look like she did earlier. She’s dressed all in black; she’s even wearing gloves. And her long, styled hair is stuffed under a baseball cap pulled low over her eyes. There’s no mistaking that body, though, even if it is covered up. And there’s no mistaking those green eyes even if they are hidden in shadow. It’s the lady from the gun store. Goddamn, it’s her. I make my way slowly through the bar, wondering what the hell she’s doing coming to a place like this. I follow close by her, but I don’t approach her, just watch to see what type of game she’s playing.

She stands at a relatively empty section of the bar and leans over to talk to the milky-eyed barman. “Excuse me,” she says, and that gives her away right there. Nobody in this place talks like that. “I was wondering if you could put me in charge of a higher-up in the Thunder Riders motorcycle club? It doesn’t have to be the big boss—what do they call him? President? Chief?—just someone who can give me some information.” Is she a cop? The thought hits me like a thump to the chest. I push away how I feel lookin’ at her and use my outlaw thinking instead. When an outlaw sees someone acting shifty, the likelihood is that the person’s a cop. It’s so likely that most outlaws don’t even bother trying to think of other explanations. But would a cop act so fuckin’ stupid? Would a cop really just stroll into this place and start asking questions? I wouldn’t put it past them, but this is really something else. Plus, we’ve got a relationship with the cops in these parts. Maybe a reporter, then? “I can’t help you with that,” the barman says. “And if you want my advice, missy, you shouldn’t be here asking questions. It’s not a good idea. Not a good idea at all. Why’nt you get going before something bad happens? Now, now, that’s not a

threat, just a reality of life.” She leaves soon after, looking shaken, as she ought to look. I don’t give it much thought. I follow her out into the evening sun: bruised, red, like the way I’m feeling right about now. Then I climb on my bike and ride after her.

Chapter Five Allison It’s not the first time Emma has shown up at my house and I doubt it will be the last, but this evening all I want to do is go in and do some online research about these motorcycle clubs, try to find a way to enact my plan without somebody hovering over me. But when I see her face set in that grim look of determination, I know that arguing with her will be futile. She offers me a smile, but she can’t hide the way her lips quiver trying to break into a scowl. “Hey,” she says. “Want a coffee?” “At nine o’clock? Believe it or not, I actually have a couple of hours of work tomorrow.” She looks up at my house: rickety in places with chipped paint and a general neglected look about it, but functionally okay. “You know, if money is ever a problem …” “Luckily Mom owned this place, so I don’t need much to get by. Thanks for the offer, though.”

We stand at the front door for a while, just staring at each other. The unspoken assumption is that I will invite her in and the unspoken understanding is that I don’t want to invite her in. But that stare is impossible to withstand without withering, so I open the door and wave her inside. Not that I need to wave her in; she’s through the door the moment I open it an inch, as if afraid I might slam it on her. She goes to the kitchen and busies herself with the coffee. “Shall I make you decaf?” “Sure,” I say. My laptop rests on the coffee table, tempting me. But I can’t exactly research motorcycle clubs with Emma hanging over me. She brings the coffee into living room and sits on the couch, legs folded. “So,” she says, sipping slowly. She’s using her we-need-to-talk voice, the one she used when she found out I’d gotten wasted ten days in a row after Mom died. I can’t turn away from that voice completely because it brought me back from the edge, but that doesn’t mean I like it. “Are you going to tell me what you’ve been up to?” She nods at me. “That isn’t exactly your regular style.” “I didn’t realize I had a regular style.” The coffee is

black and bitter, the way Emma likes it. I wonder if I’m being too paranoid by thinking she made it this way on purpose as a spiteful punishment. “I normally just throw on whatever I feel like.” “Oh, trust me, dear. I get that. But even this is a little extreme for you. You look like a cat burglar.” “I don’t like cats much.” Her eyes roll. “We can do this dance all night if you want. I know that you’re working tomorrow, but I happen to have one of my rare days off. So if you want to play this game, I’ll get nice and comfy here.” She wriggles in the seat. “Shall we put on The Lord of the Rings or The Green Mile?” “I’m actually quite tired …” “Me too!” she suddenly snaps, placing her mug on the table. So all of this was really the tightening of a spring before it comes loose. She scowls, smiles away the scowl, and then scowls away the smile. “Let me tell you what’s keeping me up at night, Allison. A few years ago I met a girl at work. She was seventeen years old and looked terrified all the time, and she was terrified all the time, from what I could tell. She would skulk around the office and mumble if somebody spoke to her, or she’d go the

other way and shout somebody down when they asked her if she wanted anything from the store around the corner. I made it my mission to talk to this girl, to make her feel welcome. I didn’t expect anything else to come of it, but I was wonderfully surprised when we developed a friendship. She quickly became my best friend. And now I see this same girl going down a road that can only lead to bad places. And you expect me to just let it happen!” I lean back, close my eyes, let the coffee mug rest against my chest even if it is hot. I stare at the blackness of my eyelids. “Brandon was always a good big brother. I don’t remember Dad very well but he does. He was eight or nine when he left. But even after that, he didn’t go bad, like some kids would have. He got even better. He helped Mom with the groceries and the housework, never bothered with drugs or alcohol or so much as a cigarette. He was a little doofy, sure, but he was a good person and he hated to see anything bad or mean. “I remember one time there was this spider with its leg trapped in a matchbox on the side of the road. I hated spiders and I told him to leave it, but he wouldn’t. He knelt down right there and opened the box and tried to smooth the spider’s leg out. That

didn’t go well, but you should’ve seen him after. I can still hear him, Emma: ‘I killed him! I killed him!’ He was a wreck.” I trap my tears behind my closed eyes. I shouldn’t be crying right now. I need to be strong, focused. “And then Mom got cancer, a big generous dollop of it right in the pancreas.” I laugh bitterly, the same way I laughed when she told me: not because it’s funny, but just because. “You have to understand, Brandon spent his whole life trying to make sure she was okay after Dad left. He didn’t do all of that for me. Some of it, maybe. But most of it was for her. He wanted to make sure that she was okay. He had to. He saw it as his mission. So when something came along that he couldn’t make okay …” “He went off the rails,” Emma mutters. “Exactly.” I open my eyes, rub the tears from them, and take a sip of my coffee. “Screw this. I’m getting a real coffee.” I go into the kitchen and start making it. Emma follows me. “But you can’t fix this in the way you’re going about it,” she says softly. She’s looking at me like she wants to hug me but knows that’s not what I want. As though I’m an injured

bird and she’ll cause more damage to me by trying. Just like Brandon with the spider. “You have to go to the police—” “And get him thrown in jail for ten years for possession of cocaine or weed or whatever he’ll have in his pocket when the police show up?” “Okay, fine. Not the police. But something else. A charity. A rehab center. The community center. I’m sure there are places out there where you can get help. You don’t have to go this alone. And you certainly don’t have to run around like Rambo.” I take a sip of my real coffee, letting the caffeine work its way through me. “Fine. Sure. That sounds good on paper, but what happens when Brandon gets himself killed while I’m filing paperwork with some charity?” She shakes her head. “You haven’t even tried yet. What about this? What if we come up with a plan together on how to make him see sense? We’ll have a step-by-step list and do it in a logical way. Right now you’re not thinking clearly. You’re letting your feelings for him get in the way of that.” “Of course I am!” I bark, spilling coffee onto the kitchen floor. “What else would you expect me to

do? He’s my brother, isn’t he? If my feelings for him aren’t going to be a factor, when will they be? But I’m not going by feeling and nothing else. If that was true I’d go to his place right now with my gun and start shooting. I’m thinking. I have a plan.” “And what’s your plan?” I can tell her, I suppose. But then what? What tricky word traps will she devise to stop me from going through with it? What clever word mines will she lay to blow it up before it can get started? What logical weaves will make up the net with which she’ll trip me? “Not a specific plan,” I lie. “Not yet.” “There you go then!” She clutches my hands, staring me firmly in the eyes. “I’ve literally been alive twice as long as you have, Allison. I don’t want to be that patronizing woman who says she knows better, but right now I think a bit of life experience can do a whole lot of good. So why not listen to me? Why not let me help you? We don’t have to come up with the plan tonight if you don’t want to. What about tomorrow evening? Just don’t do anything until we talk about it, all right?” “Are you going?” I ask, fairly certain I hide the

excitement from my voice. “I have to. I skipped out on date night to be here.” “Go, then.” I usher her toward the door. “Don’t let me keep you. Really.” We stand at the threshold, Emma half reaching for me before folding her hands on her belly. “We’ll make a plan,” she says. “We have a plan to make a plan,” I agree. “It’ll be fine.” “You’ll wait?” “I’ll wait.” I don’t like lying to her, but it’s better than the alternative. She leaves me, glancing back once before getting into her car. I go to the laptop and research the Thunder Riders. All I find is a forum website where one of the moderators explains that they only allow men into the club, which was what I guessed to begin with. If I’m going to do any good, I need to be in, not one of those girls I saw at the bar earlier tonight who seem to exist for the sole purpose of giggling at the

bikers’ jokes—and other things, I’m sure, which I don’t want to think about right now. And that’s not even because it makes me squeamish; it’s only because then I might start thinking about the Thunder Rider I saw at the gun store, and I might be tempted to go into the bedroom and lose myself in a fantasy with my hand between my legs, instead of focusing on the task at hand. It’s been several months since I’ve had a man, and several forevers since I had a man like the hunk in the gun store. I push the thought away and go into the bathroom. I bring the scissors to my hair: my long pretty hair that took years to grow down my back like this. Then I hack away, leaving only the pixie cut, which I can stuff under a beanie or a cap anyway. I sweep the hair under the rug with my foot and then arch my back, standing up straight, but there’s a problem: my breasts. I would never claim to have giant bazookas or anything of model-size, but I have breasts and they’re quite obvious just by glancing at me. I take off my shirt and my bra and go into the bedroom, under the bed and get the first-aid kit. I take out a bandage and wrap it around my breasts, tying them down, flattening them. Then I pull my shirt on and walk up and down in front of the mirror.

“How goes it, pal?” I say, deepening my voice. If I just deepen it, it sounds artificial, but if I put a growl in it, like there’s something stuck back there, it sounds more natural. “Wanna catch the game later? Call me Al, Al Marshall-Brown.” The motorcycle is old and dusty, a relic leftover from one of Mom’s boyfriends. I dust it off and push it out onto the road, siphon some gas from my car and then start it up. I’ve ridden three times before, so I suppose I have an advantage over a complete newbie. I sail around the block, if you can call a cautious twenty miles-per-hour sailing.

Chapter Six Allison I practice everywhere I go: in the bathroom at work, pacing around the house when I get home, in the rearview mirror when I’m driving. I deepen my voice, strut like a man—swagger; men don’t strut— and try and imagine what it’d be like to have a big piece of junk between my legs. How would it make me act? I bring to mind those bikers at Brandon’s place, trying to behave as close to them as possible. And then I’m ready, or as close to ready as I’ll ever be. Then it’s time. I ride to the clubhouse. I’ve gotten better at riding but not by much. I can just about keep up with traffic without making any foolish mistakes, but if they want me to weave between traffic like a professional, all my hard work will be wasted. I stop outside the clubhouse in the middle of a Saturday, the sun only getting hotter. I step from the bike, wipe sweat from my forehead, store my helmet, and then pull on my beanie. It’s way too hot for a beanie and already I can feel a layer of sweat coating my skin, but it’s manlier than my hair.

I walk up to the clubhouse, heart pounding, approaching the men at the door. There’s two of them, both smoking. One is Gray-Ear, the man from outside the bar, and the other is a young-looking biker I don’t recognize. Gray-Ear turns to me. “You a pledge? A courier? What, lad?” Lad. That’s a start, then. “I’m neither,” I mutter, voice so growly the words are barely audible to me. Let’s just hope these men are so used to motorcycle engines it makes no difference. “Want do you want from me, then?” Gray-Ear chuckles. “Standing in the sun having a smoke and some teenager-looking motherfucker strolls up and starts growling at me, and I’m supposed to—what? Speak. Goddamn.” I take a deep breath, let it out shakily. This is a planned speech. “I’ve been hearing lots about your club, the Thunder Riders, been hearing it’s the hardest-riding club this side of the Devil’s Horn crossroads. And I think I’m a pretty tough guy, too, so I want a meeting with your boss. I wanna join the club.”

Gray-Ear watches me for a moment and then lets out a barking laugh. “I’ve seen lots of things in my life, a damn lot. I’ve seen men fall off their bikes wearing nothing but shorts and getting up without a cut on them, and men in leathers falling off and never getting up again. I saw a lady fuck a horse once. But this … some teenager coming up to the club and asking to see the boss? This is new to me, let me tell you.” He takes a drag from his cigarette and exhales, shrouding his face. He waves a hand, dissipating it. “I’m not about to go and disturb the boss with this shit, goddamn. Turn around, kid. Wait until your balls drop. That’ll be a start, at least.” I turn around, walk a few steps, and then think of Brandon and those guns. I need this. I can’t just leave after almost a week of getting ready. I turn back, my heartbeat going crazy. But I ignore it. I have to. “I didn’t come by here to be lectured, old man, and I didn’t come by here to be laughed at either. I happen to know you’ve got shit with this new MC, the Brass Skulls. I hear they’ve been recruiting more men. What about the Thunder Riders? Can you afford to just turn folks away?” “He has a point,” the other man mutters. Under his jacket he’s wearing a comic-book T-shirt.

“Does he?” Gray-Ear shakes his head. “A pledge telling me that a fuckin’ civilian has a point. What other gems of wisdom you got in that head of yours, kid? Listen to me. I ain’t goin’ to the boss with this shit. That’s final. Mr. Ivarsson don’t take kindly to folks who waste his time.” “But this won’t be a waste of time,” I counter. “This’ll be adding troops to your army. What’d’you think the government does when we go to war, turn troops away?” “Yes,” Gray-Ear says, looking at me like I’m crazy. “They do. They always have. ’Cause listen, kid, it don’t take much to screw shit up when bullets start flying. You want a man at your side who knows how to fight, not some kid who sounds like they ain’t hit puberty yet. Like I said, come back when your balls are an inch lower. And stop hanging around here. You’re starting to piss me off.” “All right there, Michaels.” A man steps from the shadows of the doorway, bald with blue eyes, covered in red patches of sunburn. “We should give the boy a chance. If he thinks he can waltz up to my house and get a job, let’s see if he can dance.” He walks into the clubhouse.

I stand there for a moment before Gray-Ear— Michaels—nods at me. “That means follow him.” I walk into the clubhouse, the smell of whisky and cigarettes hitting me immediately. The walls are covered in framed photographs of men in biker leathers, some of them in black and white, and the bar section is dotted with bottles of whisky and cards strewn across tables. A cigarette burns from the corner, its smoke distorted in the light. I think it would take several lifetimes to count the motes of dust which hover in the air. The bald man leads me to his office, which is right next to the bar. It’s a large office but asymmetrical, his chair massive and mine a glorified stool. “Take a seat.” I sit down. I’m about to fold my legs under the stool when I remember that’s not how a man sits. So instead I spread my legs and lean forward on my elbows. “My name is Mr. Ivarsson,” he says. “I am the president of this club and I decide if civilians get made into pledges. I was listening to you and Michaels. You seem to think you have something to offer the club. You seem to think that we’d be lost

without your unique abilities.” His accent is Texan but every so often a Scandinavian twang comes into it. He steeples his fingers. “I am not a superstitious man, but I am a man who believes that sometimes the order of things has some importance. Here I was thinking about what to do with the Brass Skulls, and then I overhear you outside, talking about the Brass Skulls. Perhaps it was fate. Are you our savior? Tell me your name, lad.” “Al Marshall-Brown, sir,” I say at once, because I doubt any man hesitates when asked his name in here. “Al. So, Al, are you the one who’s going to turn this all around?” He leans forward, his expression difficult to read. The corner of his lip twitches as though he could smile, but maybe he’s like Emma and it could just as easily be a scowl. He might be mocking me. I lean back, let out air through my teeth. “I don’t think any man can say that, sir. All I can say is that I’ll work my hardest for the club. I’m not claiming to have any magic powers or anything like that, sir. But maybe if you recruit ten men like me, you’ll have a better chance against the Brass Skulls. But if you get defensive, maybe they’ll wipe you out.”

I clench my teeth so hard it aches in my skull. That might have been a step too far. That might have been the nail that will seal the coffin in which I will be shipped far, far away. Mr. Ivarsson stares at me for what feels like hours, drumming his fingers on the desk. “Have you ever killed a man?” he asks. “Killed a …” I resist the urge to lick my lips. I try to read his eyes: what does he want me to say? This is a meeting with a purpose, so lying and telling the truth are both viable, depending on what he wants to hear. But his face gives nothing away. “No,” I say, guessing he’ll see through it if I lie. “I have never killed a man.” “It’s a strange thing, especially if you do it with your hands.” He stands up, hands behind his back like a general, and paces up and down the room. “My father was a hard man. He modeled himself after the Viking raiders who died thousands of years ago. He was tough, and mean, but he was also efficient. He wanted a son who knew how to kill before he became a man, so one afternoon he took me on the back of his bike and rode me miles and miles to this giant lake. I don’t even remember now where that lake is, only that there was nothing there, just the water, just the wind. He told me we

were going fishing, but I knew we weren’t as soon as we got there. There was a man tied to a post at the edge of the lake, with a machete just out of his reach. The man was struggling and dribbling as men’ll do in those situations, but my father just walked me up to that machete, nodded at it, and stood back. It took me twenty-one hours to get up the courage to do it, and all the time my father just stood there, staring. We went for ice cream afterward and we never talked about it, except on his deathbed when he told me he was proud of me.” He slams his hands on the table, moving with speed I wouldn’t have guessed. I start; can’t help it; all the playacting in the world can’t stop me from leaning away from his jackal’s smile. “How do you feel, hearing a thing like that? Because we need men who aren’t going to make excuses. We need men like my father. We need men who aren’t going to get squeamish when the time comes. What if I took you out and told you to hack a Brass Skull apart with a machete? What would you do?” I wouldn’t do it, because it might be Brandon. “I’d do it,” I lie, my voice more growling than ever in an effort to hide my fear. “Your father did the right thing. He was trying to make you strong. He clearly succeeded.”

He just watches me as a man will watch an insect to see if it shrinks or braves the microscope. I brave it as best I can, staring back at him, not allowing my lip to tremble, trying with everything I have to make him believe that I am club material. He stands up, smiling. “All right then, tough-guy Al. You can come on as a pledge. That doesn’t mean that you mean shit, or that you’ll ever be a Thunder Rider. That doesn’t mean that you have a place here or that any of our brothers will help you if you ever need helping. That right is reserved for true brothers. It means that you’re dirt, and maybe one day you won’t be dirt if you show your loyalty. Go outside and ask Michaels if he has any jobs for you.” He pauses. “Right now! What the fuck are you staring at me for?” “Yes, sir.” I jump to my feet and walk back outside. “The boss told me to ask if you have any jobs for me.” Michaels studies me for a moment. “He did? And if I go and check that with him, he’ll say the same?” I stand aside. “Go check. See what he says.” He runs his nicotine-stained fingers through his

greasy hair. “I want every bike in the parking lot cleaned. You can get water and sponges from around the back.” It’s only when I’m kneeling down near the faucet, filling the bucket, that I allow myself a small smile. A nervous smile, a shaky smile. But a smile all the same.

Chapter Seven Granite “You just can’t get her out of your head,” Ranger says, sliding the bottle of whisky across the table to me. It’s evening time and the diner is almost empty apart from a few old fellas in the corner. “You don’t have to be ashamed of it. I get it. You know how I met Maria. I was working in the kitchen and she came in with her friends one day and just sat there and man, if I wasn’t the most goggle-eyed person in the world. I couldn’t talk to her, she was so beautiful. I loved her. People say love at first sight is bullshit, but I don’t know. I sure as hell felt something there.” I take a swig of whisky. “That might be a little extreme. I don’t love this girl. I don’t even know this girl. But yeah, you’re right. I can’t get her out of my head. Every time I close my damn eyes, she’s there. I’ve been followin’ her most days, keeping an eye on her, ’cause the worst of it is I don’t know what her game is. She clearly has an interest in the club. Last week she was riding around the block on some piece of shit bike; thing was so rusted I couldn’t even see the make or

model.” “I never said I followed Maria home.” Ranger grins at me. “I never thought you were a Romeo, Granite, but stalking’s a bit much, isn’t it?” “It’s not stalking. It’s club business.” “So your boss knows about it?” I take another sip so I don’t have to answer. “Ah, so he doesn’t. Let me guess. You know that if you tell your boss you think some journalist or private investigator or whatever she is, is sneaking around, he’ll put other men on the job. He’ll force you to break into shifts and there will be other men watching her, and you can’t have that, because this is your girl. Even if you don’t know it yet. Even if she doesn’t know it yet.” “Maybe I’m not looking into her as hard as I would if …” “If she weren’t as purty?” “It’s not just that.” I sigh, resting my head in my hands. “I don’t know what I’m saying. I don’t have words for this kind of shit. I could describe a

headshot to you in a hundred fuckin’ ways, but this shit? All right, let me put it like this. Whenever I’m at the club or the bar and I see some girl in the crowd, for a second it’s her, every time, and then my eyes adjust and I see that it’s just another club girl. But in that second when I think it’s her, I find myself smiling. But that don’t change the fact that she did come sniffing around the bar, asking questions. I’m doing the right thing by keeping an eye on her.” “And it just so happens that, for once, the right thing for the club is the right thing for you too.” “I preferred you when you were a scared little pledge.” I knock back two swigs of whisky, the fire liquid burning down my throat and burning in my belly. I roll my neck in my shoulders. “Goddamn, but this whisky is good.” “Don’t change the subject. You came here for advice. Well, here’s my advice. Buy a big bunch of flowers, put on a shirt, knock on her door and introduce yourself. Give her some story about how you spotted her on her porch and wanted to say hello.” He pauses to tip his Stetson to two old men who wave to him from outside. “And then you get talking, and then something good might actually happen.”

“I’m tryin’ to picture myself in a shirt with my hair slicked down and a bunch of flowers in my hand. Really, I am. It just don’t fit the way I see it. I’d feel like an imposter if I walked into a flower shop.” “Florist. They’re called florists.” “See? I don’t even have the name down. No, I can’t introduce myself anyway. I can’t let myself cross that line, Ranger, ’cause what if I do and it turns out she’s an agent for the Brass Skulls or something else, something worse, and I have to …” Ranger turns away from me, watching a raven as it pecks apart the remains of a cheese burger. “That’s a horrible thing to have to think about. This is the life for me. This diner. A burger. A shake. Closing up. Opening up the next day. To have to think about …. a woman you … goddamn, Granite, I’m glad I left the life.” “I know you are. I don’t blame you. But I’m still in and there are things I’ve gotta think about. This is just a funk. That’s how I’m looking at it. I’m pissed ’cause he didn’t make me an officer so I’m letting myself go all weird. There ain’t nothing else to it.”

“Do you really believe that, though?” he asks. “Or do you just wish you did?” I laugh, not because it’s funny but because if I don’t laugh I have to take him seriously. Then I take a few more sips of whisky, closing my eyes and letting it burn onto the insides of my eyelids. I imagine that the sunlight is the whisky: whisky flares instead of solar flares. “If you’re gonna start meditating, you mind doing it someplace else?” I open my eyes. Ranger is on his feet, making for the counter. A group of around ten has come in, a nice-looking family, the father with one of those fanny packs and the mother wide-hipped, the sort of woman who bakes apple pies and leaves them near open windows to cool them off, getting the whole neighborhood excited. They look at me like they might go somewhere else, not wanting to bring their brood into the same place as an outlaw. I stand up and go out the back door, into the shadows. There’s a homeless guy sitting up against the trash cans across the parking lot, rolling a cigarette. I go over to him. “I’ll give you ten dollars for one,” I say.

“Ten dollars? You can take one, friend. No need to pay a man ten dollars.” His hair is a nest and his face is hidden under layers of grime, but his eyes are as green as leaves. “Here.” He hands me the one he was rolling. “Do you need a light? Oh no. Come on, pal. There’s no need for that.” I push the ten dollars into his hand, take his Zippo, light my cigarette. “You ever been in a funk?” I ask him, handing him the lighter. “You ever felt like you ain’t yourself?” “You’re asking me that?” The homeless guy narrows his eyes, causing some of the dirt to crumble. “That sure seems like an odd question to ask me, friend. But I guess I can answer. I haven’t felt myself for twenty-some years. Sometimes it just goes on that way. I’m going to make a change tomorrow, though. I’m going to clean myself up and get myself a job and a place, but first I’m going to have one more big night, one big blowout. Just one more.” I leave him there, puffing my cigarette. Life ain’t as simple as it was a couple of weeks ago. My head is always full, fuller than it ought to be, fuller than makes sense. Haunted, maybe that’s the word. Haunted by the quick glimpse of her in the gun store, the way she moved in the bar, the way she

walks to and from her door. Haunted by that tight ass and those big eyes. Haunted by the thought of her lips. I finish the cigarette—head swimming with the whisky-nicotine combo—and ride toward the clubhouse. Maybe that’ll help me forget. Maybe the men and the bullshitting and some more booze will make this seem like some ridiculous high school pining. Dagger, Jax, and Michaels are standing outside the club when I get there, sharing a joint. Jax offers it to me but I shake my head. “I don’t mess with that shit,” I say. They’re standing in a semi-circle facing the parking lot. “What’re you all standing like this for?” “Wait,” Jax says, smiling like a kid on Christmas morning. “The boss let in a new pledge today,” Dagger explains. “He must be no older than fifteen, maybe sixteen, but I guess the boss saw something in him. His name’s Al and he’s been cleaning bikes all day, from around one o’clock. He keeps cleaning them and men keep riding in.” “A real carwash service,” Michaels says, eyes red

from the weed. He grins widely. “When he swaggered over to me earlier I never would’ve guessed this. No way. Just look at all these bikes.” I turn with him: around twenty-five bikes, all of them glistening where they’ve been washed. “That sure is somethin’,” I agree. “But working pledges ain’t nothing new.” “You haven’t seen this one yet,” Jax says, hopping from foot to foot. “You know I hate it when people call me a kid, but this kid really is one. He must have stepped right out of kindergarten yesterday or some shit. Yesterday!” I watch as Al the pledge walks out from around the side of the clubhouse, a bucket and sponge in his hand. No—a bucket and sponge in her hand. My world spins over and over as I watch her, moving with the same grace as when she was in the bar, her eyes the same green and her fringe poking out from underneath her beanie. My instinct is to tell the men at once that they’ve been fooled, but I repress it. “Where’d this Al come from?” I ask. “No idea,” Michaels says, coughing as he takes a big puff of weed. “I was just standing out here with

this other pledge and he comes walking over like he thinks he’s something big, comes right out and asks for the boss.” “Goddamn,” I whisper, watching as she gets on her knees and wrings the sponge in the bucket. I want to say: “Are you stupid? Look at the way she’s moving. Look at that tight ass. She might’ve tied her tits down but damn if that body ain’t fine. She might have cut her hair but damn if that face ain’t pretty. Do you seriously think that she’s a man?” But if I say that, Mr. Ivarsson might punish her. Michaels and Jax and Dagger might punish her. The whole club might punish her. So I only repeat, “Goddamn.” “I’ve seen some pledges in my time,” Michaels goes on, talking in that low, slightly-paranoid voice he uses when the weed has really hit him. “I’ve seen men come and go. But I’ve never seen the boss let a guy like this into the club. I mean, look at him, fellas. You ever seen a movie set in a high school? My girl had one on the other week. He’s that kid, the nervous one who’s always in the library. That ain’t the stuff bikers are made of, no, sir.” “I’m gonna go talk to him,” I say. “Maybe there’s more to him than meets the eye, eh?”

“Doubt it,” Dagger mutters. “I can read people, and all I read on him is fear.” “Maybe.” I shrug. “Let me go see.” I walk toward her, a ball in my throat. It takes me a second to pinpoint the source of the ball. At first I think it’s ’cause I’m nervous to talk to her, but that ain’t it. At least, that’s not mostly it. Mostly it’s ’cause I’m a weird combination of scared for her and angry at her for coming here. “Hello,” I say, standing over her. She glances up; her face drops. “Uh, hello.”

Chapter Eight Allison Does he know? I try to read his face, but the setting sun is behind him, partially blinding me, and even if it wasn’t, I don’t know him well enough. Hell, I don’t know him at all even if I think I do: more than the other men here, at least, since he’s haunted my dreams for the past week. I stand up, dropping the sponge in the bucket. My instinct is to stand with my hand across my belly, but that’s a girlish way to stand, or at least a non-biker way. So instead I let my hands fall to my sides and stare him straight in the face. I don’t let my eyes roam over him, even though I want to, wearing a T-shirt and jeans, his tattoos on display, his muscles on display, his piercing blue eyes staring into my soul. “So you’re the new pledge,” he says. “I’m the new pledge.” “What’s your name again?”

“Al Marshall-Brown.” He holds his hands up. “I just asked your name, kid. No need to bite my head off about it.” “S—” I bite down. I was about to say: “Sorry. I didn’t mean to. But I do bite, you know.” No, that’s flirting, and right now flirting should be the last thing on my mind. I cannot flirt with him. He thinks I’m Al, Al the pledge, and the last thing Al the pledge needs to do is flirt with one of the Thunder Riders. “Just telling you my name,” I mutter. “So they’ve had you cleaning bikes all day?” He paces around the bike, hands behind his back. He’s the biggest man I’ve seen, even bigger than the boss. I wonder what it’d be like to lift his shirt just a little. Is his belly tattooed? Running my finger along his abs would be something, wouldn’t it, something to think about, to dream about … No, no, no. I kill the thoughts. I. Am. Al. “Yeah,” I say, with what I hope is a casual shrug. “I get it. You’ve got to put the pledges through the wringer. I’m not taking it personally.” He comes right up to me, standing so close I can smell the whisky and cigarettes and cologne on him. Some animal part of me awakens, urging me to

rest my head against his rock-hard chest. “Where’d you hear about the Thunder Riders? ’Cause let me tell you, folks don’t normally just walk up to the club askin’ if they can be pledges. Normally they know somebody in the club, and that’s how they get in. The boss has taken a liking to you and maybe it’s ’cause you’re brave, or maybe he’s just having fun. I don’t know.” “I heard about them on the Internet,” I say, glad not to have to lie. “You have an Internet forum. I don’t know if you’re aware.” Fuck! Some of my own voice enters my growl, the ‘you’re aware’ going high-pitched toward the end. “It wasn’t no tough thing to find you.” I deepen my voice, compensating. “Why do you keep looking at my arms, Al? Have I got oil on ’em or something?” His blue eyes dance. He knows, but then if he knew, he would just come out and say it. Wouldn’t he? “I’m not,” I say, sounding appropriately defensive. “I’m just trying to get on with my work. That’s all.” “Hmm.” He nods, whistling softly. “I get that. A man needs to work. You ever stopped to think on

that? I’ve known fellas who were hard as nails right up until their seventieth birthday, and then they quit the life and disappeared into retirement and they were dead in a year. Funny thing, life. Al, what’s a camshaft?” I take a step back. I don’t mean to but the question catches me off-guard. I feel like an idiot for not looking up some motorcycle terms. I should’ve guessed one of them might ask me. “Um …” Don’t say um, dammit! “It’s an engine part, far as I know.” “That’s like if we were at a pond and I asked you what a carp was. ’Course you’d say it was a fish, since we’re standing at the edge of a pond, and course you’d say that a camshaft is an engine part, ’cause we’re standing near a bike. What does it do? What’s it for? I’m guessing you know a good deal about bikes to feel confident enough to just walk up to a clubhouse like this one and ask for a job.” It would have been so easy to research motorcycle parts online, but the idea didn’t occur to me. I guess lots of things didn’t occur to me, especially being interrogated by a man I’d be flirting with if it wasn’t for the getup. “Well, I’m more of an instinct guy,” I tell him, leaning back on my heels. “I don’t know all the names, but I know the parts. When I

get down there and start tinkering, I know what I’m doing. But the names? Nah, they’re not wheelhouse.” “Ah.” He nods slowly. “So you’re a childhood prodigy who never bothered to learn the names. You just went into the garage and worked on your daddy’s bike and never bothered with all that technical shit? Far enough.” “That’s right.” The lump in my throat is the size of a golf ball. I wish he would leave me alone. It’s hard enough playing the tough biker when I’m on my own. “I just tinker where the tinkering is.” Tinker where the tinkering is … I sound like a character from a flipping Tim Burton movie! “I don’t think too much about the technical stuff.” “Right. So if I take this bike apart right now and ask you to put it back together, it’ll be easy as pie for you?” “Yes.” My voice trembles a little. He can’t do that. If he does, I’m done. “But that seems like a waste of time to me, man. What if some Brass Skulls come riding through here and there you are, your bike in a thousand different pieces. What’ll you do then? It seems to me that wartime isn’t the time to mess around with your vehicle.”

“I’ve been thinking.” He strolls around the bike, catching my eye every so often and smiling in a way that makes me sure he must know. And yet it’s possible that he doesn’t, possible that this is how he grills every new recruit. “What the Brass Skulls have that we don’t is a couple of really solid fighters. I’m talking MMA-level motherfuckers who live for this shit. I’m a damn good fighter myself, and the good thing about being an outlaw is that when some prick comes at you with all that dancing shit, you can just knuckle-duster him in the face. But sometimes you lose your weapons and you’ve gotta fight. So what about you, Al MarshallBrown? You a good fighter?” I curl my upper lip. That’s how tough people look, right? “I don’t think it’s good for a man to say that about himself, but when it gets down to risky business I can take care of myself.” “Risky business.” He lingers on the phrase, smiling that devilish smile, and then nods. Then he holds his hands up. “All right, then. Come on.” “What … You want me to punch you?” “Just a few jabs to keep your skills honed. That ain’t no big thing, is it?”

“I’ve got soap and water all over my hands, man. What happens when I punch you and the soap gets in your eye? I won’t be joining the club then, will I?” “Wipe your hands on your trousers. Goddamn.” I do as he says. I have no choice. It’s either this or admit that I can’t punch. Which is the truth. The last time I got into a fight was with a girl in second grade over a boy we both liked, but even that wasn’t much of a fight. I slapped her once and she slapped me once and then we both cried and hugged and made friends again. I hold my fists up like I’ve seen boxers do while flipping through the TV channels. His grin eggs me on. His blue eyes seem to say, “There’s no way you’re doing this.” I throw my body into the punch, filled with strength. And then my fist hits his hand and it barely moves, if at all. The connection is weak. He squints at me. “Come on, Al,” he says. “What’s the problem? You’re skinny but you ain’t that skinny. You never thrown a punch before?” “I’m not a performing monkey!” I snap, and

Allison comes out. I bite down and pick up my sponge, turning back to the bike. “No,” he agrees. “You’re not a performing monkey. Let me tell you somethin’, Al Marshall-Brown. A few years back there was this pledge who was just like you. He was eager. Keen to be part of the life. He did what we asked him, hoping that he’d get a place in the club. At least that’s what we all thought. But then Mr. Ivarsson found out that this pledge had been selling secrets to a rival gang. The gang had killed three of our boys with that intel. The boss didn’t give this pledge any leeway ’cause he wasn’t patched, no damn way. When he found out, he buried that motherfucker up to his neck in the desert like they do in the movies, covered his face in pig’s blood and waited for the vultures to come flying over. I was there that day, and goddamn, what a vulture can do to a man when it’s given the right encouragement is really something.” Me, buried up to my neck, blinking into the sun, a shadow of a vulture flying toward me; the image stabs me like a knife. “Good job I’m never going to do that, then,” I say, grinning and cocksure and confident. On the outside. “Sounds like that man made a real stupid mistake.” “We all make mistakes, don’t we? We do somethin’

for what we reckon are good reasons and then we get down the line and we realize that it’s all horseshit, that we should’ve gotten out when we had the chance. Even the best of … people will make that mistake.” He raises his eyebrow when he says ‘people’. “But I know you won’t do somethin’ that stupid, Al Marshall-Brown. What’s with the double-barreled name? Was your mother Marshall or Brown?” “Marshall. My dad was Brown. He was a biker too.” “Part of a club?” “Yes.” What am I saying? The words just pour out. Granite folds his arms. His biceps are tight in his Tshirt, pressing against his hands. “What club? What was its name?” “I can’t remember,” I tell him. “I was very young when he left.” There: the first true thing I’ve said all day! “Ain’t that a shame. Well, Al Marshall-Brown, I’m sure you’ll make a good member of the club. Just

one more thing. What’s your fastest pump-valve time?” I pause, wondering. That doesn’t sound real. But it could be real. Pump-valve time. Is that something that all bikers know about or just some bullshit he came up with to trick me? “Uh …” I trail off. He just watches me expectantly. I let out a puff of air between my teeth and laugh. “Don’t fuck me around, man. Pump-valve time. What kind of bullshit is that?” “All right.” He nods. “You got me, Al. You really got me there. Let me tell you somethin’ else. I know you must like yourself some pussy. Who doesn’t, right? Well, I saw this real sweet piece at the gun shop a week ago. Real tight ass, real tight legs, a body like I’ve never seen before. She kept lookin’ at me and damn if I didn’t keep lookin’ at her. And ever since then I haven’t been able to get her out of my head.” He leans forward, lowering his voice to a whisper. “In fact, Al, I even know where she lives.”

Chapter Nine Granite “She’s got some stones on her.” I lift up the table so that Ranger can mop underneath it. “I mean, goddamn.” I put the table down. “What sort of lady does a thing like that? I’ve known men who’ve shit their pants just walkin’ into Mr. Ivarsson’s office, but apparently she just strolled in there like it was no big thing. She was sweating like crazy washing those bikes all day, but she didn’t complain none.” “What’s her deal, though? The hell is she doing?” We move into the kitchen and scrub the sides as we talk. “I don’t know. If she’s a journalist, she’s got more stones than any journalist I’ve ever heard of, but if she’s a cop, why wouldn’t they just send a man in, and why wouldn’t the cops tell us?” “Ah, police corruption.” His smile is a shadow under his hat. “If she’s just a woman having a good time, I’m sure there are better ways to do it. I just don’t get it. A spy for the Brass Skulls, that could be it, but then it

still don’t make sense why they’d send a lady and not a man. This strikes me as the sort of shit somebody does on their own. You should’ve seen her face, Ranger. I reckon she knew I knew, but she was too scared to say anything to try’n find that out for sure. She was playing the proper little pledge. It was fuckin’ hilarious.” “I’m glad you’re amused, but you still have to decide what to do.” Together we take apart the dishwasher, cleaning each part and then resting it on top. “Think about it like this. What if somebody else finds out about her first? I still can’t believe that they’re falling for it. How stupid are they?” “It ain’t about stupid or smarts. It’s just ’cause a person sees what they expect to see. So if you walk up to a streetlamp in the middle of the day and saw it down, folks’ll call the cops, but if you’re wearing a high-visibility jacket and a tool belt and you got a truck near you with more tools inside, folks’ll just go about their business ’cause that’s what they expect to see.” “You read this in some psychology book?” “No, I had to saw a streetlamp down for a job once.”

Ranger chuckles. “Give me grease,” he says. “Give me this shit. Oh, damn.” He goes to the sink and washes the gunk off his hands. “How can something that washes be so dirty? That makes no sense if you ask me. Here’s the thing, Granite, old pal. Here’s the real important part. When you were standing out there with her, shooting the shit, I bet you felt happier than you have in weeks. I bet this funk you’ve been talking about went away. I bet you lost yourself a little bit.” I turn away from him. “There’s no need to recite poetry at me or whatever the fuck you’re doing. “I’m not reciting poetry. I’m just thinkin’ about when I met Maria, how she always made me forget whatever problems I had. When I was around her, the world was simple.” “Maybe there was some of that,” I say uneasily. “But that don’t mean nothin’.” “You’re in denial. That’s all.” “I ain’t in shit.” I go into the diner and sit at the bar, resting my elbows on the counter and staring down at my hands. “I’ve never been in love or anythin’ like that, and I don’t reckon I ever will be. That ain’t for me. I’m a biker. We fuck club girls.

We don’t let feelings get in the way. Let me tell you something about feelings, Ranger. They’ll fuck a man up if he lets them. I had some pretty strong feelings once about a person who I thought would never go away. I thought they’d be here at least until I was dead. They were younger than me, and better, so that was only fair. But that’s what feelings’ll get you: gut-punched every damn time.” “You talking about your parents?” Ranger sits opposite me, head down. Maybe he knows that a man’s more likely to talk when he ain’t being looked at. “No—you said younger. Who, then?” “I’m not gonna sit here trading stories with a man about my past. That’s just not somethin’ we do.” “Let me tell you something.” Some fierceness comes into Ranger’s voice. He’s on his feet, hands at his sides. He almost does look like a cowboy except for how skinny he is. “You keep saying shit like that. We do. When are you gonna stop asking what your biker friends do and start asking what you want? You can’t just spend your life asking yourself what other people do just so you can do the same. If I did that, I’d still be in the club. I might have blood on my hands.” “You’re so fuckin’ high and mighty, is that it?” I

stand up. “No.” He shakes his head. “I just know that I wanted somethin’ different. Me, Granite. Not the men at the club, or what someone told me. I asked myself honestly what I wanted and I came up with an answer.” “What about loyalty? What about respect? What about commitment? Don’t they mean anything to you?” “I am loyal to my wife, I respect my wife, and I am committed to my wife.” “You were never patched, so you won’t understand. But when a man goes in to get his patch, he doesn’t walk out the same. He can’t be the same ever again, ’cause now he has a hundred brothers, and when I ask myself what I should do ’cause other men do it, it’s not so I can be like them. It’s so I can protect the club. Imagine if every brother went all Hollywood and followed his dreams. What’d you think would happen? The club’d fall apart and the Brass Skulls would roll in. You think you’ve got problems now with a few punks dealing weed outside on Friday nights? Just fuckin’ imagine what it’d be like without the Thunder Riders to move those punks along.

Imagine what it’d be like having the Brass Skulls coming in here whenever they want, not paying, just using this place as a fuckin’ all-you-can-eat buffet.” “I get all that,” Ranger says. “But just because that’s all true, it doesn’t mean you have to be so strict about it. I’m not telling you to leave the club. I’m not telling you to abandon your brothers. All I’m saying is that you ought to do something because you want to do it for a change. You’re not a mindless robot, Granite. You’re a fuckin’ man.” “But what …” I shake my head. “What?” Ranger urges. “I’ve known you for a long time,” I say. “How many years now? Five? Six? In all that time, have you ever seen me like this? I don’t feel like myself. I keep going over it in my head, how I can see a lady in a gun shop and how that can change me. I tell myself it’s something else, that she has nothing to do with it, but she’s what I keep coming back to. I don’t know what to do about it. I just … life ain’t so simple, not anymore. Do you wanna know what I’m scared of? I’m scared that if I let myself talk to her, really talk to her without any of this pretending bullshit, I won’t be able to stop. And then the next

thing I know, I’ll be a completely different man. That shit changes you, doesn’t it?” “Yes.” He’s smiling. “But that’s not a bad thing. It’s supposed to change you. That’s what it’s for. Why don’t you do what I suggested the other day? Get a bunch of flowers, knock on her door, introduce yourself. That’ll be a start.” Ranger must be some sort of a wizard because a few minutes later I’m riding toward a florist, picturing myself at her door with a bunch of flowers, picturing her face. I reckon it will light up. She might be able to hide behind that Al routine some of the time, but she can’t help but let herself slip through. The way she smiled at me under that beanie … I go into the florist and approach the old man at the desk. He’s white-haired with brown spots all over his forehead, a drooping mustache, and a turkey neck. He sits on a stool with a magnifying glass, trimming a plant. The leaves and twigs fall onto the glass counter but sometimes flutter onto the floor. “Hello, young man,” he says, smiling up at me. “How can I help you?” “I need some flowers,” I tell him. “Somethin’ for a

lady. I don’t know much about flowers, old man, so if you could just pick me some, I’d be grateful. Don’t worry about the cost.” “Well, let me see.” He hobbles around the shop, peering at different flowers, making humming and ahhing sounds. Eventually he returns to the desk holding a big bunch of blood-red roses. “These should do nicely. Do you like them?” “They’re fine. How much?” “One hundred dollars.” “Fine.” I pay him and then go out to my bike. Now I have a problem, I realize, ’cause if I stuff these into the storage compartment they’ll just get ruined. I do a quick mental calculation of where I am. I’m only fifteen minutes’ walk from her neighborhood. I leave my bike where it is and walk down the street, feeling weird with the flowers in my hand. Every person I pass glances at me. It’s making me paranoid, even more so when I think about one of the fellas seeing me. I can’t be bothered to deal with the shit they’d give me. I’m on the outskirts of her neighborhood, an

American flag telling me I’ve reached the first house, when the bike engines growl from behind me. I turn at the sound. Five Brass Skulls ride past, a couple of them looking at me sideways, a couple of them maybe recognizing me. They don’t stop but that’s enough: enough to remind me that this is fuckin’ madness, enough to remind me that I’ve got to stop listening to Ranger. The Brass Skulls are real. They’re not a joke. And what am I doing when I think we’ve got a weakness in the club? Taking her flowers? It’s goddamn ridiculous. I carry the flowers to the first house on my way and leave them on the porch, and then head toward her house. This is business now. I can’t mess around. I try’n make my heart hard, try’n not think about how tight that body is, how sexy those eyes are. That’s the thing she couldn’t hide, even if she did cut her hair. She couldn’t hide those eyes, womanly as hell. Al’s motorcycle is in the driveway. I go up the porch steps and knock on the door, my hand behind my back where my gun is. I’m not gonna shoot her but it might not hurt to scare her some, let her know that she can’t just roll into a club and have nothing happen. She walks around just beyond the doorway. Her footsteps are quiet, but not quiet enough so I don’t hear them.

“Listen. You can hesitate in there all you damn well please. But you know why I’m here and you know I ain’t gonna leave until you let me in. And we both know you ain’t gonna call the cops.” Unless she is one. “So why’nt you just open up and stop messing me around?” I work on keeping my voice hard, ’cause really I want to just talk to the woman. “Come on now. Don’t make me huff and puff.” The door rattles as she unlatches the locks and double-locks. She opens the door, wearing shorts and a tank top. For a second I let myself be drawn into her, those tanned legs, those wide eyes. She’s not wearing a hat anymore. Her hair is short and messy and sexy. “Hello, Granite,” she says, her chest rising and falling quickly. “I’m Allison.” “Allison.” I take out my gun and walk into the house, dropping onto the couch.

Chapter Ten Allison “Do you want a beer? A coffee? An apple juice? I have some ice cream. Chocolate cones.” I busy myself in the kitchen, heartbeat in my ears, in my fingertips. He just sits on the couch with his gun in his hand, staring straight ahead of him as though his head is locked in place. He doesn’t have his finger on the trigger but neither does he have it far away. I wonder if I’ve misjudged him. Did I mistake him as different from the other guys? Maybe he’s the type to shoot and kill me; I don’t know. “I don’t need anything,” he says, voice flat. “Thanks for the offer and the hospitality, but this ain’t really that kind of a visit.” I get myself a beer, crack it on the counter, and go into the living room. I sit on the armchair with my legs tucked beneath me. I’m aware of the way he looks at my body, and of the way I look at his. His forearm muscles twitch, causing his tattoos to dance as he strokes the barrel of the gun.

“Can you put that thing away?” I ask. “It’s making me nervous.” “No,” he says, no intonation in his voice at all. “I don’t know who you are, truth be told, and it’s a stupid man who puts his gun away when a stranger asks him to. A dead man.” “Do you think I’m dangerous?” I giggle. It’s the nervous kind of giggle I normally hate hearing, but I can’t help it. “I’m not going to hurt you, if that’s what you mean. I don’t think I could hurt you if I tried. You’re … well, let’s be honest, you’re much bigger than me. You’re a real hulk, if you want the whole story. You could flick me and I’d go flying into space, so I don’t see why that gun is necessary.” “Maybe it isn’t,” he agrees, but he doesn’t put it away. I take a long sip from my beer. The sun has set now, the only light the stars and the moon. I go to the corner and turn on the lamp, yellow light cascading across the ceiling. I return to the armchair and take another long sip, almost draining the glass. “Are you sure you don’t want one?”

“I’m sure,” he says. “Shall we get down to business or do you wanna waste more time?” “Business?” “Don’t play innocent with me, Allison. Let’s start with the facts, at least. You’re pretending to be a man so you can get into my MC. I know that ’cause I saw you at the gun shop, and you saw me. I know that. What I can’t figure out is why you’re doing it. When I saw you at the bar I thought you might be a cop. That’s why I followed you. But there’s no damn way they’d put a woman into undercover work and make her pretend to be a man. They’d just put a man in. So what are you? A private investigator? A freelance journalist? What?” “Nothing as exciting as that,” I tell him. “I’m not looking into your club because of anything that’s specifically to do with your club.” “Yeah, right, but that doesn’t make much sense. It sounds to me like you’re saying you ain’t looking into the club because of the club. But then why else would you agree to wash bikes all damn day long? For fun? There’s somethin’ going on here. And you’re going to tell me about it.” “Or you’ll shoot me?”

“Might be that I will,” he says. “Just then.” I sit up; the beer has given me some confidence, slowed down my heartbeat a little. “Your face went tight when you said that. I don’t think you want to shoot me.” He turns to me, face still tight, blue eyes the only bright thing about him right now. “There are lots of things a man like me doesn’t want to do, Allison. And there are a lot of things a man like me has to do. You’re right. I don’t want to shoot you. But I’ve done plenty of things in my life I didn’t wanna do.” “So you’re saying you will shoot me, then, if it comes down to it?” He swallows. His Adam’s apple shifts. “I’m sayin’ what I’m sayin’. And now it’s your turn to start talking. Tell me what’s going on.” “Okay.” I close my eyes, afraid that voicing this plan aloud will sound sillier than it does in my head. But what choice do I have? The barrel of a gun really does simplify things. “My mom died a few years ago and my big brother didn’t take it well at all. He used to be a good kid, but ….” I tell him about how Brandon went off the rails, how he

turned to drugs. “Then he decided to join the Brass Skulls, but I’m not sure if saying he decided to join them is the best way to put it. It was more like he made friends with his dealer and his dealer invited a bunch of people over to his place and now they’ve never left. He’s in deep with them. He’s going to get himself killed. He’s an idiot, a real idiot. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He has no clue what he’s gotten himself into. He just … he thinks he can just join a club and have everything work out. Or no, maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he’s just scared. “But this is the problem!” I snap, getting angry at him even if he’s not here. “Usually we’re close. We talk. But at the moment I have no idea what’s going on with him because he won’t talk to me about it. He just tells me to leave him alone. But that’s the thing. I can’t leave him alone. He’s my big brother. My dad ran out when I was little, so he became the father figure. Even if he is a little twerp sometimes.” “Right.” His voice is devoid of emotion. “I don’t see how joining the Thunder Riders has anything to do with that.” “Well, it’s like this. I can’t go to the cops and I can’t go to anybody else. I don’t have anybody else. But I know that your club and his club are at

war with each other, so if I can become a patched member of your club maybe I can prove to him that I can protect him. I can bring him over into the club. He won’t have to be afraid anymore. He’ll be safe.” He lets his head fall back. I don’t know what he’s thinking. I can’t guess at it, only that his heart must be beating quickly because his pulse shimmers. “There’s some merit to that plan,” he mutters. “In principle, it’s a good idea. But do you really think you’ve got what it takes to get patched?” He opens his eyes, stares at me. Something has changed in him. He doesn’t seem as on-edge. “But still, it ain’t a bad plan.” “In principle,” I say. He nods. “So it’s all about your brother, eh? Goddamn, that’s some situation. That really is some situation.” He clears his throat. “I … I could do with that beer now.” “Sure,” I say, watching him curiously. For some reason, hearing about Brandon has softened him. He opens and closes his fist, taps his foot on the floor. His knee bobs up and down. “I’ll get it now.” I go into the kitchen, pick up one beer, and then

grab the pack and place it on the coffee table. Granite opens it with his teeth and takes a long swig. He leaves his pistol on the table, no longer seeming to care about it. He props his feet on the edge of the table and leans back. “I don’t know why, Allison, but I feel like I wanna tell you somethin’. It’s somethin’ I’ve never told anybody. I never talk about it. Never have. Never will. That’s what I always say to myself. But sittin’ here with you and hearing your story, it … I don’t know, goddamn. I feel like I can talk to you.” He turns to me, a plea in his eyes. “Am I goin’ crazy or do you feel the same way?” “I feel the same,” I tell him. “Even if it confuses me just as much as if confuses you.” He laughs, but there’s something grim in there. “People ain’t ever simple, are they? But you’re right. It’s confusing as hell but I feel like I can talk to you, feel like there’s somethin’ here, somethin’ I don’t have with anyone else in my life. Let me tell you, then … “I had a brother once. His name was Jimmy. Good kid, sweet kid, the nicest goddamn kid there ever was. He was one of those kids who’s always smiling, who always sees the bright side of shit. When he was little he used to go down to this field

near our place and look for animals that needed help. He never found any, but that was his dream: find a bird or somethin’, fix it up, let it back out into the wild. Then we got older, and he saw that his big brother was gettin’ involved in some outlawing. He saw me in the club and he wanted to be like me. Maybe it was my fault. I should’ve let him in so he didn’t decide to try’n go out on his own. I don’t know. Life is never as simple as all that, I guess. But right now it seems pretty damn simple. Hindsight is a real motherfucker. “A real motherfucker,” he repeats, clenching and unclenching his fist. “I didn’t want shit to go bad for the kid. Never wanted that. He was my brother, you know? I loved the little bastard. But he just couldn’t let it go; let me go, I guess. I was off livin’ the club life and he wanted a piece. So one day he decided to walk right into the most dangerous neighborhood in town, just walked right in there with his fuckin’ knapsack and his stupid grin. I don’t know what Jimmy was thinkin’ in that moment, if he was even thinkin’ at all. All I know is that one decision can change a life forever.” My heart aches for him. I want to reach across and touch him, but he seems almost on fire, like he’s burning up with emotion. The tendons in his throat shudder. He said he’s never talked about this and I

believe him. It’s as though the past is physically working its way through his body, twisting him, contorting him. “He walked right into one of the most dangerous places in town, up to one of these corner guys. What I didn’t know was that he’d been growing weed in the shed at the back of the garden. He was a real smart kid. He would’ve been somethin’ if he’d stayed away from all that drug shit, somethin’ really good. An engineer or somethin’ like that. Things went pretty predictably after that. I read it all in the police report years later. Jimmy tried to offer this guy his knapsack of weed so he could get in on the business, and the drug dealer accused him of being a cop, and the drug dealer started firing— and that’s the end of the story.” He drains his beer and then takes another, drinking down half of it quickly. “I’ll help you the best I can, Allison. I won’t tell the boys or the boss who Al really is. You can stick with the Thunder Riders if you think that’s what best. What’s it to me if you wanna help your brother? There ain’t nothin’ evil in that. There ain’t nothin’ wicked to it. I wish I could go back and help my brother. Goddamn, I wish that. I wish I could go back and tell him that he ought to stay on the straight and narrow, ’cause this life is no life for a kid like him.”

He pauses. He’ll help me! That’s something then: a boost instead of a hurdle. Then he places his beer on the coffee table, his hands on his knees, and stares into me with his sapphire eyes. “Now the question comes back around, I reckon. I’m gonna do somethin’ for you. What’re you goin’ to do for me?”

Chapter Eleven Granite “Why the fuck did you tell her that?” Sometimes he’ll come to me, when I’m not being careful and I leave myself open. Jimmy, with his mop of hair and freckles spread across the center of his face. He sits in my mind with the gunshot in his chest, staring up at me from an impossibly deep abyss. “What good do you think that will do, big brother? You’ve really gone and done it now. You’re not supposed to reveal yourself like that. You’re supposed to be hard. Have you forgotten about that? You can’t go around being soft and wimpy, like I used to be, because you’re a club man.” Allison is in the bathroom. After I asked her what she’d do for me, she basically fled. “Yeah, that was some kind of question, wasn’t it? What did you mean by that?” “I didn’t mean to ask it,” I mutter, not aloud but in my head. “She’s just so damn hot, kid. You’ve never seen a woman like this.”

“Don’t lie to me. It’s more than that. Maybe you think you can redeem yourself by saving her brother! Ha! Is that it?” “There’s a reason I keep you locked up in a box in my mind, kid.” I close my eyes, sip my beer. “I shouldn’t have told her about you. I’ve got those feelings locked up, locked up nice and tight. I don’t need this shit. Any ridin’ man, any outlawing man don’t need this.” “Well, you have it now. And it’s your fault. So the only thing you can do is go along with it.” “Leave me alone, kid. Just leave me alone.” He does like I ask, disappearing back into the recesses of my mind. I lean back and listen to Allison in the bathroom, running the faucet. I don’t know what she’s doing in there. Maybe she’s trying to think of a way to make me leave. If she comes right out and asks me to leave, I’ll do it. I won’t hang around where I’m not welcome. But if she doesn’t … my cock gets hard just thinking about it. She comes back into the living room with those tight legs and those pert tits all too easy for me to see. Those shorts, man, that face … She skips over to the chair and sits down with her legs crossed,

fingers trailing up and down her thigh. Does she know what she’s doing to me with that? “Thank you for sharing that with me,” she says. “It —it really means a lot.” She swallows. She must be nervous. My question must’ve meant something to her then. I decide to let this play itself out. See what she wants. I never wanna be the man who trades favors for sex, not with a lady like this one. “I know how hard it is talking about stuff like that, so thanks. I don’t like talking about my mom’s cancer, or my dad running out, so … yeah, it really does mean a lot. I know I already said that.” “It’s all right.” I smile at her. There’s nothing like a beautiful, sexy lady to make a man forget about the horror he just let out into the open. “You can repeat yourself all you damn well please. I’m not going to hold it against you. You can repeat yourself until the end of time if you want, Allison.” She shivers, as though a ghost is running its finger from the bottom of her spine to the top. “You cold?” I ask. “No, it’s just …” She lets the words disappear into the air and then grabs a beer, drains half of it, looks at it for a moment, and then drains the other half.

“I’m not normally the Dutch courage sort of gal, but there you go. It’s just when you say my name.” “Allison.” She shivers again. “I … I like it.” This is the moment with a club girl where I’d pounce on her, but I want to take this slow, linger on her legs awhile. And, if I’m being honest with myself, watch her try’n work up the courage. It’s so damn sexy watching as she stretches out her legs, looks at me under her eyebrows, smiles shyly. It’s way sexier than anything the club girls do, including the sexual stuff. “Allison.” I smile. “I can say your name all day long if it makes you happy. I don’t mind.” “What did you mean before?” she whispers. “When you asked what I could do for you, I mean.” I lean back casually. “I reckon I’ll leave that up to you to work out.” Her eyes move over my arms and to my face. Her cheeks are flushed. Her hands fidget. It’s like she wants it, wants it bad, but doesn’t know how to

take it. I could end her uncertainty here but I like watching her getting horny, getting restless. I like that flush of red moving up from her chest to her neck. No club girl ever gets a flush like that. They’re too used to this side of life. “Well, that’s quite the challenge.” She giggles. “Today has easily been the strangest day of my life. I’ve learned what it’s like to be a man, be a pledge, and then you walk in with your gun, and now … It’s like I’m dreaming or something. I remember after Mom died and I got wasted for ten days in a row, it felt like I was dreaming then. I’d be way drunker than I’d ever been before that, just lying in bed, wondering if she really was dead or if I’d dreamt it. Or if everything was a dream because it was so strange. I don’t mean to ramble.” “You can ramble all you want.” She bites her lip, lets out a breath. She’s really dying here. Perhaps this is cruel. But dammit, it’s just too hot when she squirms like that. “Ramble, ramble, ramble,” she mutters. “I never asked you, Granite. Do you have a girlfriend?” “A girlfriend?” I laugh. Then I hear the laugh. Grim, dark. “No,” I tell her. “I don’t have a girlfriend. I never have, not really.”

“Not really,” she repeats. “So you have had girls, then.” “Do you really wanna talk about that?” She tosses her hands up. “Excuse me for wanting to know if I’m talking with a virgin!” “A virgin? No, you’re safe on that front.” “Not that I mind.” She pouts, but there’s something vicious in it. “If poor little Granite never got up the courage to ask a girl to the dance, to take a girl’s hand, I won’t judge him for it.” “It’s true. I never did ask a girl to dance or take her hand. But in my world that don’t mean you’re a virgin.” “So you’re more of an animal type of guy then, are you?” I lean forward, resting my forearms on my knees, and stare at her for a full five seconds without saying anything. Once she’s wriggling and nervous, I say, “It seems to me that you’re tryin’ to work yourself up to something. Now, me, I got no idea what that is. I’m just sitting here drinking a beer

with no idea what you’re doing with yourself. But let me tell you somethin’ about getting things done, Allison. When you need to get somethin’ done, especially somethin’ that makes you nervous, the best thing for it is to just take the plunge. Otherwise you’ll be eighty and still working up the courage.” Her eyes widen a fraction. She knows what I’m saying. And she knows that I know she knows what I’m saying. An entire conversation passes between us, unspoken. Then she stands up and pulls her tank top over her head, revealing the sexiest damn body I’ve ever seen, a tight belly with tits pert as hell, trapped in a lacy pink bra until she unclips it and lets it fall to the floor. Her tits are small but round, begging to be grabbed, with pink nipples that curve toward the end. My cock was already hard but now it’s so hard it might explode. She stands with her back arched, pushing her breasts out, biting her lip as she looks down at me. “Tell me what to do,” she whispers. “Turn around. Slide down your shorts. Bend over. Slowly.” She nods, letting out a relieved breath. She doesn’t

want to take the lead, and that’s fine with me now that I know she really wants it. She does like I ask, turning and bending at the hip, pushing her tight ass out and pulling down her shorts. Her ass is even better naked, round, almost like it was made to be grabbed while I have my dick inside of her. She bends all the way forward, flashing me her bright pink pussy. I stand up, hand rubbing the outside of my jeans, on the edge of not being able to control myself. She bends all the way over, propping her hands on the arms of the chair, and sticks her ass out. I walk forward, unbuckling my jeans as I go, and then stand right behind her with my jeans around my ankles. I smooth my hand over her ass. It’s the tightest, smoothest ass I’ve ever touched, and onehundred times sexier than any other for being Allison’s ass. “Do you like it when I stick it out like this?” she whispers, sticking it out so that her ass cheeks rub against my cock. “Fuck, yeah.” I grind my cock in between her ass cheeks, pressing them together. “I’m so wet,” she mutters. “I—I want it hard, Granite. Take me. Fucking take me.”

This is the woman I saw in the gun store; that’s the thought that comes to me again and again as I grab my cock and guide it to her pussy. I press my helmet inside of her. She’s right. She feels like a hot fist, grabbing me, loosening only slowly as I push deeper and deeper. She moans lightly, her body twitching here and there, and then I drive all the way inside of her and hold it like that for a few moments. “You’re so fucking big,” she moans. “Oh God, you’re big.” I start to fuck her slowly, sliding out and in and waiting for her pussy to get loose enough so I can unleash myself on her. My whole body is shaking with the effort of holding myself back. She pushes against me, her ass cheeks crushing flat against my abs. It’s so fuckin’ hot, the way she lets out a breath each time my cock goes back into her. Then warmth floods her pussy, stroking my cock, her pussy opening for me. “Fuck me!” she cries. “Fuck me hard!” I don’t need to be asked twice. I grab her ass cheeks and drill into her, losing myself in the

madness of it. Her ass is so tight—the way it bounces—the way she moans—the way her fingers grip the arms of the chair, clawing as though she’s trying to hold on but can’t. She lets out a moan and white cum spills onto my cock, grinding up it and into her asshole, the dirtiest, sexiest goddamn thing there is. I fall into her, pressing her against the chair, pounding her so hard my balls hurt, and then it’s too much. I can’t take it anymore. I feel like there are a hundred buzzing insects inside my cock, moving around it, tingling. I cum inside of her hard, the tip of my cock exploding, my body seized with the feeling: that one moment where nothing exists apart from her ass, her moaning. Then I fall onto the couch, panting. She looks over her shoulder and smiles at me.

Chapter Twelve Allison “So you can see me, then!” Emma tosses her hair and hands at the same time, a movement that she must practice in the mirror to get it this perfect. She stands on my porch in almost total darkness. It’s near midnight and Granite is long gone. “I was starting to think that I’d become a ghost. Maybe this was Sixth Sense and you were that little kid with the fake glasses. Right? Because what else am I supposed to think when you don’t call me for a week? Oh, I bet you were very happy that we had different shifts this week, weren’t you? At least you didn’t have to see me! Well, are you going to invite me in?” I’m tired and my body aches, but I know she won’t give up. She has that look about her. She’s a soldier now, and this is her war. “Come on in,” I say. She charges in, almost knocking me off my feet. “I can’t say I love what you’ve done with your hair. I know we women are supposed to compliment each other no matter what. Just like when my hairdresser messed up and made me look like a caveman, right?

To be honest with you, I consider that courtesy one due to friends, not girls who don’t even call!” “All right, Emma.” I’m still a little drunk from the beers and more than a little drunk from the sex. I place my hand on her shoulder. “You’re here now, aren’t you? You don’t have to rant at me about it.” “Rant, she says!” She tuts, shaking her head so fast I’m afraid it might fly away from her shoulders. “Is that what you think? That I’m ranting?” “Do you know what time it is?” I ask her as we go into the living room. She paces to the corner like she owns the place and switches on the lamp. “This is the only time I can fly the coop without causing a disaster. That’s what time it is.” She glances at the coffee table, where five beer bottles sit, and then at the floor, where my pink panties lay in a bundle. “Well, well, well.” She taps her forefinger against her chin like a detective. “It looks to me like somebody’s had an interesting evening.” She sniffs the air. “A very interesting evening.” “Okay. There’s no need to be disgusting.” She paces around the coffee table. “Shall I ask you

where it’s safe to sit or shall I take my chances?” “Take the armchair,” I tell her. She looks at me under fake eyelashes almost an inch long, tips her head back, and then drops onto the far end of the couch. “I’m not falling for your tricks.” “You are aware that I’m a fully grown woman, aren’t you?” I call from the kitchen as I get us both a glass of water. “I can take care of myself. I don’t need a babysitter.” When I return to the living room, she has her arms crossed and her eyes are like chips of coal. “I never claimed to be your babysitter, did I? Or did I say that? I certainly don’t remember saying it, but then I guess you’re a better judge of what I said than I am, aren’t you?” I hand her the water and sit down on the armchair, which she’s right about; it does still smell of sex. I fold my legs, place my hands on my knee, and lift my chin. “So, my dear Emma, how may I help you today? You know I am absolutely thrilled that you decided to just show up at midnight. Shall we play charades? Have a few cocktails? Gossip about the office?”

“Wow.” She adjusts herself on the couch, sitting even more upright if that is possible. “I don’t like being mocked, Allison. But I get the point. Fine. I’ll stop ranting at you, but you have to agree to stop blocking me out.” “What do you want to know?” “For one, why does it smell like a porno shoot in here?” “How many porno shoots have you been to, Emma? I’m starting to wonder if you’re the woman I befriended all those years ago …” “You had sex,” she states, unflinching. “Let’s pretend that I did, just for a second. And then let’s ask ourselves that if I did, why would you care? What stake would you have in it? Why would it matter to you? If I had sex, does that fix world hunger? Does it make everybody rich?” “Ha, ha, ha, ha.” She slaps her knee. “You are on fire this evening. It doesn’t matter to me. Of course it doesn’t. But it also smells of oil and whisky and cigarettes in here, and the last time I checked, you don’t smoke and you don’t drink whisky. And

there’s a motorcycle out front. And you’ve cut your hair. If you’re going to look me in the face and tell me that nothing’s going on, you’re going to lie to me. That’s all. And it’s fine if you want to lie to me. Really, it is. It just isn’t the sort of friendship I thought we had. But if I was wrong … then, fine, I’ll deal with that.” She drops her gaze, Drama Queen Supreme. “I get it.” “You don’t have to be so dramatic about it,” I say. “It’s like you’re saying we can’t be friends if I don’t divulge every detail about my sex life.” “So you did have sex then?” She leaps on it. “And it was with that biker, wasn’t it, the one you called the handsomest man you’ve ever seen? By the way, I still don’t think that that’s a word.” “It is.” I think quickly. I can please her—and get her to leave me to sleep—without giving the whole game away. Half-truths are better than full lies, surely. So I give her a half story, tell her I ran into him at the gun store when I was looking into firing ranges, and we got talking, and we came back here and had wild, animal sex. “Wow,” she says. “That’s really something. That’s just crazy.” A small smile touches her lips. She leans forward. This is what she lives for. Gossiping,

chatting, cocktailing. “How do you feel about it?” “Do you really have to do the whole therapy thing?” But I’m smiling. I can’t help it. It’s too much like being a teenager again, talking about boys with the other weird non-cheerleader girls under the rafters, giggling about a kiss or something more. Emma snaps her fingers, pointing at the smile as though it is proof. Which it is, I guess. “Don’t play that game with me. You want to talk about this. You need to learn something, doll; you might be able to lie to everybody else. You might be able to lie to yourself. But you will never be able to lie to me.” “Are you God now?” “No. I’m much more important than that. I’m a cougar.” We both giggle, the idea is so silly. Then she asks me how I feel about it again. “I don’t know how I feel,” I answer, honestly. “It all happened so fast. It was like—I was definitely into it. Really into it. It was probably—no, not probably, it was the best sex I’ve ever had.”

“So what’s the problem?” “Who says there is one?” “You do. You tell me it’s the best sex you’ve ever had and also that you don’t know how you feel about it. If that isn’t a problem then I don’t know what is.” “It’s just …” I can’t tell her the whole story: that I don’t know how I feel because I’m not sure what we are, exactly. He made a suggestive comment about helping him and I took the hint, then he bent me over and we fucked like dogs. It was steamy and sexy, sure, but that doesn’t mean that that sort of interaction isn’t new to me. Was it a transaction? Something more, something less? It wasn’t coercion, I know that for sure, but if I were to tell Emma the whole story would she feel the same? I don’t have anything to compare it to because none of my past relationships have been like this. “Allison!” she snaps. “Are you aware that it’s rude to sit there with your mouth hanging open when you’re in the middle of a conversation?” “You really do know how to play the bossy mother, don’t you?”

“Are you going to tell me …” “I don’t know him that well,” I say, deciding on another half-truth. I don’t know him that well, true, but that isn’t the only reason I’m confused. “How am I supposed to feel when I’ve just had sex with a stranger?” “I used to do it all the time in college.” She throws it out there casually, as she often does with character-shattering news, like the time she nonchalantly told me she’d tried cocaine. “I used to go out and find a guy I liked the look of and bring him back to my dorm and bounce on him like a pogo-stick!” “You are a beast,” I tell her. “A monster. An animal.” “I never felt bad afterwards, but I guess I never felt good, either. For me it was just a pleasure thing. There was nothing else there. For them it was the same too. You know what college boys are like. But that was just physical. You don’t look like a girl who’s in it just for the physical.” “We’re going out together tomorrow,” I admit. “Oh, now it comes out …” She smiles like a

torturer exacting her pound of flesh. “A meal?” “Yes,” I lie. Really he’s taking me to a shooting range and then he’s going to teach me how to ride better, but a meal works well enough. “So it’s developing into quite the relationship then,” she says, drumming her fingers on the arm of the couch. “Allison and … Wait, what’s his name?” “Granite,” I say. “Granite.” She pauses. “Granite.” She draws it out. “Granite.” She steeples her fingers. “What kind of a name is Granite?” “I don’t know. It’s his name.” “Does that seem normal to you?” “I guess not. But I didn’t give it much thought until just now.” “Somebody introduces himself to you as Granite and you don’t bat an eyelid? What if somebody called himself Gravel? Would that be fine with you, too?” “It’s getting late, Emma.” I nod at the clock. “It’s

past midnight.” “Is that your subtle and tactful way of asking me to leave before you can explain to me the depths of your conflicted emotions?” She takes a gasping breath. “I want you to know something before you kick me out. If you really care about this man, you shouldn’t let him see you as the girl he bends over and fucks. I know. I’m sorry for being so blunt about it. But men are hardwired a certain way. When they have a girl they can just take anytime they want, they lose interest quickly. I know, I know.” She places her hand over her heart. “It’s sexist and old-fashioned and mean. I understand. But it’s also the truth.” “I don’t agree,” I say, though my voice isn’t as strong as I’d like. “Okay. Then ask yourself this question. If you knew a guy who you just used for sex—every time you wanted him, he came running; every time you wanted him gone afterwards, he left—would you marry him? I’m just saying. If you care, be aware.” “What a lovely rhyme. But I really am tired now.” I escort her to the front door, say goodbye a dozen times—amidst promises to stay in touch—and then

go upstairs and fall into bed. “If you care, be aware,” I mutter. It doesn’t sound as stupid as I’d like it to.

Chapter Thirteen Granite “You can’t tell me this ain’t no different to a club girl and then blush like a schoolboy when I ask you if you’re going to see her again. That’s not how it works.” Ranger flicks ash onto the tarmac as he paces up and down in front of my bike. He is smiling in the shadows of his Stetson. “When I was getting ready for my first date with Maria, I was more nervous than I’ve ever been in my life, and that includes becoming a pledge of the club—and leaving it, in fact. My belly hurt. My chest was tight. Everything moved really fast. I was a wreck.” “Good for you,” I say. “But it’s not like I ain’t used to stressful situations.” “But you want to woo this lady,” he points out. “Don’t you?” “I reckon that’s a strange thing to say in 2018, but it might be I do.” “But you’re scared.”

“Goddamn, Ranger. I ain’t scared.” I step on a soda can with my boot, crushing it. The sound is like a gun reloading. “I don’t get scared. If I can face down five men on my own, meeting with a lady ain’t gonna scare me.” “If only it was that simple!” He tosses his cigarette to the ground and lights another one. “It should be. I’ll agree with that. You should be able to say that since you can do some manly shit, women shouldn’t scare you. And yet, they do.” “There’s only one thing that’s—not scaring me, you overdramatic fuck—but makin’ me question stuff a little bit. And by the way, this ain’t a date.” “It is. But we can agree to disagree. All right, then, what’s making you ‘question stuff’?” I look up at the sky, at a flock of birds darting between clouds, and then toward the diner, where a mother of two walks by with a stroller for one kid and the other clinging to her leg. I look down at my tattooed fingers on the handlebar of my bike. Then I sigh. “You know I find it hard talking about this shit. But here it is. We fucked last night and I’m not sure if it would’ve happened if I wasn’t helping her. I don’t know if she woulda just gotten down like that otherwise. And now I don’t know how to act

when I meet with her, ’cause I don’t want it to be like with the club girls, like they’ll do whatever I want just ’cause of who I am. I know this sounds … not like me, but I want her to—I can’t say it, man.” “You want her to like you for you.” I spit onto the ground, click my neck from side to side. “I reckon part of me just died. “Don’t be so dramatic all the time. You don’t have to be an outlaw every second of every day of your life.” “You know, Ranger, sometimes I wish that was true. I’ll be sittin’ in my apartment, wondering what it is normal folks are doing right about now while I’m cleaning my pistol, and I’ll get to thinkin’ that’d it’d be something sweet to take a break from that, to go to mini golf or down to a diner and talk about the newest comic book movie with my friends. And then I’m walking down the street and I see one of these guys looking like he just had his lunch money stolen from him and I’m glad I am who I am.” “But not with Allison, you’re not,” Ranger points out, smiling. Smiling because he has me. Smiling because I’ve got no way out. Smiling because he’s got me boxed in all from all sides. He knows he’s

right, the bastard. The smile spreads across his cheeks. “With her, you want something else. You want to be that normal guy walking down the street, the one who knows how to talk to women beyond just grabbing them and dragging them closer. That’s what you forget. Most men have to learn a thing or two about how to treat a lady, since they don’t have club girls throwing themselves at him all day long.” “Yeah, well … I reckon I’ll work it out.” He finishes his cigarette, tosses the butt to the ground, and stands with his thumbs looped through his belt and his Stetson shadowing almost his entire face: everything but the lower half of his smile. “Maybe you will. I’m not saying you won’t. All I’m saying is that when it comes to ladies like that, you can’t just treat them like they’re there to fuck you. They don’t take kindly to it.” “Is this coming from all your dating experience?” He raises his hands. “There’s no need to get defensive about it. I’m just telling you the truth.” “All right.” I turn away from him, pull on my bike helmet. “Tell me the truth later. I’ve gotta get going.”

“For your date.” “You’re a fuckin’ teenager.” I ride away. I don’t want to think about what he’s said, at least not overly think about it to the point where it will throw me off my game. Because he’s right: I’ve never had to have a game before. I’ve never had to think about how to approach a woman, what to say. The pathway between bar and bed has always been a matter of just taking her there, and then she’ll do whatever I want. This is different. I stop outside her house and go up to the door. I wish I had those flowers on me now. All I’ve got is a nervous fuckin’ grin. She answers, wearing shorts and a tank top with her hair styled around her face. She looks damn hot, standing on her tiptoes and still lookin’ up at me. “Hi,” she beams. “Hi.” I nod. “Shall we get going?” “Am I riding with you?” she asks. “If that’s okay with you. You’ve got leathers and a

helmet, ain’t you, Al?” She pouts. “Yes, I have a jacket and a helmet. Wait here.” She leaves and returns a few minutes later wearing leather pants, a leather jacket, holding a helmet at her side. “Let’s go, then.” “Have you got your piece?” “My … piece? Do you mean my motorbike?” I laugh, a surprise one that just bursts out of me. “What?” she snaps. “I don’t know what you mean.” “Your gun, genius.” “Oh, no. Wait here.” “No.” I touch her arm. She shivers, I think, and looks at me with widening eyes. She bites her lip. “We’ll use mine.” She nods shortly, her bangs shifting on her forehead. “Okay.” I climb onto the bike and she climbs on behind me, wrapping her hands around my belly and holding

tightly onto me. I’ve ridden with women on the back of my bike before, but it’s always made me feel uncomfortable, like they’re intruding on my private space. This is different. I like riding with Allison, the feel of her right behind me. She flinches at the pop-pop-pop of gunfire as we approach. “It’s so loud,” she mutters. “They tend to be,” I agree. “Yeah.” Silence stretches between us. I can’t think of anything to say. We walk into the range without talking again. “Howdy, folks,” the man behind the desk says. He’s an old fat cowboy-hat wearing man with an American-flag T-shirt and a signed baseball mitt hanging on the wall behind him. He tips his hat at Allison. He has a tattoo of an American flag on the back of his hand and a bullet scar down his forearm. “Ma’am. Allow me to invite you both to the wonderful, the magical, the unbelievable world of firearm training. Two booths?”

“One,” I tell him. “I wanna teach her a thing or two.” “One it is. You have some experience with shooting there, big guy?” He glances at me. His gray beard shifts as his lips tremble. Maybe he thinks it’s a stupid question. “Just a little,” I say, hoping to diffuse some of the awkwardness. “Well, here you go. Let me show you to your booth.” The man shows us to a booth right at the end of the line. As he leaves, and Allison is busy studying my gun, the man winks at me. “Hell of a place for a date,” he says, too quietly for her to hear. I just nod, not sure what else to do. He’s right. This is one hell of a place for a date. Now I have to try’n find a way to smooth talk her, or flirt, or whatever the fuck it is regular folks do. Nine-to-five folks do this shit all the time, this dating shit. “This is the safety, right?” She turns to me. I leap forward, grabbing the barrel of the gun and facing it away from me. “Rule number one. Never

point your gun at somethin’ you don’t mean to shoot.” She smiles up at me. It’s a shy kind of smile, but it’s got some wicked in there too, the same way she looked at me when she pulled her shirt over her head. “How do you know I’m not going to shoot you?” I just say nothing. I open my mouth to talk but all that comes out is a growling laugh. I need to stop thinking so much. Talking with Ranger was a mistake. “Come here.” I turn her around and stand behind her, reaching my arms around her and grabbing the gun with her hands beneath mine. I press myself forward, her body flat against mine, my cock going hard against that tight ass the second it touches it. “Okay. Look. These are called iron sights. You use ’em to aim. You need to hold the gun tight enough so it doesn’t go flying when you pull the trigger, but not so tight that it breaks your goddamn arm from the recoil. Strong, but flexible. That’s better. Now turn the safety off. The switch there. Yeah, that’s it. Why’nt you try’n shoot that target there?” I stand back and watch as she takes a couple of shots, her hand going all over the place from the

recoil. I laugh, step forward, hold her hands again. “No, like this. Look.” I guide her hands to the target and then pull the trigger for her. Then I let her hand go up a little, but correct it soon after. “I think I get it,” she says. “I have to let the gun do what it wants to do when I pull the trigger, but within reason. I don’t want it going crazy or anything like that. We want to keep it as safe as possible. Right?” “Safe, sure. But you also want to be able to hit what you’re shooting at. It’s rare that one shot does it, at least for a newbie.” “A newbie.” She turns on me with a flirty look on her face. But not one that means she wants to fuck. Which leaves me hanging, really, ’cause that inbetween space is pretty damn confusing to me. “Is that really how you want to talk to me? No, don’t answer!” She giggles, waving her non-gun-holding hand. “You’ve offended me now. Yes, that’s right, you’ve absolutely offended me and now you’re going to have to spend years and years trying to make it up to me.” “Are you really a little diva then, Allison?” I take a step forward, staring down at her. Her cheeks are flushed, just like they were in the apartment. Her

lips are slightly parted. “Well, I can be.” She flutters her eyelashes like a cartoon character. “But you might want to step back when I’m holding this big gun.” After the shooting range, we go back to her neighborhood where I’ll try’n teach her how to ride her motorbike. I push it out of the garage. “I’ll tell you somethin’, this must be the rustiest goddamn bike I’ve ever seen. Let me give it a onceover and make sure it’s safe to ride, at least.” “Okay.” She stands just off to the side, toeing the ground, leaving grooves in the grass. “Thanks. It’s good that you don’t want to—that you care enough.” “Sure.” I’ll never understand how a man can be inside a woman one minute and then feel strange about meetin’ her eye the next. I fix up her bike as best I can. “It won’t be winning any competitions but it won’t be committing any murders either.” “Great.” She walks over to me, places her hand on my arm, looks up at me with those same flushed cheeks. “I’m really grateful that you’re taking the

time to show me this stuff, Granite. It’s really nice of you.” “It’s no big deal,” I tell her, staring back down at her. I need to just try for a kiss. The sex can wait for later. If I can kiss her, then we’re getting somewhere. “The last thing I want is for you to go tumbling from this rust bucket ’cause I didn’t take the time to fix it up. So don’t worry about it.” She keeps her hand on my arm. “I know, but thank you.” I lean down then, more nervous than I should be. This isn’t my domain. I don’t kiss, not really, unless I’m kissing a clit or a nipple or a belly or a thigh. But the second I touch her lips, I forget what nerves are. I kiss her, hard, on the lips, losing myself in the hot-as-hell feeling of her, losing myself in the softness of her lips, the heat of her body. I pull her close to me, pressing my cock against her, rock-hard through my jeans. She moans, and then the moan lengthens, and then she makes a strange, almost-painful sound and steps back. “Wait a sec,” she murmurs, breathing heavily. “Not here, baby. Just calm down for a second.”

“Sure.” I step back. “No, sure. Goddamn, you’re right. I don’t know … I reckon I’ve gotta get going, Allison. I didn’t mean to upset you or anything.” “You don’t have to go.” She tilts her head at me. “I thought we were going to practice the bike?” “Another time,” I call back, already on my way toward my bike. I sit on it, about to get the engine going when she jogs over. “Are you sure?” she asks. My heart is pounding like a fuckin’ teenager’s. She just wanted a kiss and I tried to fuck her right here on the driveway where her neighbors can see. “I’m sure,” I say. “I’ll see you soon, all right? Ride safe on that thing.” Then I’m gone. I stop at the end of the street and glance back. Allison is walking up the driveway, toward the bike.

Chapter Fourteen Allison “So how old are you, Al, really? Don’t fuck me around about it.” I’m standing in the noonday sun with Jax squinting at me, arms folded like an angry teacher. “I’m nineteen,” I say in my deep-Al voice. Then I kneel down next to the bike and scrub it with the sponge. “You don’t look nineteen. I reckon they’ll be calling you the Kid if you ever get into the club for real.” I smile to myself: the Kid, what irony. “You look about twelve. Has anybody ever told you that before? Do you like washing bikes or something? You seem really into that.” “I just want to do a good job,” I tell him. What I don’t say is that ever since Granite left me two days ago I haven’t been able to get that moment out of my head. I keep seeing him walking down the driveway to his bike after the rough kiss. I keep wondering if I should’ve reacted differently.

“That’s the best way to get into the club, right?” “Yeah, they like loyalty,” Jax says. “They like men doing what’s best for the club. They like it when you do what needs to be done and don’t ever embarrass the club. But let me tell you what they don’t like, little man, they don’t like it when a fella just does what he’s told all the time, when he might as well be a lapdog because he never says no.” He flips his cigarette around the back of his hand and catches it. He’s always doing that as he speaks. “Maybe you might make a good courier or a caddy for the boss if he ever gets into golf, but if you wanna be a runnin’, gunnin’ outlaw, you’ve got to be dangerous.” “And what about you?” I stare up at him, face flat. “Are you dangerous?” He laughs, whistles, twists his neck from side to side as though encompassing all the danger in the world. “I could tell you a thing or two about Jax that’d make your blood go cold, kid, but I don’t wanna give you nightmares.” “Right.” “There are two types of people in this world, Al, people who wash bikes and people who ride them.”

“I think you missed a third kind,” I say. “Because I rode in on a bike and now I’m washing one.” “Don’t be a smartass.” He wonders off toward the clubhouse. I get on with the bike-washing, wondering if he’s right, wondering if this could all be a waste of time. And then I think of Granite. My mind pendulums between the two, Brandon and Granite, and then settles on a stubborn oil stain on the chassis of the bike. I manage to scrub it off just as my cellphone rings. “Yes?” I answer. “Um, oh. Hello. I was hoping to speak with Allison, Brandon’s brother. Is this the right number?” That’s when I realize I answered with my Al-voice. “This is she,” I whisper, walking away from the clubhouse. “Oh, right. Okay. Hello, my name is Dr. Hutchinson.” I hear her words as though coming to me across a

large gap: Brandon in a knife fight, laid up in hospital, a stab wound to the belly. “I’ll be right there,” I tell her. I get on my bike and ride away from the club, not thinking anymore, just desperate to get there before something terrible happens to him. “Death,” a voice whispers. It’s the growling on my motorbike made into a voice. “This is the end,” it hisses. “It’s all over now. I’m sorry, little girl, but you had a bad plan and it failed. You took too long. Now your older brother is dead, dead, dead, just like poor old Mommy and just like Daddy—probably, though we can’t say for sure, can we?” I force myself to stop at the house first, change quickly into women’s clothes, and then go out to the car and drive the rest of the way. Everything feels like it takes too long, from traffic lights to pedestrians talking and laughing as they cross the street. At one point I almost snap at an old lady who’s dragging one of those shopping carriers across the road. I bite my lip. Finally, I pull into the hospital. I rush up to the main desk, past patients and nurses to a tired-looking receptionist with dirty blonde hair and hollow cheeks. “Hello, how can I help you?”

She says it like a zombie. I bet she’s been on shift for hours. “I’m here for my brother …” I give her the information. Her eyes widen for a moment, and then she says, “Yes, he’s upstairs on the fourth floor. But he’s … well, it’s a strange situation. His friends have decided to congregate outside his room. Normally we don’t let that happen, you know. Normally they have to wait in the waiting room, but the security guard wouldn’t do anything and when we called the police, they hung up. Said they were too busy for a complaint like that. How strange is that! Anyway, I just thought you should know.” “Thank you,” I say. “You’re right. I should know.” I’ve chewed two of my nails down to stubs by the time the elevator drops me on the fourth floor. I see what the receptionist was talking about straightaway. The hallway is filled with bikers, the same kind of bikers who filled Brandon’s house the last time I went to see him. Brass Skulls. I try to swallow my nerves as I walk over to them. I can’t let it show on my face. I can’t let them see how hard my heart is beating, as though its sole mission in life is to break my ribs.

Then the handlebar-mustachioed biker from last time turns to me. He walks over to me, a smile on his lips which isn’t much of a smile at all. It’s more of a pained grimace. He looks me up and down and the grimace deepens. “Well,” he says. “If this ain’t fate throwing me a gift. Look at this.” He glances back at his men: around ten of them, all as roughlooking as him. “Have you come here ’cause you knew the fellas would be bored, miss? It seems to me the only reason you would’ve come down here dressed like that …” And he points to my bare legs in my shorts “… is to show the men a good time. Do you wanna take me first, sweetheart, or shall we speed things up a little by havin’ you take us three at a time? Can you do that, honey?” I let my arms fall to my sides, standing how Al stands, not how Allison does. “I’m not here for you,” I say, voice as firm as I can make it. Though it’s harder this time, knowing that Brandon is not only in hypothetical danger but is in danger of dying, too. I feel tears rise behind my eyelids. I force them back. “I’m here to see my brother. If it makes you feel big and cool to talk to me like that, then fine. Say whatever you like. But get out of my way, please.” “No,” he says flatly. “I don’t think I will. You see,

maybe I would’ve if you’d asked me a little nicer. But if there’s one thing no man likes, it’s a woman who doesn’t know when to play nice. It ain’t for you to talk to us like this, darling. You need to learn some manners. The last thing a man wants to hear is some fuckin’ whore telling him what to do, telling him how to act. Most of us have had enough of that shit from our old ladies, so I reckon we need to restart this whole thing. Let me tell you how it’s gonna go. You’re gonna walk to the end of the hallway, think hard about how much you really love your brother, and then come back here and ask me nicely.” He leans forward, his reek of whisky and sweat washing over me. I fight the urge to gag. “Men like smiling women, friendly women. Men like the sort of women who know how to make a man feel happy to see her, not some uppity whore who doesn’t know her place.” I force the tears back, turn around, and walk to the elevator. But instead of walking back up to him like he wants, I ride the elevator down to the parking lot and call Granite. “Yes?” he answers. Ever since the kiss outside my house, he’s been acting strange. It’s the same here, his voice slightly distant. “It’s me,” I say pointlessly. He knows who it is.

“Brandon’s been stabbed and …” I explain it all to him. “And they won’t let me in to see him.” “Wait there,” he says, voice changed now. He doesn’t sound distant or strange anymore. “Those fuckin’ Skulls. Don’t move, Allison. I’ll be right there.” I go to my car and sit on the hood, staring down at my feet and trying to think about nothing but the shadows or the ambulance or the passersby, anything but my fear, my anxiety. Granite pulls in a few minutes later, wearing no helmet or leather. He walks over to me and opens his arms. And even if he looks awkward, it’s still the most welcome sight I could ask for. I fall into the embrace and rest my head against his chest. I feel safe as he wraps his arms around me, holding me close. “I’ll get you in to see your brother,” he says. “You don’t need to worry. And Allison, I’m sorry, all right? Can we agree never to talk about that kiss again?” “You don’t need to be sorry.” I kiss him softly on the cheek, slightly rough from where he hasn’t shaved. “But if it makes you feel better, we won’t talk about it.”

“Okay.” He steps back. “Good. Let’s go up.” We head into the elevator. I can’t stop my foot from tapping on the floor, the sound like the thudding of the elevator’s heartbeat. “Calm down,” he mutters. “Never let them see that they can get to you. Once they know that, they’ll never stop.” I take a deep breath, rub tears from my eyes, and then follow Granite out of the elevator and down the hallway toward Handlebar. He turns, smiles, and then his smile falters when he sees Granite. “Are you crazy?” he says, and then laughs gruffly. “You’re gonna walk in here with no leather and no gun and … you Thunder Riders really are stupider than I thought, aren’t you? Jesus Christ. The hell’s the matter with you?” “No.” Granite steps forward, facing down all ten of the bikers without showing a hint of fear. “Nothing’s wrong with me, fellas, but I can see by the way some of you are lookin’ at each other that you know who I am.” Handlebar glances back. Granite’s right: several of the men shift uncomfortably.

“So here’s how it’s gonna go,” Granite goes on. “You’re gonna let this girl in to see her brother, or there’s gonna be a problem. Maybe you really do find it funny, hearing that from me, but I reckon it’s more likely that you don’t want to go toe to toe with me. There ain’t no shame in moving aside. There’s more shame in doing what you want just ’cause you wanna be tough. Well?” He walks right up to Handlebar, staring into his face. “How tough do you fellas feel?” Slowly, Handlebar steps aside. He waves a hand at the other bikers. “Let her in. It don’t mean shit to us.” Granite turns to me, nods. “Go on.” I walk by them, into Brandon’s room, but not before I hear Granite say, “You’re gonna pay for pulling this bullshit. Going to war with outlaws is one thing. Getting in the way of a woman tryin’ to see her brother is something else.”

Chapter Fifteen Granite Maybe some part of me guessed they’d pull some shit like this, because I ain’t surprised when I get outside and find my bike completely trashed, the wheels taken off and the chassis sitting on a bed of bricks, graffiti covering it and the handlebars twisted round so they’re facing the other way. I’m not angry. It’s more like finding out that I’ve got to work another four hours when I thought I was done for the day; I’m more just pissed. I go back up to her brother’s room and sit outside, waiting. The Brass Skulls have gone now, which is a good decision on their end. The last thing they want is a pissed Thunder Rider coming after them. I sit there for a long time. I’m not about to go in there and ask her to hurry things up, and if I’m being honest the main reason I’m waiting is ’cause I wanna see how she’s doing. Eventually she comes out, eyes red. She seems surprised to see me, but not in a bad way. She walks over to me and sits in my lap, resting her head on my shoulder. “He’s going to be okay,” she

murmurs. “That’s what the doctors are saying, anyway, but it still kills me to see him like this. He’s got tubes going into him and he can barely breathe. He’s wheezing like hell. Apparently it was with some random guy at a bar. The other bikers egged him on to say something to this bodybuilding type and the bodybuilding type didn’t take too kindly to it.” “They rarely do,” I mutter. “Those sorts aren’t exactly known for keeping it cool.” I touch the back of her head, stroke it. Seeing her in this sort of pain makes the whole question of how to treat her not like I’d treat a club girl pretty damn simple, ’cause if a club girl came to me like this my first instinct would be to get away. But with Allison, my instinct ain’t to run away. It’s to comfort her. I’ve gotta believe that means something. “Tell me how I can help.” “You are helping,” she whispers. “It was nice of you to wait for me, too.” “Yeah, though that wasn’t all my choice.” “What do you mean?” I explain to her about the bike.

“Wow,” she says. “Those jerks.” “Jerks. That seems a little mild to me, truth be told. I was thinking of somethin’ with more F-bombs in it.” “Those fucking fucks?” She raises an eyebrow. “That’ll work.” “So I’m guessing you want a ride?” “If it ain’t too much trouble.” She slides off me onto the chair next to us. “Of course not,” she says. “I just …” She explodes into tears. It catches me off guard ’cause there’s no warning for it. One second she’s sitting there and the next tears are streaking down her face with a vengeance. I put my hand on her back, feeling pretty damn useless. “I just keep thinking about how he was when we were kids.” She wipes her tears with the palm of her hand. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to burden you with this. It just keeps coming back to me, the way he would always be there for me, you know, the

way he would always do what’s best for me and Mom. And now he’s in the hospital because some asshole in a bar stabbed him. It makes no sense to me. Life doesn’t make any sense.” “No, it doesn’t,” I agree. “I can’t count the number of times I asked the world what the fuck sort of racket it was running by killin’ a kid like Jimmy, but the cruel truth is that the world never has any answers. It just keeps on bein’ the world. I’m sorry, Allison, I know that ain’t what you wanna hear right about now.” “It’s okay. I’m just glad that you’re here. Come on, let’s get going.” We head down to the parking lot together. She leads me around the side of the hospital where it’s quieter. “I’m parked down here—” They leap from the shadows of an alleyway: dumpsters and rats and discarded cigarette butts. The handlebar-mustache fuck grabs her by the arms just as two more leap on me from behind. I’ve been hit in the back of the head before, but I’ll never get used to it. I fall to my knees, try’n get up, and then they hit me again. My vision goes woozy and a moment later—I think it’s a moment, anyway—I open my eyes to find the handlebar-mustache prick pushing Allison up against the wall.

The two men at my sides hold me up by my arms. My first instinct is to thrash and kick and fight, but then I realize that they think they’ve worked me over harder than they actually have. They think they’ve really messed me up, where in reality they’ve only partly messed me up. “Think about what you’re doing,” I say, staring the bastard right in the eye. “This ain’t gonna go well for you. You know that. This here is my old lady. What do you think’ll happen to you if you’re caught messing with a Thunder Rider’s old lady? Do you think that’ll go well? You’re livin’ in a goddamn dreamland. Let her go or this’ll get ugly.” He uses one hand to pin her up against the wall as he turns to me. He’s a strong motherfucker, I’ll give him that. She just lays flat against the wall; if she moves, she’ll end up choking herself. “What do you think will happen if you keep running off that mouth of yours?” “I’m gonna give you this choice once, and only once. And I suggest you take it, ’cause I’ll never give it to you again. You let her go and you call your dogs off. You turn around. And you go home. If I never see you again, I won’t make you pay for this.”

“Make me pay?” He cackles madly. “Folks talk about you, Granite. The famous Granite. Took out fifty guys on his own, they say. A fuckin’ psychopathic focused killer, they say. But I know the truth. That’s all horseshit. You’re just a man, and a man ain’t nothin’ to get excited about. You’ll cry just like the rest of them when you see your girl turned into fucking mulch in front of you. Come here, sweetheart.” His hand goes for her crotch. “Don’t be shy.” “Stop!” I snap. Somethin’ in my voice must be wicked, because he does stop. “Listen to me. I don’t wanna kill you motherfuckers, but I will, all right? So why’nt you just step down and go on your way? I don’t want to hurt you but if it comes down to it, what do you expect me to do, eh? The fuck you think I’m going to do when you treat my old lady like this?” “You know, you’re making a whole lot of threats for a fella who’s being held back as we speak.” That’s because I’m buying time, gathering my energy, and then— I flip one guy over by yanking him by the chest. At the same time, I grab the knife from the other guy’s

belt and stab him in the throat, stab him twice so that his blood pisses onto the tarmac. I toss his bleeding body at the leader and then leap after it, hacking at his face. He roars and lets go of Allison, tackles me, throws me to the ground. I roll aside just in time to avoid a crushing boot, and then stab him through the calf muscle, his jeans immediately turning red. He lets out a scream and then I lean up and stab him in the thigh. “Fucker,” he hisses, limping back so that it’s him and his men on one side and me and Allison on the other. I stand up quickly, spreading my hands. “You wanna go for round two?” I spit on the ground. “Or you decided you had enough of this shit? I’ll go all day, you fuckin’ fuck.” I spit again. I don’t normally get this angry from a fight, but Allison is wheezing close to my ear like a wounded animal. “You think you’re real tough, don’t you? A real fuckin’ tough guy. But the truth is that you ain’t shit. You got lucky with your little trick. Wellfuckin’-done. But this ain’t the end.” “Just leave,” Allison says. She points at the bleeding man. “Look what he did to your friend. Do you really think it’s a smart idea for you to hang

around after he did that?” “Wow, what a fuckin’ miracle.” He grins widely. “A whore said something smart. She’s right, but we’ll be back.” They limp away, leaving us alone. Allison collapses against me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders and burying her face in my chest. Her weeping is like the trembling of a volcano, vibrating her whole body. She grabs my face and stares into my eyes. “Promise you won’t leave me,” she says. “Not tonight. Please, Granite. I can’t be alone, not after …” She weeps again, crumbling in front of me. “I promise,” I say.

Chapter Sixteen Allison “I’m not saying I don’t wanna watch over you. I never said that, goddamn. Don’t put words in my mouth.” “It’s your tone.” My own tone isn’t much better: clingy. But I can’t help it. After everything that’s happened since we left the hospital—Brandon discharged, cars following me—I can’t help being a little clingy. And if I’m being honest, it’s more than a little. “I get it. You’re here. I’m really grateful for that. But you don’t have to talk to me like I’m some sort of chore you have to complete. I don’t mean to annoy you, or make it so you can’t do what you want, or whatever. I just … I don’t feel safe.” He sips his beer, eyes closed, taking steady breaths. “Listen to what I’m saying. Listen to the words that are coming out of my mouth. Not my tone, or my body language, or any of this amateur psychologist shit. Just listen to the words that are coming out of my mouth. All right? I am happy to be here. I am happy to watch over you. I don’t have a problem

with any of it. Okay?” “But . . . when you say okay like that, it sounds like you really don’t want to be here.” He stands up, goes to the window. It’s late evening; he’s a silhouette. “I’m not used to this kind of stuff, Allison. You can’t just expect me to sink right into it. It’s been—what? Three days since that shit in the hospital? You’ll never catch me saying that you’re safe after three days, but what you do need to think about is what you’re gonna do about the way you’re handling this shit. ’Cause if there really are people following you, and if your brother really is missing—” “What do you mean if?” He sighs, rolls his eyes. “I don’t wanna get into this,” he mutters. “Well, what do you mean by if, though? Because I told you those cars were following me. I saw them with my own eyes. Every time I turned, they turned.” I sit on the couch, legs stretched out under the coffee table, pulling a thread from my shorts and rolling it between my thumb and forefinger. Sooner or later there’ll be no thread left. “So when you say if, I don’t know what the heck you’re

talking about.” “You ain’t a trained outlaw or a cop or anything like that, that’s all I’m saying.” I go into the kitchen and pour myself a glass of wine. I think it’s my second but it must be more than that, because I opened the bottle earlier and now it’s empty. My vision is blurry; the world is blurry. I roll my head on my shoulders and, sure enough, feel the drunkenness roll around my body, as though signals are being beamed from my skull to the tips of my toes. “That’s not an insult.” He leans against the doorframe, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, hair still messy from where we had sex earlier. “Could you please not lean on that? It’s not very sturdy.” He laughs, shaking his head. “Don’t that seem slightly petty to you?” “Wow.” I drain half of my glass and push past him back into the living room. “It’s petty of me to not want you to break my apartment. I never would’ve guessed that. That’s crazy.”

“No,” he says, following me. “It’s petty of you to tell me not to lean on shit just ’cause you’re pissed at me for telling you that you ain’t a goddamn cop or an outlaw.” “You don’t have to swear all the time.” I drop onto the couch. “Swear?” He drops onto the armchair. The distance between us is a few feet but it might as well be miles. “What do you mean? When did I swear?” “I don’t know—all the time. You say ‘goddamn’ like other people say ‘the’.” “So now you wanna police my language as well as where I lean and don’t lean. Is that it?” “You don’t have to be so dramatic,” I say, rolling my eyes. “I’m not trying to police anything. I’m just talking to you. And for the record, there were three separate cars. But if you don’t want to believe that, then fine. What about the phone calls?” “The phone calls are real,” he says. “I heard the messages. I reckon it was the Skulls tryin’ to creep you out.”

“So there we go,” I say. “I’m not lying.” He lets out a tired groan. I want to stop, but I also want him to admit I saw what I saw. Life is whirring out of control and the last thing I need is the only person I can really talk to about this doubting me. “You don’t have to groan at me like that. I’m not a freaking animal.” “Allison.” He speaks slowly, in the tone of a man who’s constraining himself. “I get it. All right? I understand that you’re stressed and scared and all that shit. But you can’t keep accusing me of doing shit I ain’t doing. Okay, maybe I did groan. But so fuckin’ what? I’m here. I’m protecting you.” “But you don’t want to be!” I snap. “It’s fuckin’ scary for me!” he explodes, leaping to his feet. He slams his beer down on the coffee table and goes to the window, leaning his hands against it and pressing his face almost against the glass. From this angle he looks like some kind of animal, back heaving. “I’m not made for this shit, all right? I told you about my little brother. I’ve shared shit with you. And you’ve done the same and I’m thankful for that. But Jesus Christ, did it ever occur to you that it might be hard for me to wake up next to the same woman, to go to sleep with you every night

without feeling like I’m—I’m under siege, goddamn.” “Under siege,” I mutter. And I want to meet him halfway. I know he’s angry, upset, reaching out to me. But something twists in my belly. Anger, outrage: something vicious. “So you’d rather wake up next to a different woman every night.” “That’s not what I’m saying.” He turns to me, face difficult to read. “I’m just being honest with you about how I feel, is all, and that’s how I feel. You can take it any way you want. You can get upset about it or get mean or whatever, but I never tell women how I feel, and now I’m tellin’ you. I reckon that means something. But you’ve gotta understand that I need some goddamn freedom, just a little bit. Let me call in a couple of the brothers to watch over you so I can go and take care of business.” “So you can go someplace else, you mean. I bet you’ll just go to a bar and get drunk and forget I exist. You’ll end up fucking some other woman.” He massages his temples, closing his eyes, breathing slowly. “Can you just fuckin’ stop for a second? Just talk to me like we’re human goddamn beings. You don’t need to do this aggressive shit.

I’m just telling you—” “How you feel. I got it! Did you ever stop to think about how I felt, maybe?” He laughs, and then the laugh turns into a growl. “What do you think I’ve been doing for three damn days? I’ve been talking you back to sleep after nightmares. I’ve been stroking your hair. I’ve been making sure you’re okay. All that shit. You can’t tell me I haven’t been thinking about your feelings.” “Wow. I didn’t realize it was such a chore for you.” I fold my arms and make my face calm. Emotions attack me nonstop, trying to throw me off-balance. Or maybe they already have … “I didn’t realize I was being such a burden when I woke up seeing the bloody face that you stabbed. I didn’t realize I was being such a horrible bitch by asking for your help.” “I didn’t say that.” He sighs. “And you know I didn’t say that. I really wish you’d stop accusing me of shit I didn’t do or say.” “Well, I wish you’d stop accusing me of trapping you!”

“I didn’t say that.” “Let me explain something to you, Granite, because we keep running into this problem. Sometimes people imply things when they didn’t actually say them.” “I didn’t imply shit, either.” He lets his head fall back, staring at the ceiling as though that will give him the solution. “I didn’t mean to imply shit, anyway. I don’t wanna keep going on like this, all right, but this shit really isn’t easy for me. So if it seems like I’m distant or pissed off or whatever, then fine, all right. Fine. But that doesn’t mean we have to have a full-blown argument about it. This is what’s gonna happen. I’m gonna call a couple of my boys—I’ll make sure they’re ones Al’s never met before—to come by and watch the place. And then I’m gonna chase down these leads you told me about. It’s the best thing for it. I know it seems like I’m abandoning you or whatever, but I’m not. I promise you. I’m just trying to do what’s best, practically, not …” “Say it,” I urge him. “Emotionally. You can say it.” “Well.” He sighs, shrugs. “There it is.” “So you’re leaving.”

He approaches me, hands raised. “Only for a little while. Come here. Don’t be like that.” “I’m not being like anything.” I flinch away from him, dodging away from his grip, and then follow him to the door. “If you want to leave, then leave. I won’t get angry at you about it. I don’t care. Fine!” He sighs again, and then goes about gathering his things. He doesn’t have much: just one hold-all and his leather jacket. I follow him to the door, pissed at myself for being pissed with him, wishing I could push this emotional shit away and just be with him, just be with him like I want to be, like he wants to be—I think—but which that horrible moment outside the hospital has made far more difficult. The blood—the hand—the terror … “I’ll see you again soon,” he says. “And I’ll wait outside until my boys come to watch over you.” “I had somebody here to watch over me.” I slam the door in his face and then sprint into the bathroom. The argument, the stress, I don’t know what it is, but something is causing sickness to rise up in my belly like the waves of a tsunami. I collapse onto my knees beside the bowl and vomit forcefully into the bottom, belly twisting like

there’s a blade in there. Then I go into the living room and call Emma. Her voicemail picks up. “Hey, I just want to let you know that you were right about Granite. He doesn’t care about me. He never did.” I slam down the phone, not sure if Emma ever said that Granite didn’t care about me or if I just made it up. About twenty minutes later, somebody knocks on the door. I answer it to find a tall, hard-faced man with a dice tattoo on his neck. “The name’s Lucky,” he says. “Granite wanted me to let you know that I’m just outside if you need anything.” “Thank you, Lucky,” I mutter, reminding myself not to be rude. I return to the living room and throw myself on the couch, resting my cheek on my arm. I tell myself I won’t call him. I won’t be that girl. But then I end up calling him. He doesn’t answer. I try calling Brandon instead, but he doesn’t answer either. My brother’s lost or maybe dead; my protector’s gone because he can’t stand spending time with me … And now this sickness, rising with a vengeance. I run back into the bathroom just in time to stop the chunks from decorating my hallway wall.

Chapter Seventeen Granite “I felt like I was being suffocated, man, and it ain’t even her fault. She’s just scared. Of course she’s goin’ to be a little bit clingy. That’s how it goes, ain’t it? But the way she was going on at me. I just needed some air.” I lean back in the corner booth, sipping my whisky. Ranger stares at me with his upper lip curled. “I refuse to believe there was no way the two of you could’ve worked that out without going at each other like that. I just refuse to believe it.” He strokes his finger along the rim of his Stetson as he talks. “There’s a way to fix everything with a lady if you take the time. It sounds to me like you didn’t take the time.” “I came here for a drink.” I drain my glass of whisky and pour another. “I didn’t come here to be lectured. I just came from being lectured. Goddamn it, man. Do you work for her or somethin’?” “I just never saw you spending three days with a lady. So if you did spend three days with her, and

you’re still alive, then it seems to me there must be somethin’ special between the two of you. You’ve never spent more’n, what? A couple of hours with a lady?” “If that.” I nod. “I didn’t want to leave. I mean, I did. I had to get out of there for a couple of hours. But I didn’t want to leave the way I did, with all that shouting and bullshit. I get that she’s scared—” “Do you?” Ranger interrupts. “Because it seems to me that a man like you don’t know what it is to be really scared. You spend your life being tough and facing things that’d turn most folk to jelly. So when something happens like what you told me about— all that blood, man—it don’t mean half as much to you as it does to somebody like her. She’s getting nightmares and you’re sleeping like an angel on account of how different your lives are.” “Maybe there’s something to that,” I say, thinking on it for a few minutes. I never thought about it like that. Ranger has a way of pulling something out and holding it at a different angle, one I never would’ve guessed at. “Maybe I should call her,” I mutter. “Or at least call the fella who’s watching over her, to make sure she’s okay.” Ranger smiles. “That sounds like a good idea to

me,” he says. “A real good idea. Why don’t you do it right now?” “So you can sit there and watch me and get some sort of sick thrill out of it? I like you, pal, you know that, but sometimes I think you get off by making me uncomfortable.” I go outside, taking my whisky with me, and call Lucky. It rings three times, four, five … on the sixth ring I know something’s up. A man might let his cell ring four or five times if he’s smoking a cigarette or it’s fallen down the side of his chair or whatever, but when you’ve lived the outlaw life as long as I have, six rings means it’s time to get ready. I call Allison next, heart thumping in my neck, which I didn’t even know was possible. The phone rings and rings and then her voicemail takes over. I clench my teeth, hard, until they feel like they might shatter, and then ring again. No answer. I jump on my bike and speed toward her house. “So you left her and now this happens,” Jimmy says, making a tutting noise. “That wasn’t very smart, was it, or nice? That’s very silly if you ask me. Yes, very silly. Very silly and stupid and mean

and dumb and silly and stupid and mean.” “Leave me alone, kid,” I whisper in my head. “I’ve got enough to worry about without you getting involved.” “I know you have!” And Jimmy giggles. “You left her all on her own because you were annoyed. What sort of man does that to a woman he’s supposed to care about? I don’t want to be judgmental, big brother, but that seems like a real mean thing to do to me. I’m just being honest.” “Well, be less honest.” I block him from my mind and bring the bike to a stop outside her house. The world is mostly dark now except for the light from the nearby house and a snatch of starlight every now and then, when the clouds decide to move. I run across the dark-lit yard into the house, where I find Lucky propped up against the wall, a blade stuck through his neck. He opens his mouth and blood comes out, and then his eyes fall closed. I kneel down next to him and check his pulse, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out he’s dead. Then I search the house, quickly and thoroughly. She’s nowhere to be found. They have her, the fucking

animals. They’ve taken her from right under my nose. They must’ve been waiting for me to leave. I run outside and jump onto my bike. They think they can take my girl and nothing will happen. They think they can do anything they damn well please and get away with it. I ride quick and hard toward a bar where I know they hang out, where even the boss knows they hang out. Everybody knows they hang out there but they’re too well defended to hit them. Well, I ain’t going to hit them. I’m going to get my girl back. Part of me knows I should go about this smarter, but before I can give that part a fair hearing, I’m already walking toward the bar. It’s called The Damsel, with a carving of a lady in a dress over the door, and two fellas standing out the front. One is a short, fat fuck with one of those combovers and a gold front tooth which makes him look like a pimp rabbit. The other is young, around the same age as Jax, with that eager look all young outlaws have. He grips a knuckle-duster and stares at me with dead eyes as I approach. “I need to speak with the man in charge,” I say, ignoring their meant-to-be-intimidating looks. “I don’t know the bastard’s name, but I’m guessin’ it’s the stupid fuck with the handlebar mustache.”

The kid with the knuckle-duster takes a step forward. “You better watch your mouth.” “Is that right?” I step close to him, staring him in the face. “My name is Granite, kid, and I reckon you’ve heard of me. Your boss took my girl and I ain’t too happy about it, so you might wanna rethink getting in my face like this. I really ain’t in the fuckin’ mood for it.” “Kid.” Gold-Tooth touches his arm. “Let him past. Todd said he wanted to see him.” He looks at me. “First door on the right.” I walk into the bar, down a hallway which smells of old alcohol, and into the door on the right which has a manager sign hanging on it. I don’t knock, just push through. It’s the handlebar-mustache bastard, sitting behind a desk with his hands behind his head, some poor hooker on her knees in front of him, sucking him off. “Oh, it’s you,” he says, smiling. He waves the hooker away. She leaves the room, wiping her mouth. When the door closes, he stands up, zipping up his fly. “Todd. What kind of name is that for an outlaw, or a leader?”

“A name’s a name,” he says. “You don’t need to worry about my name, Granite. You’re not here for that. You’re here for something else. Not that I know anything about it, of course.” He strokes the ends of his mustache as he talks. “Cut the movie villain shit. You killed one of my boys and you’ve got Allison. Give her back to me and this don’t have to get ugly.” “Give her back to you?” Todd taps his finger against the desk. “That seems like a very strange thing for you to say, Granite, seeing as you’re the one who walked out of there. I thought you were done with her. Don’t look surprised. You think you can stab one of my boys in the face and we won’t keep an eye on you? We had a bug in that place before you even got home. That was some argument you had, right? I’m sorry. Boohoo … you’re not used to that sort of thing, are you? I shouldn’t bring it up.” “Screw you,” I snap. “Just give me my fucking woman.” “But how is she your woman? Can you explain that to me, big guy?” He takes a sawn-off shotgun from under the desk and waves it as he speaks. “If she was your woman, you wouldn’t have left her there

for my men to pick up. You wouldn’t have got so damn annoyed at her when all she wanted was a shoulder to cry on.” “I don’t wanna play these games.” “Neither do I.” He stands up, rolling his shoulders, clicking his neck from side to side. He looks like a boxer getting ready to fight. “I never want to play games. I’m not that sort of guy. I prefer real shit, like your girl. There’s something real. When she came around to Brandon’s house and I saw her, goddamn. I can see why you like her. She has that look about her, doesn’t she, that real slutty look.” “Cut. The. Shit.” I make to step forward, but he casually hefts the shotgun in my direction. I stay where I am, but I don’t take a step back. “You’ll take me to her.” “How old are you, Granite? Twenty-something? I’m forty this year. I remember when I was your age. I never thought I’d grow old. I thought it was a myth, getting old. I know how that sounds. Sounds like I’m a proper fuckin’ moron, doesn’t it? But it’s the truth. I’d look in the mirror and try’n imagine getting wrinkles and all that shit. And it just didn’t seem real. But now those wrinkles are popping up like whores at a funeral. So I find myself looking

back on my life, on those young days, and thinking about what makes a man a man.” He sits on the desk, shotgun laid on his knees but aimed at me at the same time. “I remember when I was a young guy. I was the meanest bastard you’ve ever seen. Nobody crossed me. One time I was in a bar and this fella made some joke about my mustache. I laughed along with him, told him he was a funny guy, and then later that night I got that piece of shit outside the bar, stabbed him in the back of the head, and watched him fall like a bag of bricks. I finished him, finished him good and quick and clean. That’s how I lived my life after that, never let a man embarrass me, never let a man think he’s better than me. And then you come along, you sick fuck, and stab my boy in front of me. Do you think I can let that stand?” I put my hand in my back pocket, working from memory. Slide my thumb across to unlock the phone. Bottom left for messages. Bottom left again for audio message. “I’ve got a friend called Ranger,” I say. “He’s a real smart fella. He’ll find me if you try any funny shit. He knows where The Damsel is. He knows my boys. He won’t have any trouble on that front.” I click send—or what I hope is send.

“Maybe he will.” Todd shrugs. “It don’t matter. This is all gonna be over soon.” He sighs, scratching his face with the handle of the sawn-off. “Why couldn’t you just do what you were told? You could’ve just sat there, let us do what we needed to do, and then gone on with your life. There was no reason to play the hero. That’s what you sort of fellas never understand. You think you’ve gotta be some superhero all the time, when if you just did what you were fuckin’ told, everything would work out for the better.” “You’re telling me I should have let you rape her.” I force out a laugh. It’s growly, like a broken engine. “You must really be bat-shit.” “Maybe.” Todd shrugs. “Either way, it doesn’t matter anymore. Do you want me to take you to your girl?” “Do you think I don’t know this is a trick?” I counter. “No. I’m guessing you know that it’s a trick. But I’m also guessing that you ain’t gonna say no, because if you say no that’s as good as giving her to us. And I doubt you wanna do that, do you?”

“No,” I admit. “That’s the last thing I want. But before we go I need to let you know that if she’s hurt in any way, there’s gonna be blood. And fire. And bone.” I clench my fists, walk right up to him, let the shotgun press against my chest. “If she’s hurt, you’re a dead man.” Todd smiles. “I wonder if I was ever as dramatic as you,” he says. “I don’t like to think so, but you can never be sure, can you? You can make all the threats you want, Granite, if it makes you feel tough. But you’ll come with me no matter what. I reckon this was decided a long time ago and there’s not much we can do to change it.” “I reckon that’s horseshit,” I tell him. “But fair enough. Let’s go.” He prods me with the shotgun and I turn around, heading out of the bar and across the street to his four-by-four. We wait for a few minutes and then the doormen from before join us, sitting in the backseat with their guns out.

Chapter Eighteen Granite “These are my friends,” Todd says. “That there’s Russel.” He nods to the fat guy in the rearview mirror. “And that there’s Larry.” He nods to the younger kid. “Todd, Russel, and Larry. This sounds like the start of some bad joke. I mean, goddamn, for outlaws you sure do have some shitty names.” “We don’t live by our names,” Larry says. “We live by our code.” “And right now our code is to get him where he wants to go. Isn’t that right?” Todd grins. “Because the first thing we do when somebody stabs one of our friends—” “Disfigures him for life,” Russel interjects. “Yes, the first thing we do is ask him what he wants to do, where he wants to go, and take him there. You want to see your girl? Then we’ll take you there. Of course, we will.”

I don’t have to be a genius to work out that they’re talking out of their asses. They’re not taking me anywhere but an early grave. I glance in the rearview. There’re no signs of bikes or jeeps, but then I hope that Dallas and the other fellas will be smarter than to use bikes and jeeps. Or maybe they didn’t get to the bar quickly enough and they’ve got no clue where I am. The only thing I can wish for is that the GPS on my cell is working. “You know,” Todd says, as we stop at a red light. A couple walks across the road, normal-looking. It’s strange to think that there are normal-looking couples in the same world as men like me and these assholes. “We’ve looked into you, Granite, and you haven’t had a steady girl since—You’ve never had a steady girl. In all your years of outlawing. And now, suddenly, you decide that this woman is the one for you: the one you’ll risk everything for; the one you’ll make some pretty fuckin’ stupid decisions for.” “Maybe I have made some pretty stupid decisions,” I agree. “I can’t argue with that. Maybe I have done some stupid shit in my life. But I don’t reckon going after Allison is one of them.” “How can you judge that?” Larry says. “You

haven’t seen the full consequences yet.” I grip my knees. They’re right, I realize. I went about this all wrong. The fuck was I thinking, storming into their place like that? But I wasn’t thinking; that’s the point. “You know, you fellas might be right. Maybe going steady with Allison was a mistake, or will be a mistake. I don’t fuckin’ know. I try not to think of big questions like that, questions that’ll get under my skin and really make me wonder. I try’n keep it simple. And to me there’s one simple fact that overrules all this other shit. When I stabbed your boy in the face, he squealed like a goddamn pig.” “All right!” Russel snaps, taking a knife from his belt. “Let me gut him, boss. Let me gut this motherfucker.” Todd turns a corner, past a residential neighborhood and toward what looks like warehouses. “Easy now,” he says. “We’re taking him to his girl, remember?” “Come on, man,” I mutter. “You don’t have to play. I’d have to be stupid beyond stupid to really believe that shit. You’re taking me somewhere to kill me quietly.”

“Maybe not so quietly!” Russel snarls. “Maybe we’ll do it nice and loud.” “Stop!” Todd roars, slamming his palm against the steering wheel. “What did I say about keeping your cool?” “You want me to stay calm when this fuckin’ animal cut our boy’s face into ribbons?” “I guess they’ve given up the surprise,” Todd says with a shrug. “You were supposed to believe that we were takin’ you to your girl. I wanted to see your face when you found out the truth, you know? But now it’s all ruined.” “I guess it is,” I agree. What the hell was I thinking? No cars in the rearview. No weapons. No backup. “This might really be the end then.” I keep the fear out of my voice as best I can. “I guess it comes to every man.” “That it does,” Todd agrees. “The only thing you can do is try to face it bravely, ’cause otherwise your boys will hear about how you shivered and begged and all that ugly shit. What do you reckon, lads, is this bastard up for facing it bravely?”

Russel strokes the hilt of his knife. “I guess we’ll find out,” he says. They drive into the middle of a group of warehouses, a large area of tarmac covered in rubber marks and circles of ash from bonfires. Most of the windows in the warehouses are shattered. A crow clings on between the shattered glass, watching calmly. Probably waiting for its meal. My survival motor is running like crazy, but usually it has something to latch onto: a gun, a knife, a plan. Right now, I’ve got shit all. Todd steps from the car and Russel and Larry step out after him, all three of them with their hands near their hip. “You know how this goes now,” Todd says. “How does it feel to be on the other side?” “Strange,” I admit. I step from the car and they pull their weapons, Larry and Todd with handguns and Russel with his blade. “I’ve gotta say, for someone with your reputation this really was fuckin’ easy. But I guess women’ll do that to a man. Make him think all funny. Make it so he doesn’t know his prick from his brain. She opens her legs and lets a fella in and then all of a

goddamn sudden he’s signing over his life to her. It don’t make no goddamn sense if you ask me.” They lead me to the center of the tarmac and stand in a circle around me, their guns and knives aimed at me. “You must’ve known this was gonna happen,” Todd says. “I don’t believe that a man can stab another man in the face and doubt that there’s gonna be consequences. That’s what happens, pal. That’s just the way it goes. Life always has consequences. But I won’t do you like a dog. Do you have any last words?” I swallow. Every outlaw knows this day is gonna come, but we never believe it, not really. We ride, we live; we never die. And now this motherfucker has his gun pointed right at my face. “I’ve never given it much thought,” I say. “That’s the truth of it. I’ve never stopped to care much about it. But I guess now is the time to start caring, right?” “Now is the time to start caring,” Todd says. “Then I guess—” Jax walks around the corner, but he ain’t dressed like Jax. He’s wearing homeless-man gear and his

face is covered in dirt. He shivers and strokes his arms, glances all over the place like those real paranoid homeless guys do. He mutters to himself. “Prick—lies—the dark—it’s all dark now—they’ll see—they’ll all see—me!” He walks right toward the circle. “The fuck does this bum want?” Russel mutters. “Hey!” Todd calls. “It’s time for you to turn around before somethin’ bad happens!” But Jax just keeps on walking. “I saw them—I saw them.” He looks up for a fraction of a second and meets my eye. He doesn’t smile, but there’s a smile in his gaze, a secret look, a deadly intent. I get myself ready, mentally preparing for the moment of madness. Fighting always comes down to madness. Even if you’ve got a plan. That’s just directed madness. Jax walks right up to Larry and stares at his knife. “Big knife,” he says. “Very big knife.” “This guy’s out of it,” Larry says, laughing. “Look at his fucking face.” “Big knife. Whoa, there’s a big knife. Big knife—

big knife! Big gun!” “Big gun?” Dallas pops up from the rear with a Desert Eagle pistol. He fires off two shots. One catches Larry through the back of the neck. I turn and cover my face on instinct, shielding it, and then dive straight for Todd as hellfire erupts all around me. But Todd is fast. He fires off a shot—my fuckin’ leg’s shredded almost to the bone, blood pissing everywhere as I limp at him. The world spins over and over. We’re both on the floor. I bite his hand, make him drop the gun. Shots fire all around me, turning the air to fireworks. But he wriggles, gets free, kicks me across the mouth. I grab his ankle and drag myself up, but he takes out a knife and swipes at my hands. I’m forced to let go. A bullet catches him in the back of the leg but by then he’s in the car, reversing straight at Michaels. The old man jumps out of the way. I sit up, panting, squeezing down on my leg to try’n stop the bleeding. “That was something,” Dallas says, staring down at the bodies, their faces unrecognizable from gunfire. “That really was something.” He clicks his neck from side to side. “Oh shit, Granite, you’re hit.” He

walks over to me, kneeling down, studying the wound with a cold, calculating gaze. “Michaels, bring the car around. We’ll drive you down to the hospital. Use our doctor.” “No.” I spit on the ground and then tear a strip from my shirt. The air smells like blood. “No?” Jax is wiping the grime from his face. “What do you mean, no?” “They’ve got my girl,” I say. “The bastards have her and I reckon she must be in big fuckin’ trouble if she’s with them. I won’t leave her. I won’t do that, man. No fuckin’ way. Going to the hospital will take too long. She might be dead by the time I get out.” I tie the shirt around my leg. The bullet grazed me, grazed me deep but grazed me all the same. There’s nothing wedged in there. Once that’s done, I give Dallas my arm. He doesn’t look happy about it but he helps me to my feet. “Fuck,” Michaels mutters. “We save your ass and the first thing you wanna do is go running right back into the fire again. You’re one crazy bastard, Granite. Does this girl really mean that much to you?”

“She does,” I say, surprised I don’t have to think on it for long. “I know that surprises you fellas and I know that it might piss you off, but this is it. I’m savin’ her. You can either come with me or head on home. But I’d like a gun either way.” Dallas places a pistol in my hand. “We’re with you. It’s about time we showed these Brass Skulls what we’re made of.”

Chapter Nineteen Allison “Come on, Allison! Come on!” He’s always running ahead of me. He never remembers how much stronger he is than me. Well, he is stronger but it’s only because he’s older. He sprints down the beach with that goofy smile on his face. “Don’t be so slow all the time!” His tone is the same as Mom’s, chiding. “Come on! You’re faster than that, aren’t you?” I try really hard now, ducking my head and running as fast as I can down the beach, pumping my arms really fast so that my legs go even faster. Brandon thinks he can run faster than me just because he has longer legs! Ha, no way! He might have longer legs but I have quicker legs! But he’s still ahead of me, holding the ball, grinning from ear to ear. He throws it up in the air and catches it. The beach is quiet down on this end. Further up, there’s the pier and people sunbathing and playing in the shallows, but down here it’s just us. “Okay,” he says. “How about this? All you need to do is catch the ball. That’s it. No games. No

tricks. Okay?” I spread my hands, stand on my tiptoes, stare up at him hoping I look fierce. “Okay. Bring it!” He laughs in that older-brother way. “All right, Miss Confidence. Let’s do it then.” He kneels down, swings the ball two-handed between his legs, and then throws it so far in the air that it disappears into the sun. “Not fair!” I cry, weaving all over the place trying to line myself up with it. “Too high!” It slams down next to me, a full four feet to my left. “You’ve gotta be quicker than that,” he says, picking it up. “You can’t be slow all the time. What if there’s a fire and you need to get out of the building? Are you going to cry that the fire is too high?” “I never cry!” I snap. “Throw it, then!” He grins from ear to ear. He looks like a real loon when he does that. Then he throws it again. I weave all over the place, and then stand right

where the shadow of the ball is, growing bigger and bigger. I put out my hands—and the ball smacks into my head. I fall to the sand, coughing. And I wake to the sound of dripping, and try to cough. But the rag in my mouth makes it harder than it ought to be. My arms and legs ache horribly. I wonder how long they’ve been tied to the chair like this: right to the legs and the arms, so that I’m chair-shaped. My lower back throbs and my mouth tastes like the oil from the rag. The only thing I can move is my head. I’m in a dank room, sunlight a phantom at the very top of the ceiling, coming in through the slit windows. Otherwise it is almost pitch-dark. The dripping sound comes from behind me. This place couldn’t be more horror-movie-like if it tried. I laugh madly. And then I cry. And then I lean back, breathing steadily through my nose. I try to remember what happened to me. There was a biker. He introduced himself. Then my cell rang and the biker asked me to come outside. “It’s Lucky. Granite gave me your number. Will you come out here quickly? I’ve got a question for you.” I walked outside and—darkness, Brandon. “Help!” I scream, but all that comes out is

hmmphh. “Help me!” Hmmphmph. I rock the chair from side to side. Maybe I can break one of the arms and slide my hand free. But it doesn’t move, at least not much; that’s when I realize that it’s bolted to the floor. “Fuck!” a man screams from the other side of the room. “Motherfuck!” Suddenly, bright white lights turn on, flooding the room. Two men stand in the shadows, wearing leathers, hands folded across their guns. Have they been here the whole time? Five or six more men stand further back. Them, too? Handlebar-mustache walks into the room, pacing with his arms at his sides twitching and his hands opening and closing into fists. “What the fuck?” he snaps, kicking over an old metal chair, and then wincing and clutching his leg. “That fuckin’ guy, that sneaky fuckin’ bastard.” He kicks another chair and then leaps over to me, leaning down with his hands on his knees so that he’s staring me right in the face. “Let me tell you something about your boyfriend, slut. He’s got some real fuckin’ annoying friends, some real fuckin’ bastards. But he hasn’t got you, has he? So that’s something.” He yanks the rag out of my mouth. I suck in precious air, air that doesn’t taste like oil, even if my tongue is so dry that the oil is basically carved onto it. “That’s it. Breathe. Be

comfortable. Be happy. Look how many friends you have.” He nods to the men standing in the shadows. I can’t make out much about them except for their smiles, which are like jackals’. “A lot of these men would pay good money to fuck a whore like you, damn good money. They see women like you strutting all over the place with those tight bodies and they get their wallets out. But they don’t need good money right now, do they, slut? They’ve got you right where they want you.” “Where is my brother?” I whisper. “Where is Brandon?” “Brandon!” He spits. “Don’t talk to me about that worm. That fuckin’ nothing. What sort of a man lets a bunch of other men use his house like that? Doesn’t he have any goddamn self-respect? What sort of a fuckin’ loser does a thing like that? Tell me. Fuckin’ explain it to me.” “Is he alive?” He smiles at me. “Now there’s a question. There’s a real interesting question. I bet you’d love to know, wouldn’t you? Is it going around and around your head, little whore? Maybe we strung him up and we took turns throwing knives at him. Maybe we ain’t so good at throwing knives so it took a while, but

one fella stuck him in the arm and another stuck him in the prick, and another got him in the leg, and more and more fellas stuck him until there was nothin’ left but fuckin’ gristle. He was just meat when we were done with him. That’s it. Maybe that’s what happened. Or maybe he’s still alive. Look how desperate she is to know, fellas. All right, let’s make a deal.” He strokes my cheek. I flinch away, but I can’t outrun these zip-ties. “You do somethin’ for me and I’ll tell you all about your big brother.” When I don’t reply, he grabs my throat. “Now’s the point where you ask me what you need to say.” “What do I need to say?” I barely get the words out with his hand on me like this. He doesn’t squeeze hard, but there’s power in his grip. I sense that it won’t take much for him to really hurt me. “You need to tell me that you’re a tight little whore and you’ll do anything we want. You tell me that and I’ll think about letting you know what happened to your brother.” I swallow. My throat burns. I need to know what happened to Brandon, but at the same time I hate the way he’s looking at me, like men have often looked at me throughout my life. I remember after Mom died when I went to a bar and the men looked

at me the same way, like I was there to service them and I’d do whatever they wanted. I hate it. I hate the sneering sideways grin, the way the eyes dance like he can’t wait for it. “No,” I whisper. “I won’t say that. Because it isn’t true.” He lets out a whistle through clenched teeth. “This bitch right here … goddamn. All right, then, let me tell you what’s going on. Sometimes a man likes to do things for a lady just to be nice, so I guess this is your lucky day. Your big brother’s not dead … yet. He’s still clinging on. He’s had a few bumps here and there, but he might go on living if we let him. Which we’re not going to. I’m sick’n fuckin’ tired of your family. Your brother’s a fuckin’ coward who don’t know shit about the life and you’re a cross-dressing freak who happens to be fuckin’ the fella we want dead. Who would be dead right about now if it weren’t for some fuckin’ trick. So that there’s about the size of it, sweetheart. Now you’re probably wondering what’s gonna happen to you, right? What’s your punishment? First, I’m gonna bend you over, tie you down, and then we’re gonna take turns on that tight cunt. My boys’ve been workin’ hard and they ain’t had a woman like you in a long, long time. You should know somethin’ before we start. You’ll hate it at first. You’ll be

screaming and crying and all that shit. But then it’ll start to feel good and you’ll wonder if you’re a real freak, and you’ll start moaning and begging for more. Don’t fight it, sweetheart.” He nods at the shadows. “Come on, lads. Let’s get her ready.” The men move with the efficiency of slaughterhouse workers, handling me like a piece of meat. I try to fight, twisting my arms and legs, lashing out at them, but they maneuver me like it’s nothing, untying me from the chair and carrying me across the room. “Please,” I whisper, panic choking me. “Please don’t do this. I’m begging you. Please, please. I don’t want this. Please don’t. Please just—just think about what you’re doing! Don’t you have sisters, moms? Don’t you—please!” But they just ignore me. They carry me to a closet on the other side of the room, shove me inside, and then go about the business of tying me down the same way they’d tie down a boat. There’s no emotion in what they do. I catch glimpses of their faces but each one is blank. They don’t react when I talk, just stay straight-faced as though I don’t exist, or as though all that exists is my body. Then Handlebar-Mustache leans over me, his hand

—or maybe it’s somebody else’s—stroking my inner thigh, worms crawling all over me. “I’m going to give you some advice now and I reckon you ought to take it. This is going to be one of the last things you do, so I reckon you ought to try and enjoy it right away. We’ll win you around eventually, but why wait? You’re all whores if you scratch deep enough. That’s the truth of it.” “Please,” I whisper. “Don’t do this. Just don’t do this. Please!” “You should stop moaning like that,” he says. “Most of the fellas like it.” He yanks down my pants, the tearing sound like a tearing through my chest, my heart sundered. I close my eyes and see that beach, Brandon and the ball, and instead of squinting at the sun I run to the other side so that the sun is behind me and I can see it clearly now. I catch it and turn to Brandon, a smile on my face. We laugh together. And then I think: my baby, my innocent baby.

Chapter Twenty Granite “This motherfucker’s still alive,” Jax says, kneeling down next to the young one with the knife, Larry. Jax ties a strip of cloth around his throat where the bullet entered and exited and then picks up his knife and tosses it from one hand to the other. “What do we think? Shall I kill him now?” “Don’t get so excited about it,” Michaels says. “It makes you look even younger than you are. He’s dying. End it.” “Wait.” Dallas walks over and kneels down next to Jax. I join them, limping from the burning pain in my leg. “If Granite won’t go to the doctor until we’ve found his woman, then it seems to me this prick still being alive is a gift we shouldn’t just throw away.” “He’s right.” I snatch the knife from Jax and fall on the Skull, burying my knee in his chest. I bring the knife to his cheek and lean down. He wheezes from the hole in his throat, but he’s alive. Wounds are like that sometimes: the smallest thing kills a man

but the biggest thing sees him fighting another day. “I reckon you’re gonna tell me where they’re keeping Allison, kid, or your day’s gonna get a whole lot worse. Maybe you don’t think that’s possible, but it’s always possible.” He wheezes something. I lean closer. “… breathe. Can’t. Breathe.” I release some of the pressure. “Where is she?” “I’ll … take you … there. But you have to … promise.” “We promise,” Dallas says, and the way he looks, that dagger under his eye, his gaze honed down to dagger points, I know why we sometimes call him Dagger. He looks vicious. He looks like a hyena. “Get him up, kid.” I stand up and Jax drags him to his feet. We all walk toward the exit, where the car is parked. “If you’re lying to us, there’s gonna be trouble,” Jax says. “You see that guy there? That there’s Granite. You might’ve heard of him. I bet you have. He’s the hardest bastard this side of Austin, maybe even the hardest bastard in Texas. He doesn’t mess around. He’s not like you Brass Skulls, with your pussyfooting, getting all nervous and shit. He gets

the job done.” “All right,” I mutter. “Less of the dick-riding.” Dagger coughs out a laugh. “Goddamn, kid, you auditioning for a romantic comedy or something?” We stop near Dallas’ jeep and climb in, but first we get the Brass Skull in the middle of the back seat, squeezed between me and Jax with Michaels and Dallas up front. “Where we heading?” I ask, squeezing down on the Skull’s knee, squeezing hard so that he knows it won’t take much to cause some real damage. “Back toward town,” he whispers. “If you … just head into town but don’t go into town … I’ll direct you from there …” We drive toward town, past rolling dust land and toward more civilization, billboards and road signs and all that shit that lets a man know he ain’t out in the Wild West anymore. “Thanks for being so quick on the drop, fellas. I didn’t know when I shot that text off what the fuck was gonna happen.” “That was a fool move,” Michaels says. “You

shouldn’t have just walked into their camp like that. Were you looking for trouble? That was something a rookie pulls, not a man like you. What the hell got into you?” “Love,” Jax says, and then laughs. “Isn’t it obvious? He’s in love.” “Say one more word and I’ll make you swallow your jaw.” He touches his neck. “Just so you know, that’s a pretty fucking weird thing to say.” “If you think it’s a weird thing to say, you ought to wait until I do it. That’s what fuckin’ weird is, kid.” He swallows, leans his head back. “I’m good, man.” I laugh along with them, try’n have a joke, but really all I can think about is Allison. This is what men do: joke around before a job. But my heart’s not in it. My heart is wherever Allison is. That’s some cheesy shit right there, but it also happens to be true. “She’s probably dead,” Jimmy says, that neverfading smile on his face. “I mean, come on. Let’s

be honest about it, at least. Do you really they’re going to keep her alive? Maybe for a little bit; maybe they’ll have some fun with her. They’ll do their grown-up thing and ride her until she’s completely done, but then they’ll kill her because why wouldn’t they, you know? What incentive do they have to keep her alive? She’ll die and you’ll move on. You’ll be happier, I bet. You won’t have to be worried all the time. What’s the difference between having a woman and having a kid? I guess there is a difference, actually. You can leave a woman and it ain’t so bad.” I massage my forehead, blocking him out. Dallas brings the car to a stop outside the town, near the sign. I grab the Skull by the shoulder and whisper in his ear, “Time to start talking.” He gives us directions, his voice growing quieter with each word. Finally, he leads us to a warehouse in the middle of a field of dust with a cactus sitting at the entrance like a green prickly bouncer. We get out of the car, dragging the Skull out with us, and watch the place for a few minutes, long enough to see that there are men inside: one walks out for a cigarette, and in the open doorway I can see several other men, stood around in the shadows. “They could be doing anything to her in there,” I

mutter. “Any damn thing they please. We need to get in there now. We need to take out these fucking assholes.” “You’re right,” Dagger says. “But they have more men than us. You know better than anybody that when you’re outnumbered, charging in there is the last thing you want to do. We’ve got to be smart about this. Ah—perfect.” He catches the Skull as he collapses, breathing his last breath. “Just when you need a dead man, he offers himself up. What a fuckin’ trooper.” “What’re you thinking?” Michaels asks. “I’m thinking we throw this prick through the doors to get them worried. We sit out here and wait for them to come out and take a look, and then we kill every single one of them.” “Sounds simple,” Jax says. “Yeah.” I laugh grimly. “What could go wrong? It’s a good plan, probably what I’d do if I was here alone. Always draw them out. Never go to them if you have a choice.” “Like you did with the strip club guys,” Jax says.

“Exactly. Just like I did. Who wants to do the honors?” “I will.” Jax takes the Skull from Dagger and holds him up as he waits for the man at the door to finish his cigarette. When he does, he flips the Skull over his shoulder and carries him fireman-style toward the door. We crouch down, guns aimed. Anybody could come out at any moment and see this young kid carrying a corpse to their door. It would be no big thing for them to gun him down. Then not only will the element of surprise be gone; one of our men will be, too. “We’ve gotta give the kid credit,” I mutter, watching as he runs straight at the door without fear. “Yeah,” Dagger agrees. “I wouldn’t expect stones like that from him. Maybe he’s finally becoming a member of the club.” “He’s always been a member of the club,” Michaels says. “Since when did you get all soft before a job?” Dagger laughs gruffly.

“Since now, I guess. I’ve gotta tell you the truth, fellas. I’ve never done a thing like this. How many men are in there? My eyesight ain’t what it used to be, but when that door was open, it looked like at least thirty. We’re gonna have to be quick.” “We will be,” I say. “But I reckon we ought to call in backup as well. Just in case.” Dagger tilts his head at me. “Are you fucking crazy? I called in backup on the way here. I’m not about to gamble my life on you three knuckleheads.” Jax stops near the door, looks back at us, and then kicks the door open and throws the corpse inside. He ducks his head and sprints back toward us, crouching down behind the rock we’re all crouched behind, gun aimed. He’s breathing heavily. “That got their attention for sure,” he says. “Did you see the way they all turned around? Maybe you didn’t. But they’ll be out in a second, no doubt about that.” He wipes sweat from his forehead. “Are we all ready?” “We’re all ready.” “Is that place big, kid?” Dagger asks. “You get a

glimpse in there?” “It’s big. Lots of raised areas near the back, sort of like—management areas, I guess, with fire-escapestyle stairs leading up to them. Could be more Brass Skulls up there. Could be more prisoners.” Dallas spits. “Let them come.” We duck down as the first men come running out of the building. Dagger has four guns lined up between him and I, and Michaels has done the same for him and the kid. More and more men run out until there’s about twenty-five men standing outside, guns raised, looking around. Jax makes to move but I wave him down. “Wait,” I whisper. “Let them get comfy.” I don’t see Todd, but that’s all right. Let the bastard hide. “See anything?” one of the Skulls says. “Not a damn thing,” another replies. They lower their guns, only slightly, but enough. I nod down the line. Jax takes a deep breath and Michaels wipes his cheek with his sleeve, and then

we all pop up and start firing. I’m a good shot, probably the best in the state if I’m being arrogant about it. I fire off six shots in a couple of seconds, getting six headshots, and then pick up another gun and do the same. Dallas is almost as good a shot as me and gets as many kills. By the time the smoke has cleared from the barrels of our guns, most of the men are dead and we’ve only taken one hit: me, in the goddamn shoulder this time. “Motherfuck,” I whisper, teeth gritted. “Today ain’t my lucky day.” “Shit, man,” Jax says. “What do we do?” “We get in there and we get Allison.” I don’t wait for them to agree. I just run toward the warehouse, limping and holding the pistol with my good hand. There’s one fella left, crouched down behind the corpses of the other Skulls. He pokes his head up—and my bullet cleaves it in two. I leap over him and charge into the warehouse. Footsteps skitter up the stairs, several sets of them, but nobody fires at me. I rush deeper into the warehouse until I see two bare feet poking out of a closet, underwear clinging to her ankles. The feet tremble; she’s shivering.

I rush over to her, ignoring the pain. Pain doesn’t exist when my girl’s in trouble. When I touch her, she screams. “Don’t you fucking touch me! You pigs! You animals! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill every damn one of you!” “Hush,” I whisper. It’s me. Allison. It’s Granite. I’m here to get you out.” “It’s … is it really you?” I pick her up, carry her out of the closet, and then pull her underwear and trousers up. She looks at me with those wide green eyes, lips trembling. “They almost … they were going to …” She breaks into coughing sobs. I cradle her in my arms and carry her to the door, my shoulder throbbing, my leg throbbing. As we pass Dallas and Michaels and Jax, Dallas says, “Isn’t that the pledge, Al?” “It doesn’t matter,” I say.

Chapter Twenty-One Allison He lowers me to the ground and then checks me over like a professional, patting me down softly, searching for wounds. When he sees that I’m not hurt, he kneels down next to me and touches my face. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” he says. “Not okay. I know you ain’t okay like that. But goddamn, they didn’t hurt you. They didn’t … those sick fucks. I need to get you out of here.” The other men stand off to the side, all of us within viewing distance of the warehouse but crouched down behind an outcropping of rock. I look up at the sky, at the slow-drifting clouds, and then down to Granite. “You’re hurt,” I say. He shrugs, grits his teeth. “It’s nothing.” “I hope that’s true, because …” I remember what Handlebar-Mustache did when the gunfire started, running up the stairs and then dragging Brandon out to the barrier, holding him over the thirty-foot drop. “He has my brother in there. Brandon, in there, with him. He could be doing anything to him. It was

dark so I couldn’t see, but … I know how this is going to sound, Granite. And I’m sorry. I really am. But I think some of your men need to go back in there and get him.” He tears off a piece of his shirt and ties it around his shoulder, gritting his teeth and letting out a snarling sound. “You want us to go back in there for your brother,” he says, shaking his head slowly. “I’m sorry, Allison, but a man makes his own decisions. When our backup gets here, we’ll sweep the place clean, but if you want us to go back in right now to get your brother you’re gonna be disappointed.” “But—” Tears slide down my cheeks, unbidden and impossible to resist. “I know it’s not fair of me to ask. I get that. I really do. But he’s my brother, Granite. He’s the only brother I have. He’s—he’s my brother, you know? He’s the only family I have left now.” “He’s a man!” Granite snaps. “He’s a fully grown fuckin’ man. A man makes his own decisions. That’s what the life is all about. That’s the fuckin’ point of being a man. A man does what he decides he wants to do, and if it turns out that that ain’t the best for him, then fine, he’s fucked himself over. But at least he’s still a man.”

“You’re saying …” I wipe tears from my face. “You’re telling me that I should be okay with that psychopath killing him because he made his bed and now he should lie in it?” “I don’t care what he does,” Granite says. “All I know is that he ain’t the one I care about. You are. So if he’s got himself in some trouble, then all right, fine, he can deal with it. In this life we don’t pander to men. That just ain’t the way it goes.” “I’m begging you. I know, I really do know that it’s a horrible thing for me to ask, but it’s important. That guy, that leader, whatever his name is, he’s angry. He’s really, really angry. He could be doing anything to him right now and there’s nothing I can do but ask you for help. So I’m sorry, Granite. I really am. But I’m asking you.” He groans, rubs his forehead. “I don’t wanna keep repeating myself, but here’s the thing, Allison. He is a man. He is an adult. He made his decision to invite these fuckers into his home and look what it got you. He fucked you over, your own brother, and now you want to risk everything for him. It just makes no damn sense.” “What if it was your brother?” I snap. “Would you

say the same then?” He smiles, but it’s more of a shocked smile. Smiling like he can’t believe I just said that. “Don’t say that again.” “Okay, okay. But … I just. Ah!” I close my eyes. I need to tell him. I didn’t exactly want it to be like this, but I have to. “I’m pregnant.” *** After I’m sick, I go to the medicine cabinet and stare at the pregnancy test, still there from my last one-night stand, my last late period. They came in a pack of four and there’s two left, just waiting for me to use them. I don’t want to, because the idea is terrifying, but at the same time I have to know if I’m carrying his child. I can’t just go about my day, my life, not knowing if Granite’s baby is inside of me. I sit on the bowl and try to pee, but apparently my body has decided to pick this moment to make peeing far, far more difficult than it should be. I end up leaning across to the sink and lapping water from the faucet like a thirsty dog and then peeing. I stand up, I pace, I wait … and then I discover that I am pregnant.

Granite’s baby is inside of me. I walk around the house, chewing my fingernails, unsure of what to do. *** “Goddamn,” he whispers. “God-fucking-damn.” “Our baby can’t lose his uncle like this, not before he’s even born.” “Fuck.” Granite stands up, limps in a small pacing circle, clutches his forehead. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. You’re pregnant. Goddamn. I don’t … I don’t know what to say, Allison. I don’t know how to take this. This has been a nightmare of mine for years, some club girl telling me she’s got a bun in the oven. I never thought I’d feel—I don’t know what this is. Like I’m committed already. It’s crazy. You look different. Just staring at you. You’re—changed, somehow. It makes no sense. Fuck!” He raises his voice. “Dagger, where’s the backup?” “Stuck on another job!” he calls back. “What job?”

“Looks like whoever’s in the warehouse organized a hit on the clubhouse. A distraction. Not a big force but big enough to buy them some time.” “Enough time to kill Brandon,” I whisper. “Maybe,” Granite says. “Brandon. Who the fuck is he to me? Nobody. That’s who. A man who don’t know how to be a man. But you’re right. He’ll mean a hell of a lot more to the kid than he ever could to me. A kid …” He shakes his head, staring up at the sky. “A goddamn kid. Fine.” He limps over to the other men. “I’m going in for her brother. He’s still up there. She saw him. You fellas can wait here or come in with me, but I’m getting this done.” “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Michaels asks quietly, stroking his dangling gray hair. “No,” Granite replies. “But I’m doing it anyway.” “I’m with you,” Jax says. “Me too,” Dagger mutters, and then glances at me. “Although you’re going to have to explain this shit to me when it’s over.”

Chapter Twenty-Two Allison I don’t know how long I sit on this rock waiting for my brother and my man, but it feels like years. It feels like the sun rises and sets a thousand times, though it doesn’t rise or set once; it slowly descends, but that’s all. It feels like I take a million breaths but I’m not even sure if I take one. I just sit here, hands clamped over my mouth, staring at the doorway. And then the gunfire starts, steady poppops at first and then quicker, harder. Shattering glass; resounding metal. The whole world seems to pause for their gunfire. Birds fly away. Clouds avoid the sky above the warehouse. The wind whistles around it. Dust backpedals when it reaches the door. “It’s going to be okay,” I say. I have to say it aloud, otherwise I won’t believe it. I need to hear a voice say it, even if it is my own. “Everything is going to be okay. It’s going to be just fine. Everything will work out. Nothing bad’s going to happen. Nothing. Everything—” And then I sit back, clasping my knees so hard my

fingernails cut through my pants and dig into my skin. I close my eyes and stare at the sun, staring at the red imprint on my eyelids. What if they all die? If everybody in there dies except for the man who kidnapped me, I might as well be dead. I think about leaving, going further back, but I don’t have the energy. I can’t leave Granite, Brandon. I can’t abandon them like that. Slowly, the gunfire stops. Then there’s nothing but silence. I stare at the door without blinking, my eyes aching I’m staring so hard. “This is it,” I whisper, voice trembling. “It will be Granite,” I tell myself. “Not that pervert. Granite. I swear. Please. God.” I cradle myself, rubbing my shoulders, feeling pathetic but not caring right now. “Please let it be Granite.” Time slows down, bends, warps. Time abuses me. Time taunts me. Time doesn’t care about my feelings, about what I hope happens. The only thing time cares about is moving on at whatever pace it chooses, and right now the pace is excruciatingly slow. But finally—after who knows how long—the door opens and they walk out. The light shifts. Is it Granite? I lean forward.

Granite limps out, bleeding from another gunshot wound in the side of his belly, clutching onto Brandon who looks okay for a moment before my eyes focus. His face is haggard, almost blue, and his eyes flit open and closed. I run toward them, arms spread, catching them both and helping to hold them up. “We need to get you to the hospital,” I say. “Right now,” Dallas—Dagger—says, coming up behind them. “I’ll bring the car around. Don’t you fuckin’ die on me, Granite. I mean that.” He grins weakly. “I’m never dying. I decided that a long time ago.” The wound from his belly covers my hand in blood, soaking it. I lower them both to the ground, or maybe I just soften their landing when they fall. They lie side by side, staring up at the sky. “It’s nice to meet you, Brandon,” Granite says. There’s a horrible wheeze in the back of his throat like a rattlesnake is back there, upside down in his belly, tail sticking up into his mouth. “Nice to meet you,” Brandon replies, sounding just as wretched.

Dagger pulls up in their car and throws the door open. Michaels and Jax step forward without delay, picking up Granite and laying him in the back seat. Then they get Brandon and lay him in there, too. Before I can ask how we’re going to get to the hospital—I can’t just leave them—Dagger slams the door and drives away, fast. “What about us?” I ask. Jax and Michaels just stare at me like they don’t know what I am, let alone who I am. “Wait a second …” Jax walks over to me, looking me up and down. “I know you’re Al. That shit’s obvious now that I’m properly looking at you. But you’re that chick from the ATM, too, right?” “Right.” I nod. “But that isn’t really the concern right now, is it? Hey, where are you going?” “Away from there.” He points at the warehouse. The three of us walk away from the warehouse toward the road. Michaels says: “This is a fuckin’ mess if I’ve ever seen one, and I’ve seen some goddamn messes in my time. This is worse than the time at the pier. Do you remember that, kid?”

“Why is this worse?” Jax asks. “Because Granite has been hit three goddamn times. A man doesn’t get hit three goddamn times and live, not in this game.” “Don’t say that!” I snap, surprising myself as much as them. “Granite’s going to be okay. I know he is.” Michaels shrugs. “Then you’ve got some secret power we don’t know about. What do we call you now? I’m guessin’ Al’s off the table?” “My name is Allison.” “All right then, Allison, but here’s the thing: guns kill men. That’s why they use so many of ’em in war.” “But how is that helpful?” I counter, stepping over a lonely fallen log. Tears press against my eyes, as though trying to leap past my inner defenses and explode in front of these men. But I won’t let them; I cough them back. “I don’t see how talking about Granite dying does anybody any good. He’s going to live. I believe that. I feel it. He won’t die. I won’t let that happen.”

Jax tilts his head at Michaels, the two of them sharing a secret look. “I saw that! And I know what you’re thinking: If Granite dies, it’s her fault anyway. Do you think I don’t know that, really? I know it. I get it. Which is why I’d prefer if we all just stayed hopeful.” “Hopeful,” Michaels says. “There’s a word we don’t hear much.” We walk in silence the rest of the way, stopping at a dusty intersection. A few minutes later a black jeep pulls up and we all climb in. Nobody talks and I’m glad for that, because all I can think about is Granite and Brandon and how they looked halfdead when they came out, how they could be dying right now and there’s nothing I can do but wait to see what happens. I chew my fingernails down to stubs and then scratch my legs. “Who do you wanna see first?” Jax asks. We’re standing outside the hospital, people walking to and fro beside us. An ambulance pulls up and an old man is wheeled into the building. From a room upstairs, a baby cries shrilly. “Um …” This is a big choice, it feels like. An important moment. “Granite.” I answer without giving it deep thought.

I don’t need to. “Okay.” Jax nods like that’s the right answer. “Follow me.” He leads me through the hospital, up the elevator, and to a room at the end of a white-walled hallway. Then he nods to the door opposite. “Your brother’s in that room, so it’ll be easy for you to go back and forth. The boss called and I think he sort of assumes you’re gonna care for them both, like a nurse or something. Oh, and by the way, he knows that you’re Al. I’m not sure how he’s gonna take that.” I don’t have time to process that threat—if it is a threat—because before I know it I’m beside Granite’s bed, holding his hand, stroking his still fingers. He’s asleep for the first few minutes, but then his eyes open with a struggle and he smiles at the wall. I’m not even sure if he knows I’m here. “But I love her, kid. I really fuckin’ love her. And I know what you’re gonna say. You’re gonna tell me that love doesn’t happen just like that, that you ought to know a lady for a few months or whatever the goddamn rule is. But that’s the thing. I love her. I didn’t know what love was before we met. Maybe I still don’t. I reckon you’ll say I don’t, but I know

how I feel. I know what’s in here—yeah, that’s right.” He laughs sleepily. “My heart. I don’t know, man. Being with her, it’s like I can—yeah, I might be dizzy, who gives a fuck—it’s like I can finally forget about you, kid. I know that sounds selfish, but it’s the truth. All my life I wanted to forget about you, ’cause you haunt me no matter what I do. And now I can. I can just forget. I don’t have to obsess anymore, ’cause I’ve got someone else to keep me busy.” I kiss his hand, sniffing away tears. “I’ll keep you real busy,” I promise him. “Just please don’t die.” His heart monitor beep, beep, beeps … And so does Brandon’s. He looks even worse than Granite, laid up like an injured bird, skin so pale he might already be dead. He isn’t talking anytime soon, not with the drugs they’ve got him on. He stares up at the ceiling with half-open eyes. “I want to tell you something,” I whisper. “And I know it’s going to sound mean, cruel. Whatever. I want you to know that if you ever pull shit like this again, I’ll kill you myself. I get it. You’re sad that Mom died. I’m sad, too. But that doesn’t mean you have to go completely crazy, does it? That doesn’t mean you have to throw our family away, throw our life away, because you’re sad. That isn’t—” I

pause, realizing I’m parroting Granite. But then I realize that it doesn’t matter as long as it’s true. “That isn’t what men do, Brandon.” I kiss him on the forehead and then go back to Granite’s room. “I’ll protect her until the end,” he mutters after about an hour. “Whatever it takes. Guns? Fire? Fists? I don’t give a damn—a damn. I don’t care.” Then he falls into a deep sleep. I go down into the lobby, outside to get some air. Jax is down the way, smoking, so I go in the other direction, leaning up against the wall and taking slow, steady breaths. Then my cellphone rings. “Hey, doll,” Emma says, her chirpy voice out of place in the current madness of my life. “How’s it going?” I laugh, too tired to lie. “I’m at the hospital with Granite and Brandon. Both of them are badly hurt. I can’t explain how or why, but they’re safe. The men who hurt them are gone.” “Gone,” Emma says quietly. “I don’t—excuse me, Allison, but I don’t know where to start. Your voice sounds all choked up. Have you been crying?”

“Can I ask you something, as a friend?” “Sure,” she says, though she doesn’t sound at all sure. “Can you just tell me that everything is going to be okay? I know you don’t have all the facts. I know you don’t know what the hell’s going on. But can you just say it for me?” She pauses for a moment—I can almost see her, staring down at her painted nails, eyebrows knitted —and then she sighs. “Okay, here it is. Allison, you’ve been my friend for half a decade now. I love you. Everything is going to be okay.” “Thank you. We’ll talk later, I promise. I have to go now.” I hang up before she can protest and put my phone on silent, stuff my hands in my pockets, and slump against the wall. “It’s over,” I whisper. “They’re all dead.” I wonder if I should feel bad about that. After all, death is death. But I don’t, not even slightly. Each and every one of those men was going to rape me. Just as I’m thinking this, Mr. Ivarsson walks over to

me, his face and forehead burnt to a crisp red and his lips pursed like he’s sucking on a lemon. He just stares at me for a few moments, thumbs hooked through his belt. After a long silence—a silence in which I’m too intimidated to speak—he clears his throat. “So you played quite the trick on us,” he says, voice even. “When you walked into my office, I thought you were just some kid. I didn’t think you’d ever make it into the club, but I knew you had something in you. And I was right. Not in the way that perhaps you hoped. You didn’t look like a biker. But you had something in your eye. You’re Granite’s old lady, so that means you’re in the club now, like it or not. We’ll protect you. But you’re gonna have to give up this Al shit.” I let out a relieved breath. “That all sounds fine to me, sir.” He inclines his head; it’s too slow and deliberate to be called a nod. “That’s fine. How are they doing?” “Not great. They’re recovering. They’re on lots of medication. They’re sleeping, except that Granite is talking every now and then.” “Okay.” He opens and closes his hands. “This will

all be over soon. Once we get Todd and the final remnants of the—” “Wait.” The ground spins under my feet; the sky spins. I swallow mouthfuls of vomit. “What are you talking about? I thought this was over. I thought they were dead. Is Todd the guy with the handlebar mustache?” “Yes, he is their leader. No, it’s not over, not yet. They’re still holed up in that warehouse. They’ve been using that as their base for a while now, and Todd is an arrogant man. He doesn’t know what it means to be humbled, even when bodies lie all around him. He is a fool.” “I don’t …”I take a step back. Something rises inside of me, something hot and red, and then white-hot. I see that man, his smile, hear his voice, feel his breath on my cheek. They were going to rape me, they were going to take turns, they hurt my brother and they hurt my man. They’re fucking animals and they’re still alive and we’re here getting fresh air and smoking cigarettes like it’s no big deal. “It’s a lot to take in,” he says, and then leaves me. I massage my temples, trying to force this feeling

away, trying to convince myself to go back into the hospital and sit next to Granite and pretend that all I am is a caring woman, a partner. But I can’t get that fucking man out of my head, the way his eyes danced. Has he done that to other women before? Will he do it to women again? I bet he has; behavior like that doesn’t just spring into existence out of nowhere. He’s done it before and he’ll do it again and we’re all just sitting here like it’s okay. I pace over to Jax, snatch the cigarette out of his hand, toss it to the curb and then press him up against the wall. “I need your keys and your gun,” I tell him. My voice isn’t my own. It grumbles like the first signs of an erupting volcano. I barely recognize it. “And I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say no, you can’t give me your gun. Blah-blah-blah, but here it is. I’m taking your gun and I need your car keys, too. All right?” “I don’t know what’s gotten into you.” He pries my hands from him and steps back, hands raised. “But I’m not giving you my keys or my gun. What are you, crazy?” I dart forward and squeeze down on his fruits hard enough to make his face turn red. “If you don’t give me your gun and your car keys right this second, I’m going to keep squeezing until your balls

pop like fucking grapes.” I squeeze a little harder, his eyes bulging. “I’ll count to three.” About a minute later I’m sitting behind the wheel of his car, gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles turn white. I glance at myself in the rearview mirror, but I don’t see Allison, greeneyed, deer-eyed Allison. I see somebody else, something else. I see a crazed woman. “Okay, stop,” I say, trying to persuade myself. “This is craziness. You’re not a fighter. You’re not an outlaw. You’re pregnant. This is stupid.” But then I hear him, his voice, whispering close to my ear as his hands toyed near my pussy. “This is going to hurt,” he whispered, just before they threw the body in, just before it turned into a warzone. “I know I told you it’d feel good, and it will, but that doesn’t mean it’s not going to hurt as well. Soon the pain will fade, though. Trust me. I’m an expert.” And what did I do? I just crouched there, bent over, whimpering, moaning. I see that girl in a thirdperson view and I hate her, hate her weakness, hate everything about her. My cell rings. “What?” I snap.

“It’s me,” Emma says. “Jesus, Allison. You sound … are you okay? You don’t sound like yourself.” “And who am I?” I growl. “When you really get down to it, Emma, who the fuck am I if I’m going to let some pervert do what he wants with me and get away with it? Nobody else is going to do anything!” “Now, just listen to me. I don’t know what’s going on over there but if you just tell me where you are, what hospital, I’ll come to you and we can—” I hang up the phone, start the engine, and screech out of the parking lot. That’s when I notice the gas can in the back and the matches on the dashboard.

Chapter Twenty-Three Allison “What?” I snap, my cell on loudspeaker on the dash, sliding back and forth as I swerve the car. “Just wait,” Emma says. “Whatever you’re doing, just wait. Talk to me. Don’t make any decisions when you’re in this mood, Allison. Come on. Think. What are you doing? Can you tell me that, at least? Can you just tell me what you’re doing?” Her voice cracks. “I’ll tell you what I’m doing!” I swerve again. The tires screech. I speed out of town and toward the warehouse, road and civilization replaced by dust and cacti. “All my life, I’ve let people walk all over me. You said it yourself. When I first started at work, what was I? I was a nervous freak and I let people say whatever they wanted, or I overreacted, you said; that’s how you put it. But was it really an overreaction if it got them to stop? I’m tired of letting men—and it’s always men, isn’t it, because they always want something from us—I’m tired of letting them walk all over me and get away with it.”

“Just wait,” Emma pleads. “Listen to me. I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know what you’re doing. But what I do know is that there’s never a problem so bad having a friend along to help you is a bad thing.” I glance at the matches, and then laugh madly. “I don’t know about that,” I say. “I don’t think you’d agree, to be honest. I’m not going to tell you where I am, Emma, so you might as well stop asking.” “Can you at least tell me what you’re doing?” The matches slide across the dashboard, making a sound like skateboard wheels on concrete. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” “You sound—different.” “It’s because—ah, fuck it. That’s right. Fuck it! Why do I have to explain myself? Listen, Emma. I love you. You’re my best friend. But nothing you can say is going to calm me down right now. So just stop trying! Bye! I love you!” “I love you too—” I hang up the phone and turn another corner, the back of the car flipping out behind me. I touch the

gun on the passenger seat, stroking the safety switch. Hopefully those lessons with Granite will be enough. Finally, I arrive at the warehouse. Part of me suspected that my anger might dissipate when the warehouse came into view, but now, looking at it, it only flares inside of me. “You’ll love it … You really will. Come on … don’t be shy …” I bite down on my hand. And they would have done it, too; all of them would have plowed into me. I wasn’t even a person at that point. I was just a bent-over collection of parts, and there was one part they were most interested in. “And we’ll take it.” His voice is in the growling tires on the dust, the cawing of a far-off bird. His eyes are the stars. “They all take it, in the end.” I come to a stop just outside the warehouse. It takes an effort to unclench the steering wheel, like my fingers are duct-taped to it. I pry them loose and then get out of the car, stuff the gun in the back of my pants and take the gas can and the matches. I creep toward the warehouse, completely fearless like I’ve never been before in my life. I don’t feel anything but this flaring within me, this constant pulsing, this never-waning hatred. I push the door open and creep inside. Voices, upstairs, shouting. Glasses clink. I creep across the almost-pitch room

toward the bottom of the stairs, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the light. “That was really something,” a man says, his voice quiet but audible. “I don’t—burying all those men, and all for some cunt. What’s some cunt? Can you tell me that? Seems to me the whole world makes a fuss about these cunts, but what do they offer? All our friends, fuckin’ twenty-five of ’em, for some cunt.” “I know,” another man replies. No, not another man. It’s Todd, handlebar-mustache. “But we will get our revenge. I promise you that. We will not let them get away with this, the fuckin’ assholes. They think the Riders are the only club who can pull a few tricks. No, fellas, no.” Quietly, I move around the room covering anything flammable in gasoline, cardboard boxes and the wallpaper, leading a trail of it to the door. Then I strike a match and hold it out before me for a moment, thinking. This will mean crossing a line. This will mean becoming somebody else. But I’m sure these men have pushed women across lines before, lines they did not want to cross. I drop the match and run back outside. I crouch down behind the hood of the car and aim

at the door, making sure the safety’s off. Now that I’m in it, my heart is beating so loudly I can’t even hear the crackling of the flames. The fire starts astonishingly quickly, lighting up the walls and smashing the upper windows, fire-lit glass falling like hailstones. Then a man runs out of the door, gun raised, waving smoke from his eyes. I think—I shoot. It’s as fast as that, just like Granite told me. I aim. I use the iron sights. I pull the trigger. There’s a bang and the gun kicks, and then the man’s face is torn in half and he collapses to the ground. Pity fills me until I remind myself: the voice, the men, gathered around . . . they would’ve taken turns. I kill the pity. Another man runs out. I shoot again. He falls next to his fellow rapist. Then Todd comes running out, hands over his eyes but parted so that he can see through the slit. I panic—there he is, the bastard, the one who was leading them—fire twice. One bullet catches him in the leg and the other catches him in the shoulder. He drops his gun and falls to the ground with a grunt. Before I know it, I’m sprinting headlong at him. I leap at him, thud my knee into his chest and press the barrel of the gun against the side of his head.

“Wow,” he says, smiling bloodily up at me. “I never expected this. Just look at this. The nervous little whore who came walking up to Brandon’s house is all grown up. What’s the matter, baby, you miss me?” I press my hand against his wound, squeezing down on it. He grimaces and lets out a shaky moan. “You’ll like this eventually,” I tell him. “They all do. It’ll hurt at first.” I twist my hand. I’m getting his blood all over me but I don’t care. “You just need to give yourself to it. Don’t fight the feeling. This is the last thing you’re going to do, so you might as well enjoy it.” “You think you’ve got it in you to blow a man’s head off?” He laughs through blood-coated gritted teeth. “I doubt that, sweetheart. I really do. It’s one thing to fire off shots from behind a car, another to look a man in the eyes. I’ve got a son, girl, a son who looks up to me and loves me. He don’t know shit about this side of my life. His mother loves me, too. She don’t know shit either. They know me as Todd, the guy at the barbeque who always mans the grill.” “I’m going to ask you a question and you’re going

to answer honestly,” I tell him. “How many women have you raped?” “None,” he says. “I was just trying to act tough for my men.” “Liar!” I squeeze down even harder on his wound. “Tell me the truth or I swear to God …” Tears slide down the side of his face. He closes his eyes, panting in agony, and then opens them like a different man. He’s no longer in pain, or he no longer cares that he’s in pain. “I don’t know how many women, sweetheart. Fifty, a hundred. Who fuckin’ knows? You all make it so damn easy, fluttering about the place in those fuckin’ skirts, shoving it in a man’s face. What do you think is gonna happen, eh? Even you, when you were tied up, the way you moaned, the way you looked at me. You were practically begging for it—” I pull the trigger. His head jerks to the side. I leap back at the impact, the shower of blood, and then walk numbly back to the car. I lean against the hood and stare at the building, the fire consuming it now, licking the air like a hundred orange-yellow tongues. He was right. Killing a man at point-blank range is much different to shooting him from all the way back here. His head jerked to the side, blood

exploded; his eyes went dark. He deserved it and yet my chest still feels heavy. I force myself off the hood and to the driver’s-side door. Just as I open it somebody clamps their hand down on my wrist, brings something sharp to the back of my neck. He leans close to me, breath hotter than the fire. “Listen here, you cunt,” he says. “You drop that gun and turn around slowly. I don’t want any fuckin’ hassle with you.” I do as he says, since I have no choice. He’s a mean-looking man with tattoos covering his face, three gold teeth in his mouth, and a dyed blond Mohawk haircut. “Okay.” He takes a deep breath. He’s all amped-up, bobbing from foot to foot. I guess cocaine and fire and death will do that to a person. “We’re going for a drive, missy, ’cause what you did—you don’t get a quick death with that, no way, no ma’am. So we’re going for a drive and you’re going to do what I want, and then I’m outta this fuckin’ state. Might even go down to Mexico or across the pond. I ain’t staying here. Fuck it. Get in the car. You’ll drive.” Something in me snaps. I’m not angry anymore. I’m not scared. I’m just tired. “No,” I say, staring him right in the face. “I’m not doing that. You’re not taking me to some field or dungeon, you sick

bastard.” “Are you insane?” He picks up my gun and presses the barrel against my head. “Get in the car. Or I swear I’ll—” The knife pokes out the front of his neck, blood gushing everywhere, and Mr. Ivarsson grabs the gun and smacks him across the face with it. He throws him to the ground and shoots him twice in the face, and then turns to me, all with slow, calm movements. “You’ve just done what very few club men would do, Allison,” he says, dropping the knife. “You’ve proved yourself. You killed the leader of our rival club. I—” He bows his head. “Even my father would be proud of this. We don’t take women, not usually, but if you really want to be in the club—” “I never wanted to be in the club,” I say. “I just want to go home. Back to the hospital, I mean, to be with my family.” Which means Brandon and Granite, I realize. “Okay.” He nods to the backseat. “I’ll drive. You must be tired. Your first fight is always the most exhausting.” I don’t think I am tired until I curl up in the

backseat. I stare at the receding flames for a while, licking the sky. And then I close my eyes.

Chapter Twenty-Four Granite “If I knew where she was, I’d tell you. You know I would.” “With all these damn meds they’ve got me on,” I say, trying and failing to sit up, “it’s hard to know if you’re really there.” Ranger pulls his chair closer to my bed. It’s the first time in almost a year I’ve seen him without his Stetson on, and the first time in much longer than that that he’s voluntarily hung out around bikers. “I’m here, Granite, don’t you worry about that.” I open and close my mouth. Everything feels slow, drawn-out, each minor movement taking far longer than it should. My wounds don’t hurt anymore, but that’s ’cause nothing feels like much anymore. Everything is numb. “She told me she was pregnant,” I say. “At least, I think she did. It’s all a fuckin’ mess, man. Up here.” I try to point to my head, but I can’t. My arm won’t move. “I’ve never been this fucked up. Even after the most fucked-up night in the club, the most fucked-up night of

drinkin’, I’ve never felt like this.” “That’s because there’s a difference between drinking and getting shot three times,” Ranger says softly. “I hate seeing you like this. I really, really hate it.” “Don’t get all soft on me,” I mutter. Ranger glances at the door. “This ain’t right, man, being laid out like this. You deserve better.” “What was I gonna do, let them have her? Fuck, no. I’d rather be dead than let that happen. What? Why are you smiling at me like that?” His smile gets wider. “I don’t wanna be the jerk who says ‘I told you so’ to the guy laid up in a hospital bed, but …” “Don’t say it, then. If you don’t wanna be the jerk, don’t be the jerk.” “But ain’t it just perfect? A few weeks ago—hell, a few days—I was telling you that one day you’d care about her, that you already cared about her. And you were trying to play it cool, looking at me like I was a moron—”

“I don’t need an excuse to look at you like you’re a moron,” I interrupt. “Ha, ha, fuckin’, ha, and now here you are after risking your life for her. And a kid, Granite. That’s really something.” “A kid. If she really did say that. It’s all a blur. Part of me hopes it was all in my head.” “Why?” he asks. I lick my lips. “I don’t wanna play the invalid, but can you get me some water?” He brings a plastic cup to my lips and tips it. I feel like a real asshole, half of the water sliding down my face with my friend dabbing at my chin with a paper towel. “You said you hoped it was in your head,” he reminds me. “Yeah.” I sigh, staring up at the ceiling through half-open eyes. I feel more relaxed, more able to talk. Maybe I ought to keep some of these meds on hand for when I leave, but then that’ll make me a junkie, just like the assholes who killed Jimmy. “What sort of a father am I going to be, Ranger? Ask yourself that. The fuck am I going to do for a kid? Teach him how to shoot, how to ride? And

then he’ll end up exactly like me.” “You don’t have to do that, though,” he says. “You can be somebody else, somebody new. That’s the beauty of children.” “I guess so,” I whisper. “But here’s the thing. What can I offer except for my outlawin’? What am I if I ain’t an outlaw?” Ranger leans forward. “All right, fella, it’s time to stop this self-pitying shit. I’m gonna ask you a series of questions and I want you to answer with yes or no. Are you a coward?” “Come on, man …” He squeezes down on my wrist, just hard enough to hurt. “I know what you’re gonna say. If you weren’t in this bed you’d get up and knock my head off. But you are, so fuckin’ deal with it. Now, are you a coward?” “No.” “Do you love Allison?” “Yes.” That one comes with an ease which would have shocked me only a week ago: which still

shocks me now. “If she is pregnant, are you going to abandon her?” “What? No. Of course I’m fuckin’ not.” He leans back. “Then everything else will sort itself out. If you love her and you’re determined to stick by her, then what’s the problem? Don’t worry about all that other shit.” “You know, Ranger, you’re a good friend. A really good friend. But if you ever lay your hands on me like that again, I’m going to break your goddamn neck.” “Not until those wounds’ve healed, you ain’t.” He grins down at me. “This is quite fun, actually.” “You’re a sick bastard. Why’nt you stop wagging that fuckin’ tongue of yours and go and find Allison. I’m going crazy here, man. I just got her back and now she’s gone AWOL.” “That means Absent Without Official Leave, don’t it? What sort of official leave would she need to get, your permission?” “Don’t get all fuckin’ feminist on me. Just go find

her.” He puts on his Stetson and goes to the door. “If I find her, I’ll send her up. I need to get back to the diner now, man. You know what it’s like there without me.” “Yeah. Peaceful. Fun. Maybe you ought to stay away longer.” He smiles, tips his hat. “If that’s an invitation to a double date, Maria and I would be happy to oblige. Dinner. I’ll cook.” “Of course you fuckin’ will. See you later, man.” He leaves and I close my eyes. I don’t know how much time passes, only that when I open them again the night is even darker than it was when Ranger was here, and the hallway is even quieter. Then the door opens and Allison walks in. She’s blurry at first, but when I focus my eyes I see that her face is pale and tired-looking and so clean it’s like she’s disinfected it. She walks over to me halfhugging herself, like she’s seen a ghost. She sits down next to me and places her hand on mine. It’s cold, clammy.

“Are you okay?” I whisper. Dammit, I wish speaking wasn’t so draining. “Yes,” she replies. “It’s just … I …” She closes her eyes, takes a breath, and then tells me what she did at the warehouse. The more she talks, the further my mouth falls open, until I’m like a cartoon character. “I must be hallucinating. There’s no other explanation. No damn way. I don’t … this just doesn’t make sense. Squeeze my hand.” She does it, and it feels real, but then earlier today when Jimmy was sitting in the corner and talking to me that felt real, too. There’s no way to know. “You’re telling me that you, Allison, went to the warehouse and took out the rest of the Brass Skulls, on your own.” “Yes,” she says, offering a shaky smile. “I know. I get it. I hardly believe it myself. I don’t know what got into me. When I look back on it, it seems completely crazy. But it happened. That’s why I took so long. I went back to my place and had a shower, but I still didn’t feel clean so I had a bath as well, and then I still didn’t feel clean so I had another shower.” She shivers. “I know one thing for sure after today. You can’t die on me, Granite. I need you to help me get through this. You know more about this stuff than I do.”

“Feelin’ like you’re standing on the tip of a spire and if you go too far either way you’ll fall right down to your death, just keep fallin’ until you can’t even die anymore ’cause you’ve died too many times?” I’m dribbling, I realize. Fuckin’ meds. Allison dabs my lips. “Ignore me,” I tell her. “One second I’m floatin’ and the next I’m fallin’. I don’t know where my head is. But you, Allison, you fuckin’ did it. Don’t feel bad about those pricks. The way they had you bent over when I found you; bent over like you were there to service them or some shit.” “Hush.” She kisses my forehead, stroking my hand until I stop clenching it. Not that I can clench it hard. It’s more like a child’s trembling. “Don’t get yourself worked up. It’s over.” “Over. To me it’s like it’s only just beginning. Don’t laugh at what I say next, ’cause right now real and imaginary ain’t so different. Before I went into the warehouse for your brother, did you tell me you were pregnant? Or was that all in my head?” “Pregnant?” She tilts her head, purses her lips, looks inward as though searching for an answer. “I knew it,” I say, a heavy weight settling on my

chest. I guess I didn’t realize how badly I actually wanted a kid with her until now. “It’s strange, because I heard you say it just as clear as you’re talking to me now.” “How did you feel about it?” she asks. “Like I wanted it to happen. Like I wanted to rise to the challenge. That ain’t to say we have to have a kid, not if you don’t want—” “But you want to?” “Yeah.” I laugh, and it’s a free laugh, the way I’d laugh as a kid with Jimmy. Magical meds. “Good.” She reaches into her pocket and takes out a small white stick. “Because I really am pregnant. I’m sorry. I know it’s a cruel trick. I just wanted to see how you felt.” “That is a damn cruel trick!” I snap, but I’m smiling. “Goddamn, Allison, what sort of game are you playing? But you are, you really are?” “You sound like a kid on Christmas.” She has tears in her eyes. Dammit, I have tears in mine, too. “Like you can’t believe the present you’ve got. Do you really feel that way? Are you really happy?”

“Happy,” I mutter. “That word ain’t enough for it. I’m—I feel different, I already feel different. I feel like I can’t die now ’cause I’ve got somebody waiting on me. I can’t die when I’ve got a kid on the way, can I? What sort of fucked-up move would that be? No, I have to live. I have to be strong. For him—and for you.” “For him?” She kisses my cheek over and over, her tears dripping down my face. “Doesn’t that seem a little presumptuous?” “Marry me!” I shout, though it’s more of a quiet whisper the state I’m in. “Marry me, Allison! I want you to be my wife. I wanna be out in the yard working on my bike and then come into the house and you’re there with our baby, cooking or playing video games or reading or whatever it is both of you wanna do, and I wrap my arms around you both and you wrap your arms around me and— that’s love, right there, that’s what love is. Marry me.” She wipes tears from her face, kisses me one final time, and then leans up. “I won’t give you my answer now, because you’re on all this medication. Ask me when you’re not high.” She smiles. “That stuff looks good. I wish I had some.”

“I’d give you all of it if I could,” I say. I feel lightheaded, like I could fly through the ceiling and up into the sky. “I’d give you everything. I love you. There, I said it. I love you!” She smooths her hand up and down my arm, sending electrical prickles all over my body, healing me. “I love you too.”

Epilogue Allison “I’ll never get used to morning sickness.” I emerge from the bathroom dabbing my mouth with a paper towel. Granite’s on the couch, smiling over at me, smoothing his hand over the raw pink gunshot wound. “You shouldn’t do that,” I tell him, sitting down next to him. “I’m just glad they’re healing,” he says. “Glad I’m alive. Goddamn.” “Do you still want to visit my brother with me today?” I ask. He smiles over my head, glancing around the house: my place, but also his place now, too, half filled with his stuff. Not that there’s much: a few leather jackets, clothes, a couple of framed photographs of him and his little brother. “This place needs some work,” he says. “Some man’s work. A few nails. A hammer. A saw.” “A saw?” I fall into his lap. He catches me, kisses me. “What do you need a saw for?”

“To cut that baby out of you!” He tickles me, lifting me off my feet and then hugging me close to him, holding me off the ground. We kiss for a long time, losing ourselves in the kissing, our lips fusing together each moment. I love the way his tongue feels, rough and familiar, the way his body feels pressed up against mine. Then he carries me up the stairs and into the bedroom, kissing all the while. When he lays me down and yanks my pants and underwear off, a shiver runs through me. His tattooed, scarred body would have scared me once, but now it promises pleasure, promises comfort. He leans over me and pushes his massive cock inside of me. We’ve made love countless times and yet each time it feels new, a host of novel sensations working their way through my body. He slides his cock deep, deep, deep inside of me, staring in my eyes the whole while, and I stare back at him, and for a moment it’s like we’re one body, one person, and then we split apart and throw ourselves into animal fucking —not lovemaking anymore. I grab onto his shoulders and bounce up and down on his cock, grinding my hips against him as he thrusts into me, his cock smashing into my sweet spot over and over. The orgasm explodes in my

pussy, a small tingling that throws its pleasure outwards like the Big Bang: a tiny pinprick of pleasure turning into an entire universe of euphoria. I close my eyes, open them when he kisses me, kiss him through the orgasm, nipples tingling, body on fire, everything flushed, steamy, wet. I squirt onto his cock, hard, the orgasm emptying out of me, and then he arches his back and thrusts into me deeper than he’s ever been before, coming so hard that his body seizes up. He collapses onto top of me, panting. We lie like that for a long time and then silently get dressed and return to the living room, both of us basking in the afterglow of the sex. “You changed the subject,” I say after a few minutes of sitting in front of the TV. “Did I?” He grins at me. “I don’t remember.” “I asked if you wanted to visit my brother with me.” I kiss him on the nose. “You look so cute when you’re trying to get out of things.” “Get out of it?” He jumps to his feet and throws on his leather jacket. “I can’t wait to go to the hospital! Do you know how much gunshot victims love hospitals, my sweet angel?”

“Don’t be a jerk.” But we’re both smiling as we walk down to the car. “Maybe you ought to give me those keys,” he says. “I reckon I can drive, now that these wounds are healed.” Before I can answer he snatches the keys and climbs into the car. He leans across and opens the passenger side door for me. I climb in, unable to stop smiling at him. These are the most fun times, when we’re messing around like this. It’s like we’re teenagers on one long date, always playing with each other, always making each other laugh. “I love you,” I say, as he starts the engine. “Don’t get all soppy on me now.” The visit with Brandon goes as expected. He’s recovering but that infection that hit him a few weeks back has taken his toll. He’s going to be okay, but it’s a long process. He’s asleep when we get there so we just sit with him for a while. Granite pats him on the back of the hand. “All right, fella,” he says. “I want you to know you’ve got a family waitin’ for you, all right? The old lady’s

told me all about you, so I know you ain’t a bad person.” “That was nice,” I say, as we stroll back toward the car. “Don’t act like that,” he says, stopping me with an arm and turning on me. “What do you mean?” I look up at him, perplexed. “These past few weeks, tiptoeing around it.” He grins at me. “Tryin’ to work out if I remember sayin’ it but not wanting to come out and ask.” “I seriously don’t know what you’re talking about.” Although I do; I think I do. “I meant it,” he says, looking seriously into my eyes, more serious than he’s been since the hospital. He reaches into his pocket and falls to one knee in one fluid motion, despite his injuries. He opens the ring box and looks up at me. “I love you, Allison. I love you more’n a man like me will ever be able to understand. I love you more’n I thought a man like me could love. I want to marry you. I want you as my wife. And I wanna be the best goddamn husband and father I can be. Will you marry me?”

“Yes!” I squeal, the answer so obvious I hardly need to say it. “Yes! Yes! Yes!” He slides the ring onto my finger, lifts me over his shoulder, and carries me to the car. “I’m taking you home!” he says, laughing. “I reckon it’s time we learned what engaged sex is like.”

THE END *** Thanks for reading! Did you like my story? If so, sign up to my mailing list! New subscribers receive a FREE steamy short. Click the link below to join. http://dl.bookfunnel.com/ogns2te7xi

Books by Nicole Fox Click any of the covers below to go straight to the book page! Born to Ride: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Midnight Hunters MC) (Beards and Leather Book 3)

I was born to ride her ‘til she breaks. She was never meant for a man like me. But a vicious blizzard drove her into my arms. So I did the only thing I know how to do: I bent her over my chopper and made her MINE. KARA There’s no feeling quite like walking in the door of your home and seeing your fiancé getting hot and heavy with a strange woman in your bed. It’s rage and sadness and embarrassment all mixed up in one nasty cocktail. And coincidentally, a cocktail is exactly what I needed after I caught that lousy S.O.B. cheating. After that stiff drink (and maybe a couple more), I had to decide what I’d do next. Maybe a few days at home with my family would do my soul some good. I pack up my things and hit the road, but it doesn’t take long before my luck gets even worse. A nasty blizzard drives me off the highway.

Now, I’m stranded, freezing, and alone… Except for the dying man in the ditch. I almost screamed when I saw him. A brawny, tatted beast lying half-naked in the snow. I don’t know whether to help him out or run screaming for the hills. But my conscience won’t let me leave him there. So I bundle him into my car and go searching for somewhere to stay while the storm blows over. We find an abandoned cabin… The beast wakes up… And that’s where my troubles truly began. RYDER I woke up freezing and on the verge of death. My memory is a painful blank. But I know one thing: whoever did this to me is going to pay the price. I’m not sure who it was or how I ended up here. But I’m glad the girl picked me up. I might be dead if not for her.

Time to show my appreciation… the way only an outlaw biker knows how. She takes us to an isolated shack, and then we started drinking. The first whiskey warms us up. The second gets us talking. The third strips her naked. Making her mine is savage and sweaty. But what she doesn’t know is that the men who put me in that ditch are coming to finish the job. If she wants to survive this ride on the wild side, she’ll have to follow my commands. Get on your knees. And get ready to open wide.

Built to Kill: A Bad Boy Hitman Romance (Moretti Family Mafia)

I was built to kill… and born to f**k her senseless. Lorenzo No one chooses the mob life. But killing is what I do.

And I'm good at it. I guess you could say I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Saw things I wasn't supposed to. So I swore my allegiance to mafia boss Matteo Moretti. He taught me to kill. And became the man I grew to hate. He thought he could buy my loyalty. He was wrong. I've always wondered if this day would come… When I couldn't pull the trigger. I figured a bullet would be the death of me. But it wasn’t a gun that killed me. She did. Alexis Scraping dollar bills off the floor to the cheers of leering men. My parents would've been proud... Too bad I never knew them.

Life sure has a funny way of working itself out. But I'm a survivor. At least, I used to be. But then I end up at an outlaw party with a killer’s gun held to my head. Why the hitman didn't pull the trigger, I'll never know. But now I'm at his mercy… And he's coming to take what belongs to him.

Ride ‘Til Dawn: A Bad Boy Secret Baby Romance (Filthy Fools MC)

A ride on the bad boy left me pregnant. I've had enough of heartache. My life is one long never-ending nightmare, thanks

to my vicious stepdad. But that I'm eighteen, I finally have a chance at freedom… And I've never felt freedom like I do on the back of Dusty's bike. But with his hard muscles, glistening tattoos, and rugged face, I should be running for the hills—not straight into his arms. A bad boy rebel who rides is trouble incarnate, and I've had enough bad luck already to last me a lifetime. But I can't resist my outlaw knight in shining leather. He wants to hold me. Romance me. Seduce me. Protect me. I keep telling him I'm not a girl who needs protecting. I've always looked after myself… But that was before the baby.

The Traitor’s Baby: Reaper’s Hearts MC

MY BABY’S MOTHER WANTS ME DEAD. She’s my enemy’s daughter. She’s a cold-blooded traitor. And after a dirty, dominant one-night stand…

She’s the mother of my child. This isn’t a love story. After all, what’s romantic about a sweaty, filthy one-night stand between strangers? Not a damn thing. Bending Kenzie over my bed wasn’t cute or sweet. Neither was all the violence that came after. An unexpected baby would’ve been bad enough. But that’s just the beginning of our little romance. Because Kenzie is more than just a casual fling. After our little tryst, she’s something far more important… She’s carrying my baby. Too bad she’s also trying to kill me.

Filthy Nights: Demon Riders MC

I’M NOT HERE TO SAVE HER. I’M HERE TO BREAK HER. CORA Lovers for a night.

Strangers again in the morning. But one slip meant he left an unexpected surprise in my womb. LOGAN All she wants is to get away from her violent past. Too bad I’m the man who’s been sent to drag her back. At first, she was just a means to an end. But when I find out she’s carrying my baby, everything changes. Now, I’m becoming a man I never thought I’d be: One who kills to protect what’s his.

Filthy Sins: Sons of Wolves MC

I never should have slept with him. Now, I’m pregnant with his child. The biker saved me from my alcoholic daddy. In return, he wants me to have his baby.

It’s so wrong, and yet it feels so good. But our filthy sins might cost us everything. Because my dad’s corrupt cop friends want to kill my baby’s father and drag me back to hell. My belly is growing, but my hometown is burning. I have to decide: Can I trust the outlaw to keep our baby safe?

Knocked Up by the Killer: A Hitman Baby Romance

Killing is my business. But f**king her will be the sweetest pleasure.

Her scumbag ex ran off, leaving a mountain of debt for her to deal with. The thing is, I don’t give a damn about her sob story. I care about one thing only: Getting what I came for. She doesn’t have the cash to fork over. What she does have is a body I’m dying to claim. So as long as I’m waiting around for her to make ends meet… I might as well give myself a taste. When I take her, she’s as delicious as I imagined. And her pleading moans are music to my ears. But then something else came along, something I never expected… She got pregnant. All of the sudden, her situation is out of control. She’s got her billionaire mafia boss thirsting after her. A killer’s baby in her belly. And a multi-million-dollar debt hanging over her head.

If she wants to get out of this alive, she’ll have to do exactly what I tell her to. Starting with this: Get on your knees, darling.

Knocked Up by the Rebel: The Shadow Hunters MC

SHE’S MINE ONCE AGAIN… AND THIS TIME, SHE’S NOT GOING ANYWHERE.

I’ve made mistakes I won’t repeat. Like letting Daphne out of my bed. Now that I’ve got her back, she’ll never leave my sight again. That’s what happens when you hide my son from me. Who the f*** does she think she is? Keeping my son from me? Furious doesn’t even begin to describe my mood. I don’t care what she thinks I’ve done. Hell, she’s probably right. It’s true: I’ve stolen stuff. I’ve hurt people. But I don’t regret a godd*mn thing. This is just the path I’ve chosen. She thought she’d chosen a path to get away from me. But that’s impossible. Because she has something that belongs to me. And I’m coming to get it back.

Knocked Up by the Enforcer: Satan’s Legion MC

SHE WAS A TEMPTATION I NEVER SHOULD HAVE TOUCHED. …and now she’s pregnant with my child.

Mina Parker, the President’s daughter, is carrying the Vice President’s kid. Now the Satan’s Legion MC is in an uproar. And it’s my fault. The rules have been broken. The laws have been disgraced. I screwed up, I know that. But I could still make it all better. All it would take to put an end to the chaos is for me to come clean. All I would take is for me to look the President in the eye and tell him the truth: “I’m the one who had your precious daughter writhing beneath me. And I intend to have her again.”

Knocked Up by the Hitman: A Bad Boy Baby Romance

I HAD TWO CHOICES: GET LOCKED UP OR GET KNOCKED UP. It was either submit to the hitman… Or surrender to his gun against my head.

Can you really blame me for what I did next? Living out of my car, down to my last few bucks… Could things be any worse? Turns out the answer is yes. When my car gets stolen – with me still in the backseat – by a gun runner and his junkie brother, I figure I’ve seen my last sunrise. This is it for me. But to my surprise, the hitman makes me a deal. He’ll help me erase my old life and start fresh. In return, I owe him… Anything he wants. I’ll do whatever it takes to get away from my past. But as it turns out, Russell has a hunger that only a taste of me will satisfy. I strip down and give him what he desires – over and over and over again. For a while, it seems like things might be better. I have a new home, a new identity, a new purpose. But then I see the three little lines no girl like me ever wants to see. It means I’m pregnant. Before I can tell Russell about our baby, his junkie brother comes looking for his slice of the pie. There might be a beautiful new life lying in wait for Russell and me.

But only if I can get out of this bedroom alive.

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