Page 59 of Iron Hearts

That was the million-dollar question, wasn’t it? I mean, where to begin?

CHAPTERTWENTY-THREE

Striker…

It’d been a little over a week and a half since our little date in St. Augustine. The one where I’d left her gentlemanly like at her Jeep with a chaste kiss; I hadn’t stopped thinking about that short, soft press of lips against mine since.

I dreamed of her petal soft kiss every fucking night, woke up to a raging boner weeping precum every morning, and yeah, had to relieve the pressure in the shower every morning, too.

All the texting and talk of the dynamic I craved more than anything else certainly hadn’t been helping, but today? Today I would finally get toseeher. Possibly even get to hold her in my arms. That was if everything was cool and went according to plan.

The Iron Horse was back open, but they were still sans their liquor license and according to Rarity, business was more than a little lackluster.

I didn’t particularly care about that. They’d decided to host the Scorpions and not enforce their rules. That’d gotten Rarity hurt. I wasn’t inclined to forgive that… but for one thing. I liked Rarity, I didn’t want to let her lose her job, and if the Iron Horse hadn’t fucked up, we maybe more than likely would have never met.

Our friendship was still a budding one, but after our day together it was now one that I was glad to find was fraught with sexual tension.

She was such a good girl, and the contents of our texts had gotten a little hotter and certainly a lot heavier since our time together. To the point that I had a wild idea on how to help out, at least for one night, with their dwindling patronage.

I’d run it by the guys and they’d been game as long as I put it together, and so a poker run it was.

The guys from Ocala and Jacksonville were game, and we’d advertised on social media for a good while, and I’d contacted a bunch of places to put the run together – it was my position within the club, after all.

The Iron Horse’s owner had welcomed the idea with open arms as a peace offering. An olive branch between the club and his establishment, but he’d insisted on one thing:no colors inside his bar.

I’d figured that was coming and had already anticipated it. So, I’d said no problem. We’d stop out front at the gas station and divest, stowing our colors in our locked cases and saddlebags.

He’d said deal, and so it was a deal.

Riders from all over the state were set to attend. It was a fundraising poker run, after all. The start point was at our clubhouse, where we had our big tent erected, and the plan was to head down the A1A and do a total of five stops between and hold five hands of poker at each stop.

We were no strangers to doing charitable runs, and this one was no exception. We just used them as tax write-offs at the end of the year, and maybe did a little to balance our scales by running them.

This run was us being good neighbors. Florida was used to getting our shit pushed in by hurricanes. It was a yearly occurrence. Usually, we fared okay, but every once in a while? Shit got real and when it did, we all banded together and helped each other out.

Never in a million fuckin’ years did anyone thinkAppalachiawould bear the brunt of a full-fledged hurricane. It was about as ridiculous and as frequent as a blizzard inMiami.That’s what happened, though. A bitch named Helene made landfall in the panhandle and cut an unprecedented swath of fuckin’ destruction across something like seven states total. She fucked up Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, East Tennessee, parts of Virginia and West Virginia. It was wild, but nobody took damage harder than Appalachia.

Shefucked upWestern North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee like nobody’s fuckin’ business and those areas that she hit hardest up there were lookin’ at devastation that wiped entire towns and cities clean off the fuckin’ map.

It would be decades to repair the damage in the areas it could be repaired, but there were a lot of places that were justdone. Gone. There was no fixing it. There was no starting over. There was nothing left there to start over with, there was nothing left enough to rebuild.

So, this poker run was dedicated to the hurricane relief in the Appalachian Mountains.

It was only a drop in the bucket, sure, but we knew a thing or two about catastrophic storm damage and being hung out to dry by our own government down here. Sounded like similar was happening up there. We wanted to help, and have a little fun doing it and what better way to kill two birds with one stone?

Help Appalachia, and the Iron Horse by bringing people in fuckin’ droves.

By the time we reached the Iron Horse, everyone was full of beer and little else from our previous poker hand stops. We were bringing in a hungry fuckin’ crowd, and the Iron Horse had their kitchens, pits, and smokers going full bore expecting the lot of us.

I was happy to say we delivered.

Tables had been set up in long lines up top, live talent was on the stage, and thesmells. Lord, they had our mouths watering before we had our cuts off and were riding in to park.

We had the place so packed, bikes were lining the street and the Ormond Beach PD were out front directing traffic and turning folk over across the street and down some to the Broken Spoke to park.

The Broken Spoke didn’t have their feelings hurt. They’d got on board and had closed down their kitchens, leaving the food to the Iron Horse. Instead, they made up for it by having their taps wide open and the beer and liquor flowing.

It was an exercise in harmony and cooperation and so far, everything was going great.

---