Page 1 of Brandishing Betrayals

Halfway down the hall, when it was clear that Marcos wasn’t following, Luke told the doctor to wait.

I glanced back to see Marcos and Jason in a discussion, before both men did a manly hug with a back slap, before Marcos was striding toward us.

Jason didn’t follow.

Maya

Itwasamistaketo come back here.

I looked around the massive backyard, taking in all the smiling and laughing faces at the family barbeque. There were rough and tumble bikers wearing leather cuts covered in patches labeling them either a Devil’s Psycho or Ravager Knight drinking and smoking. Kids ran through a sprinkler in the yard while others jumped into the in-ground heated pool. Wives and girlfriends chatted around the pool or with their men in yard and garage.

Alcohol flowed and laughter rang out. The smell of a pig roasting in the driveway made my mouth water. A group of leather clad men stood around the spit on the driveway—the trailer the spit was attached to, was a state-of-the-art mobile kitchen on wheels.

It was a gorgeous early spring day in northern Illinois. The unseasonably warm weather had everyone was smiling and laughing, happy and carefree—everyone but me.

Scenes like this used to be as familiar to me as breathing. I had grown up in Creekton before I moved to Chicago. After almost a decade in Chicago with my son, I moved back to Creekton, or rather Mourningside, to take care of my aging parents after the car accident they had endured.

Now, I felt like an outsider. A simple backyard party, like the one around me, broke my heart. It reminded me of what had happened back then, and what could have been had I stayed all those years ago; had I not uprooted my life and moved to Chicago.

My son, Luke, ran through the sprinkler and did a running jump into the deep end of the heated swimming pool. He was a spitting image of his father, from the dark brown eyes to the dark brown hair, even the tanned skin of his Mexican heritage.

My heart squeezed when he came up laughing and yelled, “Dad! Dad! Did you see?”

“Heck yeah, I saw! Great jump buddy! Big splash!” Marcos “Killer” Candella yelled across the backyard, a huge smile on his goateed face. He leaned his arms over the top of the four-foot fence that surrounded the pool area, and watched Lucas from behind a pair of silver, wrap-around sunglasses.

It hurt to look at him, broke my heart. It was my own doing, though, nothing to be done about it at this point.

At thirty-four years old, I was no stranger to heart break, but what I’d once had with Marcos was something different. Not justMarcos, his two best friends as well, Jason “Stone” Langford and Nico “Dagger” Gage. The four of us had been inseparable back in the day.

Until I left.

The day I packed up my room in our old farm house rental had been the hardest day of my life.

Until I came back here.

Now it seemed like every day was one of the hardest of my life. Anytime I was around Marcos, Jason, and Nico, was too hard. It hurt too much being around them. I’d all but avoided them in the last six months I’d been back home.

Marcos would come over to the house to get to know Luke, but I gave them space, and mostly left them to their own devices. Eventually they started going out, meeting up with Jason and Nico, and having their own adventures.

They weren’t at the ‘spending the night’ stage yet, but I knew it would be soon. Marcos hadn’t wanted Luke around the biker life yet. It was one of the few things we agreed on.

So much for that, I thought as I looked around at all the bikers and their families scattered around the backyard.

Maya

I sat around pool, wondering what I was still doing at the party. My reason for being here had been whisked away in a flurry ofexcitement as Kara’s water broke and her three boyfriends had rushed her to the hospital.

Kara had begged me to come to the party and I found that I couldn’t tell my friend no, not anymore, not after rekindling our friendship after almost a decade. We had met in college and grown close after learning we both hailed from the same shitty little town of Creekton.

I had been a junior when Kara was a freshman. As freshman’s weren’t allowed cars on campus, I had offered to take Kara home on weekends and holidays. From there, our friendship had grown, until I eventually met Kara’s older brother Marcos… and his friends.

When I graduated and moved back to Creekton/Mourningside, I had run into Marcos, Jason, and Nico at a bar on graduation night. I had learned the truth that night about them being members of an MC. And after our history of hooking up during my college years, seeing them again had only cemented us all being together.

The rest was history.

We had started hot and heavy and burned hot and heavy through our two-year relationship. If things hadn’t gone down like they had at the end, I probably would have stayed with them—probably would have raised Lucas with them.

It hurt too much to think about the what ifs. Just like it hurt too much to sit in this backyard and stare around at all the happy families, knowing I had fucked up my chance at a happy family a long time ago.

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