Page 15 of Brutal for It
Her weight against my back.
Her grip, firm and steady.
Her trust.
I’ve been on a bike my whole damn life. Miles of asphalt, every kind of weather, every kind of road. But nothing has ever felt more like home than this—Jami’s heartbeat pressed into mine, the wind wrapping around us, the steady thrum of the engine under our bodies.
I relax in a way I can’t anywhere else. Not in the clubhouse, not in our house, not even in bed. Out here, with her holding on, everything makes sense.
We stop at a lookout point, the kind only locals know. The beach stretches out in front of us at the point parking, the last streaks of pink and orange fading into blue. She swings off the bike and pulls off her helmet, shaking her hair loose.
“God,” she says, breathing deep. “This never gets old.”
I watch her in the fading light, my chest tight around the secret in my pocket. She doesn’t see herself the way I do. She still looks in the mirror and sees the girl who stumbled out of rehab, the girl who bled on my shirt, the girl who thought she was broken.
But me? I see a survivor. I see a woman who fights her demons every damn day and comes out the other side stronger. I see my future.
Soon. Soon I’ll make her see it too.
When we head back, she leans harder into me, her cheek against my back, her arms snug like she never wants to let go. And I swear, if home is a place, it’s not the house we sleep in or the compound we grew up around. It’s this.
Her and me.
Two wheels.
The road stretching forever.
And soon… a ring on her finger.
I am the happiest I have ever been in my entire life. Everything feels right from love, business, and the club.
Club business is supposed to feel clean if you do it right.
In, out. Check the manifest, confirm the seal, eyes up, back straight. You don’t ask what’s in the crate and you don’t leave fingerprints on anything but your own throttle. The sun burns down the same on saints and sinners, and the road doesn’t give a damn which you are.
We leave before noon. Five bikes, one box truck, Tripp lead, me on his six. Red brought the paperwork we’re not supposed to have and the burner we won’t ever use again. Crunch runs tail in a pickup—prospects do the dirty work and the follow car both, and he’s not complaining. He’s got that quiet on him he gets when he’s focused—no chatter, no jokes, just the line of his jaw doing all the talking.
The run’s easy, if any run can be called that. Long straight slab, then two hours of two-lane through pines that look like they’ve been worshipping the sky since the war. The convoy settles into a rumble that gets into your bones, the kind that makes you forget the rest of the world has laundry and emails. Air tastes like gasoline and dust, all a reminder of the freedom of the wide open road.
We cut off onto a frontage road and duck along the back of an industrial park where the only thing watching is a buzzard on a pole and God if He’s bored. The drop is a loading dock with half the metal letters missing so the sign reads ST GE & PAR S. I swing the bike wide, coast into a slot where I can see the box truck and the dock at the same time. Tripp kills his engine and peels his gloves with his teeth. Business.
The contact is already there, a guy in a tan ball cap and a mustache he thinks hides him. Two more behind him, younger, wired tight like dogs that haven’t been walked. The mustache offers his hand like we didn’t both google each other six ways from Sunday.
“Afternoon,” he greets. “You the Carolina boys?” He eyes our cuts.
Tripp doesn’t shake. He lifts his chin. “You got the cash.”
“Got the cash if the seal’s good.”
Red is already at the truck door with the bolt cutters, eyes flat, shoulders loose. He cracks the steel, pulls the strip, checks the numbers to the manifest, shows them to the mustache. There’s a ritual to all this, and everybody feels safer when it gets respected.
They roll the door. Crates in rows, foam spines. I don’t look hard enough to know—which is the point. Red checks what we’re supposed to check: numbers, pallets, undisturbed foam, no light where there shouldn’t be.
The mustache whistles low. “Pretty.”
“Let’s not admire it too long,” Tripp replies. “You got our envelope?”
One of the kids hands over a thick white pack with a rubber band that used to be beige. Tripp flags me. I take it, peel the band, fan the stacks with my thumb. Crisp, new, wrong smell for a warehouse dock. We’re not amateurs; we count. I count quick. It’s all there. I give a nod to my President.
