Page 13 of King's Barber
He glared at my socked feet but returned his attention to the road. “You know everything you need to.”
“Come on, give me something.”
“So you can use it against him? Fuck off.”
I tutted at him in the same way my mom used to do to me when I swore. “Language.”
He grunted out a laugh. “He comes home and has a lot to say about you. Weed in the back alley, really? It might be legal, but you can still get your ass a fine for smoking it in a workplace.”
“I don’t see your dad calling the cops.”
“He doesn’t like them.” As if he realized he’d given me a piece of information I shouldn’t have known, KC cleared his throat and glanced out his window for a moment.
“Yeah, well, I don’t like them either.” I crossed my ankles on the dashboard. “They’re a bunch of corrupt bastards.”
“You’re also a biker. It’s a guarantee you don’t like them because if they catch you committing crimes, they’ll throw you in prison.” He rolled his eyes. “Listen, I’m not going to give you anything on Pa. If you have a question about him, you can ask him yourself.”
“He’s trained you well.”
KC grinned at me and quickly looked back to the road to guide the truck onto an exit ramp. I realized we weren’t headed back to Vert Island when he went in the complete opposite direction.
“Are we going somewhere else, kid?”
He gave me a smug smirk, and the alarm bells in my head fired up. If KC was anything like his dad, I had a feeling I wouldn’t like what he had planned. It didn’t take me long to figure it out, though, because I’d come down these streets more often than not.
“Why are we going to the Kings’ clubhouse?”
“I’m dropping you off. You get to explain to your brothers why you don’t have a bike while I fix it.”
I snorted. Smart. “Is this my punishment?”
“It wouldn’t have been, if you hadn’t gone into Pa’s room while he was sleeping. I told you not to, and now he specifically told me to drop you off here. We’ll bring you the bike when it’s done.” He said.
“Your dad is an asshole.”
KC laughed. “Well, yeah.”
We passed the gates that were always open, the sign that says Closed On Mondays hanging lopsided on the tall fence. We could see the famous New Gothenburg water tower from here and it was old as shit. The name of the city had once been painted in yellow on the rusted metal, but it was discolored from age now.
The road that led up to the clubhouse was dirt, and while we’d mostly filled what holes we could with gravel, more kept turning up whenever we had rain, and we bounced in our seats every time we hit one. The path wound through scrap metal, piled on top of each other. There were old fridges, cars, and all kinds of junk people dumped here for a small fee to be recycled—whenever King got around to it, which was rarely.
Being a Saturday, a lot of brothers who weren’t usually at the clubhouse had their bikes parked out front, and they were crowded around a firepit in camping chairs having conversations, most with a can of beer in their hand. There wasn’t much lawn left at the front of the clubhouse, I thought of it more as scrub than anything else, but King made no effort to get it fixed. There was no point adding more grass, not when bikes drove over it day and night.
I immediately noticed Scar and Charley leaning against the outside wall of the house, Scar’s arm wrapped around Charley’s shoulders as they laughed at something Travis, Charley’s brother, said. Travis, or Eyes as we called him, had brought his partner, too.
Fuck, everyone and their dog was here—literally. Destiny and Bishop had brought that damn mutt King had loaned to them for Destiny’s protection, but they’d ended up keeping him, leaving our other guard dog on his own.
King and his new boyfriend, Dallas, were sitting on a couple of chairs they’d obviously dragged out from the bar area, and they had their sunglasses on, peering up at Jester. As soon as KC drove the truck in, though, their attention diverted straight to us.
“Oh, fucking hell.” I glared at KC, but the bastard just laughed and waved at the door.
“Give me a day or so to fix it. I’ll check everything over again to make sure that’s the only problem you have. Free labor and everything.”
“Your dad’s taught you well.” I shook my head, grabbing my boots, and put them back on. With a shove, I opened the door, nearly falling out of the truck and then slammed it shut harder than I needed to. The window rattled. As KC reversed, I gave him the finger, which he laughed at as he drove back the way he’d come.
Parts of the clubhouse were still fucked up from a shootout that happened between the Warriors and Kings a few weeks ago, but we were in the process of cleaning it up. Some of the walls still had bullet holes, which was probably why so many of the brothers were here together. A lot of work still needed to be done. One side of the house had been rammed by a burning car and that was the first thing we’d focused on when we started fixing her up. More windows were boarded than usual, including one on the second floor that Rogue had smashed to shoot his rifle at the bastards. We still had a lot of work to do.
“Who the fuck was that, and where’s your bike?” Scar asked, straightening his back and releasing his hold on Charley. He’d recently come to my shop for a cut, and I’d tidied up his beard, which meant he didn’t resemble a sewer rat anymore, like he sometimes did. The white T-shirt he wore was drenched in sweat, as was some of the other guys, so I suspected they’d done some hard labor on the clubhouse already. It was hotter than usual today, with the sun beating down on us, making it the perfect time to work.
