Page 10 of Crow
I eyed him a second longer then shrugged, grinning back as I shoved my hair out of my face. “Okay then,” I said, climbing onto the bike behind him.
Crow kicked started the bike, the engine rumbling to life beneath me as I wrapped my arms around his waist again. I closed my eyes and rested my cheek against the broad expanse of his back, just feeling the wind against my face and the vibrations of the bike thrumming through my bones as he took me back into town.
Chapter Five
Crow
“Drop me off here?” Jade asked as we turned down a street. I frowned. This was right in the middle of the Freeway Fucks’ turf.
“Are you sure?” I asked. I may have only known her for a short amount of time, but the idea of dropping her off somewhere so volatile didn’t sit right with me. I had to remind myself that she may not have any clue of the turf war between the Freeway Kings and Blazing Rebels.
“Yeah. Right here’s fine,” she insisted.
“There’s nowhere else I can leave you?” I double checked, reluctant to just drop her in the middle of the street in dangerous territory at night. “Where the fuck do you live, I can just take you there. It’s no problem.”
“No!” she cried, her fingers digging painfully into my sides. I swerved at the sudden shout in my ear.
“Fuck, all right!” I shouted back, leaning the other way to right the bike. When I had regained my balance, I could tell that Jade was stiff behind me, so tense her muscles were shaking slightly. I sighed and gentled my voice. “It’s really no problem,” I said, but she just shook her head so hard I was worried she would fall off the back of the bike. I sighed and pulled over to the side of the road, killing the engine.
“All right, all right. Just… be careful,” I muttered as she swung her leg over the bike and hopped to the ground. She staggered a little, swaying where she stood. I didn’t like the images my mind was conjuring of her, small and helpless and cornered by the brutes that made up the Freeway Fucks.
“Always am, handsome.” She grinned back, giving me a cocky two-finger salute as she walked backward down the street. I lifted one hand in an almost wave, and a smile spread across Jade’s face. I noticed suddenly that she had a dimple in her left cheek. I wasn’t sure why, but that seemed very important. She turned so her back was to me, and when I blinked, she had rounded the corner and was gone. I waited for a minute longer, watching where she had disappeared. Then I caught sight of some bikes idling by the curb and got a hold of myself, kick-starting my bike. The sooner I got out of here, the better. If there was one thing Tank had been right about in the meeting earlier, it was that getting caught unprepared on the Freeway Kings’ turf was a fucking awful idea.
As I drove home, I tried to figure out why I had been so open with Jade about my past. Most of the Rebels, my brothers, didn’t know the full story about Jeannie, so why had it been so easy to tell her, a virtual stranger?
Maybe it was because Jadewasa stranger. There was no pressure or expectation attached to her. She didn’t seem to care about anything, not really. There was no judgement or pity, just simple acceptance. It was nice. And actually talking about Jeannie… it had been freeing. I had thought that coming to Mascid and having no one know my past was the fresh start I had needed to continue on with my life. But after finally talking about Jeannie honestly, it waslike the weight on my shoulders was a little less, and the cage I’d built around my heart was a little looser. It had even felt like I had helped Jade to loosen a little too. Maybe that was just down to seeing her outside of her workplace, but she definitely seemed to have no trouble talking about her problems to me. A selfish part of me hoped that she didn’t have anyone else who listened to her the way I had today. It was like we had created a safe space between us, and I wanted us to be the only ones in it.
Then I let myself into my house and locked eyes with Jeannie, smiling at me from our wedding photo on the coffee table. The paper eyes seemed to bore into me, seeing everything I had been doing without saying a word. My heart dropped to my stomach as a tsunami of guilt slammed into my chest. Any lingering buzz from the whiskey vanished as I let my front door slam shut behind me, walking across the living room to pick up the picture frame from among the empty beer bottles.
Jeannie looked so healthy here: round and rosy, before the tumor and chemo had eaten her away until she was little more than skin stretched over sharp bones. Our wedding day felt like a distant dream at this point, but Jeannie looked just like I remembered her. Absolutely stunning. I barely recognized the man in the photo with his arm around her waist as myself. There was a light in his eyes, in his wide smile—that was unfamiliar. Despite lingering doubts that I didn’t deserve to have this woman at my side for the rest of my life, nothing could have shifted my smile that day. I had felt like the luckiest man alive as she smiled at me and said, “I do”. Those doubts haunted me now, like the universe had heard them and agreed with me and that was why she had died. I put the photo down again, unable to look at it anymore. Both people smiling in it were forever out of reach.
My shoulders slumped. I tried to block out any thoughts of Jeannie being disappointed in me for just running away from my problems. She had always believed in facing things head on and trying to resolve them. Suddenly, I felt very tired. Everything that had happened that day caught up with me at once, and I wanted nothing more than to collapse onto my bed. I carefully set the photo back down on the table, making a mental note to clean up a bit tomorrow, maybe. I paused, imagining what Jeannie would have said if she saw how much of a fucking dump I lived in, and turned to head upstairs. I caught sight of my leather cuts on the hallway floor, still crumpled where I had tossed them earlier out of spite before heading to the liquor store where I had met Jade.
Jade again. My thoughts kept circling around to her, and even though Jeannie was long dead it felt like I was cheating on her. Which was ridiculous, I knew it was fucking ridiculous, but I couldn’t shake the sick, guilty feeling in the pit of my stomach. I flexed my hands, unsure of what to do with myself, and settled on picking up my cuts, smoothing them out and hanging them from the bannister as I went upstairs. I didn’t bother turning on the light when I shuffled into my bedroom, exhaustion making my limbs heavy. I just stripped down to my boxers and fell face-first onto the bed.
The night was filled with indistinct dreams of pale skin and dark hair, soft moans and high gasps. I dreamed that I had a dark-haired woman under me, her eyes shifting between blue and green as she stretched out on the mattress and tugged open my trousers. When I woke up, hard and aching in my shorts, I wasn’t sure if it had been Jade or Jeannie that I had been dreaming of. Guilt, confusion, and arousal warred in my brain as I shoved my hand down into my boxers. I was already so close to the edge, the hazy remnants of the dream girl’s moans still echoing in my ears. My cock twitched as I wrapped my hand around it, gasping at how good it felt. After a few gentle pumps to get myself to full hardness, I began to stroke myself fast and hard. I moaned and bucked my hips into my hand, chasing the end. It wasn’t until I imagined a petite hand wrapped around my cock instead of my own that I came with a shout, cum spurting over my knuckles. When it was over, I lay panting on the bed, staring at the ceiling and absently wiping my hand on the sheets.
I needed a fucking drink.
Beer for breakfast wasn’t as uncommon an occurrence as I knew it should be. It hadn’t been since Jeannie died. The bottles took up the majority of my fridge, with a half-empty carton of eggs, some ketchup and mayo, and a tub of butter crammed in beside them. I snagged a couple of bottles, popping the lids off of them against the countertop and dropping into one of the chairs surrounding the kitchen table.
My notebook lay open on the table, and I pulled it closer to me as I drank my first beer, trying to think of a strategy for infiltrating the Freeway Fucks’ territory without being caught. This was too important to risk fucking up. I couldn’t just wing it, and writing the plan down would help me go about this in a logical manner. I had meant what I said at church the day before. I was not about to just sit around and wait for more people I cared about to get hurt.
After Jeannie died, I decided that I was never going to get close enough to somebody to get hurt like that again. I had quit my job, sold the house, and moved across the country to where no one knew me. I even changed my number to be absolutely certain that I wouldn’t get any more of those condescending questions like, “How are you doing today?” and “Are you sure you’re all right?” I just wanted to keep to myself, but the Rebels had taken me by surprise.
I had met Ripper first, eating chips outside the grocery store as he leaned against his bike. I had been drunk at the time, too drunk to drive, and for some reason, he had stepped in and stopped me getting in my car. He had given me a ride home on the back of his bike, and from then on, I was hooked. The freedom I had felt speeding down the road had been nothing like anything I’d ever experienced before. The next day, I had sold the family car Jeannie and I had bought and used the money to purchase the best bike I could, and it was one of the best decisions I had ever made. Looking at the car just made me think of the family Jeannie and I never got to have, and the bike felt like my fresh start.
Ripper had stopped by not long after, claiming that his conscience wouldn’t let him rest until he had checked I wasn’t dead in a pool of my own vomit. When he saw the motorcycle parked in my driveway, his grin almost split his face. I hadn’t been able to decide if I should have been excited or afraid when he had insisted on bringing me to the Ironhead Tavern for a drink. Most of the Rebels had been in the bar when we got there, and Ripper had pulled me over to a booth where Archer, Wrench, and Hollywood had been sitting and introduced me. They were nothing like the men I was used to, who were all business suits and shiny shoes. At first, all the leather, beards, and scars that the Rebels were covered in scared the shit out of me. I had felt like a deer in headlights as I sat on the cracking vinyl seats of the booth, unable to relax, but the next time Ripper invited me to the Tavern I didn’t say no.
Bit by bit, I got used to being around the Rebels, and slowly started joining in their conversations. It started with automatically correcting Snake when he had said the wrong number after adding up how long a ride would take and explaining that I was good with numbers. Then Wrench asked me to back him up after making fun of Archer. I had blinked, startled, before nodding and agreeing that yes, he was a bit of an idiot. I was worried I was about to be punched when Archer walked over to me, but he had just flopped dramatically across the table I was sitting at, claiming that he was surrounded by heartless bastards. I pretended not to see the smile on Ripper’s face as he handed me a beer, but that had been a turning point. I began visiting the Tavern without Ripper, and every time, I was warmly welcomed by everyone who was there. When he was there, Ripper always slid me a beer, never anything stronger, and gave me a smile when I sat next to him. If he ever caught me going for something stronger, he would slap my hand away like a mother stopping her kid getting to the cookie jar.
Eventually, I was being invited to hang out with some of the club members and helping out around the bar. They helped me fix up and add modifications to my bike, and I had even gained my own nickname. Archer had said that I was like a crow with the way I only wanted the shiniest components for my bike, and the name had stuck. I wanted to help out more, repay the Rebels for their kindness. When I told Tank that I wanted to do more around the Tavern, he had looked at me seriously and said that he couldn’t trust me until I was a bit more sober. So I cut back on the alcohol and the Rebels gave me a few odd jobs, mostly helping Tank balance the books and ferrying bits and pieces across town. It was a rough few weeks where habit and temptation warred with my determination to be better, and I don’t really remember how much sleep I got, but in the end it was worth it.
Every time that I had lost the battle and drank myself into oblivion, Ripper and the other Rebels had been there the next morning. They would cook me a huge breakfast dripping in grease, while at the same time ripping me a new one. Then, after I had eaten and was feeling sorry for myself, they would reassure me that recovery was a slow process and that it was okay. I felt like I was one of them, part of their family. The thought still made my heart swell in my chest. Almost without realizing it, I had become a prospect for the Blazing Rebels. When Ripper had clapped me on the shoulder and presented me with leather cuts with “Crow” emblazoned across the back, I felt a warmth in my chest that I didn’t think I was capable of anymore.
I finished my second beer, thinking about how I owed the Rebels my life. If Ripper hadn’t been outside the store that day, there was every chance that I would have wrapped myself around a fucking tree, and I didn’t even want to think about the other people I could have hurt because I was fucking mess. And while I still relied heavily on alcohol, the club had been there for me every step of the way of weaning myself off the stronger spirits. Last night, with Jade, I’d bought the whiskey out of spite after Ripper’s nagging, and it was my first fall off the wagon since before I was elected treasurer, over two years ago.
My boots were still beneath the kitchen table where I had left them last night. I pulled them on and headed through the house toward the front door, pausing only to look at my cuts. They were still hanging from the bannister, displaying patches commemorating my rank and years in the club painstakingly stitched into the leather. Jeannie used to sew up any patches in my suits, but I had picked up a little here and there. When I had sewn my first patch on, the old ladies of the Rebels had helped me learn which needles went through the leather the best and how to keep the stitches straight enough to keep the patches in place. That night, I unpicked and fixed the patch again and again until it was straight flat against the jacket. My patches detailed my life with the Rebels, from my position as treasurer to commemorating every year I had been with the club, and I wore them all with pride. They still gave me that sense of warmth.
