Cyrus folds his hands over his stomach. “Maybe we weren’t discussing the kidnapping. Maybe we were discussing Chevy’s prospect period and his eventual patching in.”
Violet’s eyes land on me and the pain written on her face punches me in the stomach. She then shakes her hurt away. “No, this is over the kidnapping and all of you need to pull your heads out of your misogynistic asses and tell me what the hell is happening.”
Pigpen walks around the table, and as he nears Violet, she stumbles back, but he’s faster. With one longer step, he engulfs Violet in a hug and lifts her into the air.
She slaps his shoulder. “Put me down, you fucking asshole!”
“She’s back!” Pigpen rocks her like she’s a doll and then gently deposits her back on the ground. He places his hands on either side of her face, looks into her eyes with that crazy-ass smile on his face, then kisses the top of her head. “It’s good to have you back, kid.”
Violet smacks his hands off her face. “Get off me.”
He winks. “Love you, too.”
“Are you going to let me in on this or not?” she demands. “Or are you going to continue to play your reindeer games with the Riot and let people like me be collateral damage?”
I will them to tell her. I think of how Violet fought not only for me, but for her brother. The cold loneliness of the basement. The way we depended upon each other to survive. Violet’s right, and if they don’t let her in, they’re wrong.
Eli stands, and when he walks in her direction, she lifts her hand. “Touch me and I’ll knee you in the fucking balls.”
Knowing she’s serious, he allows her space. “You shouldn’t be on your leg. Strutting across the yard, climbing staircases, kicking the hell out of the door isn’t going to help you heal.”
“Do you ever bother listening to me, Eli, or is there a translation function in your brain that screws up whatever I say into you hearing what you wish I would have said?”
Eli cracks his neck to the left. “Why can’t you see all we’re trying to do, all we ever try to do, is take care of and protect you?”
“Protect me? I was coming home from a football game. You know, being a normal teenager, and I was kidnapped by your rival motorcycle club. That’s not safe and posting men at my door at the hospital because you’re scared they’ll make another grab at me isn’t protecting me. That’s called cleaning up your mess. The only thing that is going to keep me and my family safe is knowledge. It’s up to you whether or not I’m worthy enough in your eyes to let me know what’s going on.”
Eli and Cyrus exchange a long glance and Cyrus sighs. “I’ll talk about it with the board.”
My shoulders sag and Violet turns away in disgust. That was a nice way of saying no-fucking-way. She’s out the door, using the wall as a crutch, and I’m chasing after. Cyrus grabs my wrist and I pause.
“I’m worried about her,” he says.
So am I. “She wants the same thing I want. To know that the bastards who hurt us won’t do it again.”
“We’ll make sure she’s safe, but I don’t trust her to keep whatever she learns to herself. She’s a loose cannon.”
And I’m not.
“I need you to keep an eye on her. Tell us anything you think we should know.”
I shift and Cyrus releases me. He’s asking me to spy on Violet and report back. If I were a prospect, even a member, this would be an order. Considering how they just told me they’re trusting me, this is an order. But I don’t like how his request settles in the pit of my stomach.
“Do you understand me?” Cyrus asks.
I nod, then my cell pings. Damn it all to hell. Coming home was supposed to make life easier, but I traded the dark basement for being pulled apart alive. It’s Mom and she’s not listening to the club or to me.
Mom: Brandy called. She’s down several girls and needs me to bartend. I need money and life needs to go back to normal. I’m going in. Love you. Have fun tonight.
Mom texts this like she thinks I’ll drop back and let her head in on a Friday night by herself. Yeah. Not going to happen.
Violet
THERE ARE TOO many people in my life who drive me insane and too many people who make me feel like I should punch the hell out of anyone who comes near me.
My mother, at the moment, is one of the people I want to throttle. I don’t throttle her, though. Instead, I limp across the guest bedroom in Cyrus’s log cabin, grab all my shirts my mother had “thoughtfully” hung in a closet and then shove them all into a suitcase.
Evidently, my mother believed I would be thrilled to stay at Cyrus’s for...I don’t know...with the way that she packed she was set on us staying forever.
“You can’t leave.” Mom stands in the doorway and she twists her fingers. She is such a paradox. Blond hair, blue eyes, as fragile as a hundred-year-old crystal glass and she wears a black biker cut. “We’re throwing a party for you and Chevy tonight.”
“Do I look like I’m in the mood for a party?”
“It’s not going to be a crazy one,” Mom explains. “It’s dinner. With all the families. Everyone wants to see you.”
As long as I can remember, Mom never attended a “crazy” party. She’d be at the clubhouse long enough for the potluck dinners, but then at eight in the evening, like the good little dutiful wife she was, she packed me and Brandon up and brought us home, but Dad stayed.
Dad always stayed.
As I got older, I also stayed. Everyone believed Oz, Razor, Chevy and I went on with our lives away from the clubhouse, but we were curious, so we often circled back and watched from a distance.
My stalking days ended when I saw Dad do a body shot off some girl with no top, bikini briefs, and who was a good fifteen years younger than Mom. First time in my life I felt like someone had punched me. First time in my life I lost respect for my father.
“We need to go home.”
“Please don’t act this way. Especially not now. You’re talking and being normal again.”
Normal again. I will never be normal again. My suitcase is overflowing and I shove in the pieces of clothing flopping out. Using all my weight, I smash down the top of the suitcase and force the zipper to go around. “It’s Chevy they want to see. He’s the savior they all want to pat on the back.”
On the dresser is my jacket. My favorite one. It’s brown and leather and it’s the one Dad gave me for Christmas before he died. He bought it for me because I told him once the smell of leather made me think of him. Around the same time, I had also told him I didn’t like how he had been on the road more than he had been home.
Dad had written on the tag that this present meant he would be with me all the time. I pick up the jacket and lift it to my nose. An inhale in, and while it smells like leather, it doesn’t really smell like him.
God, I miss him.
A hug. I can’t express what I would do for his hug. To feel his strong arms around me. To hear him say my name. For the constant, throbbing, dull ache in my chest to be gone.
I try to imagine what he would say to me. What he would do. Dad loved me. That I know without a doubt, but would he have loved me enough to walk away from the club because his club hurt me? Or would he have stubbornly held on to the club’s ways and rules?
“I brought it for you,” Mom says. “I know you wear this jacket when you’re feeling down.”
“Did Dad ever talk to you about the club?” I ask. “About what he did for them?”
“Your dad was the accountant for the security company.” She leaves out he was also the accountant for the club.
“Yeah, but he traveled, too. Why would an accountant need to travel? What was he doing?” I’m hunting, wondering if what Justin said was true. If my father really was the peace negotiator between the clubs.
M
om fidgets with the sleeve of her sweater, then picks lint off and drops it to the floor. “Your father didn’t talk about specifics. Just that he had to go.”
“And you didn’t ask what he was doing? Where he was going?”
“Wasn’t my place.”
Of course it wasn’t. That’s not how Mom thinks.
Even though it’s a warm day, I slip on the jacket, and when my hands run down the sides, I pause. Something’s in the pocket and I’m not the type of girl who puts things there.
“Cyrus wants you, me and Brandon to stay here,” Mom continues. “At least until they have this mess with the Riot straightened out.”
Straightened out. Like the two clubs haven’t been at war for over eighteen years. I reach into my pocket and pull out a piece of paper. It has frayed edges, like it was torn out of a notebook. My forehead furrows. My English notebook sits on the desk along with my other schoolbooks. I flip the paper in my hand and the doodle of the flower is mine. It’s what I do in my notebooks when I’m bored in class.
“I think we should listen,” Mom continues. “Cyrus made a compelling argument. He doesn’t mind us staying for a long time. I think he’s lonely with Olivia being gone. It’s like we’re doing him a favor if we stay. We can take care of him and he’ll take care of us.”
A lot like the relationship Mom had with Dad, minus the love they shared and the way he kissed her after he walked in the house. Security. Dad offered security and now Cyrus is, too.
Tuning Mom out, I unfold the piece of paper. The handwriting, I don’t recognize. The lines from the poem, I do. It was the assignment I missed in English class. I picked it up after class, thinking I’d be able to have it completed by Monday. Best laid plans...
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both.
I like this poem. You probably have a lot of makeup work to do. Sorry about that. Forgot how high school sucks. Also sorry about your knee. Never what we wanted. We just want peace. Remember which path you need to travel. We’ll be in touch soon.
My heart beats so loudly Mom has to hear it, but if she does, she doesn’t acknowledge it. “They feel terrible about what’s happened and they want to keep you safe.”
My hands shake and I ball the paper in my fist, then shove it back into my pocket. “When did you bring my stuff over? My notebook? My jacket?”
“The day you were found. Why?”
We’re not safe here. We’re not safe anywhere. The Riot—they’re everywhere.
CHEVY
ELI’S TRUCK WHEEZES as I ease into the Shamrock’s parking lot and I half expect it to let out a backfire shot when I cut the engine, but instead it heaves into silence. Two motorcycles rumble in behind me and park in open spots. It’s Pigpen and Dust. They’re part of the volunteers tailing me and Violet until the board feels we’re safe.
Safe.
Not sure what that means anymore.
Shamrock’s neon street sign is so bright that the stars can’t be seen in the dark night. It’s only seven, but feels like midnight.
“I could have driven myself.” Mom glances over at her side mirror, no doubt checking out Pigpen watching us.
“You’re the one who said it was time to go back to normal. Me driving you on Friday and Saturday nights is the norm.”
Mom opens her purse and shifts the contents from one side to the other. “If it was a normal Friday night, you would have been at school all week. You’d be at the football game and wouldn’t have been able to drive me in. If it was a normal Friday night, you’d be sleeping in your bed at home and not at Cyrus’s and two members of the Terror wouldn’t be here. If it was a normal Friday night, I wouldn’t spend most of my shift tonight wondering if you’re going to show to pick me up or if I’ll walk out of here to find out someone took you again.”
Mom throws her purse to the floor of the truck. It makes a thud and then we sit. Letting the weight of the past week crush us both. Can’t imagine what it was like for her. Sitting at the bar, waiting. Each minute that passed upping the odds I wasn’t coming to get her and that I wasn’t returning home.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“It’s not your fault.”
“It’s not the Terror’s either.”
Her lack of a response expresses her disagreement. Even suggests a couple of curse words she still refuses to say in front of me, but that I’ve heard her utter to a few asshole customers.
“After all you’ve been through,” she says, “I don’t know how to make you understand how dangerous they are.”
“I’m home. I’m fine.”
She whips her head in my direction. “Fine? You’re not fine. The bruises may be fading, but when I look in your eyes, I don’t see my son. Violet may be the one who went quiet, but you’re not acting the same either. You don’t laugh. You don’t smile.”
I curl the keys into my palm and the pain from the edges is welcomed. “It’s barely been a week. Violet was just released today. What do you expect from me?”
“That you’ll wake up and see that the road you’re choosing is one that is going to shatter my heart.” Her voice breaks at the end and it’s like someone has reached into my chest and crushed my heart.
This is my mom. The woman who has raised me on her own selling drinks to men who treat her like shit. The woman who has attended every practice, peewee football game, JV and then varsity game known to man. The woman who has nursed cuts, broken bones and a broken heart.
“What do you want me to do?” I ask in such a low tone I’m not sure she heard it.
“You know what I want.”
A life away from the Terror. What had she said once? Football, a girl, a few high school parties, the son who goes away to college. Somebody else’s normal.
“Days like today I wish I could go back and slap the girl I was in high school. Tell her to take school more seriously. Tell her to take the advanced math course over the basic. Tell her that boys weren’t the answer, but really the problem. Maybe if I had taken my life more seriously, then I wouldn’t have had to rely on the Terror so much when you were younger. Then maybe you wouldn’t be as close to them as you are now. I should have done better.”
“You’ve done a great job raising me.”
“Bartending, waitressing, being away from you at night and on the weekends. Just because I wanted to be the one to take you to school in the morning. Because I wanted to be the mom who brought the cupcakes on party day and then picked you up. Because it’s the job that made me financially free from the Terror. But it wasn’t enough. I should have been home. I should have a better job. I should have found someone else to take care of you. I should have never relied on the Terror.”
I wonder if she gets tired of the same fight. “They’re my family.”
“But that doesn’t make them a good family. Even James knew that.”
Lightning strike to the chest. “What?”
Mom grabs her purse and places her hand on the door handle. “Nothing. I’m just mad.”
I’m not ready to let that go, especially with Skull’s accusation still hanging around me like a noose, but most wars are won and lost on timing. Pushing her on my father now, a subject she hates to begin with, would be the equivalent of charging a field full of defenders without a helmet.
“Bad things happen to normal people,” I say.
“They do,” she concedes. “But not like this. Never like this. Stay in the truck, Chevy. I need a few minutes by myself before I start work.”
Meaning she needs to find a way to center herself before she flirts her way into tips to pay for rent. The passenger-side door squeaks open and Mom leaves. Kills me not to walk in with her. My skin crawls with the idea I’m not eyeballing the men at the bar. Scaring the hell out of them so they’ll pass on to others not to mess with
her.
But she needs space and I need to quiet the roaring in my head. Mom doesn’t go straight in. Like a taunt she leans against the side of the building and has her head tilted up as if there’s something to see. Me? I wait.
* * *
The clubhouse is so packed full of people I have to park on the grass closer to the narrow path that leads from the main road to Cyrus’s place. The moonlight glints on row after row of motorcycles and here and there men stand in groups near them. To the right, a couple is doing the deed on a Harley Softail.
I ignore them and lift my chin to the guys who call out my name. Pigpen and Dust have already told me, multiple times, that lots of brothers are ready and willing to buy me as many beers as I can drink tonight, tomorrow night, forever. All I need to do is walk into the clubhouse and make my way to the bar, but I don’t feel like drinking.
Before I left to pick up Mom, Eli promised me he’d keep Violet safe. I trust him, but there’s a hole inside me since she left my bed at the hospital and I’m damn cold with the wind blowing through it.
The trees circling the log cabin and the clubhouse have messed-up shadows. Half of the trees still bushy with leaves. The other half skeletons extending their spiny branches like fingers into the night.
The porch light to the log cabin isn’t on, but the windows have that warm glow I used to associate with Olivia. If she was in the house, the lights were on. She told all of us a hundred times that the light would be left on for us whenever we decided to return home. I always thought that meant she would be there when I stepped past her threshold.
Olivia died this summer. Her death still makes my chest hurt.
Two prospects stand guard at the bottom of the porch steps. They aren’t there to keep Violet in. They’re there to make sure no one takes her again.
It’s a family party, and if she entered that clubhouse, she’d be hugged and worshipped by almost every guy there, but Violet’s not into club parties. Most people think it’s because of her father’s death, but I know better.
I climb the steps, and as I reach for the door, a silhouette down the wraparound porch catches my attention. Violet sits on the bench, her leg propped up on a wooden crate. She stares out onto the field, the crowd, the chaos, the bonfire closest to the cabin.