Selena

 

I stop when Dante stops and follow him across the basketball court to the clubhouse. I have my gun at my side but I don’t feel safe. I feel exposed, and silly, and like I have no business being here. I know I could turn back. I could sneak back to the car and return to the city and hide someplace, but the idea of leaving Dante is scarier than the probable danger. I crouch low and watch as he beats up the two men and ties them together, and then I wait for several minutes.

 

These minutes are perhaps the most torturous of my life. I kneel down and watch the clubhouse, wondering if Dante’s been caught. Clearly, Brose and his men are here, since Dante just took two of them out. I wait and wait and wait, and I’m steeling myself up to go in there when Dante creeps out. He limps around the bushes. I follow him as quietly as I can.

 

I catch him at the rear of the club, kneeling down and watching the club.

 

I rustle some branches. He flinches, brings his rifle to me, and then lowers it. “No,” he says. “Fuck, Selena. No.”

 

His reaction makes me want to snap at him even if I understand it. “I’m here now,” I say.

 

“But not for long,” he retorts. “I’m not allowing this.”

 

“Allowing it?” I whisper. “I came here because I chose to come here, not because you allowed or denied it. You don’t get to allow or deny it.”

 

“I just want you to be safe!” he snaps, taking me by the arm and leading me away from the clubhouse. “You’re putting us both in danger by being here. I hope you know that. You’re putting everything at risk. How do you expect me to fight if you’re here? How do you expect me to save my men when I’m worrying about you catching a bullet? Do you think that’s fair to me? Do you?”

 

“I’m not leaving,” I say. Maybe there’s some truth in what he’s saying. But I can’t just leave. I can’t, and I won’t. The idea of leaving him is like a block in my mind. As soon as I entertain the concept the block slams down and eradicates it.

 

“This is insane,” he mutters, stopping near a small pile of guns. “You’re a woman; you’re my woman now, and you think I’m going to let you—what is it you want, Selena? Do you wanna be in a gunfight?” He stands over me, staring down at me with hard eyes. “I’m seriously asking now. Because I have no damn clue what you want. I have no damn clue what you’re doing, or what your goal is, or anything.”

 

“For you to be safe,” I insist, taking his hand.

 

“And you think the best way for me to be safe is for you to follow me? Are you fucking crazy?”

 

“Maybe I am a little crazy!” I yank my hand away. “Maybe we both are! But so what?”

 

“Okay, okay.” He takes me by the shoulders, squeezing softly. “You need to be quiet, and you need to go.”

 

I fold my arms stubbornly. “I’m not going.”

 

“You’re not getting into a gunfight,” I say. “That’s not happening.”

 

“Okay, then. Let’s compromise. What can I do?”

 

He rolls his eyes. “I don’t understand why you have to do anything.”

 

“Sorry, but aren’t we wasting time by standing here debating? Shouldn’t we be, like, doing something?”

 

He flinches and I know I’ve got him, but then his face hardens. “You’re going back to the car,” he says, taking me by the wrist. I try to snatch it away but he grips harder and drags me further away from the clubhouse. “I’m not having this, ma’am. No damn way.”

 

“Do you really think I want to be manhandled again, Dante? Do you really think that’s going to make me love you?”

 

He pauses, releasing my hand. “I’m trying to do what’s best for you.”

 

“That’s funny. Clint said that, too. He used those exact words, in fact.”

 

“That’s not fair,” Dante says. “You know that’s not fair.”

 

“Do I?” I snap. “All I know is that I’m an adult and I can make my own decisions, so if my decision is to stay here and help in any minor way that I can, then you should respect that.”

 

He rubs the bridge of his nose, sighing. “You’re impossible.”

 

“Listen to me. I don’t want to be in a gunfight. But I want to help. I’m here to help. So why don’t you tell me how I can help instead of arguing with me about it?”

 

“Why don’t I just send you in there?” he snaps. “Just send you into the clubhouse and let the men do whatever they want to you, right? Just head off to Whisper’s hut and wipe my hands of the whole thing because my lady’s got it handled. This isn’t how things are done in this world, Selena. It’s just not how we work.”

 

“Time isn’t moving any slower,” I say. “So we can either waste more or get to work. It’s your choice.”

 

He looks deeply into my eyes. “You are not going to be here when the bullets start flying,” he says. “I swear to God, Selena. I’ll drag you back to the car if I have to. Once we’re done, you leave, you hide. If you don’t agree to that, I’ll have to restrain you.”

 

“Threatening me with violence again?” I say, voice bitter.

 

“If you want to phrase it like that.” He shrugs. “It don’t matter none to me, as long as you’re safe.”

 

I look into his face, really look into it, and see that he means it. He doesn’t look at all like Clint. When Clint said he was hitting me for my own good, it was a twisted trick of logic designed to make me feel bad for the horrible things he did. But restraining me would bring Dante no pleasure. He wants me to be safe. That’s all. I see that in his face and it cracks my heart in half. One half of me wants to rebel, to proclaim that he cannot decide for me even if deciding means staying alive. The other half understands. And then I think of Mom, and the survival half gets stronger. If I die out here, I’ll never see her again.

 

“When we’re done, I’ll go back to the car,” I say, and he breathes sigh of relief. “But what, exactly, are we doing?”

 

He reaches into his jacket and takes out a hunting blade. “We’re going to the parking lot and we’re gonna slash every tire, every single one.” He hands me the knife. I take it. It’s heavier than I expected. I hold it carefully. He takes out another knife. “Let’s go. Be quiet. Be silent. Be as silent as a mouse.”

 

“Okay,” I whisper, questioning why I was so adamant that I wanted to do this. I’m terrified, I realize. I swallow my fear and trail after Dante. Quiet as a mouse: that isn’t too hard for me.

 

We sneak around to the front of the clubhouse and then Dante goes off to the opposite side and nods for us to begin. I kneel on the concrete and bring the blade to the tire, stabbing as hard as I can. I stab too hard; the knife sinks in and pulls me with it. I know better for the next one, and by the time I’ve done three bikes I have the method perfected. I stab, crawl, stab, crawl, all the while hearing music from the clubhouse, Johnny Cash and then Elvis and then some modern pop tune which has the men groaning. At any moment they could come out here, one of them wanting some air or to smoke a cigarette or to change guard duties. We work quickly, but not quickly enough to stop the hairs on the back of my neck from standing to attention.

 

We meet in the middle once all the tires are punctured. Dante takes the knife from me and slides it into his jacket, and then brings his fingers to his lips. I nod and he leads me off to the side, to the garage. The big door is open and a shell of a car sits on cinderblocks. “Do you remember where Whisper’s car is?” Dante asks quietly. “I’m assuming it was Whisper’s car?”

 

“Yes, and yes, I remember.”

 

“I want you to run for it as soon as we’re done here,” he says. “Run as fast as you can and then crouch down on the floor, put your hands over your ears, and don’t move for anything. I’ll come get you when it’s over. Now hand me that gas.”

 

I hand him a metal container of gasoline, grunting with the effort. He takes it with one hand and starts pouring gas all over the garage.

 

“Take that one there.” He nods at another container. “Spread it all over the place, especially the walls.”

 

“Okay.” I do as he says, splashing the walls with gasoline, struggling to lift it over my head to get the top of the walls. I’m careful, but some of the gasoline splashes back onto my face and clothes. By the time we’re done, standing at the entrance, I reek of the stuff.

 

“Shit, a lighter,” Dante says. “Wait here.”

 

He returns a moment later with a flip lighter.

 

“You need to leave now,” he says. “No arguments.”

 

“What are you going to do?” I ask.

 

He flips the lighter. The flame lights his face. His eyes are dark, and yet there’s a glint in them. It reminds me of the tip of a blade. He looks dead-sharp and just plain deadly. “I’m going to fight,” he says. “Now go.”

 

I’m going to leave. There’s no way I’m saying here and getting involved in what’s about to happen. He’s right about that. But I can’t leave just like this. I grab his face and kiss him, hard, kiss him with the kind of passion only the prospect of never being able to kiss him again can produce. I kiss him until the fire between our bodies is hotter than the fire of the flip lighter. He kisses me back even harder, pushing his tongue into my mouth. I push my tongue against his, the tips brushing, nerves flaring, pleasure exploding. I grab his arms, his muscular arms, and move my hands down to his hands, his strong hands. He has closed the lighter but the metal is still warm.

 

Then he abruptly steps back. “You have to leave,” he says. “Because if you keep kissing me, I might go with you. I might leave my men to die and go with you and start that life we talked about. I might be tempted to screw the club and screw everything that isn’t us. When I kiss you, Selena, it ain’t like any sort of kissing I’ve ever done before. When I kiss you, it’s like you’re speaking to me. I know how that makes me sound but it’s the truth. It’s like you’re speaking right into my mind. I don’t know.” He sighs. “I’ve never been too good at explaining how I feel.”

 

“I understand,” I assure him. “I feel the same.”

 

“You do?”

 

“Of course I do.”

 

He flips open the lighter again, the flame framing his features. “Then go,” he says. “Go and hide, and if I die, know that I love you, ma’am. I love you, and I don’t give a damn about reason.”

 

“I love you,” I reply, heart flooding with emotion. I kiss him one last time and then leave, jogging down the street toward Whisper’s car. I stop at the end of the road and glance back.

 

The flames consume the garage with frightening speed, chewing through the walls and lashing at the roof supports. The roof creaks, and then cracks, and then collapses. I turn and run and keep running until I’ve reached the car. I do as Dante said, crouching down in the footwell and putting my hands over my ears, but even with my hands over my ears I can hear the gunshots.

 

They start infrequently at first, a few bang-bangs that might be fireworks. But then they come almost without pause, a steady string of gunfire.

 

And any single one of those shots could mean Dante’s death. Every time I hear a shot my body seizes up tighter, and tighter and tighter until I can barely think. Then something strange happens. I disconnect from my body as I did all those times with Clint, but now instead of watching myself, I fly through the air and stare down at Dante. Each bullet fires into his corpse, the men crowded around him, firing down into his face until its nothing more than red-white mush. Each bullet which rings across from the clubhouse is just another piece of lead in the man I love.

 

I tell myself that this is stress, that it doesn’t make any sense, that I have no idea who’s firing those bullets. But that doesn’t change that I see. Bang, bang, bang … and Dante is dead, stone-dead, and there might be a baby growing inside of me and now my baby is going to be without a father. My child will ask how his or her father died and I’ll have to explain about the torrent of bullets and the unrecognizable corpse.

 

I curse myself: “Stop it, stop it now. Have faith in him. He knows what he’s doing.”

 

I can only hope that’s true.