Slick
When I wake, a full day after the explosion on the docks, I lie in bed next to Brat for a while just staring at the ceiling. I stare and I think. I think about the Skulls, mostly, about how they’re all dead now. At least, most of ’em are dead, enough so that they’ll never be able to run some fucked up kidnapping racket like that again, so that the Masked Man will never again hack and shoot and torture anybody else. I remember how it felt, that machete cutting into my flesh with a thunk. And I remember how it looked, the plume of fire lighting up the light, reflected in the water as I jumped away from it. I thought I’d feel happy. But in truth, I don’t feel much of anything. I feel about the same, except for a small glimmer of relief which doesn’t compare to the pain those bastards inflicted on me. Two years of torture and twisting me to their cause for this small pinprick of relief? It’s a damn confusing mess, is what it is.
Brat wakes up, rubbing her eyes, and smiles up at me. “Are you okay?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I reply. “But we better get back to Denver if we don’t want the whole damn MC comin’ up here looking for us. You know your dad’s noticed you’re gone.”
She winces. “Yeah, you’re probably right. I wish we could just lie here, though. Just lie here forever and be together and—What? What is it?”
I realize I’m smiling at her. “Nothin’, Brat. Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
She sits up and prods me in the side. “Tell me,” she says.
I sigh, and then say, “I just missed you, is all.”
She smiles back at me. “I missed you, too.”
I don’t want to admit that her coming up here might’ve been a good thing, not to her face, anyway. Because coming up here was about the stupidest thing she could’ve done. Coming up here could’ve gotten her killed, and seeing as my life expectancy didn’t exactly increase when I came here, that could’ve left Charlotte an orphan. An orphan with a whole MC to protect her, but an orphan nonetheless.
I stand up and start getting dressed.
“What’re you doing?” Bri asks.
“I ain’t riding bitch the whole way home,” I say. “Lucky my wallet didn’t go up with my fuckin’ bike. I’m gonna get some more clothes and a junker. I saw a garage on our way here. Do you want anythin’, breakfast or something?”
“You’re going to bring me breakfast in bed now, Slick? You really are a changed man.”
“Changed man? I don’t know about that.”
I leave the motel room, go about my business, and return a few hours later with an old beat-up dirt bike and a fresh change of clothes. Bri is up, in the bathroom washing her hands. “Had to tool up the bike,” she tells me. “I rode her hard, following you.”
Seeing her like that, oil washing off her hands and into the plughole, just makes me want her all over again.
“You’re still the grease monkey you always were, Brat, even with your fancy new hair.”
She flicks her hair. “Is that your way of saying you like it?”
“Ha-ha. We need to get goin’. We’ve got another long ride back to Denver, and I don’t reckon Grizzly is just patiently waiting. Maybe we oughtta call him.”
“Maybe,” she says, but neither of us makes for the phone.
I come up behind her, wrap my arms around her shoulders, and kiss her on the cheek. “You’ve already called,” I say. “I heard you, last night.”
She bristles, avoiding my gaze in the mirror. “That wasn’t Dad. That was Heather. I was checking on Charlotte.”
“Our daughter,” I say. For some reason, after last night, the idea of Charlotte being my daughter ain’t such a bad thing. The fear, the terror, doesn’t grip me. I want to meet her. I want to be there for her. I want to try and make something good of myself. I thought killing the Skulls would make me feel better, but it didn’t. Maybe being some kind of father will.
“Our daughter.” Brat nods, giggling, and disentangles herself from me. “Let’s ride, Sky.”
“Let’s ride, Brat.”
And so we ride. The twenty-some-hour ride back is just as grueling as it always is, and I’m constantly shocked to see that Brat is not only keeping up, but outpacing me in some areas. We stop a few times along the way, since there isn’t the time crunch there was on the way here, but mostly we just ride. Morning turns to night, and then to deep night, and then to early morning, and we just keep riding until the clubhouse comes into view. We pull up in the parking lot and climb from our bikes. Brat removes her helmet, showing her flushed cheeks, red and glowing in the moonlight.
“Wow,” she says, grinning. “I don’t think that’d ever get old. I can see why you have all those tattoos now. And let me guess,” she goes on, when she sees me looking down at the piece-of-shit junker, “you’re going to blame the bike for those parts where I outpaced you.”
“Nah, Brat,” I say, turning away from the bike. “That was all you. You’re a goddamn devil on wheels.”
She giggles, and I’m about to laugh before I see Clint and Grizzly come walking from the clubhouse. Brat sees my expression and turns around. Soon the four of us are stood in a crude huddle, me and Brat on one side, Grizzly and Clint on the other. Clint makes this bitchy tutting noise which makes me wonder for the millionth time how he’s climbed so high up in the club. How does a man like that get the respect of the men? But the answer is obvious. Violence. In this life, it’s always violence.
“So you’re home,” Grizzly mutters, looking at Brat. “Don’t you think it’d be a good thing to call your old man and let him know you plan on going to a fuckin’ suicidal trip, Brianna? Don’t you think a man who’s already lost his wife might not like the idea of losing his daughter, too? Don’t you think your daughter deserves better than a mother who goes out of her way to put a goddamn gun barrel between her eyes?”
Brat just stands there under this tirade, all the while Clint grinning this shit-eating grin which makes me want to turn his nose into a mess of blood and bone. But I can’t, not with the President here.
Grizzly rears up like an old bear, as grizzled as his name, and points his finger down at his daughter like a claw. “Don’t you reckon it would’a been a good idea to think of your fuckin’ child before thinkin’ of—of him, Brianna? I know you’ve got a soft spot for Slick. Fine, I may not like it, but fine. But Slick knows what he’s doing. Slick was briefed. Slick knew the danger. You didn’t. You could’ve gotten yourself killed—”
“I’ve already heard all this from Slick!” Brat cries, shaking her head, stepping back. “What do you think the first thing he did when we got into that motel room was? Do you think it was to make sure I was okay? No, it was—” She stops, realizing she’s mentioned the motel room, and seeing her father’s face. I see it, too; Grizzly knows, or at least guesses, what happened in that room. Staying in a room together alone might not be damning on its own, but when you take into account that time outside the Irishman, and the trip into the mountains, it don’t look good.
“I want you away from the club for a while, Brianna,” Grizzly says, face hardening. “You’re going somewhere else for a while, to get your head on straight. If you come by here, you’ll be turned away.”
“What are you talking about—”
“And you,” Grizzly goes on, turning to me, “follow me. We need to talk—about respect, about honor, about a hundred other things you don’t seem to give a shit about.”
Bri makes to protest, but then Grizzly cuts in. “If you don’t leave, I’m gonna have Clint and his men make you leave. I know. You don’t think I will. You don’t think I have it in me. Test me. The mood I’m in, I won’t think twice about it. Go and see your daughter.”
Despite the threats, she’s about to protest again when I place my hand on my shoulder. Grizzly doesn’t look too happy about it, but he’s going to work me over anyway, so fuck him. “It’s okay,” I say. “Do as he says, Bri. Go and see Charlotte. She needs you. I’ll be fine.”
She turns to me. I can see it in her face, what she wants to do. She wants to throw her arms around me and kiss me. She wants me to hold her. She wants both of us to run away, get Charlotte and run far, far away. But she knows I can’t do that. This is my club, my father’s club, and I’ll always be loyal to it. Even if they have got assholes like Clint playing puppeteer.
“I’ll go and see Charlotte,” Brat murmurs. And then, throwing a look at Grizzly, she says, “And I’ll tell her you say hello, Slick.”
Grizzly don’t look none too happy about that comment, but before he can reply, Brat is on her way, and Clint and Grizzly are leading me into the club. Clint’s grin is so self-satisfied, so oily, that all I can think about as we walk through the bar to Grizzly’s office is if he would be grinning so much with a bullet in his head. Spike is in the bar, shooting pool. He raises his eyebrows, asking me what’s going on. I just shake my head.
In Grizzly’s office, Clint stands at his shoulder whilst he sits in his throne-like chair. I take the small chair opposite, and wait for it to begin. Bri shouldn’t have said anything about the motel room, that’s for damn sure, but it’s like Grizzly doesn’t even recognize what the fuck I just did for the club. I tell myself not to get angry, to calm down, but I can’t help but grip the arms of the chair so hard I reckon they’d snap of if I did it much harder.
“I’m basing you in the clubhouse,” Grizzly says, in a matter-of-fact tone. “You’re not gonna leave the clubhouse until I say you can. I’ve sent Brianna away for a while, so with you here, there’ll be time for you two to come to your senses.”
“Fuck that,” I say. It’s more like I hear myself say it. Clint bristles. Grizzly clenches his jaw.
“The fuck’d you just say to me?” Grizzly snaps.
“This is bullshit,” I say, trying to keep my tone steady. “You’re goin’ to put me in prison again, and for what? You know what I just did for this club.”
“Or for yourself,” Clint cuts in smoothly. “Maybe you blew those pricks to kingdom come because you were scared of what they might say about you, if they were allowed to live.”
I slam my hand down on the desk, sending pens and papers lurching. “After everything I’ve done for this fuckin’ club!” I roar.
Clint has his gun out, and Grizzly has his hand near his waist, where his gun is holstered.
After a few moments, I lean back, realizing that attacking the President and the VP, even if they’re being unreasonable assholes, is no way to get ahead.
“You’ll stay here until I say you can leave. I’m damn sick of seein’ you paw all over my daughter like some kind of fuckin’ animal.”
I’m about to speak—not even sure what I’m going to say, but reckon I need to say something—when Grizzly lays his fists flat on the desk and stands up, leaning over me. This is the man who raised me. I’ve seen him angry hundreds of times. But this is different. This is more than anger.
“If you don’t leave my daughter and granddaughter alone, I’ll put you in the fuckin’ ground.”