Cade
Rudy, my lieutenant, and I were going to a club that night. We had a lot of E to sell, and I knew that I had to do my fair share. He was already pissed at me for handling the Catchers in a non-violent way, and I knew that I was gonna have to do some serious hustling to get back into his good graces.
“Here,” Rudy said. He slipped me a few bags of pills and I tucked them into my pockets. “Twenty a pill, no exceptions. And I don’t give a shit how hot she is, you hear me?”
I nodded. “I’m not gonna sell these for less,” I snapped back. “Trust me, Rudy.”
Rudy shook his head. “Ain’t saying you would, Cade. But know that we gotta walk away from here with a couple thousand tonight, or else we’re fucked.”
I nodded. The club was thumping bass. It was so loud that I couldn’t even hear my own thoughts as I strode inside, which was probably a good thing. That meant that there was no room for Vanessa to worm her way into my head.
She’d been doing that a lot lately. After the party, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I couldn’t get her cute little smile or amazing body out of my mind. I thought that I’d forget about her in a couple of hours. After all, she was a complete priss. She wouldn’t want anything to do with a guy like me.
Somehow, that just made it hotter. I hated to admit it, but she’d gotten under my skin in a way that no girl had since I was a teenager. I’d jacked off three times in the shower thinking about her. I hadn’t said anything to the guys, but Rudy and Tyler had all been giving me strange looks since the party. Sometimes, there was a downside to being so close to the men I worked with.
To outsiders, or to people who didn’t understand clubs, I tried to explain that it was like being in a platoon. Some of these guys weren’t likable, or the kind of men I’d hang out with on the side. But after a while, it didn’t matter anymore. After a while, you only cared about how these guys were looking out for your back. And then, after a few years, it was like you were all psychically connected. Sure, you may still think one of them was a douche or another one was an asshole, but it didn’t change the fact that these men would give their lives for you, and you’d be expected to do the same for any of them.
I guessed it was also kind of like a cult, now that I thought about it.
After Rudy dropped me off, I strode inside. The club was full of people dancing to the beat of the latest trance DJ. Girls in sexy, slutty raver outfits trailed by me, looking at me and smiling. I knew I looked exactly like the kind of guy who provided the drugs. And tonight, that was exactly what I was gonna do.
I made a few laps of the club, being sure to make eye contact with as many people as possible. Everyone who was dancing with a glow stick or another rave toy was obviously looking to get wasted, and I had to make sure that I kept a low profile even though I was trying to sell to most of the club. It was easy to tell who was already rolling from who wasn’t: the fucked up people had their eyes closed and they were losing themselves to the beat of the music. The sober people had their eyes open, looking around like vultures for any trace of their beloved MDMA.
After I’d made sure to be seen, I settled in a dark corner of the club and leaned against the wall. I’d bought a whiskey and Coke and I sipped it occasionally, moving my head to the music. As far as I could tell, there were no undercover cops around. This club, The Poisoned Apple, was owned by an affiliate of the Bleeding Prophets. The owner would usually call us up and tell us if he was expecting undercover cops to show up that night. Thankfully, I hadn’t gotten a call today, but sometimes it was tricky with the cops. We hadn’t been pushing at The Poisoned Apple for very long, but the coast looked as safe tonight.
I didn’t have to wait very long. A couple of girls, both cute, came up to me. One of them leaned close to my ear. “Hey, you know where we could get some molly?”
My lips curved into a smile. “Yeah, I can help you out,” I said. “Twenty each.”
“We each want two,” she whispered back. I felt her small hand come close to mine and hand me some crumpled bills. As I reached into my pocket for the pills and palmed them to her, I counted the money. Eighty dollars. Not bad for only ten minutes’ work.
After the first two customers, I practically had a line around me. This stuff was good, too: it was cut with coke, and the MDMA was really pure. I was eager to unload my pills unto the patrons of the club and get the hell out of there.
Close to midnight, I was almost empty. This girl came up to me and tugged on my sleeve. When I looked at her, my jaw dropped. She was young, maybe sixteen or seventeen at the oldest, and skinny, like Vanessa. She even had the same brown hair and light blue eyes. But her face was entirely different because of the expression she wore. Unlike Vanessa’s obvious naïveté, this girl had clearly seen some bad times in her life. Her teeth were yellow and she was missing one of her front incisors. As she reached out for me, I saw that her hands were shaking.
“You know where I can get some E?”
I stared at her. My instinct was to hand her a pill, take her money, and run. But something inside of me froze when I realized how similar she was to Vanessa. Hell, Vanessa could have been this girl, had she not come from a different background. Was this the fault of people like me? Drug dealers who pushed our shit onto unsuspecting good girls from the suburbs?
“I can’t help you,” I said drily, pushing past her and walking out of the club.
Thankfully, she didn’t follow me. Rudy was waiting for me outside, leaning against the brick wall with one of his legs propped up.
“That was fast, man,” Rudy said. He clapped me on the shoulder as we walked to our bikes.
“Yeah,” I replied. “Here.” I handed him a wad of bills from my pocket. There were still three pills rustling around in a plastic baggie, but I didn’t hand those over right away.
Rudy frowned. He riffled through the money and then stared at me, his brown eyes boring two holes into my face. “What the hell, Cade? What the fuck is this?”
“It’s the money, yo.”
“This isn’t enough,” Rudy hissed. “Didn’t you sell all the pills? We’re sixty short.”
I sighed, then reached into my pocket and showed him the three remaining pills. “Couldn’t get a bite for the last three, sorry, man.”
Rudy shoved me hard and I stumbled on the ground, almost falling to my knees. I’d had a few whiskeys in the club and my balance was off but I managed to catch myself against a fire hydrant and stand upright.
“What the fuck?” I growled. “You wanna fight ’cause I didn’t sell three measly pills?”
Rudy’s brown eyes blazed fire. “No,” he snapped. “I wanna fight because you’ve been sucking at your job lately. Ever since that fucking party, your head is damn near off the in clouds. What the fuck did I do to deserve that, huh, Cade?”
I rolled my eyes. “Rudy, I haven’t done shit wrong,” I said. “There was a little junkie girl in there and I didn’t wanna sell to her, she looked like she was already fuckin’ strung out.”
Rudy glared daggers at me. “The next time this happens, you’re in the fucking toilet, asshole. You got that?”
I nodded. “Yeah, yeah, whatever,” I shot back. “I’m going the fuck home.”
I didn’t feel like going home—I shared an MC house with Tyler and Boulder, and word would probably get back to them before I got there. Instead, I climbed on my hog and drove out of the city.
Madison wasn’t a huge place. Looking at it on the map, you wouldn’t guess that there was room enough for one motorcycle club, much less two. But the Bleeding Prophets had been around for a long time, and that wasn’t about to change just because of some incident with the Demon Catchers. Or the Dick Catchers, as I preferred to call them. I’d always hated those assholes, but right now I hated them more than I’d thought humanly possible. After all, if they hadn’t come storming into our clubhouse, I would have fucked sweet little Vanessa and gotten her out of my system once and for all.
Or would I be more stuck on her than ever before?
I didn’t want to think about it. There was a biker bar on the roads outside of Madison that was usually pretty empty at this time of night. It was sort of a haven for me, a place I’d gone during previous fights with the other guys. The Bleeding Prophets hadn’t been without our fair share of drama. After all, now that Colton was aging, I knew it was likely that one of us would take over for him any day. He couldn’t even walk without an oxygen tank, and he hadn’t been on a bike in months. He was a tough old man and I knew he wanted to hold on, but it was hard for us all not to say something. After all, he was the kind of guy who would rather die on his bike than in a hospital bed. It wasn’t fair for us to oust him, not yet.
But something was going to have to be done.
I walked into the dark bar and slid onto a stool. The bartender, Arianna, had worked there for a few years and she recognized me every time. Although she was a flirt, she was old enough to be my mother and I knew that there was no way we’d ever hook up.
“Hey, handsome,” Arianna said. She had a deep tan, one of the darkest I’d ever seen on a white person, especially for Madison, and a cleft in her chin that made her look like someone from an old movie. “It’s been a while. How you been doin’?”
I shrugged, not wanting to tell her about the fight with Rudy. This bar, The Last Haul, was a favorite haunt of the other Bleeding Prophets. And there was nothing worse to be in the MC than a snitch.
“Not great,” I admitted. Arianna slid me a whiskey and Coke and I downed the whole drink without tasting it. The familiar burn of whiskey in the back of my throat was a comfort, and I closed my eyes, savoring the taste I’d come to love over the years.
“That’s a damn shame,” Arianna replied. “Girl trouble?”
My eyebrows shot up. “Damn, if you aren’t a little psychic,” I teased. “How the fuck did you know?”
Arianna laughed. “You boys forget how long I’ve been around,” she said. “I can practically smell it comin’ right off ya. Don’t tell me, she got spooked because of those.” Arianna pointed at all of the patches on my leather vest.
I chuckled. “Not exactly,” I said. “I think she was spooked before she ever laid eyes on me. But as soon as I talked to her…” I trailed off, winking at the older bartender. “As soon as we talked, I knew that I had her.” A vision of Vanessa popped into my head, still clad in her fuzzy pink sweater. “She’s the sweetest girl I’ve ever met. And she’s really a girl, too, none of this older woman shit.” I winked at Arianna again and she laughed.
“And what happened? If you had her…?”
I sighed and raked a hand through my hair. “Those damn Catchers showed up,” I snarled.
Arianna laughed. “Yeah, they always gotta go and spoil a good time. So what’s keeping you from finding Miss Perfect?”
I laughed humorlessly. “She won’t have anything to do with me,” I said with a sigh. “She’s not exactly the biker chick type of girl. Real prissy, a pre-med student. She’s in college, goes to UW Madison. Her roommate dragged her to the party and that’s where we met. I didn’t actually expect her to be interesting, but she’s smart. And funny. And witty.” I sighed. “I feel differently when I’m with her.”
Arianna raised her eyebrows and poured a double shot of tequila. We clinked glasses and threw our heads back. The sweet cactus juice burned my throat and I had to swallow hard to keep from coughing as my eyes filled up with tears.
“Good god,” I muttered as I shoved the shot glass back towards Arianna. “Haven’t had that shit in ages. It’s not exactly welcome shit, you know?”
Arianna laughed. “It’ll cure you, though,” she said, pouring another shot. This one was easier since my throat was already numb. “That way you can forget about that girl and ask me out, Cade.” Arianna batted her eyelashes at me and wiggled her ample bust.
I shook my head. “Arianna, I wouldn’t know how to treat a girl like you,” I said. “Don’t go gettin’ jealous on me now. That won’t do at all.”
Arianna giggled. “Cade, if you like this girl, go find her,” she said. “If you like her so damn much, tell her. Women like to be wanted, just like men do. And if she’s anything like you say, I bet she’s never had a guy come up to her and tell her that before.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I said. “We didn’t get to talking about that.”
“What the fuck are you waiting for, then?” Arianna gave me a playful shove. “Go get her!”
When I stood up from the barstool, my head was swimming from alcohol. “I can’t go anywhere right now,” I said. My voice was rapidly becoming looser, almost a slur. “I can’t fuckin’ drive like this. Can I crash back in your office?”
Arianna nodded. “It’s all yours, hon,” she said affectionately. “You just wait there until you’re ready to go rescue your princess.”
I rolled my eyes. I’d crashed at The Last Haul plenty in the past. Arianna had a back office with a pullout bed and blackout curtains that were perfect for nights like these. But something felt different inside. It wasn’t that I was still angry with Rudy. Hell, I respected his decision. Even though he’d been an asshole about it, he was right—I was turning soft.
No, this was something else. What the hell? I thought, combing the back of my mind for stray thoughts. What the fuck is going on?
Finally, it hit me. I was afraid of ending up alone, like Colton and most of the other guys in the club. Boulder had been married for a couple of years to this cute little blonde named Jolie. She’d been a club groupie and they’d fallen in love, but it hadn’t worked out. That was back in the days of the road trips that lasted for weeks at a time. Boulder, like many of the other guys, started stepping out on his wife and she’d found out about it and left him. I’d been surprised. I would have thought that Boulder had told her what she was getting into when she got involved with a Bleeding Prophet. But either he had or he hadn’t, and she was gone all the same.
I was only twenty-two, but I was afraid of something like that happening to me. It wasn’t the kind of thing I would have admitted to the club. They would have called me a pussy, and rightfully so.
God damnit, Vanessa, I thought as I settled into the pullout couch. Why the fuck did it have to be you?