Dante

 

A year can pass damn quickly when everything’s just business as usual. The usual runs, the usual schemes, the usual missions, the usual thoughts. I stand outside the club, my breath fogging in front of me. Time passes too fast, like the world is just spinnin’ by me and I’m watching it go, but this past year has been different in one major way: since Kayla, since last year and that madness with her, I haven’t touched another woman. Me, fuckin’ President of the War Riders, and I haven’t touched another woman. There’s something strange about that. Something damn strange. But it’s just like every time I go to fuck some girl, I see Kayla, and I just can’t stomach the sight of this random woman anymore.

 

Often, this past year, my mind has returned to the moment I just let her walk out. To protect myself, I know, to make it so Kayla didn’t pry open my ribcage and prod at my heart. But sometimes, I think about what would’ve happened if I’d jumped out of bed and told her to stay. Where would we be now? Who would I be now? As it is, I’m just Dante, same old President of the same old club.

 

I laugh gruffly, stuffing my hands into the pocket of my leather. That’s horseshit. Apart from this thick black beard—since Kayla left, I haven’t had a proper shave, as though wanting to mark the distance of time between us or some shit—I’ve changed in other ways, too. The old Dante would never have thought about the same woman from winter to winter. The old Dante wouldn’t have goddamn dreams about the same woman every night. The old Dante wouldn’t give a damn.

 

I walk down the road, wondering, always wondering. About Silvertongue’s killer, who I still haven’t caught, and his debt, which still hasn’t been paid as a result, and most of all of Kayla, with those huge brown eyes, those sleek long legs, that skittish way she had of looking around as though always on-edge; maybe I thought I was the man to stop her from being so scared all the time.

 

A year, dammit, and here I am still thinkin’ about the same woman. Either she was really special or there is something wrong with me.

 

I kneel down next to the road and pluck the thorny flower, turning it here and there in my hand. It reminds me of the flower that was on the floor when I rescued Kayla, similar thorns. I prick my finger and drop it, and it’s like the past has cut into me, like the past is dripping onto the icy tarmac.

 

Thinking about Kayla in between jobs is driving me almost to madness, I reckon. Used to be my thoughts were consumed with the crevice-faced man and how I bashed his skull in, what almost happened to me, or else Sandra and her hacking coughs, but now my mind is consumed with Kayla. I was sent a girl just last week, short, blonde, big tits, ready for anything, and I just sent her back. Couldn’t stand the sight of her. Can’t stand the sight of any woman who isn’t Kayla.

 

I need to find Silvertongue’s killer. That’s the excuse I’ve given myself for hiring the private detective. Silvertongue’s killer is the thing, and perhaps Kayla has remembered more in the interim since we last met. Perhaps Kayla has had a lightbulb moment. Maybe she remembers seeing someone before she was taken, perhaps the killer, the man who now owes me a debt. Or maybe I just want to see her again, and all this is an excuse. But fuck it, either way, it’s getting done.

 

I drop the flower and wander back to the clubhouse, taking a toothpick from my pocket and chewing the end, the only thing these days which brings me any sort of calm.

 

I’ve just sat down in the bar, in the corner away from Ogre and Dogma and some of the guys playing pool, when my cell rings.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“It’s me.” The private investigator’s voice is gravelly, old, a veteran at his trade.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“She’s in Lawrence. Not sure where she’s staying. But CCTV at an ATM showed her in Lawrence.”

 

“An ATM . . . how the fuck you find that?”

 

The man laughs. “I know my business, Mr. DeCowl.”

 

I shrug. “Alright. Lawrence.”

 

“I’ll know where exactly soon.”

 

“Alright.”

 

I hang up, moving the toothpick around my mouth, from side to side. Lawrence. It’s midday, winter, the sky shielded grey. But there is no rain. Lawrence. If I ride as fast as the ice will let me, I could get there in four hours. Four hours, and then what? Just blindly walk around Lawrence? It’s a goddamn stupid idea, I know, but we haven’t got anything on today, one of those long winter days with fuck all to do. Maybe I’ll take a ride just for the hell of it.

 

“I’m going to check out a lead,” I tell Dogma. “Hold the place down.”

 

Dogma nods. “Okay, Boss.”

 

I return to the winter cold and mount up, rev the engine, and make my way to the highway. As I ride, I think about Kayla. I think about the way she would just sit there and listen to me talk shit, about bikes, fighting, the orphanage, Sandra, any old shit. I think about the Sandras: my mother and hers. I think about the pain she must’ve felt in the Movement, when her mother was killed, and when she was on the run. And as I think I wonder at myself. I’ve never thought about stuff like this before, never thought I would, never dreamed it.

 

I’ve never felt so close to a woman that after a goddamn year I’m still thinking about her. It’s messing me up. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to be with another woman again. It’s like finding the best beer in the world, a top-shelf beer, and then trying to go back to piss-water. It ain’t happening. Sometimes, at night, I’ll wake up to the sound of Kayla’s giggling and turn over and make as though to prod her in the belly, playfully, to make her giggle more. And then I’ll wake fully, the bleariness of sleep falling away, and realize I’m prodding the sheets like some kind of freak.

 

The engine growls. It’s good to ride through the cold, the wind cutting through my leather, keeping me alert. It’s good to feel like I’m heading somewhere, even if it’s to an entire city and not a single location where Kayla is. Even if I’m just going to be roaming looking for a needle in haystack. Still, just to be in the same general area as Kayla, to know that there’s a one in a thousand chance of me seeing her, is more than I’ve had this past year.

 

I bring my bike to a stop in the parking lot of a supermarket, busy in the buildup to Christmas. I’ll grab a snack, maybe a couple of beers, and just take a stroll. I need to find Kayla so that I can find Silvertongue’s killer; I repeat this to myself like a mantra, as though I can trick myself into believing my feelings have nothing to do with it.

 

I’ll get a six-pack, get a little tipsy, probably just stay the night at a motel and ride back in the morning. It’s good to give Dogma the experience as VP, anyway, and there isn’t anything massive happening right now. All the deals are solid, nothing is turbulent.

 

I stroll into the store, wondering what type of beer to get, thinking about getting a hotdog and seeing if they can nuke it for me in the back. Some stores let you do that. The little stores they had whilst I was growing up had no problem with that. These huge ones, which are more like buying factories, aren’t so keen on it, but people tend to do what I ask, especially now I have this big black beard.

 

I grab a six-pack, and make my way past serial shoppers to the refrigerated section. I’ve just picked up a ready-to-nuke hotdog when I hear it. A voice which tugs me back over a year to a crumbling building full of dead bikers; a voice which tugs me back to moaning pleasure; a voice which pulls me back to the times where I shared, and listened, and made love. Made fuckin’ love like a man like me never does.

 

I cock my head, listening, telling myself I’m just hearing things.

 

“It’s okay, baby. It’s okay.”

 

I turn at that, thinking she’s talking to a man, and already I know that I’m going to fuck this guy up. Foolish of me, but I never claimed to be Einstein. But then I see her, see her, really see her. She’s there. I blink, once, twice. Yes, she’s there. Kayla Pearson, wearing one of those kangaroo baby-carrier, a little baby girl looking up at her. She’s holding a basket filled with baby stuff and a few vegetables.

 

I stare at her as she makes her way down the aisles, as people drift between us, wondering if what I am seeing is real. Wondering if life can really be this crazy. The baby . . . I look past her, watching for a man. Who the fuck’s baby is that? Mine. Is that my kid? I swallow, a big ball moving down my neck. The time would match up; the kid looks about the right age, maybe a couple of months, but I’ve never been good with kids’ ages.

 

I realize that I’m approaching her, like my legs are moving without me telling them to, like there’s some force in me that wants to see her again so badly it doesn’t care about my input.

 

“Kayla.”

 

She looks up, gasps, drops the basket. The baby begins to cry. Kayla takes a step back.

 

“Dante?”