I was numb from her touch. Maya’s cool eyes had searched my face full of trust and desire. Neither of which I had earned. I let everything else fall away, focusing on the stretch of highway in front of me and Maya’s arms wrapped around my waist.

I went faster, letting the power of the Harley ripple through my legs. I knew Maya felt it too. I heard her gasp and felt her tighten her grip. My dick twitched as the memory of her spread beneath me filled my thoughts. I wanted more. I wanted to lose myself in her. I just might.

As we left the Port Az city limits behind, I took a winding road to the northwest. Maya never questioned me. She never asked where we were going or how long we’d be. I took her back to her apartment probably for the last time so she could pack some things and pick up her laptop and the damn cat. We showered together. I fucked her again. It was the fourth time in less than six hours. She’d made my damn legs weak from it. Still, I knew I wasn’t done. I’d want her again and again before morning came. When it did, we’d be sleeping under the same roof away from the club and everything we left behind.

The club.

It was E.Z. who’d called me when I was with Maya at the beach. Bear had asked for a status report. And so I’d told my first lie to the club. I hadn’t betrayed them. Not yet. My job was to take care of the witness against Junior DiSalvo. So far, I had. As long as Maya was with me, she wouldn’t go talking to the police again. I’d keep her out of sight until I could figure out what to do.

Still, I knew damn well it was all bullshit. When Bear ordered me to take care of Junior’s problem, there was no other interpretation about what had to be done. I’d done it before, more times than I could count. It was my job. Protect the club. Protect my brothers. Junior DiSalvo was the biggest threat we’d faced in a long while. If he went to jail ... hell ... if he even saw the inside of an interrogation room, we were fucked.

Fucking Junior.

I’ll admit, as we headed northwest and the afternoon sun started to fade into early evening, I thought about what would happen if I just kept on going. I could. Fuck. It wasn’t like I hadn’t thought of it before. Most of the time, my job was easy. Black and white. A job needed doing and I did it. Every once in a while though, it would stick to me harder than other times. The guys were used to me going AWOL now and again. It’s something we all did. E.Z. himself had gone walkabout just last year. He’d been gone for weeks. I could pull it off. I could. Except I’d never done it with an unfinished job.

Maya squeezed me tighter as I took a sharp turn. I leaned into the turn and yelled back at her to hold on. I saw her through my side mirror. She threw her head back and laughed. God, it seemed like she loved to ride almost as much as I did. Having her on the bike with me heightened my own pleasure. I wanted to show her everything, take her all the way across the country and back. It could be just the two of us. We’d sleep under the stars or wherever the road took us. I’d fuck her in ways she’d never dreamed. She’d rise to it every time. I already knew that about her. We’d only just gotten started, but I knew exactly how to train her body to respond to mine. It was like she was born for me. Or maybe I was born for her.

Over the rumble of my engine, I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket again. I knew it could only be someone from the club. I squeezed my fist around the handlebars and kept on going.

Maya yelled something behind me, but I couldn’t make out the words. I slowed the bike, taking an unmarked exit. I kept on going. Twenty miles outside of Port Azrael and to her I imagined it was like stepping off to another planet. We left the city lights far behind. If there had been a road sign to where we were headed, it would have read Perfect, Texas. For me, it had been hell except for one small place. But this place didn’t show up on any maps. Tonight, I’d take her out. I didn’t know what she saw in Monroe, Michigan, but I’d show her fat, bright stars that looked close enough to touch.

I veered to the south, taking a fork in the road. The narrow dirt path led to a small white farmhouse. The barn stood just behind the main house. The roof caved in on one side. A long time ago, the wood had been painted in traditional barn colors, red with white trim. Now I could only find a few chips of red on the south side, the rest of the wood was weathered gray.

A group of four chickens squawked as I cut the Harley’s engine. Maya shifted in the seat behind me. She handed me her helmet and I propped it between my handlebars. She stayed on the bike as I got off. Gordon, her cat shot out from under Maya’s jacket and took off for the barn. She had a mouser on her hands and probably didn’t even know it.

“Wait here,” I said. Maya’s eyes narrowed as she looked around. God knows what she thought. Though she’d never questioned where we were going, I figured a rundown farm in the middle of nowhere wasn’t what she had in mind.

I heard pots clanging from deeper in the house as I took the porch steps two at a time. The rickety old screen door hung crooked in the frame. I made a note to put fixing it on the top of my list. I knew it would be a long one. I hadn’t been back here in months.

The rusted hinges of the screen door creaked as I opened it and stepped over the threshold. Gran’s house had smelled exactly the same as the day I first walked into it, skinny, scared, covered in fresh bruises.

“Gran!” I yelled. A louder bang of pots reached my ears as she must have dropped whatever she’d been holding.

“Well, shut my mouth!” she called out in that gravelly voice she’d had her whole life as far as I knew. Gran used to smoke a pack a day. She came roaring down the hallway, wiping her hands on her apron.

“Hey, Gran,” I said, feeling sheepish. The old lady could have given me a stream of shit for not calling ahead or for not coming out here sooner in the first place. That wasn’t her style. Instead, she stood in front of me, eyes wet with tears as she looked up at me.

I swear, the woman seemed to get thinner every time I saw her. She wore a yellow cotton house dress; her spindly arms poked out of the too-wide sleeves. She wore little white socks rolled down at the ankles and white sneakers. She had sticks for arms and legs but her skin was smooth and tanned. She’d never gotten veiny like a lot of women her age. Granny Hart still had toned arms even if her brown skin had loosened. Her black hair had only a few strands of gray right along her part. She wore it tied back in one long, thick braid that hung straight down her back.

“Honey pie, am I glad to see you! The gate on that fence back behind the barn is sticking again. Damn chickens keep getting out. You can maybe work on it after supper. I’m makin’ goulash.”

Laughing, I leaned down and kissed her cheek. Her skin was weathered, just like the side of the barn. But her grip was strong as she wrapped her arms around me.

“I’ll get right on it.”

Gran patted my cheek, then she squinted as she looked around me. “You plan on making that little girl stand there or are you gonna invite her in? Damn mongrel. Sorry, honey!” she called out to Maya. Maya had climbed off the bike and leaned against it at the end of the porch. Whatever she made of Gran, Maya’s face stayed neutral. The sunlight made her hair shine like spun gold. Her nose and cheeks were already showing the signs of a good sunburn. My dick tightened thinking about the other places that might be red.

“Come on in, darlin’!” Gran shouted, waving her arm wide. Maya bit her bottom lip then smiled as she came up the porch steps and stepped inside.

“Gran,” I said, “this is Maya. Maya, this is my grandmother.”

Maya held her hand out and shook Gran’s. “I pretty much pieced that together. Very nice to meet you. And I’m sorry to just barge in on you like this.”

Gran jerked her chin and gave me a wide-eyed stare. I knew what went through her head. It never would have occurred to Gran to turn anyone away for not calling ahead. It was a foreign concept to her. Gran’s house was always open.

“Well, Maya, I’m damn glad to meet ya. Hope my Alexander hasn’t rode you too hard on that bike of his.”

All the places on Maya’s face that weren’t already sunburned turned an even brighter shade of pink. I had to bite my tongue not to laugh out loud.

“Alexander?” Maya said, looking at me. She put two fingers to her lips to conceal her smile.

“You might as well just call me Gran,” she said. “Everyone else does. Though, nobody much has occasion to anymore. We’re kind of isolated out here. Just the way I like it. You any good in the kitchen? I’m just about to get started on the cornbread, but my wrists are giving me fits. Arthritis.”

To prove her point, Gran held her hands up like she was about to be cuffed. Gran’s knuckles were gnarled and swollen, her wrist joints bent at an odd angle. It was a wonder she could use those hands at all.

Maya stepped right in. She put a gentle hand on the middle of Gran’s back. The two of them walked around me and straight into the kitchen at the end of the hall. Maya shot me a glance over her shoulder then yelled back, “Back gate, Alexander. Behind the barn.” Gran hooted with laughter as they disappeared around the corner.

At the other end of the hallway, Gran had a winding wooden staircase leading to the second floor. I bounded up it. She kept my room ready for me at all times though I rarely slept in it when I was here. Walking over the threshold was like a time capsule. I’d only lived here for three years. It had taken her almost a decade to find me after my father, her son, died. By then, I was in the system. Year after year, she’d gone to the courts to try and get me out. But she was already nearly seventy years old at that time. The judge kept telling her she was too old to care for me.

I hung my cut over a hook on the back of the door. I switched from my motorcycle boots to a pair of worn cowboy boots I kept in the closet. Tying my hair back with a leather strap, I stopped and looked in the mirror. Sometimes, it seemed like a stranger stared back at me. Deep lines creased my eyes. Even the room itself should belong to someone else. It was a boy’s room with a twin bed too short for my legs. I kept work clothes here. A piece tucked under the mattress. Gran knew it was there and I’d taught her how to use it. She owned one herself. A service weapon that had belonged to my grandfather, sent along with his personal effects after he died a million years ago in some hospital bed in Da Nang. That made him one of the lucky ones. They’d only found pieces of the men from the rest of his unit.

I heard deep, heavy laughter as I walked back downstairs. Gran had already worked her magic on Maya, making her feel comfortable, as though she belonged here. Or, maybe it was a little bit of the other way around. Maya had her own magic to spin.

The barn was quiet and dark when I got there. My tool belt hung where it always did, next to the workbench my grandfather built years before I was born. I’d never gotten the chance to know him. Gran said I looked just like him, favoring the Comanche blood I inherited half from him, half from Gran herself. Would I have ended up right where I was if the Viet Cong hadn’t caught up with Hiram Hart? Would he have been strong enough to straighten out my old man? I never corrected Gran when she called me by the name on my birth certificate. It was the same as my dad’s. Another thing that tied me to him that I wanted to cut away. I’d been Axle since I was old enough to write it down.

The truth of it was, until the last few days, I’d never wanted to change a damn thing about my past. I’d earned every bit of it and it made me who I was. It made me good at what I did. It led me to the club.

Sunlight faded as I hammered out the bend in the latch. The gate itself was fine. The wood had just swelled one too many times from the heat and rain. I found a few planks of good wood and replaced the bad, testing the gate as it swung open and shut. Soon, Gran’s booming voice would echo across the barnyard calling me in for food. The aroma of her goulash would reach me first.

Turning, I could just see Gran and Maya working through the kitchen window. God, Maya glowed. She had her hair pulled back and piled on her head. She smiled wide as Gran put a hand on her shoulder and whispered something in her ear.

Maya. Sweet Maya. She had me turned around and wrecked from the inside out. No sooner had I thought it when my phone rang again. I was back in the barn by then. I swung the door shut and went to a dark corner where I knew no one could see me if they looked outside.

“Hey, Domino,” I said, blood racing. I was supposed to check in with Domino or Deacon or another club member by nightfall. That Domino was calling me first wasn’t a good sign.

Dom cleared his throat on the other end of the phone. It wasn’t like him to hesitate, so I knew something was up. “Hey, Axe. E.Z.’s getting antsy. Hell, so are the rest of us. Where are you?”

“I’m doing my job,” I said. It was at least close to the truth.

“Yeah. About that. The girl’s in the wind. Did you know that? E.Z. got her address from Junior. We’ve had a crew sitting on her place since this afternoon. She hasn’t come or gone. You having any better luck?”

My stomach churned and I gripped the phone so hard I’m surprised I didn’t crush it to bits. “Bear quit trusting me or something in the last twelve hours?”

“Jesus, no, Axle. It ain’t nothing like that. But Bear says time’s of the essence on this one. He’s got the club on the lookout. The sooner we put this problem to rest, the better for everyone. Junior’s losing his shit. He caught wind of the fact that a witness gave a statement on Kline’s case yesterday. He’s gonna put two and two together that it was this girl.”

“Yeah. And all of this shit was of his own making.”

“Nobody’s arguing that. Look, this one’s a fucking mess. Nobody likes being in this position.”

I snapped. “Nobody but me is in this position, Dom. Who the hell does Bear think he’s kidding? This is mine to handle. Just like it always is.”

Domino paused. “You looking for a career change?” There was no mistaking the change in his tone. He was pulling rank. Rumor was, when Maddox was ready to step down, Bear was looking to move Domino into his slot. I could look outside myself and see it for what it was. I understood it. I would have done it myself if our roles were reversed. They weren’t though. The club was only asking me to do my duty. Only now, I didn’t know how I could.

“No, man, no. It’s just like you said. This one’s different. But I’ll handle it. Tell E.Z. and Bear to stand down. I’ve got this.”

“You know something we don’t?”

I squeezed my eyes shut and pulled the phone away from my ear. I was lying, right to Domino’s face. It was the same as lying to Bear. Except I didn’t know what the fuck else to do about it. Maya’s lilting laughter reached my ears as she stepped out into the yard with Gran. In another moment, she might call my name. I doubted Domino would be able to hear it, but it was a risk I couldn’t take.

“I’ve got a lead,” I said. “Just give me a day or two to flush it out. Three, tops. Tell Bear not to worry. I’ll call him myself in the morning with what I’ve got.”

The lie blossomed and spread. It churned inside of me and made me taste blood.

“Yeah, man, yeah,” Domino said. If he sensed something different about me, he didn’t let on. I had to bank on the fact he wouldn’t. Jesus. Maya’s life depended on it, maybe my own.

I said goodbye and clicked off. Just then, the barn door swung open letting what was left of the daylight flood in. Maya stood there, her skin shining and her hair flying wild. I went to her. My heartbeat quickened as I looked down at her. She went up on her tiptoes and touched my face. A current of electricity seemed to spark from her to me and back again. Leaning down, I kissed her.

“Come on,” she said. “Dinner’s ready.” Laughing, she took my hand and led me out into the light.