CHAPTER NINETEEN
Vik
WHAT THE FUCK does Harper mean?
I love you.
We had a deal and nowhere in our discussion of friends with benefits and sexy hookups was love mentioned. The whole faux boyfriend/girlfriend was just to make my old man happy. But right now my dick’s in control, and he wants to come, so come we do. I hammer into the sweet, slick pussy clenching around me, and try not to think. The tightness in my balls is all the feeling I need, fuck her very much.
She was looking for a long-term guy. I helped her scope out dates. I practically gave her away. Goddamn it.
I’m balls-deep in her and she’s stripped away more than just the condom. I have no idea what to do next, so I make her come. I touch and tease until she stops shouting I love you and makes those cute but indecipherable whimpering noises that herald her orgasm. And afterward, I may sort of pull her close. I mean, we’ve reestablished our boundaries, right? When she said those words, it was probably just the sex talking. Or hormones. Pheromones. Something.
She rests her cheek against my chest, breathing hard. I probably qualify for bastard of the year, if we’re being honest. She cried, and I fucked her. Cowgirl style. The only feelings allowed here are of the orgasmic, blissful kind. I know I’m an idiot for passing on the possibility of something more but that’s me. An idiot. No way anything else could work out between us anyhow. It’s not like I’m a white-picket-fence kind of guy—or the kind of man she can dress up in a suit and take to her company cocktail parties. I do dirty sex and I do it well. Really, really fucking well. Feelings, however, are not part of our deal.
The sounds of Bon Jovi’s “Ride Cowboy Ride” fill the air.
“That’s your dad,” Harper says. I both hate and love how she knows that I’ve given my dad that Bon Jovi ringtone. It makes it harder to pretend that we’re just sex and nothing else.
I grab my phone from the pile of clothes on the floor and answer. Apparently, it’s my night for crying women.
It’s Lora on the other end. At least, I think it’s Lora. The number’s right, but she’s crying so hard I’m not certain. Could be some random stranger sobbing into my ear.
“Calm the fuck down.” Harper stiffens by my side. Think she’s about to rip me a new one for my lack of manners, but then Lora spits out the words she’s choking on.
“Your dad’s dead.”
* * *
I turn my phone off when I reach the hospital, and I don’t fire it back up for two days. There’s no club business that needs me; Prez knows where I am and that I have personal biz. By the time my old man’s been gone two days, however, I decide it’s time to stop being such a pussy. I turn my phone back on, and watch the screen blow up with messages.
Stupid.
I delete the voice mails straight off. Nothing I need to hear there. The texts are harder. Got plenty from my brothers, reaching out and asking me if I need anything. As if. The practical stuff is harder. I deal with the doctors, the hospital, the funeral home and Lora. Shitload of other people come out of the woodwork, too, needing decisions about this, that and the other thing. And then there’s Harper. She must spend every free moment she has texting me because my phone’s at 317 messages and counting. The 317th is a fucking doozy—she’s been threatening since 246 to track me down and verify for herself that I’m okay. Not that she thinks I am—that’s clear. But that’s what losing your old man does to you. I get through the first night by shacking up with Jack Daniels, mostly because I’m dumb as shit. Each swallow dulls the memories a little more, but it all comes crashing back in the morning with a souvenir killer headache.
I know Harper and I have unresolved shit, but I’m in no mood to talk. Whenever I think about her, something twists inside of me. That call could have been about her. The closer someone gets, the more it fucking burns when they go away. By the time my phone lights up with message 318, I’m feeling really fucking sorry for myself.
HARPER: When’s the funeral? I want to be there for you.
ME: Not necessary.
HARPER: I want to.
Life’s funny—we don’t always get what we want. Santa Claus isn’t real, and he doesn’t give a boo-fucking-hoo about hitting the highlights on Harper’s wish list. I don’t know what’s happening between us right now—other than me avoiding the shit out of her—but I’m telling myself that the only wants I’ve got are sexual. Got a whole list of preferred positions and dirty fantasies she and I haven’t worked out yet. The dirty dangle, doing it accordion style, the electric slide...plenty of shit we haven’t tried. Or we could just redo a few favorites. She fucking mewls like a kitten when I do her hard from behind—I love that, too.
So what the fuck does she think I need from her right now? I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say. Yeah, come hold my hand because I need...what? We’re just a hookup. Can’t afford to be more. My fingers fly across my phone with a life of their own.
ME: I don’t need a girlfriend.
My stupid, stupid fingers.
Harper doesn’t text me anymore after that.
I don’t bury my old man alone.
My brothers have my back. My dad might not have patched into our club, but he rode and he was mine, and by extension that means he’s theirs. Too many fucking pronouns in that mix, but you feel me. Don’t need their interference in my life, but it feels good to know that they care.
“You ready to do this?” Prez straddles his bike, hands on his thighs. Could be out for just any ride, but for the black bandanna around his upper arm.
“Yeah,” I say, throwing a leg over my own bike. “Time to let him fly.”
He nods slowly. “Okay to hold on, though, if that’s what you want.”
Doesn’t matter what I want so goddamned bad because my old man’s dead. I won’t turn around and find him riding my ass, a grin lighting up his face because he knows he’s got me. Old man loved to get a rise out of me. Might have fought over it, but I loved him.
“Let’s ride.”
“No one else we’re waiting for?”
I make a show of looking around the parking lot. “Entire fucking club’s here. You think I shoulda hired a brass band, too?”
Prez shakes his head. “Your girl not coming?”
“We covered this before. I don’t have a girl.”
Prez grunts. “You ask her to come?”
“None of her business,” I say slowly. “She’s not a biker, doesn’t ride with our club. Got no place for her here.”
Prez looks over at Romeo. “Jesus, he’s stupid.”
Romeo’s nodding hard enough to fall off his bike. “You fuck it up with her?”
“You ever know me to have a long-term relationship?”
“The kind where you fuck the same woman more than twice and wake up in her bed?” Romeo asks me.
“Sure.”
Prez looks me over. “He did.”
“Some shit’s off-limits,” I say. No big surprise that they fucking keep right on talking. My brothers are worse than a bunch of girls when it comes to this feelings business. Must have some of that attitude written on my face because Prez hooks a finger in my vest and pulls me close, dropping a heavy arm around my shoulder. Fucking feels like the man’s made out of iron.
“You think there’s no place for a woman in this club?” he asks. “Because you take a good look around you. Some of our brothers, they’ve found themselves an old lady and they’ve been smart enough to hang on. Put themselves the fuck out there and get down on their knees if that’s what it takes to make her stay. And if you think that’s a weakness, you’re dumber than I think. Those old ladies are the heart of this club, so that makes them the best fucking part of us. Sometimes it’s easier to do your thinking with your dick, but they make us more. Make us better.”
“Didn’t know it was national poetry day. Don’t see you wearing any old lady arm candy.”
Prez cuffs my head hard. “Just because shit’s sweet doesn’t make it candy. You find an old lady, you do whatever you need to do to keep her. If fate drops someone into my lap, I’m gonna throw an arm around her and hold her tight. Not ashamed to admit that there can be more than a quick fuck. Sometimes, you meet someone who belongs by your side and at your back, not just under you.”
“She’s not my old lady,” I say.
Not about to share my sex life with my club president. It’s none of the club’s business, and I’m not a porn channel he can surf. Sex with Harper was amazing. It’s just that...Harper’s looking for that shit, too. She wants forever and family and a goddamned dozen qualities I can never be for her, and not just because I don’t own a suit. Some brothers settle down, while the rest of us ride on.
“Hear you,” Prez says slowly. “Not a question of what she is now—because the answer to that would be not fucking here. More interested in what she could be if you were man enough to let her.”
“Yeah, well, what if I don’t want an old lady?”
“Jesus,” Romeo mutters. “You don’t want to win the lottery, either?”
Harper would not only know the odds on winning the lottery, but she’d know what came next, too. She never could wrap her head around my old man’s love of scratch-off tickets. Said it would be just as effective to burn your dollar or use it as toilet paper. Plus, she’d trotted out all sorts of sad sack stories about winners who went bust or ended up worse off than before because a lottery win’s a onetime thing and not an evergreen money tree you plant in your backyard.
“Harper and me are over,” I tell them.
Prez mimes shooting himself in the head. “Stupid as fuck.”
On that we’re agreed.
It’s time to ride, though, and so Prez stands up on the seat of his bike, hand balanced on Romeo’s head. The rest of the club immediately shuts the fuck up.
“We’re gonna say goodbye to a good brother today,” he says. He adds a few sentences about who my old man had been, his service to his country and how he and Prez had met. They’re good words, but I’m itching to ride.
My brothers listen, heads bowed in respect. Planting my old man in the ground had seemed too much like tying him down, so I’d had the body cremated. We’d let him ride, fly free over the highway he’d raced down so many times. I wait for the familiar stab of pain, and sure enough it comes. We’d had our differences, but we’d had our good moments, too.
We hit the highway at sunset, going balls-out as the desert stretches away from us on either side. It’s a good night for a ride, and when we crest a little rise in the highway, I know it’s time. I pop the lid on my old man’s urn and hold it overhead, letting what’s left of him fly free. Might be some people who think this is disrespectful, but he loved the road and the desert. He was happiest here, so this is the right spot to send him on ahead of us on his next ride. Someday sooner or later I’ll catch up with him, and he’ll give me shit for screwing things up with Harper.
I can’t wait to see him again.