Bri
At first, I think it’s just the rain pattering against my window. I roll over and bury my head in the pillow, ignoring the constant pat-pat-pat. But after around ten minutes, it stops, and then after around another ten minutes, it starts again. I don’t dare to hope, as I rise from bed and creep across the room, wincing every time the floor makes a creaking noise. I can’t hope. I can’t let myself believe. It’s not possible. Slick would never risk his life in the club like that, not for me. He’ll do what Dad tells him. He’ll serve his time.
Going to the window, I look down on the street. It’s dark, difficult to see anything, but there’s a shadowy form down there. The form steps forward into a streetlamp and Slick, in his leather and just how he was the last time I saw him except that his hair is longer and he hasn’t shaved in a few days, smirks up at me.
I glance back at my bedroom, at the baby monitor on the nightstand. She’s getting so loud now that I probably don’t need to use one, but if mothers aren’t allowed a little paranoia, who is? I take the baby monitor and creep through the apartment on my tiptoes. For such an expensive apartment, the floors in here seem to creek with each light step, as if wanting me to fail. I open Heather’s bedroom door, lean in, and place the monitor on one of her shelfs. She mutters something in her sleep and rolls over, but does not wake. After that, I return to my bedroom and throw on some jeans and a sweatshirt, before creeping out of the apartment. It’s only when I’m downstairs, walking into the cooling night air, that I let myself breathe a sigh of relief.
I look around the street for Slick, but he’s nowhere to be seen. For a moment I wonder if perhaps I dreamt the whole thing, or hallucinated it. It would be possible, considering just how much I’ve been thinking about him these past two months. I walk toward the end of the street, under the streetlamps, and then almost jump into the road when Slick says, “Hey,” from the darkness of an alleyway.
“Are you trying to kill me?” I hiss, hand on my chest.
He smirks, and immediately any panic or anger drops away. First, I waited two long years to see that smirk. Now, I’ve waited two long months.
“Aren’t you glad to see me?” he says, approaching.
“No, of course I am. You’re the most welcome sight a woman could see at night, alone, in an alleyway—”
He presses against me, and then kisses me on the lips. I kiss him back, my body instantly alight at the roughness of his lips, of his prickly beard. When he breaks off the kiss, I’m gasping even more than I was when he startled me. “Is our daughter safe?” he asks quietly, hands wrapped around my waist. That this would be his first question makes me want to kiss him again, but harder, with more meaning behind it. But I’m too aware of Heather’s apartment building, a watching sentinel from which Heather could emerge at any moment, wagging her finger and talking about leather-wearing bandits.
“She’s safe.”
I tell him about the baby monitor, and how Heather has taken care of her countless times.
“Then let’s ride,” Slick says.
“Ride, where?”
He shrugs. “Anywhere. Away from the city. To the Rockies. I need to get away from bricks and steel and all that civilized shit for a while. I’ve been locked in the goddamn clubhouse for two goddamn months.”
When we find his bike, I see that it’s not his bike but somebody else’s. I vaguely recognize it from the shop. “I’m pretty sure this belongs to one of Clint’s men,” I mutter.
“Clint’s men,” he echoes. “This amazes me. Everyone talks about Clint’s men like it’s natural, like there should even be such a thing as Clint’s men. That’s what he’s done. He’s played the long game, made everyone think it’s all normal.”
“He’s been with us since before I was born,” I point out. “Why would he wait so long?”
“Either he’s a fuckin’ coward, or he’s a fuckin’ genius.” Slick takes off his leather and hands it to me. “Put this on. Don’t won’t you gettin’ hurt. And this.” He reaches under the bike and takes a helmet from the storage compartment.
“What about you?” I ask, taking the leather.
He just looks at me. Even in the darkness, his sky-blue eyes are full of life. I put on the jacket and the helmet, and then climb onto the bike behind Slick. He is wearing a thin-fabric long-sleeve shirt. I can feel his abs through it, well-defined. I squeeze onto them, so glad to feel them that I don’t care if I’m being too forward, don’t care if Heather and Grizzly and the whole world thinks this is wrong. How can riding with the father of my child be wrong? How can any of this be wrong when it feels so natural, so true, so right?
Slick rides us out of the city, toward the mountains, framed by starlight, some of the jutting areas looking like forefingers, crooked, beckoning. It feels good to ride, even if I’m not the one riding. I haven’t ridden much since staying with Heather. I’ve had Charlotte with me; I don’t think it’s good practice to chuck a helmet on a toddler and throw her on the back of a bike, and I can’t afford a sidecar. I lay the helmet against Slick’s back, hugging into him, enjoying the thrum of the engine beneath me and the wind whipping at my legs. After a while, I see where Slick is taking us. I laugh to myself. We wind down passageways, between valleys, down secret hidden places which Slick has to slow down to navigate.
“You’re taking us to our old dirt bike course,” I call to him, once he’s slowed down enough to be able to hear me.
“You’re a smart lady,” he calls back.
When he was sixteen and I was nine, he used to bring me down here on his dirt bike. Somehow, he’d found a kid’s dirt bike which he kept in a makeshift hut he’d built himself out of old sheets of metal. He would bring me up here, and then, after making sure I was in all the safety gear, let me ride up and down the muddy ramps, around the course. I always looked forward to coming here more than I looked forward to anything else. These were in the days before I realized how much I wanted Slick. These were the days when he was just my older friend, my protector. When I became older, I often fantasized, when we came here, that one of these days he would tackle me into the rutted area of the ramps, the deep crevices, and ravage me, kiss me, take me. But he never did; he never would. That wasn’t Slick.
He brings the bike to a stop and we both climb off. Taking the helmet and the jacket off, I breathe in the fresh night air. When I make to hand the jacket back to Slick, he shakes his head. “Don’t know if I have the right to wear that anymore, Brat,” he says. “Don’t know if Grizzly’n all would take too kindly to it now.”
“What happened?” I ask.
He tells me about breaking out, about threatening the men, about stealing the bike.
He’s right; it’s a terrible situation.
Dropping the jacket, I jump across to him. “Let’s not think about that now!” I exclaim, putting my hands on his shoulders. “Tonight is about reunion. Tonight is about saying, ‘Screw the world. We want what we want, and they can go to hell. Right?’”
He grins, and takes my hand. “Right. Follow me, then.”
Gripping his hand in mine tightly, afraid that if I don’t this will really all turn out to be a dream after all, I walk with him around the edge of the track. Back when we were kids, Slick used to maintain the track with a shovel, shaping it, making sure it didn’t build up packs of dirt or crumble in the wrong places. Now, the track is half-wrecked, some of the muddy ramps still in place, others crumbled to dust. When I see it, still standing, I let go of his hand and run toward it. Behind me, Slick chuckles.
“What the hell?” I approach the hut, as rickety-looking as ever, catching the starlight on its metallic surface. I turn to Slick. “Seriously, what the hell? How is this still here?”
“A courier has to be a Jack of all trades,” he says.
“You came by here recently and rebuilt it, didn’t you?”
He grins, and then shakes his head. “No faith, Brat, no faith. Come inside. I wanna show you something.”
When we’re inside, I don’t see anything at first. It takes my eyes a while to adjust to the darkness, even if starlight seeps through gaps in the metal. Then the dim outline of a dirt bike reveals itself, and then the dirt bike in its entirety. I remember it being green, but now it just looks grey. I run over to it, squealing with excitement. A rush of memories hit me when I see it. This was the first proper bike I ever rode. Back then, I thought I was a real dirt biker, a proper Ricky Carmichael. I remember the first time I fell off, how Slick quickly cleaned and patched me up. I remember when some boys around Slick’s age found the spot and started teasing me, calling me, a “widdle girl,” and laughing. I also remember how Slick bloodied their noses and sent them running.
“Brat, there’s something else.”
I turn to see Slick standing with a small metal box in his hand.
“That’s not what I think it is, is it?” I ask, fidgeting with excitement. I can’t believe he’s done this. He must’ve done it soon after he came back, and left it like this, waiting for the time he could bring me here. And then life got in the way. Or maybe it really has stayed standing all this time, a permanent emblem of our shared childhood.
“Come outside and see.”
We go back outside. Slick places the box on the floor and returns to the bike, calling back, “Don’t peep until I come back, Brat, or there’ll be hell to pay.” I laugh, and wait. Soon, he returns with a flashlight in his hand. We sit down on a grassy patch of dirt, before Slick clicks his fingers and jumps to his feet.
“Are we ever going to take a look?” I ask, pretending I’m furious with him for taking so long.
“Just wait a sec, damn.” He goes to the bike, and then returns with an old oily blanket. “I don’t reckon you mind a bit of grease, Brat?”
“You know me so well,” I reply, my cheeks warm with the moment, the night, with seeing him again.
He lays the blanket on the dirt and we both sit on it with the box between us.
When he puts his arm around me, pulling me into him, I feel like I’m home. Time drifts away and we’re back where we started, Brat and Sky, and all the horrible shit that’s happened to Slick no longer exists. The escape, the ramifications, Dad’s misguided anger and Clint’s scheming . . . all of it is burnt away by the starlight and drifts into nothingness. Slick and I, me and Slick; that’s all.
“You can open it now,” he says.
I tear the box open, and then let out a gleeful scream when I see them there, just how we left them. Slick tips them onto the blanket and shines the flashlight on them. In total, there are around fifty Polaroids, taken over the span of a couple of years. The first one I pick up shows me, thinking I’m super cool and super grownup sitting on the dirt bike with a serious, pensive expression, glaring at the camera.
“You thought you were the shit, Brat,” Slick says, smiling warmly. “You thought you were a real—”
“—Ricky Carmichael.”
“So you remember?”
He used to call me that all the time.
“Of course I remember,” I say.
The next photograph shows Slick, younger, skinnier, with long hair down to his chin and without any tattoos. He’s on his knees working on his bike.
“Look at your hair!” I slap him on the arm, giggling.
He smiles ruefully. “Forgot that one was in there, truth be told. Do you prefer it how it was then, or how it is now?”
“Now, definitely,” I say. “You look like a wannabe rock star.”
“Yeah, well—what about you in this one?” He picks up one of me with my bike on its side, my foot planted proudly on the bike, arms raised in the air like it’s a boxing match and I’ve just toppled my opponent. I’m wearing an oil-stained jumpsuit and my hair is cut so close to my head that if it were not for my feminine face, I would look like a boy. “I went out of my way to get you a dirt bike you could ride, and how do you repay me, eh? By nagging me all damn day to take a picture of you with the thing toppled, all damn day, on and on. Sky, Sky, please take this picture. Please, please.”
I nudge him, and then snuggle closer into him. With his arm around me, he coils a long strand of my hair around his finger. “Look where my hand is,” he says, “all the way down here, near your shoulder, and still I get a handful of hair. You would’ve died back then if you could see it now.”
“That’s because I wanted to be like you,” I whisper.
“I had rock star wannabe hair, didn’t I?”
“A grownup, a rider, a junk head, a grease monkey.”
He laughs. “Well, you were all that. Just look at you.”
We go through all of them, coming across only one or two with both of us in shot together. One is too blurry to be able to make anything out, but the other is of me on his shoulders, Slick holding the camera at arm’s length. It’s framed poorly and we can’t see much, but we can see our smiles, both us grinning like fools.
“Damn timer button was broken, remember?”
“I remember,” I say. “Look how happy we were.”
A powerful wave of nostalgia hits me. I wish I could lie face down in the dirt, and then when I stand up, be in that past, just for the night. Just for one night, ride up and down those ramps again like all that exists is this little pocket of mud in the middle of the Rockies. Everything, all oppressive grownup concerns, melting away as my world hones down to the next jump, the next lap.
“Aren’t you that happy now?” Slick asks, once we’ve put the photographs away.
“I’m happy,” I say. “When I’m with Charlotte, I’m happy. And when I’m with you, I’m happy. But it seems the world doesn’t want us to be together.”
“Your dad, you mean,” Slick says. “Grizzly confuses the fuck out of me. He took me in after my father died. He knew I’d never find my mom, knew she was a hooker who ran to hook someplace else after she had me. Knew all this, took me in. Good—damn good of him. And then, when I’ve done more for the club than any man, decides that he can’t have me near his daughter and locks me up.”
“He’s over-protective,” I say. “He’s been like that ever since I hit puberty. Even now I have Charlotte, he seems to think that I’ve never been with a man. He thinks that I’ll break like glass if anybody touches me. It drives me crazy that he doesn’t trust you, of all people. He must know that Charlotte is your daughter. He has to. I don’t get how he could look at her and think anything else. And yet he acts as though the father is a complete mystery. It pisses me the hell off.”
“Me, too.” Slick kisses me on the forehead. “I brought you here for a reason, Brat. I brought you here ’cause I wanted to tell you . . .” He trails off. I hear him swallow, a loud gulp of nerves.
“Go on,” I urge, looking up at him, at his serious face, his deep wells of eyes, his clenched jaw. His hair hangs just over his eyes. I brush it away, and then run my hand through his hair, all the way down to his neck. He grins. “You really know how to relax a man, Brat.”
“Tell me,” I say. “You don’t have to be afraid, Slick. You don’t have to be afraid that you’re not good enough for us.”
He flinches, looks away, studying the dirt track. “That’s exactly what I’m scared of,” he mutters. “You said you loved me, a couple of months back—”
“I do,” I say, without a shred of doubt in my voice, “and I always have.”
“I don’t know if you’d love me if you saw me back in Seattle. And the most fucked part is I still don’t wanna talk about it.”
“Let me ask you a couple of questions,” I say, “and then let me decide.”
“Okay . . .” He looks at me questioningly.
“Did you hurt any children?”
“No,” he says, confused.
“Did you hurt any women?”
“No.” Firmer now.
“When you hurt men, was it them or you—if you didn’t fight, would you have been killed?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Did you hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it when it was your choice?”
“No.”
“Did you rape anybody?”
“What the fuck—no.”
“Was there a way out, but instead you chose to hurt people?”
“If there was a way out, I never would’a touched a single goddamn person,” he says fiercely.
“Then whatever you did,” I say, “I don’t care. You’re still my Slick. Where it matters, you’re still the kid from those photographs. So you’ve been roughed up a little around the edges. So what? We all have.”
“Not like me,” Slick mutters. “I was bathed in blood, Brat, fuckin’ bathed in the shit.”
“And you came out on the other side.” I climb to my knees, bring my mouth close to his ear. “You came out the other side. You’re here, with me. This night is all that exists. This moment is all that matters. You’re home, Slick; this track is our home. This—”
“I love you more than I can say,” he interrupts, sounding surprised by the admission. Not surprised that he loves me, but surprised that he’s told me. “I always have, Brat. I loved you since that night we made Charlotte, but even before that, as your friend. I’ve always loved you in one way or another, and you’ll always be the only woman for me. The rest of ’em can go to hell, for all I care. All I need is you and Charlotte. That’s all I want.”
“Do you really mean that?” I realize that tears are sliding down my cheeks, salty on my lips.
“Yes,” he says. “Course I mean it.”
“I’ve always thought you loved me,” I say. “That night we shared—it was special. We were closer than any first-time lovers. It was the best night of my life. And you know I love you; there has never been anybody else for me but you, Slick.”
He turns his face to mine, his breath warm against the coolness of the night, and looks deeply into my eyes. “So we’re in love,” he says, smirking, that old cocky smirk, a smirk that has infuriated me and captivated me in equal measure over the years. “What’re we gonna do about it?”
Before I can reply, he kisses me. It is different to any other time we have kissed. He kisses me softly, so softly that at first I wonder if this is the same Slick. Then it hits me; we are closer now than we have ever been before. His lips brush mine, but then passion takes him, and he grabs my shoulders and kisses me powerfully. I bring my hands to his hair, pulling him closer, hungry for the kiss, losing myself in it. We devour each other, taking in each other’s love, each other’s pain, each other’s longing. For a long time, we kiss, faces flushed, aching. And then I reach down and press my hand against the front of his jeans. He is hard, urgently hard, so hard that when I unbutton his jeans and pull them down below his balls, his cock springs up covered in pre-come. I break off the kiss and look down at it.
“Fuck,” I moan, the length of it, the thickness, driving me wild after two months without it. “Fuck, Slick.”
“Come here,” he says.
He lays me on my back, and then pulls down my pants and my underwear in one quick motion, revealing my naked pussy, my naked legs. The air pricks my skin, but soon Slick is leaning over me, his lips pressed against mine once again. I run my hand all over his body. As we kiss, shift, his cock brushes up against my clit. I gasp, opening my mouth so that our teeth click together. Slick, reading my body like he’s been able to do since the first time we were together, reaches down and guides his cock to my clit, rubbing the helmet against it. There’s something wildly dirty about it, having his cock just pressed against my clit, so close to my hole and yet not inside of me.
“Oh, fuck,” I moan, as the pleasure begins to mount. He rubs my clit quicker, pressing his cock against it harder. I’ve never done this before: never thought to do this. The pleasure takes me by complete surprise, as he rubs up and down, circles it, and then, finally, pushes down so hard on it that I let my head fall back and moan loudly in euphoria, gazing up at the stars. But the stars are blurred by my vision. All I see is a sheet of distorted light set within blackness. “I’m nearly—” I can hardly believe it. But that’s how powerful my lust is.
He brings his face close to my ear and whispers: “Do it, Brat. Come for me, Brat. Do it. Do it.”
Warm, tickling breaths, cock pressed against my clit, emotions whirring madly in my chest, heightening it all . . .
“I—ah—I—”
The orgasm is somehow soft, velvety, like a slow gentle ride down a river of pleasure. I close my eyes against the starlight and moan out into the night like I’m singing a song. Slick keeps rubbing against me, as though we are two teenagers who are forbidden to have sex, but want the pleasure anyway. He keeps rubbing, and my pussy twists with the pleasure, my body growing warm with it, my hands clawing at his hair. And then, it passes, and I am left satisfied and yet at the same time hungry for more.
I move my hands down to his hips, and pull. Slick doesn’t need to be told twice; he’s as horny as I am, perhaps more. He slides his cock down from my clit to my hole, and then arches his back as he thrusts deep inside of me, all in one quick movement. I gasp, let out a cry, and then my pussy spreads hotly for him, and at once I begin to move up and down. But Slick reaches down, grabs me by the shoulders, and pulls me up, all whilst he’s inside of me. Before I know what he’s going for, he’s done it, and we’re sitting opposite each other, straddling each other, me on top of him, him deeper inside of me than I knew he could get, somewhere near my belly.
We begin rocking together slowly, back and forth, eyes locked on each other, as much love as pleasure moving between us with each movement. He moves his hands beneath my shirt, bracing my bare back, spreading goosebumps all over my body with his touch. I sit down, over and over, on his cock, burying him within me down to his balls. We moan in unison, surprisingly soft moans, passionate moans, the moans of lovers instead of just people fucking.
I see the pleasure in his face, in the way his lips twitch, in his eyes, getting wider, as though amazed by what we are doing. I feel the same; there is a connection between us. He shifts, and I shift. He thrusts, and I angle my hips so that he slides right into my sweet spot. I grip his shoulders and sit up, high, and then sit down with all the strength in my thighs. He gasps, and I giggle.
“I love you, Sky,” I moan, knowing that it’s a risk. Slick has always been a man’s man, a hard man; even as a boy, he was like that. It might be a turn off for him, for it to be this emotional.
But he just reaches around, grabs my ass cheeks, and then drives into me so hard I let out a scream which echoes around the mountains. “I love you, Brat.”
Grabbing my ass, he slides into me, sensually, deeply, until I feel another orgasm coming, hot, burning, and the heat and the burning is in my chest, as well. The emotion and the pleasure in my pussy combine, each making the other larger, each making the other more intense. I love him the more he thrusts into me, and the thrusts feel more pleasurable the more he loves me. I sit down, again, again, taking in the pleasure, until I feel it building to breaking point, until I feel the lips of my pussy tingling like a feather is being trailed across them, until I feel my hole going tight around him. I kiss him, and that seals it; the orgasm breaks upon me like waves breaking upon a beach, slow yet powerful. I force myself not to close my eyes. I ride the orgasm as I look into his sky-blues, my pussy burning with the heat of a thousand fires, raging beneath me, his body suddenly hot to the touch, his lips scorching into my lips as he kiss. Aching for him, I release all over his cock, my come sliding down the shaft and onto his balls. I arch my back, driving my hips down, sitting once more as another wave breaks upon the beach.
“Oh, fuck,” Slick whispers, and I know he’s about to come.
I grip his face in my hands—my hands trembling with the ecstasy of the moment—and stare into eyes I have dream of my entire life as he comes inside of me. Gazing at each other, euphoria takes us both, throws us about, my pussy burning as his cock pulses and wilts. I’m still coming as he finishes, both of us burning with pleasure as one. And then, after what feels like an eternity spent within each other’s embrace, we fall into each other, my lips on his neck, his hand stroking my hair.
“This was the best night of my life,” I whisper, kissing his neck.
“Mine, too,” he says. And I know he means it.