Ice

She’s lying in my arms, her head resting against my shoulder, her fingers twirling the hair on my chest and her naked body soft and warm and kinda sticky where it’s pressed against me. I always liked this part of sex, just lying with the woman afterwards, spent and satisfied, and I always got a lot of shit for it from the guys I rode with if I talked about it, but that didn’t bother me and it didn’t change it. Women feel good to have around any which way.

That said, there was never just one for me, it was a series of club whores and random chicks I met on the road, but they all felt good. All of them, until the whores Lizard brought to me. One by one, those made me forget how good women felt in my arms and on my dick and on my bike. But Barbie, she makes me remember, and those memories are more than just echoes right now.

“You have so few tattoos,” she murmurs. “How come?”

She’s tracing the one I have over my heart with her fingers, the one of my father’s club colors — of my club’s colors, the Wolves of Hell MC. It’s faded, because I got it a long time ago, long before it all fell apart. And I don’t much like the echoes her question brought up now.

At first, I figured she already knew who I was, being such a club hanger-on, and that she was just tactful by not asking direct questions about it. But she just kept asking, which led me to believe she didn’t know. It was refreshing not having all that shit from my past hanging between us the way it always hangs in the air wherever I am and who ever I’m with. Her not knowing also kinda let me not think of it so much.

But what does it matter if she knows my whole story? I’ll never forget it anyway.

"For a long time, I wasn’t free to just go out and get a tattoo whenever I felt like it,” I tell her. “And that was the case until very recently. Nowadays, I don’t much care about shit like that.”

“Then what do you care about?” she says and lifts her head to grin at me.

“Nothing,” I tell her truthfully, and she doesn’t like that answer, I can see that plain in the frown on her face. She believes me though, I can see that plain in her Aegean blue eyes too.

“What the hell happened to you, man?” she asks and lies back down on my chest like she’s not expecting me to answer.

What the hell difference does it make if I tell her? At least she’ll stop bugging me with questions if I do. Hopefully.

“Seven years ago, my entire MC was destroyed by a rival club—Satan’s Spawn MC — you probably heard of them, they ran that whole area you played around in for a long time. Over two hundred people dead in one night, all the members, all the club whores, the old ladies and their children too. It was brutal and unnecessary.”

She flew up the second she started comprehending what I was telling her. Now she’s staring down at the tattoo on my chest with her palm across her mouth and her eyes very wide. And sparkly. I like how her eyes sparkle.

“Wolves of Hell MC, that was your club, right? I remember now,” she mutters, still holding the palm over her mouth. “It happened before I came to town, but I heard stories.”

I shrug, since what the hell more is there to say? I’d prefer to be kissing her right now, but all these memories telling her brought up and the hate they carry are fast making an echo of that wish.

Her eyes get even wider like she just remembered something else. “Brick called you Iceman at the bar.”

I nod. “Yeah, so I thought you knew all about me.”

“I didn’t really follow that conversation all that well at the beginning. I was struggling to stay conscious,” she says, finally taking her hand away from her mouth and laying it over my heart.

The bruises on her face are almost gone and she keeps them covered with makeup pretty good, but they’re enough of a reminder of why I saved her that night to make even the hate recede a little, and keep me in the present, not in the rain on my knees on that dark night when my life ended.

“And even after I started remembering all the pieces of it, I still didn’t put two and two together,” she goes on, I guess heading towards the part where she tells me she does in fact know all about me. “You’re the Iceman, the Death Match Champion, right?”

I nod and I kinda like the awe in her voice, and the fact that I like it.

“Seven, a guy I dated told me all about you,” she continues, and the hate hearing that brings, nukes every good thing I was feeling a split second ago. “I even watched you fight a couple of times.”

She pauses to take a ragged breath, since all that talking seems to have knocked the wind out of her. Kinda like her telling me that Seven fucked her did for me.

“Seven said you betrayed your own MC and helped the Spawns kill them all, so that you could fight for them in the tournaments,” she says. “Something about your father not letting you compete, and that’s why you got rid of him.”

I chuckle which makes her gasp like I frightened her.

“Yeah, they liked spreading that lie around. It’s true that my father didn’t want me to fight, but also that I did fight for years despite it. Lizard knew that and he wanted me to fight for him. It’s why he didn’t kill me that night along with everyone else. And I’d never harm my father, I loved and respected him,” I tell her, and it feels good hearing it. “What really happened was that the Spawns took me prisoner and then kept me locked up, only letting me out when it was time for another fight.”

I’m seeing the moment I killed Seven very clearly before my eyes. So clearly, Barbie fades into the background. I hate knowing she fucked a Spawn, but Seven probably wasn’t even the only one. She gets around. I’m trying to hold onto the knowledge that she’s just a girl, alone in the world and with nothing, just trying to make it through this life in any way she can, but it’s not helping. The fact that she’s not saying anything, where she won’t shut up usually, isn’t helping either. But what’s there to say to something like what I just told her?

“I never liked Seven very much, or any of the other Spawns I met,” she says. “There was what they did to your club, but they were also just a nasty bunch of guys all around.”

“Well, they got theirs now,” I tell her. And I gotta admit that what she just said was probably the perfect thing anyone could’ve said. But that’s just Barbie. She talks a lot and she knows what to say.

“And you’ll never have to keep their company again,” I add.

She’s still very wide-eyed, but she nods when I say that. “I heard that they were all killed. Did you do it?”

There’s fear in her voice, but not nearly as much as I expected. And not nearly as much as there should be. I didn’t just kill off the Spawns, I enjoyed doing it, and I’d enjoy doing it all over again.

“I had help, but yeah, I got most of them,” I tell her. “Seven was one of the last to go. He was a spiteful, arrogant bastard right to the end.”

His old lady got killed because he wouldn’t back down, not even at the very end, but I can’t say I felt particularly sorry about that turn of events. And I still don’t.

“Yeah, that’s the guy I knew too,” she says. “They got what was coming to them, I guess.”

And there she goes, saying the most fitting thing again.

She lays back down next to me and rests her head on my chest, but she’s not as soft as before, or as warm. Yet she’s still plenty warm and I’ve been so cold for a very long time.

“I get it now,” she murmurs. “I get why you’re the way you are.”

I chuckle. “How am I?”

“Distant and cold, even though I know that’s not the man you really are,” she says. “But I get why now.”

“No, you don’t,” I say, since she can’t possibly, and it’s a good thing she doesn’t. “Go to sleep now. We’ve got a lot of riding ahead of us tomorrow.”

She doesn’t say anything else, since I guess even she runs out of things to say eventually. It’s better that way. She did find those few perfect things to say, but on the whole, there’s nothing to say. Though I do feel less cold and hard having told her all that stuff and gotten it out of my head for a change. But I’m sure that won’t last.

* * *

Barbie

He dozed off soon after telling me his horrible life story, but I couldn’t sleep. I suppose he had to get it off his chest, I could feel it weighing him down all this while, but I can’t say I felt the weight lift after he told me either.

I was ready to fall asleep before he started talking, still floating on the last waves of the pleasure we shared, letting them lull me into a sweet dream, but I was wide awake again by the time he finished.

I remember watching him fight in the tournaments. Seven took me to a couple of fights, as did most of the guys I dated after him. I never liked going, and avoided it if I could, since I know exactly what it’s like to get hit hard and find nothing enjoyable in it. For guys it’s different, I guess. After Seven told me that lie about Ice, how he betrayed his club and helped slaughter them all, I liked going even less, since I couldn’t understand why someone would do that. Or how someone could do that. Here I was, searching for a family I never really had and also never found, and this guy just sold his out and let them all be slaughtered? That never made any sense to me, even while I knew it for the fact I thought it was.

I believe him that it was all a lie. I saw the truth in his eyes when he spoke about his father and I doubt very much that a guy whose sister wanted him to play Barbie’s with her, would just let her be killed a couple of years down the road. Everyone associated with his club was killed that night, I know that part of the story well. That’s why the doctor at the hospital thought he was dead. She remembered him for the good guy he was — that he is— and that’s why she believed him when he told her I didn’t get my injuries from him. And he saved me, a complete stranger. No way a guy like that would help kill his entire family.

No, the way he told it makes perfect sense. Right down to the fact that he needed to kill all the Spawns in revenge. It’s scary as fuck, and it frightened me hearing him talk about it, because I saw clearly that’s all that mattered to him for a long time. But I get it. I also get why he thinks he can’t give me a good time.

I’d still like him to try though, and I still think we can have a pretty damned good time on this trip. That might be because I’m fucked up in the head too, but I think we could make it work. I think me and him were meant to meet, that we’re destined to be together, and to leave our brutal, bad pasts behind us together. Sleep came easy once I figured that out.