Smoke

I STRADDLED MY BIKE, kicked it into gear. I had to get away. The Nightriders had fancy attorneys, like Clarice. She’d earn her big retainer. She’d take care of the bogus charges. The lawyers always fixed things, even the shit we were guilty of. No, I wasn’t running from my arrest. Fuck. I wasn’t running at all. I was riding. Heading out into the night where I belonged.

On the road. Sayonara, baby. The bitch had turned on me. And I was the biggest gawddamned fool on the planet to have believed we could make something together. Ha. The arson investigator and the arsonist. At best, it was a bad B movie. At worst?

At worst, it was just exactly what had happened. She didn’t believe me. Didn’t believe in me. I was fire. She was water. Only she wasn’t. She should have quenched my heat, but she was the fire, lighting me up, burning through my blood. She lit up my darkness when she should have just faded into it.

I hit the highway doing eighty. The wind’s fingers twisted in my hair, not like the lover she had always been, but like the whore she could be on a cold night on a lonely stretch of road. A more philosophical man might wax on about the symbolism of the empty road. Me? I'd always been a lone Wolf. By definition, I was alone. And who the hell had time to be lonely? Not me. Fuck no, not me.

My heart burned in my chest—not with heat but with a frigid intensity that left my whole body numb. I didn’t know where I was going. Didn’t care as long as it was away from her. From Leigh. I should never have stopped. Never turned around to go back for her that godforsaken morning.

And I damn sure should never have fucked her. Forget about trust. Forget about love. She was a disaster waiting to happen and when she erupted? She seared me to my very soul. My only hope was to get out of range, so far away she couldn’t reach out, couldn’t touch me, couldn’t set my night on fire.

A Texas State Trooper jumped on my ass at Denton. I was doing 110 miles per hour by Gainesville and the Red River bridge crossing into Oklahoma was nothing but a blur. I’d called ahead. So had the trooper. Oklahoma troopers were massed and waiting, seeing as Texas decided the Okies could take the risk of catching me.

I grinned into the wind, more wolf than man at that moment. With reflexes honed in my very DNA, I shifted gears, slammed brakes, slid sideways, and threaded the fucking roadblock like it was the eye of a needle and I was silk thread.

Some of the brothers from the Oklahoma chapter were waiting at the first exit, the one that led to the big Indian casino. I whipped in, rode hard, and got right back on I-35 using the on-ramp on the other side. By the time the cops got untangled, my Oklahoma brothers were strung out behind me, running interference. I grinned, teeth biting at the night when the first set of blue lights lit up the last bike in the pack.

I was running dark, my night vision that of the wolf. The brothers all had their lights on. They’d be picked off one by one, questioned, harassed, but eventually freed. By the time the cops caught the last one, I would be in Oklahoma City at the clubhouse, drowning my stupid, sorry ass in pity and pussy because a Wolf couldn’t get drunk. Or stoned. Fuckin’ metabolism.

But sex? Yeah. I’d find a willing woman. Or three. Sweet butts who would give me whatever I wanted. And what I wanted was to be free of Leigh. To get her out of my head, off my dick, and the fuck out my life. That was the plan anyway. Too fucking bad I’d already marked her, claimed her.

 

 

Leigh

DAY, NIGHT. Night, day. They were all the same. I’d been placed on paid leave pending an investigation. My job was part of the deal to get Smoke to inform on the Nightriders. If I could deliver suspects or intel on the gang and their cohorts, then those in charge would look the other way about my collusion with a known gang member.

God but I was an idiot. I was so sure that my…my what? My allure? My pure and true love for the bad boy? What possessed me to believe that Smoke had real feelings for me?

I rubbed my chest, tired of the continuous ache there. My lungs constricted every time I tried to take a deep breath. Tears remained a continuous prickle behind my eyelids. Smoke had never cared for me. He’d lied about his feelings. Mine, he’d claimed. I called bullshit on that. I wasn’t his. When someone was yours, you did whatever it took to keep them, to hold onto them. You didn’t get all pissed and storm out, riding away into the dark with a nonchalant, “We’re done. Finished.”

The other parting words he said? Those I ignored. I could protect myself, especially from him. And if his motorcycle brothers were all so loyal, they wouldn’t kill him. That was just total crap, justification to walk out on me.

That late-night conversation I’d overheard before we were almost blown up in the boathouse played over and over in my brain. I was just a pawn. Had been from the moment he flashed that cheeky grin at me. He’d obviously been following me, just waiting for a chance to make his move.

It was bad luck that sent that dog running across the road in front of me. That’s all. Because no way could he ride around with a freaking silver German Shepherd on his Harley. I paced the length of my living room for the ten hundred thousandth and one times. There was something about that dog.

Ha! That’s what I should do. Adopt a dog. Dogs were faithful. They loved you even when you didn’t love yourself. They were slobbery and shed and tracked in mud and needed attention. And they took up half the bed. Just like Smoke.

I swiped my cheeks with the backs of my hands. I was not crying. I hated him. Period. He’d used me. Set me up. Left me to deal with the fall out. And that witch of a defense attorney was just…mean. I don’t even know why I called her. But I had to try.

All Smoke had to do was cooperate with the DA. He’d get off with probation. We could have moved somewhere, started over. The bitch just laughed at me. Called me stupid and naive. Maybe I was. I curled up on the couch and snuggled Smoke’s T-shirt to my chest, burying my nose in it. Leather and a hot summer wind and cherry pipe tobacco. It still smelled like him. Barely. Eventually I wouldn’t even have that.

I started laughing. I was so damned pathetic. At this point, I should haul my sorry butt off this couch, get in my car and drive to my favorite ice cream parlor. I should buy the biggest Fix & Go container—all fabulous 48 ounces of coffee, cookie batter, and cinnamon ice cream and every single add-in goodness they had.

With that goal in mind, I headed out. Ice cream was my emotional duct tape.

I had to turn off the radio. Every single song was one of those crying-in-my-beer ballads. Where was Garth and Toby when I needed them? I wanted friends in low places and I’d take them to Honkytonk U. I pulled into a parking lot to pull up a play list on my phone. I’d plug my cell into the Highlander’s sound system, roll down the windows, and sing along at the top of my lungs.

Once I had things organized, I got ready to pull back into traffic. Except there was fog rolling in. No, not fog. Smoke. I sniffed the air blowing in the window. I’d been a firefighter and now an arson investigator. I would never forget that smell. I pulled out on the street and followed the haze.

Three blocks away, I found the fire. An abandoned two-story building, one side engulfed in flames. I dialed 9-1-1 and gave my report even as I was rushing toward the crowd of people gathering to watch. I needed to make sure they stayed well back, and that no one blocked the street for the engine and truck companies. Then I heard someone yell.

“There’s an old man who lives in there!”

I started running.