Kade
I sit at my desk at the Tidal Knights clubhouse, in the town of Evergreen just outside Seattle, my mind on the past. Thrown back to the past with all the fear and the shit it brings along with it. First Dad, drunken Dad, stupid fuckin’ old man, moron who danced around the trailer with a loaded revolver and eventually paid the price for it. That I understand, I reflect as I sit here, surrounded by framed pictures of club members, Duster pulling stupid jackass faces in some of them. That, at least, I can get my head around. He was a drunken idiot; he died. Fine. But this fuckin’ Duster shit. Duster wasn’t an idiot. Duster wasn’t a drunk. Neither him nor I ever drank to the point of getting shitfaced. We knew the damage it could do. A few drinks here and there, but never the race-to-the-end drinking of the trailer scum. Duster, man . . .
He was my age but I think of him as a kid, always looking to me for advice, always looking to me to help him out. And when he needed help, the fuck did I do? I was too busy misjudging a man I was meant to be dealing with to know that everything was about to go wrong.
I lean back in the chair, ignoring the jolt of pain from my gunshot wound. The wound is the least of my concerns. Now the Italians think the Tidal Knights had something to do with Manuel’s stupid death. Now they’re sending some hitters into Evergreen. Damn, but I’d give a hell of a lot right now just to see Lana. I keep wondering why that girl has made such an impression on me, and then I remember her breasts and her open, pleasure-filled face and I don’t have to wonder anymore. But I can’t get too close—can never get too close. Close gets you hurt. Being close to Duster is what’s making me feel like my world has been hacked apart with a machete. Duster was not just my friend. Duster was my brother-in-arms in escaping the trailer park and Duster was my second-in-command. That runs deeper than friendship.
I groan, curse at myself.
Lana would make me forget, but then—
Getting too close is a double-edge blade. Get too close, I might be made to feel this way. Get too close, I might turn out to be not so different to Dad, might warp and change, might become a drunk, might one day take one drink too many, lose the control I’ve sustained my whole life. Maybe everyone’s just one misstep away from becoming their parents.
I bring my thumbs to my eyes and massage my closed eyelids, groaning again.
I’m grateful when there’s a knock on the office door. A distraction.
“Yeah?”
“It’s me, Boss.”
“Come in.”
Scud walks and reaches the desk in two quick strides. He reminds me of a giraffe. All long legs and a long neck and long arms. Face all sharp edges. Eyes set deep and always watching. But he’s efficient. No Duster, but he’s efficient.
“You wanted to see me?”
I nod at the chair opposite me, making sure I show no grief. Can’t show grief in front of the men, ’cause grief is weakness. And when you start showing weakness, people start thinking you are weak, and thoughts like that are soon followed by blood.
“I’m promoting you to VP,” I say, barely listening to my own words, my mind faraway with Duster and Lana. I find myself wishing the two of them could’ve met, my best friend and my—my what? My woman I fucked once upon a time back in Bremerton?
Scud knows better than to show any sign that he’s pleased at this. He nods quickly, as if just wanting to get the nod over with, and then watches me. Waiting.
“I want you to keep an eye out for Italians around Evergreen. Don’t do anything yet, unless they come at you, obviously. Then you can go to work. But just keep an eye out. Put some of your men on it. Do you know how this works, Scud?”
“Yeah, Boss. I can handle it.”
Handle. Duster. I know it’s the grief which puts this desire in me, but when he uses that word I want to leap across the table and hook him across the jaw. I push it down.
“Alright, good.” I nod at the door. “Get to work, then.”
“Yes, Boss.”
He leaves, and I go back to leaning back in my chair and groaning and thinking about all the things me and Duster used to get up to back in the day. I think about the time we made a poorly-constructed human model from junkyard scrap and draped it in clothes stolen from clotheslines and left it outside a bully’s trailer and waited for him to come out and see who was stupid enough to just stand outside looking at him like that. And then we pounced on him, a boy twice our age, and even when his friend came running out from inside we stood tall.
I shake my head and rise to my feet. I can’t deal with this shit right now. I need a woman. A woman who’ll make me forget. I need a woman and that woman has to be Lana. Even the thought of any other woman just makes me bored. I don’t know why Lana has this hold on me and I don’t need to know. It’s enough to know that she does.
I pick up my jacket from the back of my chair and leave the office, walk through the bar, past the framed photographs of Tidal Knights members and old antique pistols and the pool table and the rows and rows of whisky bottles and out into the Evergreen early-summer sun, across the sunlit parking lot and to my Harley.
I’ll get the ferry to Bremerton.
I’ll pay Lana a visit.