“I told you we shouldn’t have gone.” Jimmy was holding an ice pack to his jaw. It was his second one, and Macy thought he was exaggerating the injury just a bit. She was annoyed with him. He’d insisted they be at Cody’s coming-home party. Macy thought that anyone with a brain would be able to figure out that Cody was going to be pissed. For starters, they had both known him most of his life and he’d never had any impulse control. He got suspended for fighting in the third grade. He got expelled for beating up a teacher in the fifth grade. He got suspended again in eighth grade and wasn’t allowed to take part in eighth grade graduation, for punching the principle in the face. How in God’s name Jimmy had thought he was going to get off without a bruised or broken jaw was beyond her. She wouldn’t have even been surprised if she’d ended up with one herself. She felt like they both deserved it.

“Your ‘I told you so’ is getting old. Sing a new fucking song, will you?”

“I’m just saying, neither of us so much as wrote him a letter in all those years and then he gets out and sees us together right off the bat. We should have told him before he got out, like I wanted to.”

Jimmy sighed and rolled his eyes. “You’re always right, aren’t you?”

“I’m not always right, but in this case, I think it’s obvious that I was. Damn it, Jimmy, he has every right to be pissed. And you know as well as I do that he’s not going to let it go at what happened tonight.”

“So what do you want me to do, Macy? You just need me to admit that you were right? You were right, okay? There. Did that fix the fucking problem?”

“No. I don’t know what I want, Jimmy. I just feel like shit. I feel so bad. We should have told him.”

“But we didn’t and we can’t fucking go back in time and do it now, so will you please stop your fucking nagging? My jaw is probably broken and my fucking head is throbbing…” She rolled her eyes and when the shadow crossed his face, she immediately regretted it. “You’re annoyed with my pain?”

“No, Jimmy. I’m sorry. I’m sorry you hurt, okay? This whole situation just makes my stomach hurt.”

Jimmy put the ice pack down and stood up. He towered over her by at least a foot and when she looked up into his dark eyes she could see storm clouds forming in them. He’d never hit her. She worked hard convincing herself that he would never hurt her, but he loved to intimidate her and sometimes she thought that was worse. Sometimes she thought if he’d just punch her and get it over with it would hurt less than the mental torture he forced her to endure. “Listen to me, Macy. Nobody gives a shit if Cody has his feelings hurt. I’m a prospect with this club. He’s a fucking nobody. He can’t even ride a motorcycle. He doesn’t even have a fucking driver’s license. Our life was good before he walked back through those doors tonight and it’ll be good again, as soon as he figures out his place…which is way beneath ours. He has no blood rights to this club the way you do and he hasn’t worked for a spot the way I have. If it comes down to a vote, he’d have to be the one voted out, no matter how far up Dax’s butt he is. So, I’m going to go to bed and if I wake up at any point in the night and you’re gone…”

She sighed. Their life was never good. It was riddled with guilt and secrets and it always would be. But every time she tried to talk to him about it, he’d use those secrets as leverage. Maybe one of these days she’d be strong enough to not give a shit. But that day hadn’t come yet. Most especially since now that Cody was back, he’d be privy to those secrets if they were revealed and if he didn’t hate her already, he would then for sure.

“I’m not going anywhere, Jimmy.” She softened her tone and tried to smile. “All I’m trying to say is that it’s going to be awkward around here and we should probably try not shoving this thing between us in Cody’s face.” She reached up and touched the side of his face with her fingers gently. “You know that I love you. Cody being back is not going to change that. I just don’t want to live in constant fear that the two of you are going to hurt each other, or get Dax so pissed off that you lose your place in the club.”

“I’m going to be president of this club someday,” he told her.

“I know, baby.”

“I’ll be president and you’ll be my old lady and we’ll turn this club back into something to be proud of.”

“I know, baby.”

“Let’s go to bed. I’m tired. I want you to suck my dick until I fall asleep.”

Macy swallowed hard. She couldn’t get the image of Cody’s face when he saw them together out of her head. She was glad at least that a blow job was all Jimmy wanted. Hopefully he’d fall asleep quickly and leave her alone with her thoughts. There hadn’t been a day that went by that she didn’t think about Cody, but she had a feeling hiding that from Jimmy now that Cody was back, was going to be a hell of a lot harder. Their life wasn’t good; that was Jimmy’s delusion. But she had a feeling it was about to get a lot worse.

* * *

“Damn, Tool, who fixed it up?” Tool had just pulled the cover off Keller’s bike and Cody’s mouth practically watered as he looked at it. Keller had been seventeen and gotten his first job working for a rich guy in town, taking care of his lawn and doing odd jobs on the big estate. One day he was cleaning out the guy’s old shed for him and he’d found the bike shoved way back in a corner. It was rusted and dented and at the time it didn’t even run, but Keller had fallen in love with it anyways. He was supposed to take the bike to the junkyard along with the other things he’d cleaned out of the old shed, but that was the one thing he kept. With the help of a few guys from the club, he got it running. It was still ugly but you’d never be able to tell that by the pride in Keller’s eyes when he rode it. Even though he never wanted to be a part of the club, motorcycles were in his blood, and he loved that bike so much that if you didn’t know better, you might have thought he bought it new off the showroom floor. That summer he put every cent he made, that the old man didn’t beat out of him, into replacing the rusting chrome and buying a new seat. The guys in the club would have painted it for him and helped him fix it up for next to nothing, but Keller was born with this sense of responsibility that back then Cody didn’t understand. He wanted to do it himself. He told Cody that hard work and sweat would make him appreciate it a lot more. Cody was a kid at the time and to him hard work and sweat was nothing he aspired to. He was jealous of his brother, though, and jealous of the motorcycle even though it was a piece of shit. He gave Keller a hard time about it, and it was one of those things he couldn’t take back and he would always regret.

Tool was grinning from ear to ear. “We’ve been working on it for over a year, ever since Dax heard you were going to make it out at your next parole hearing. He told us to do it up right. What do you think?”

Cody thought that he wished it wouldn’t make him look like a big old pussy to cry. It was fucking beautiful. They’d given it a custom paint job. The gas tank was black and it had a white, flaming skull painted on it. The graphics were incredible. Every spot on the bike that could be covered with chrome was, and it was so shiny it nearly blinded you. He smiled when he looked at the seat. They’d left the same one on the bike that Keller worked his ass off to buy, and Cody had no doubt he would be as proud as hell to sit on it.

“I don’t even have the words, Tool. She’s gorgeous. If she was a woman I’d fuck her right now.”

Tool cracked up at that. “Well, now, what we have to do first is pop that cherry so you can fuck her right. Dax said you’ve only ridden a time or two and that was when you were just a kid.”

Cody nodded. “Some of the guys used to take us out to the field out back and let us tear it up on their old hogs. But as you know, it’s been eight years since I’ve ridden anything. Can I take her out back…?”

Tool laughed again. “Boy, you don’t pop your cherry on Angelina Jolie. You start with the ugly girl in high school that nobody wants to take to the prom and work your way up from there.” He walked over to a beat-up sportster that probably had a hundred thousand hard miles or more on it. “Meet your ugly girl. This is the girl Dax said you could take to the prom and fuck in the back seat. Angelina will be waiting when you’re ready.”

Cody was aching to sit on the back of Keller’s bike…his bike now…and feel it vibrate between his legs. But he knew Tool…or Dax…was right. He needed to take it slow. He had to get good enough on the bike to pass his DMV test or Dax wasn’t going to let him ride, much less become a prospect. He nodded at Tool. “Alright then, is she ready now?”

Tool handed him a key and said, “Dax said just don’t run into any of the buildings and when you get back, if you’re still alive and in one piece, I’m supposed to give you the website to study for your DMV test.”

Cody took the key out of Tool’s hand. “Can I ask you a question, Tool?”

“Sure, kid.”

“You were here when Doc was in charge. What do you think about Dax and all the changes he’s made? Are you worried about how ‘soft’ things seem around here?”

Tool raised an eyebrow and said, “Come over here and let me show you something.” Cody followed the older man into the little office of the shop. One wall was covered in photographs. They weren’t your average photos; these were all mug shots, and Cody recognized a lot of the men in the photos. “You know what all these guys have in common?”

Cody shrugged. “They’re all hard-core bikers?”

“Wrong. They were all hard-core bikers. Now they’re all dead. Every one of these guys died either fighting some fucking stupid street war or in prison after they got arrested for hauling drugs or guns or beating the shit out of a prostitute who wasn’t bringing in enough cash. What Dax is doing for this club is what Doc was trying to do way back when. It got him labeled as ‘soft’ and people even wondered if he was right in the head. Dax has made a lot of changes, but let me promise you, son…there ain’t a thing soft about that boy, and if he’d been born anything but a biker in small-town Massachusetts U.S.A., that kid could have been a college professor. He’s a fucking genius, and those of us who realize that and let him lead are the ones who are reaping the rewards. Them that want to insist he’s as soft as his old man supposedly was…well, let’s just say when they finally figure out that’s not true, they don’t stick around long enough to tell anyone.”

Cody thought about that. He thought about his father. The old man had been missing for a years. Nobody gave a shit, Cody the least of all. But the last thing that the old man had done was piss off Dax Marshall and like Tool said, he hadn’t stuck around long enough to tell anyone about it.