Cavan

Maybe it would have been noble to have a heart to heart with McMurphy. A conversation, a meeting of the minds. He’d made mistakes; I’d made mistakes. He was a little off his rocker, but he wasn’t an unreasonable man when you spoke his language. We could talk through this, maybe come to an understanding. Besides, he was bigger than me, and I was outnumbered.

I should have thought it through logically.

Instead, I attacked his mean, leathery ass.

I used the element of surprise. McMurphy saw me as a pussy, an ink man who wasn’t a true brother, so he didn’t expect it. I walked out of the bar and up to his bike as he parked. I caught him as he was still swinging his leg over the seat, his helmet still on. I kicked his kneecap hard on his balance leg and sent him sprawling to the pavement.

I had a split second, so I used it. I yanked his helmet off and punched him in the face.

He roared. Really roared, like I’d awoken a dinosaur in Jurassic Park. He scrambled up but I kicked him in the gut and unbalanced him, sending him down again. Then I punched him again.

It hurt. McMurphy had a skull of cement, and I felt the skin on my knuckles split. I struck again, but he dodged and I only glanced his nose, which must have smarted. Then his big hands grabbed me and jerked me down to the pavement with him.

It was all so familiar—here I was, fighting again. Like it was a Friday night at the Black Dog clubhouse, and some biker wanted to trade shots over whatever argument crawled up his ass. Like the guy who had come at me at the soda machine. Maybe someday I’d be done with fighting, just like I’d be done with diners and hotels, but today was not that day. It was either fight or let McMurphy rearrange my face. Besides, this time I was fucking mad.

McMurphy tried to get my throat; I tried to get him in the nuts. I got him a good one in the kidneys, and he cracked my temple with his huge fist. I managed to smack my elbow into his jawbone and snap his teeth together hard. He managed to thump my head into the pavement.

We rolled around like that, both of us intent. We had an audience; I could hear some shouts of surprise, the shuffle of feet. I wasn’t worried about the four bikers who had arrived with McMurphy; they wouldn’t join in. Instead they’d stand and watch, entertained, until either McMurphy signaled them to finish me off or until it looked like I was winning. If either of those happened, they’d gang up on me and turn me into roadkill. But not yet.

It was undignified, it was unplanned, it was maybe even anticlimactic. But it was so fucking satisfying, I didn’t want it any other way. Without Dani to worry about, I was done being nice. Done talking. I realized in this moment that I had spent years—literally years—wanting to punch McMurphy’s face. What he’d done to Dani—that she’d wasted her time and her confidence on him, her trust, even her virginity—just made it worse. I had my opportunity, and I punched him as hard and as often as I fucking could, even when it hurt my hands and I took my shots in return.

It was fucking glorious.

He was bigger than me, but I held my own—maybe because I was angrier, or I had more at stake, or maybe just because I wasn’t hungover as fuck. Which McMurphy was; he smelled like he’d slept in a bed of whiskey and pork rinds. The stench only made me more determined, and I hit him harder.

A heavy motorcycle boot kicked me in the back, and I flinched, losing my grip on McMurphy. The other bikers either had a signal, or they got bored. A hard pair of hands grabbed me and dragged me off McMurphy, and I heard my brother growl, “Hands off, motherfucker.”

Shit. Devon was getting involved.

Blood was running into my left eye, but I managed to get my feet under me so I could try to scramble up. Someone kicked my foot out from under me.

“This is it, McMurphy?” I said, wiping the blood from my eye. The bikers were surrounding me, and McMurphy was sitting up a few feet away. “You can’t beat me one on one, so you call in your buddies?”

“Shut up, Wilder,” McMurphy said.

“You piece of shit,” one of the bikers said, taking a swing at me. I dodged, and then Devon was there, twisting his fist into the biker’s ratty t-shirt. “Back the fuck off,” he said. Anyone who thought Devon was afraid of a few bikers had obviously never grown up with my brother.

There were non-bikers watching too, though those people hung further back, along the sidelines. This bar had seen its share of fights, most of them probably in this same parking lot. A big, burly guy stuck his head out the door and shouted in a bored voice, “Get the fuck out, boys. Someone’s called the cops.”

“Shit,” Devon growled. “Let’s get moving.”

I turned to McMurphy. My head was pounding like hell. “We done?” I said.

He shook his head. One of his ice-blue eyes was bloodshot and he had blood in his teeth, which was a sight that shouldn’t have gratified me. But it really did. “Never,” he said. “We’re never done, Wilder. Not as long as you breathe.”

“Wrong.” This was Ben, Devon’s lawyer, who stepped in between us, putting his phone in his pocket. He, too, had no fear of a few bikers, and this time I really did see why Devon hired him. “I just got a call from inside the Lake of Fire,” he said to both of us. “Word’s gone out from Preston. Anyone who touches his daughter, or her husband, is starting a war. You want that, McMurphy?”

Dani, I thought. There was only one reason Robert Preston would decide to get involved after all these years, and that must be because Dani asked him to. Which meant that Dani must have gone to see him in prison. You brave fucking woman, I thought. And hard on its heels was: What did you promise him?

In response to Ben’s question, McMurphy spat blood on the concrete. “Stay the fuck out of Arizona, Wilder,” he said. “Come into my territory, and it’s off. I’ll rip your fucking balls off and feed them to you, motherfucker.”

“Classy,” Ben said, “but honest. Now all of you get out of here before someone gets arrested. I’m not doing any fucking bail hearings today.”

The biker gripping me let me go, and Devon helped me up. I scrubbed more blood from my eye as one by one each motorcycle roared to life and peeled out of the parking lot, vanishing down the highway before the cops could come.

“Feel better?” Devon asked me.

Everything hurt—my face, my hands, my jaw, my back. “Yeah,” I said. “I feel much better.”

He laughed softly. He completely understood, the asshole. Fuck, I had missed my brother. “You can’t drive,” he said, looking at the blood in my eye. “Grab your bag from your car and get in. Time to clear out of here. The last thing we need is cops.”

So I grabbed my bag from the car I’d bought in Vegas, and I got in Devon’s car. Ben gave us a wave, got in his own car, and drove off. Devon’s car was a Mercedes, deep black, about ten years old, cared for like a baby. Basically, erotic love on wheels. My brother had always had taste in cars. If I wasn’t married to Dani, I might marry that car.

“Bleed on my seats, and I disown you,” Devon said, deadpan. “You don’t get a dime.”

“Yeah,” I said, folding myself gingerly into the passenger seat. “I get it.”

“You need a hospital?” he asked, getting behind the wheel.

“Are we fucking related?” I asked.

“No hospital,” he agreed. He started the car and left the parking lot. From far off, we heard faint sirens. “You want to call your wife,” Devon said, “considering she just saved your sorry ass?”

“I’ll call her,” I said.

“Impressive,” he commented. “One woman making the Lake of Fire bend to her will. Sounds like maybe she gives a shit about you.”

“She thinks she does,” I said. “I told her she needs to think it over.”

“Maybe,” he told me. “But if you ask me, she sounds like exactly the woman you need. You fuck it up and lose her, I disown you. You don’t get a dime.”

I pulled up the hem of my shirt and used it to mop my face. “If I disappear for another ten years, will you stop nagging me?”

“No,” Devon said. “Also, don’t go back to Arizona.”

“Right.” I’d spent ten years in the desert; I was done with it. I didn’t care about McMurphy’s threats. I only wanted to be where Dani was. Assuming she would even look at me again. “Anything else?”

“I’m bringing you back to San Francisco,” he said. “I have a house in Diablo that our grandfather left. It’s big, and it’s nice. I live there with Olivia. You’re staying there until we get some shit sorted out. Your wife wants to join you, there’s plenty of room. Max wants to see you and introduce you to Gwen.”

I was quiet for a minute. The fact was, I choked up. I’d spent ten years with nothing, no one. Now I had my brother, and the woman he loved, and Max and the woman he loved, and even Devon’s badass lawyer. And Dani. I could have Dani. Maybe I didn’t deserve any of it, but it was what I had. And as Devon would put it, what was I gonna do with it?

Devon put his hand on the back of my neck. Just that one touch, lasting a few seconds. He grabbed me, squeezed, and let go. That was everything I needed, right there. So I didn’t say anything, and neither did he.

Sometimes, talking doesn’t matter.

It was me and Devon again.

We watched the road unspool before us as we headed for San Francisco.