Dani

There was a reason I had to go to the party. The entire club would be there; if I skipped it, if I left town before the party started, everyone would notice. Everyone. It would put them on my trail that much sooner.

The better plan was to go to the party like normal. Watch the club drink themselves to unconsciousness, like normal. Watch them get stupid and eventually fall asleep. And then, while they were snoring their way to a hangover—that was the time to run.

I even dressed up. I put on a short skirt, a blouse with the top three buttons undone, and heels. I did up my eyes in heavy black and put on big hoop earrings. When I looked in the mirror, I wanted to smash the woman I saw.

College. I was supposed to go to college.

I’d thought I might be a vet tech, or even a vet. Stupid little-girl dreams of helping animals all day. Then I’d gone through a wild period in high school, the kind parents have nightmares about—staying out all night, telling Mom to go fuck herself during screaming fights, even shoplifting. I decided at some point that everything was unfair, my life sucked, and I was going to make my dissatisfaction known loud and clear. A stupid phase, and one that should have passed so my sanity could return.

Instead, I started dating bad boys, one after the other. And then I met McMurphy.

I’d been at a party, and I’d met a girl I didn’t know, and she told me she was sneaking out to another party, and did I want to follow her? She seemed cool, and she had weed and I didn’t, so I followed. This was in SoCal, in Malibu, and she took me to a party back in the scrubby hills, and I could still remember the moment I realized this was a biker party. It was the Black Dog SoCal chapter lighting up a Saturday night. I’d had loser boyfriends, but my mother had kept me away from the bikers in the area, and the minute I got to that party I knew why. The biker life was in my blood. To make things worse, McMurphy had been there, visiting the SoCal chapter. He’d seen me, and he’d decided he wanted me.

I hadn’t given in right away. It had taken a little time. But in the end, men like McMurphy always got what they wanted. And a year later, here I was, in Arizona, hundreds of miles from home, staring at my dark-lined eyes in the mirror. I had left my mother. I had no siblings, no friends. McMurphy had made himself my life, unless I could get out. It was do or die.

I needed Cavan Wilder.

My chest felt tight, and sweat dampened my armpits. The thing was, I actually had no idea what Cavan would do. I’d thought he might be a decent guy, deep down, if a loner. I’d thought he’d help me out—that maybe he was even a little bit attracted to me. And I thought I’d gotten through to him about his brother, and the danger that put him in. I thought. But this was the Black Dog, and he’d lived a long time with bikers, where the code could be harsh, with survival of the toughest. Maybe Cavan wasn’t a good guy after all. Maybe he’d already forgotten about me, or was laughing at me, or maybe he’d even told McMurphy my plan.

There was a sharp knock at the bathroom door. “Get moving, babe.”

I jumped. His voice didn’t sound angry. McMurphy had a temper like a volcano, especially when it came to his women—he didn’t have a slow-burn kind of anger. So Cavan Wilder hadn’t told on me yet, at least. “Coming,” I said, and opened the door.

He looked me up and down and smiled. He had blue eyes that could slice you in two, McMurphy did, and a big body that was heavy with muscle under his cut. I’d thought he was so cool once. I thought he was such an awesome rebel, a fuck-you to my uptight mother. Now I just looked at him and thought, You’re not getting what you want for once. Not this time. If he caught me, it would almost be worth it, just to know I’d run for even a little while. Just to know I’d done that much.

But I smiled back at him and tossed my hair. “All set, baby,” I said. “Let’s go.”

* * *

That first party in the Malibu hills had been life-changing for me, but now I was used to club parties. There was hard liquor—lots of it—and music. The boys drank. Women showed up, not just the club’s old ladies, but random local girls, appearing like strays who had nowhere to go. They were girls who were exactly like I’d been a few years ago, thinking this was cool, hoping to get into the life. No doubt I was the envy of a few of them. There was no point trying to talk sense into those girls, just like there had been no point trying to talk sense into me.

The club house was on the edge of town, in an ugly industrial area filled with boarded-up buildings and warehouses. Black Dog flags had been hung over all the windows, the snarling black dog logo looking out at anyone who looked up from the street. There was no doubt who ruled this particular building. The back opened up onto an expansive patio, with weeds pushing up between the stones, which vanished out into an endless expanse of scrubby brown landscape, punctuated with far-away rock formations. It was a place that literally felt like the end of something, like you walked in one door as part of a town and walked out the back into nothingness.

Some of the guys lived here, and most of them at least had a room set aside. McMurphy, as club president, had what would be called the master bedroom if this were any kind of home. He stayed there sometimes, sometimes at his own place, where I lived, and sometimes at an apartment he kept with his brother a mile away. I had no idea where he was staying tonight, but if he got drunk enough he’d crash in his room at the club, leaving me free to skip town without him knowing.

The back patio was already alive as the last of the twilight disappeared into darkness. Music blared, and someone had started a fire in one of the big metal barrels out in the scrub. A few girls were already swaying drunkenly, looking witchy in the firelight, one with a bottle of tequila that she held high in one arm, the tequila dribbling down her bare arm as she danced with her eyes closed.

I gravitated to the other old ladies, like I was expected to. Biker women, when they’re alone together, talk about surprisingly normal things—their men, their kids if they have them, the mutual friends they want to gossip about, the bills that need to be paid and the baby food that needs to be bought. I was given some deference as the president’s woman, but since most of them were older than me—only one was younger, a girl of twenty—that deference was only on the surface. They accepted me into their circle of conversation, but in reality they ignored me and mostly talked among themselves.

That was okay with me. I didn’t have any babies to talk about, I didn’t know most of their mutual friends, and the last thing in the world I wanted to talk about was McMurphy. Hey girls, McMurphy calls me a stupid slut. He kicked me in the thigh with his motorcycle boot and laughed. Last night he held me down until it hurt. So how have you all been?

Someone handed me a shot. I downed it, because not to would look out of place. Someone handed me another, and I downed that one too. Soon I’d be wobbling on my heels—just drunk enough to fit right in, but I’d have to be careful. Too sober, and people would start to say What the fuck is her problem tonight? She too good for us? Too much, and I’d be too drunk to make it out of town.

I took a third drink and sipped this one, telling the girls that I was drinking on an empty stomach. It was the truth. I’d managed a few crackers at breakfast today, and that was all. Except for the hour I’d spent on Cavan Wilder’s tattoo chair, I’d felt like throwing up ever since.

I was nursing the liquor as slow as I could, trying not to attract notice, hoping it wasn’t obvious that I was obsessively running over the things I’d packed in my suitcase and the hiding place I’d stashed it in, when I heard one of the other women say, “Well, look at that. The ink showed up.”

My throat went dry. But I tossed my hair and looked around as casually as I could, checking out the faces in the dark.

Cavan was here.

Dark Henley. Jeans. Motorcycle boots. One of the brothers—Purple Kush, he was called, after his favorite kind of weed—was talking, and Cavan was listening, his expression mildly interested, one eyebrow cocked. He’d jammed his hands into his back pockets, a posture that was both awkward and oddly graceful, pushing his lean body into a sinuous line.

“Mm,” said one of the other women, appreciatively. “He doesn’t come often, but I do like it when the ink shows up. That man is pure eye candy.”

I made myself turn away.

“Trinidad called him,” said Trinidad’s old lady, Maria. “McMurphy doesn’t think he comes to enough club events. Thinks he should show some more loyalty.”

He’s not a member of the club, I wanted to say, but I bit my tongue. It would do no good to defend him now. I just kept my expression neutral and finished off my drink, as if I was slightly bored and only half listening.

“He can show loyalty by getting naked for me,” the first woman said, and I laughed with them.

“You ever meet the ink?” another woman, Brenda, asked me. She looked at me a little too closely in the light from the barrel fire. McMurphy’s paranoia had spread through the entire club, much of it focused on me, which was one of the reasons I needed so badly to escape. It was bad enough having one monster suspecting my every move; having the entire club of them, plus their women, was becoming unbearable.

“Today was the first time,” I answered Brenda, looking her calmly in the eye. “He inked me this afternoon. McMurphy took me.”

That made me remember the feel of Cavan’s fingertips on my skin, his deft hands taking such care with me, his knuckle brushing the side of my breast. I tried not to shiver, tried not to get wet. The drinks were slowly going to my head.

The women made a bit of a fuss over my getting my first ink, which I couldn’t show them because of the spot it was in and the bandage over it. Secretly, I was glad. The birds were mine alone—well, now they were mine and Cavan’s, since he’d created them on my body. His mark, and mine. Not that he’d think of it like that.