Trainer’s face softened as he looked at his kid. “Tell me about it.”
While Dominic talked to Trainer about the new friend he’d made and the school play that he wanted to audition for, I saw two other people enter the garage. Trainer’s wife, Eve, came into the garage carrying a baby girl in her arms.
She greeted me with a smile before pecking Trainer on the lips. I found myself staring at a perfect little family. My focus was on the way that Eve and Trainer looked at each other. There was so much love there that I could practically see it in the air between them.
The twinge of jealousy I felt surprised me. I’d never concerned myself with the idea of settling down. I’d always thought that the idea of finding someone to be with forever was unrealistic, but that might have been because I didn’t understand my parent’s relationship. How could two people who were so different spend their lives together? I always suspected that it was because they’d gotten pregnant with my older brother early in the relationship, and marriage had seemed like the best option at the time. But now that I was around happy couples regularly with so many of the Outlaw Souls being in happy relationships, I found that I wanted that happiness.
No kids, though. Trainer’s children were great, and I genuinely enjoyed being around them and others, but I didn’t want to raise one myself. It just wasn’t something I was interested in. I preferred the idea of sharing my life with one other person, a woman who didn’t want children either.
“Do you want to come to lunch with us, Blade?” Eve asked, pulling me out of my thoughts and back to the present. I shook my head to clear it. “We’re going to Tiny’s.”
“Thanks for the invitation, but I’ve got to finish this oil change.”
She nodded with understanding.
“I’ll see you at the meeting later,” Trainer said as he polished off his beer and tossed the empty bottle into the trash.
I went back to changing my oil, finishing the job quickly. I was alone in the garage now, but I knew that someone was probably back in the office. As one of Outlaw Souls properties, it was a potential target for our rival motorcycle club, Las Balas, so it was never left unattended.
Las Balas were trouble. They dabbled in all sorts of shady shit, and Outlaw Souls had made it their mission to stop some of the more nefarious activities. Before I became a prospect with Outlaw Souls, they had busted up a sex trafficking ring run by Las Balas. They were kidnapping young women from La Playa and the surrounding areas to force into sex work or even sell as sex slaves. It was some nasty business involving several of the higher-up members of Las Balas. Since then, there had been a few incidents involving drug dealing and car theft.
Outlaw Souls weren’t saints, and they didn’t pretend to be. But as far as outlaw motorcycle clubs went, they were among the good ones. They worked to clean up La Playa, which was why I was eager to join the club. It was the reason I had gone out of my way to figure out what Luca was up to.
Ryder came out of the back office as I was disposing of the old oil I’d drained out of my bike. The bike was running, to make sure there was no leak around the drain plug as the fresh oil worked through the system.
“Hey, you got a minute?” Ryder asked.
“Sure,” I said, wiping my hands off on a rag. “You want to talk about Luca?”
“We’ll cover that later, at the meeting.”
“I’m attending the meeting?” I asked with mild surprise. Prospects didn’t have voting rights, so they didn’t attend the meetings. You had to be a Patch for that.
“Yes. We all need to hear what you have to say.”
“Then, what’s up?”
“I hear you’re working at Ink Envy.”
“Yeah, you been there?”
He shook his head. “No, but I’m looking to get some work done. You up for it?”
“Sure. What did you have in mind?”
“On my forearm,” he held it out, showing me the unmarked skin. “I want a skull with the stem of a red rose between its teeth.”
“Sounds badass.”
“I saw a similar picture a few days ago and have been thinking about it ever since. Can you do it?”
“Definitely. Tuesday afternoon?”
“I’ll be there.”
I left the garage after that. I had a few hours to kill before the club meeting, so I decided to go for a solo ride. Laying on the throttle on the straight-aways so that I felt like I was flying down the road and weaving through the curves on the backroads that got so intense my knees damn near touched the ground, it was a perfect afternoon. The best thing about riding was the thrill of it, and I liked to push it sometimes.
You only live once, and I wasn’t going to waste it.
