Jess just stood with her hands on her hip, gave the world’s most casual shrug, and took my twenty bucks. Only when she handed me the change did she answer with a “business” flirtatious smile.
“Ask around,” she said. “It’ll do you some good. You might learn some things.”
I groaned, giving her back three bucks on a ten-dollar bill. I nodded to Patriot to join me in the back, and we found our seats in a booth where we both had the eyesight of the only door in the entire bar.
“Let me guess,” I said before we began. “That shit was in reference to me being aloof in the club.”
Patriot took a sip of his beer, giving nothing away with his body language.
“Actually, man, I have no idea, but let’s be real, wouldn’t surprise me.”
“Shit.”
If even the bartenders knew, then I really did have to change.
“You really gotta get yourself more involved, Lane,” Patriot said. “There are no ifs, ands, or buts about that. If you think Axle finally mentioned what he did because he had a momentary outburst, you’re wrong. Someone like Axle does not say something like that without contemplating his words for a long, long time.”
“I know, I—”
“If you do, why did you let it happen?”
I sat back into the booth, letting my body sink into it. I both wanted to collapse into it, becoming one with it, and to spring forward as a different kind of Lane, a badass motherfucking Lane who wasn’t afraid of shit. Unfortunately, as seemed to be the case for me in the last year or so, I wasn’t getting what I wanted.
“The thing you have to realize, Lane, is how serious this is,” Patriot said. “It’s not just that they think you’re being aloof. They don’t trust you.”
“The fuck?”
Of all the things to question, my loyalty to the club was the last thing I felt was fair. It didn’t just bother me, it genuinely offended me. I could feel the tension rising in my stomach as my teeth gnawed shut. What did I have the last name Carter for if not that?!?
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“They don’t trust that if shit went down, you’d be coming into the fight to help.”
Oh.
Well...
They may not be as wrong as I would like them to be. At least they’re not questioning my loyalty to the club—that would be unforgivable.
“Tell me the truth, Lane,” Patriot said. “Man, you know I’m not going to tell anyone. You know I’ve got your back. But would you?”
“Would I what?”
Patriot looked like he was struggling to control his frustration at my confusion. It was one thing if Axle got mad at me, but if my best friend did...
“I mean, would you go into battle if shit went down? If guns started firing, would you join Butch, me, Axle, all the other brothers in combat?”
The fact that I was even hesitating gave Patriot the answer he needed. I didn’t want to lie to Patriot. But confessing the truth to Patriot, someone who had seen actual comrades die in combat in far more gruesome ways than we ever would on the streets—in ways he wouldn’t even describe to me—felt even worse than telling the truth to Butch and Axle.
Telling the truth to Butch and Axle was admitting weakness to veterans in the club whom I more or less only had a professional relationship with. Telling the truth to Patriot was admitting weakness to my best friend and to someone who knew what true courage looked like.
“Look, you don’t have to tell me the answer, man,” Patriot said, which felt like his way of covering face on my behalf. “But when the time comes, when the next risky run comes up, you have to put yourself in the line of fire. You heard what I said about them not trusting you. But what I’ve also heard is that if you don’t start doing that, they may vote you out as President.”
“That’s beyond insane,” I immediately snapped.
Whatever sense of image I was trying to project was forgotten immediately by perhaps the gravest insult the club could have given to me.
“My father founded this club and ran it for decades. He raised me—”
