Butch rose from his chair and threw a glass at me. It hit my forearm and shattered. Miraculously, it did not cut me badly, but I barely had time to react to that.
Seconds later, I felt Butch’s massive hands grabbing my jacket, yanking me out of my seat, and throwing me against the wall.
“Enough!” Lane said.
But if the President had any sense, he would’ve gotten the hell out and let us fight to the death. Because either this rat was going to die and I was going to do something good for the day, or I was going to die, and I wouldn’t have to worry about anything with the club anymore.
Butch approached me and raised his foot to curb stomp me. But I rolled to the side at the last second, got on my feet, dodged a punch, and landed a hard socket right to his gut.
Unfortunately, that shit hurt me more than it hurt him. I didn’t know where Butch had been training, but he’d clearly done a shitload of working out.
“Fuck!” I yelled as I shook my wrist.
Butch again grabbed my collar with one hand. This time, though, even though it felt like my hand had broken on impact, I peeled off his hand, slammed the base of my hand into his chin, and drove him back. With him briefly staggered, I raised my foot, drove it straight into his gut, and knocked him to the ground.
“Die, you fucking rat!”
But before I could get him, he swept my feet from underneath me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lane standing in the corner, keeping a healthy distance from the fight. It was almost like watching a hockey ref oversee a fight—he was going to let blows land until it got to the point that someone could get killed.
I scrambled to my feet just in time to feel Butch’s fist collide with my jaw. It knocked me right back to the ground. He mounted me, but I had the quick sense to buck him off with my hips, and we rolled on the ground, colliding with the chairs and the table legs. The more time that ticked by, the more it felt like someone had taken a baseball bat and driven it straight into my body.
“Motherfucker!” Butch yelled.
“Alright, enough!” Lane yelled, coming over. “Break it up! Break it—”
And then Lane learned why he needed to stay out of the fray. A stray fist of mine, meant to hit Butch in the face, hit Lane right on the side of the face, right by the eye. The hit again left my fist a little shaken, but Lane crumpled to the ground, writhing in pain. Butch shoved me violently away, but he did not chase after me. Instead, he tended to Lane.
“Not a fucking rat,” Butch said. “I am not a fucking rat!”
That fight hadn’t proved otherwise. If anything, the way he reacted so strongly just told me he was a rat. Why else would he react so strongly?
Maybe because anyone would react that way in this club if they were accused of being a rat?
“Whatever,” I said, spitting blood on the ground.
“You want to accuse indiscriminately?” Butch said. “Get out. We don’t need your kind.”
I had never heard Butch utter something that sounded so racist.
And I didn’t need to hear him say anything more.
Jerome was right. I wasn’t a part of this club.
If I was being forgiving, I would think that the way Butch suddenly changed facial expressions to one of regret suggested he didn’t really mean to be racist. It might have also indicated that perhaps his loyalty lay with the Black Reapers. After all, if he was trying to split us apart, his regret would not have been so instantaneous.
But I wasn’t being forgiving.
“You backwater prick,” I said. “You want to fight again? You want to fucking go?”
“That’s enough, Axle!” Lane said. “You two need some space right now.”
“But he’s—”
“That’s enough, Butch,” Lane again said. “You both can fight me on it if you want, but you’ll have the entire fucking club on your throat.”
I knew he was right. I hated that he was giving Butch something like the benefit of the doubt. Fine. He may not have been the club rat.
But he still had done a lot of shitty, fucking awful things.
