Cole
My phone rang. Standing over my clothes drawer, I headed to my bed and looked down. “Lane Carter.” I tapped decline.
I returned to my clothes, grabbing two pairs of jeans, three white t-shirts, and some socks and boxers, stuffing them into a bag. Again, my phone rang. Again, it was Lane. This time, I silenced it but just let it go to voicemail.
I went to the bathroom, grabbed some deodorant, my razor, some shaving cream, and some clippers. I got a buzz that alerted me I had one new voicemail.
“Goddamnit, Lane,” I muttered under my breath.
At first, I just continued putting supplies and necessities into my bag, but I knew curiosity would win out at some point. I walked over to my phone and saw I had close to a thirty-second voicemail. I bit my lip, fully anticipating a verbal onslaught from Lane.
“Hey brother, we’re having the meeting now. We’re all wondering where you are. We hope you’re OK; let us—”
I deleted the voicemail. I did not have to hear anything more.
For what was anyone going to say that was going to change my mind? I didn’t belong with the Reapers. I never had. Fuck, I had never belonged with anyone or anything other than myself.
Let’s see. Family? My mother had died giving birth to me. My father always seemed to favor Lane, even if he had repudiated that notion on his death bed. My brother had excommunicated me, and for some reason now... maybe he had changed, but that didn’t erase over two and a half decades worth of older brother dickishness.
My club? Well, I had always been the doer for the Black Reapers back when my father was alive, but never a man of great importance. Now, the Black Reapers were consuming the Gray Reapers. Once more, the Black Reapers were becoming the sole, dominant Reaper club.
I said none of this with malice or bitterness in my heart. By this point, I had accepted it all as straightforward fact. Perhaps it qualified as depression and brooding the night before, but now, I had a plan.
First, I was going to change my phone and my number. I had done so a year and a half ago, but I had allowed myself to resurface when I wanted to. That was a mistake, but changing my contact information had not been.
Second, I was leaving Southern California. Just like Lilly had to leave to escape her father’s overbearing presence, I had to leave my brother’s and father’s shadow. They were certainly no Lucius, but their outsized impact on my daily life was all the same.
Third, I was going to go to Albuquerque.
Yes, I was serious. I didn’t know if Lilly and I were going to be romantically linked when we got there. I fully recognized that, past experiences and stories in my head aside, there were many reasons that our chemistry may have been an artificial development of being confined to a small space and me having rescued her. Once “normal life” took hold, maybe we’d realize we had absolutely nothing in common, nothing to keep us together for more than a couple nights of sexless cuddling.
But I sure did know that I could not just go to San Diego or Las Vegas, two cities that, while distinct from the greater Los Angeles region, could be reached in a single day. Albuquerque was a twelve-hour drive on even the best of days, meaning that even if I got found, I’d have a full day to prepare for the arrival of whoever from my past wanted to drop in. It was a fertile place for riding a motorcycle while also giving me the distance from my past.
Would I start another club? I didn’t know. I hadn’t thought everything out to the point that I could lay out a five-year plan for my life. But I knew that as long as I had my motorcycle, a new city, and my freedom, I’d be in a much better place.
And isn’t that what you thought a year and a half ago.
Again, my phone rang.
“Are you fucking serious?”
But this time, it was not Lane calling me. It was Phoenix.
For a second, my finger hovered over the “Answer” button, tempted to give someone who had not confronted me a chance to speak to me. But Lane had given himself away, saying that he was in a meeting. Nope, I would not answer.
At that point, I just turned my phone off entirely. I didn’t want to speak to anyone. I just wanted to be by myself.
I wanted, quite literally, to ride off into the sunset, saying farewell to my home for the last twenty-plus years, and start over as I moved through the darkness of this Friday night.
Just one problem.
It was only about four o’clock, and the sun would not set for another three hours. Maybe I was leaving myself open, but I decided to just open a couple cold ones, sit on the couch, and watch some TV. There was a lot I was leaving behind, but there was a lot I needed to leave behind.
In the end, I just turned it on toThe Empire Strikes Back. I had never been a bigStar Wars, fan, but what else was I supposed to do, sit on the porch and meditate until sunset?
As I saw lasers and brightly colored swords clash on the screen, I thought about all of the experiences I’d had in Springsville, from the bad ones, like getting bullied in middle school by Lane and his friends, to the good ones—almost all of them in the last six months. I thought about the women that had been, and the women that could have been, most notably, yes, Shannon.
The one that has driven all of the changes over there with the Black Reapers.
