“Like in Vegas? I mean, plenty of people—”
“I mean here. Do you have a place yet?”
“I just closed on one, but no, I haven’t announced—”
“Good, keep it that way,” he said. “They probably already know that I’m here, which is bad enough, but let’s just keep it on the road. When we get moving, it’ll be easier to see if anyone is following us.”
What in the world had I gotten myself into?
An hours-long car ride with Ash. You knew what you were getting into when you tried to get him back. Don’t let it go to waste.
I hurried to help him get his bags in the car, and when we were finally packed, I drove the car out of my work complex and toward US-93, the road that would take us up to Las Vegas. I saw him looking over his shoulder and at the rearview mirrors several times. It took probably half an hour of us on the road before Ash finally settled down.
More than once, I found my hand moving to his leg, as if to calm him down. But I barely thought better of it, preferring to wait for a calmer moment to show some level of intimacy—if I even got the sense he was open to that.
Which…I knew he was.
I guess I was just scared of getting hurt and rejected again.
It was painful enough going through everything the past year. I’d put up a pretty face for him when I saw him and in the past few days, but a pretty face and an open heart didn’t mean the heart lacked scars or wounds.
Finally, Asher let out an audible breath.
“I don’t think we’re being followed,” he said as he turned up the radio, something I’d almost never seen him do in the time that we’d been married. It was perhaps as clear a sign as any that he was feeling better.
“So you’re good?”
“For now,” he said. “You can never be too sure with King. But I think it’s fine now.”
King. I’d heard that name so much. I’d heard a bunch of names before. King. Sonny. Black Reapers. King’s Men.
It was time to learn a bit about those names.
“You know, if we’re going to share our apartment with one of these clubs, the least you can do is give me some indication of what’s going on,” I said. “I’m into this now. There’s no pushing me out. You might as well tell me more.”
Asher’s face contorted, but he didn’t reject my request as he might once have. He understood I wasn’t backing down. That, or he was just tired of fighting me.
“King puts on a professional image, but he’s just a power-hungry sociopath,” he said. “He encouraged me to join back in the day. Said he’d give me something that I’d never had in my life. Meaning. Brotherhood. But it just turned into the military without the freedom those guys have—which is saying something.”
He let out a sarcastic chuckle.
“If it’s a military, it’s more like North Korea than North America,” he groused. “I had to go to Arizona back then, back before I left you, to tell the Devil’s Patriots they needed to surrender. I…got my ass beat. So I laid low. And that’s when the Black Reapers came to town.
“They recognized what I knew. That King and his club weren’t going to stop at anything to destroy other clubs, that they would leave a trail of blood and violence along the way. And here’s the thing—if you asked an outsider, they’d all say King was the nice one. Dressed professionally, charming, appearing to be friendly. The Black Reapers and the Devil’s Patriots, not so much. I mean, for fuck’s sake, the club president of the Patriots is called Satan.”
I laughed at that, though it was an uneasy laugh. I just figured Ash wanted some sort of sign I was paying attention.
“But a suit doesn’t make you an angel any more than wearing the name Satan makes you the devil,” Ash said. “Fuck, I should write that one down. But for real, though, you’re in this because the Black Reapers want to use our apartment as a sort of base while they try and see what resources and options there might be in Las Vegas. Think of it like an anonymous base.”
“That makes sense,” I said. “And…”
The question that I was afraid to ask for being too stupid finally got asked.
“You really were afraid King would kill you if you showed up again?”
“Oh, a hundred percent,” Ash said with such certainty that he sounded like he was saying the sky was blue. “Yesterday, I met up with Crush, their sergeant-at-arms. You’d recognize him instantly if you ever met him. Red beard, soul-haunting eyes, monstrous build, mean motherfucker. It was the first time I’d ever met one of them since I got my ass beat by the Devil’s Patriots, and the only reason I did so was because it was the only way we’re ever going to know peace.”
“We?”
