Here we go.
Then he did and I had a clear path to my bike. A path I didn’t take, instead letting my daft boots carry me across the grass to where Locke was, the last conversation I’d had with Rocco ringing in my ears, an uncontainable need to look him in the eye one last time and tell him he had better options than whatever they were clinging to here.
“They’ll kill him eventually.”
I stopped in front of Locke, hands itching to touch him for reasons that were between me, God, and the woman of my dreams who was going to rip my curious dick off if I didn’t get home soon. “We’re not just a club, we’re a family, and whether Rocco comes back or not, this is a new era for all of us. If you want to spend that time fighting for Crow scraps, that’s up to you. Come find me if you want something different.”
I smiled.
He didn’t.
But I walked away with hope that one day he would and that I’d be around to see it.
2
LOCKE
NOW
The first song my kid ever learned to play was fuckin’ Wonderwall. She strummed it on repeat for three years straight. Drove her mum crackers, but I didn’t mind. It was a shitty time in my life. When I was too fucked up for my kids to see me, I’d sit with my back against Kara’s gate, listening to that song filtering from Willow’s bedroom window, wishing I was a better man.
These days, I knew I was, but that fuckin’ song. It always came back to me when I needed it the most, the gentle chords in my head the first clue that I was waking up to a nightmare.
My eyes were heavy.
I cracked them open, unseeing, and a solid wave of pain crashed over me.
My ribs.
My head.
A molten burn in my shoulder.
Blood.
I smelt it. Was it mine?
Felt like it, and my pulse rose to a thudding beat, throbbing against my ribs, the ache in my head manifesting in the side of my skull, right over my left ear.
The pain was familiar. I’d taken hits there before, from a right-handed motherfucker who liked to clock people with the handle of his favourite weapon. But that pain... it was years old. Priest didn’t even have that knife anymore. He?—
No. My eyes crashed shut. Why was I thinking about Priest? About anything Crow? That wasn’t my life anymore. Hadn’t been for long enough that the cracks in my heart had healed over. I had better brothers now.
I hadlovers. Right?
Fuckin’ hoped so, cos if the warmth in my chest was nothing but a dream, whatever had tried to kill me this time could go ahead and finish the job.
Logan.
Nicky.
Willow.
Blond hair filled my head. Eyes like mine, a laugh like a tinkling bell. A guitar stuffed on the front seat of a bright red car.
The image jumpstarted my brain. Willow hanging out of Kara’s living room window, hiding her vape in the front pocket of her sunflower dungarees like a regular fuckin’ idiot. Me passing her the guitar I’d been too destitute to pay for. The one Logan had fished out of a skip. The one Nash had fixed.
Nash.
