I look at him.The kind of look that says my answer isn’t changing without me saying the words.
He shrugs.“Thought I’d keep guessing.”
I push off the stool.“I’m heading out.”
Grit snorts.“Quick change of your mind.To the clubhouse?”
I grab my cut at the edges pulling it close around me a reminder I never ride alone anymore.“Eventually.”
“Want company?”Grit asks and I shake my head.Grit tips his bottle toward me.“Don’t do anything stupid.”
That almost gets a smile out of me.“With what?”
“The woman.”Looney and Stunt answer in unison.
I bark a laugh and head for the door before anyone can say anything else.
Outside, the night air is heavy with Gulf moisture and the smell of gasoline.My bike sits under the lot light, black paint dull under a layer of road dust.She needs a wash.So do I.I swing a leg over the seat but don’t start the engine.
Instead, I sit here a moment with both hands on the bars, staring at the stretch of dark road leading out from the Black Rose Tavern.
Lucy.
The bartender said her name once, and somehow it stuck.I don’t do this.Don’t sit around wondering about women I meet in bars.Don’t replay the look on their face when I get close enough for them to smell danger on me.Don’t think about what they might be driving home to.
But she mentioned a daughter.
That hit harder than it should’ve.A kid changes things.Means responsibility.Means roots.Means some asshole ex doesn’t just get to fade off into history because he’s inconvenient.Means any trouble aimed at the mother splashes on the child too.
I don’t know why that sits so wrong in my chest, only that it does.Maybe because kids deserve better than chaos at home.Maybe because a woman shouldn’t have to face some drunken piece of shit alone while the rest of the room watches.Maybe because a woman shouldn’t experience any fear at the hands of a man, but especially not at home or on a regular basis.Maybe because she looked at me like I was both terrifying and safe, and I don’t know what the hell to do with that.
I start the bike.The engine rumbles to life under me, low and steady.
Normally the sound settles me.Tonight it just gives my thoughts a soundtrack.
I pull out of the lot and onto the highway, taking the long way back toward the clubhouse.The road curves along the dark edge of marsh and pine, salt air mixing with the smell of hot engine.Freedom Falls at night is all hush between bursts of life—porch lights on isolated houses, bait shops gone dark, neon beer signs glowing in windows of places like the Black Rose.
I know every inch of these roads now.
Didn’t always.
I left Alabama young and stayed gone longer than anyone expected.Put miles between me and everybody who knew my name.Rode through cities too loud to sleep in and deserts empty enough to hear yourself think.Took jobs where I found them.Picked fights I should’ve walked away from.Collected scars and stories and enough bad habits to build a personality out of.Still wound up back here.
Freedom Falls gets in your blood even when you think you’ve bled out enough of it to leave.
The Kings helped with that when I was out in California.When I made my way back here, met up with Chux, I missed club life.Together we built the Freedom Falls Kings of Anarchy MC and it’s settled me at a soul deep level.
I wasn’t the best at following rules before the Kings but meeting Big Daddy years ago gave me a moral compass to live by.A code of my own.It made sense when laws didn’t.It comes with judgement, living this one percenter life style.Hell, in towns like this everybody does it, jumps to conclusions.Some people call us criminals.Some call us guardians.Truth of it lies somewhere in the middle.We protect what’s ours.Sometimes the law lines up with that.Sometimes it doesn’t.
Either way, folks know there are rules.And if word gets out that some drunken asshole put hands on a woman in Crystal’s place and walked away without a scratch, it sends the wrong message.
Maybe that’s all tonight was.Maybe that’s the story I’ll stick with.
The clubhouse comes into view twenty minutes later, sitting back from the road on a spread of land edged by pines and bad decisions.Floodlights throw pale circles across the gravel lot.Bikes everywhere.Music drifting from inside.Laughter.The low thump of bass.
Home.Well, the clubhouse version of home.I don’t actually want to be at my house tonight, then again, it’s not often I want to be there.
I kill the engine and head in.
