I turned to Emily, who was now reading over the notes I’d left on the table. She picked up the legal pad and turned it in her hands, tracing the lines with a finger.
“You really think they killed her for club business?” she asked, voice so soft it barely made the distance.
“I think they did it because they knew it would hurt,” I said, sitting across from her. “And because people like us don’t get to walk away.”
She stared at me, the green in her eyes almost black in the dim light. “What are you going to do?”
I wanted to lie, say something noble, but all that came out was the truth. “Whatever I have to.”
She sat, arms around herself, thinking. “I’ve lost people, too,” she said finally. “Not like this, but… You get tired of pretending it’s not rage under the sadness.”
I nodded. “Sometimes rage is all you have.”
She set the pad down, leaned in close. “Just don’t let it swallow you whole. Promise?”
I reached for the tags, rolling them in my fist, feeling the cold edge settle me. “I promise.”
Sergeant whined, sensing the static, and butted her head between us until we both laughed, the sound brittle but real.
We spent the rest of the night not talking about the club, or the funeral, or what would happen when the Scythes rolled out for revenge. Instead, we watched an old war movie with the volume low and the dog curled between us on the couch.
I let Emily fall asleep against my shoulder, her hair tangling into the patch on my vest. I wrote her name on the legal pad, underlined it, and felt something like purpose bloom in the dark.
Tomorrow would be business. But tonight, for a few hours, I let myself breathe.
7
Dean
Rain, the color of lead and old bruises, fell in sheets over the cemetery, pooling on the granite and bleeding down the fresh mounds like ink off a shoddy tattoo. It flattened the grass, beat the flowers into the mud, and did nothing to clear the sour rot of a world gone wrong. My father’s stone was already three years old, the dates hard and final; Ma’s was so new they hadn’t even set the real marker yet. Just a cheap plastic stake, her name scrawled in magic marker, already smudging to blue in the rain. That’s how quick it happened. That’s how little the world cared.
I stood over both graves, boots leaking cold, the rain matting my hair and soaking the collar of the cut. TheBloody Scythes patch—once a badge of ego, now just a sodden, dark shape against my back—didn’t keep the chill off any more than the leather did. I rolled the dog tags between my thumb and forefinger, the only thing in the universe that felt solid. My hands, for once, didn’t shake. Maybe it was because I was past the shaking part.
I didn’t look behind me, but I felt them. The club, fifty strong, in a loose ring around the cemetery, boots in the puddles and heads bowed. They didn’t care about rain; to them, weather was another opponent to stare down. Their bikes lined the chain-link, front wheels turned out for a fast exit, pipes gleaming wetly. Some of the prospects passed a flask, but the full-patchers just stood with arms folded, eyes always scanning the horizon. It was what they did best—show of force, shield against the world. No one from the Sultans or any of the other bottom-feeder crews would dare crash this funeral, but Damron made sure the perimeter was tight.
Off to the side, beneath the sagging branches of an old piñon, Emily waited. She wore black, not out of respect, but because it was all she owned that wasn’t already stained with bleach or animal hair. The rain soaked her straight through, but she never moved, never tried to huddle deeper beneath the tree. She watched, arms crossed, her face sharp in profile. She looked out of place among thebattered men and the raw angles of the graveyard, but she also looked like the only living thing left after an extinction event. I’d told her she didn’t have to come. She came anyway. She always did.
The priest—white-haired, voice like an empty bottle—rushed the prayers, probably hoping for a fast escape before his collar shrunk to his throat. When he said my mother’s name, I didn’t listen to the words. I watched the earth, watched the rain as it erased the boundary between old and new dirt. It made it seem like nothing ever really got covered up, just mixed in with the rest of the shit.
When the service ended, most people drifted off, flinching against the cold or ducking into cars. The club didn’t leave. They just waited, patient, rain beading on their vests and trickling down the bridges of their noses. It was their way of saying I wasn’t alone, even if I never wanted to hear it.
I stayed until the last shovel of dirt settled, until the groundskeeper had left to warm his hands, and until even the club started to shift uneasily, ready for the wake but unwilling to drag me away. Only then did I take my hand off the dog tags. Only then did I realize Emily had moved closer, her boots squishing in the mud just off my left shoulder.
She didn’t say anything. Not at first. She just waited in the way animals do when they sense you’re hurt bad enough to lash out. I respected that. I respected her even more for not trying to fill the silence.
We stood together, the rain coming down harder, wind picking up so it stung against the skin. I watched the names blur on the grave marker. My hands were empty now.
After a while, I said, “I thought it would feel different.” My voice sounded strange to my own ears, thin and wrecked. “All my life, people told me you don’t really become an orphan until the second one goes. Like there’s a switch that flips in your head.”
Emily cocked her head, listening. Her hair was wet against her cheek, dark and streaked, and she looked at me with those eyes that missed nothing and judged even less.
“I always figured I’d die before either of them,” I said. “It was the running bet in the club, too. Medina’s the kind of guy who throws himself between trouble and the world, just so he can say he was there first.”
She smiled, but it was the kind of smile you give a feral dog before you try to check its wounds. “You talk about yourself in third person now?” she said. “Is that the biker version of therapy?”
I barked a laugh, short and bitter. “Therapy’s not a luxury we get. You know what my dad told me the day Igot patched in? He said, ‘You picked this family, so it’s on you when they bury you in a patch of mud next to all the others.’ He didn’t even mean it mean. He just wanted me to know what it cost.”
Emily stepped closer, rain running off her jacket in thin rivers. “And your mom?” she said.
