Prologue
Slim
September 2010
Whenever life, work, club business, or the heat feels like too much, nine times out of ten, I get the hell out of Tucson for the day. I hop on my bike, take the Tanque Verde road, then turn onto the Catalina Highway, and drive up towards the wonderfully cool air of Mt. Lemmon.
At the Loma Linda picnic area, right by the tables, stands a thick, tall pine tree with a heart carved into its rugged bark.
Inside the heart, you can still see the letters D + R.
Over the years, the tree has tried to heal itself, and the letters have faded somewhat, but ultimately they’ve prevailed over nature and have, at this point, become an unerasable part of that tree.
I can’t remember the last time I felt the need to come up here. Nine months ago, maybe?
I trace the letters with my thumb.
Dylan loves Rebel.
Rebel is the heartless bitch who left me almost seven years ago without so much as a word of explanation. She left her property cut neatly folded on my bed and just dropped off the face of the Earth.
The first year after she left passed in a drunken daze - there wasn’t one second in the day when I wanted to be conscious or have a functioning brain. Turns out, both of these are pretty important things when you’re a tattoo artist, so, in addition to being heartbroken, I also ended up unemployed.
Then our late Prez had a sit-down with me, man-to-man, and that helped a little. Together, we made a plan for my future. I sobered up, focused on building my business, and spent the next two years fucking every willing blonde in a 10-mile radius.
One morning, I woke up and noticed it hurt a little less. If you ask me these days, I barely ever think of her.
So why is she back? Why now, when she couldn’t even show her face for longer than an hour when her own father died?
The whole clubhouse must have heard me and Prez yelling this morning when he ordered me to hire Rebel in my shop.
“Gray Wolves MC gave you the money to start Inkspiration, so you will do as you are told,” were his exact words.
That’s when I lost it.
“How can you do this to me, man? You know better than anyone what she did to me.”
“Stop acting like a bitch! It’s been over six years; you need to get over yourself,” Prez told me cruelly, and then he dropped the bomb that Rebel would meet me at the clubhouse tonight, to explain.
So, after a few hours of staring at trees in order to clear my head, I drive my bike back to the clubhouse, sit down at the bar, andwait for her arrival, choking my beer bottle to unload some of the impotent anger inside me.
This whole thing feels like someone’s ripping an almost healed wound in my chest open. I’m right back where I was when she left, mourning the life I had planned out with Rebel as my old lady and at least three rugrats roughhousing with their Daddy at the club barbecues.
She took all that away from me.
But the old Dylan, the stupid, weak boy who used to give in to her every whim, is gone. I shake my head to dispel the memory of those days, when I was a lowly prospect, and Rebel was the unattainable club princess.
Things are different now. I’m 33 years old, I own a business and a house, and I have hundreds of hours at the gym under my belt. I straighten up, relishing the sensation of my pecs straining against my shirt.
Now, Rebel’s going to see what it’s like to deal with Slim, the man, the club brother, and her boss.
I nod to myself before taking a swig, and the prospect manning the bar nods back. I almost chuckle at the poor bastard’s confusion. Prospecting is a rite of passage we all go through, and once you’re patched, you can look back at it fondly. I wish that were true for all things in life.
The door opens, and I glance up at the mirror above the bar, not wanting to give the heartless bitch the satisfaction of eagerly turning around.
Only, she doesn’t look so heartless as her eyes search the room for me. She looks insecure and small, like she did whenever her mom had too much to drink.
“Hey,” I hear her familiar raspy voice next to me, and it takes all my energy to look like I’ve been distracted and unaware of her arrival.
