“Marissa,” he says, and I meet his eyes in the rearview mirror. He winks. “Relax.”
Chapter 14
Marissa
An armed guard greets Hawk with a nod, lifts the ramp, and waves us in.
“This is the clubhouse and what we call the dorms. We’ll return here for the party,” Hawk tells me as he gestures to a three-story building that has a bunch of motorcycles parked in front of it.
We then drive up to another ramp, where Hawk presses his ID badge against a scanner, and the ramp lifts.
He wasn’t exaggerating when he said it was military-level safe.
“Is this… a gated community?” I ask, perplexed.
A smile creases his eyes in the rearview mirror. “This is the residential part, and the businesses are on a lot on the other side of that wall,” he says as he points to the left.
“You didn’t make it sound this fancy over the phone,” I mutter as I look around.
“These first two belong to Doc and Red. Red runs the gym, remember?”
“Are they the ones that used to be married?”
Living next door to your ex sounds awful. My face twists into a grimace.
“Yeah, but they’re friends now. They share a daughter, and this is good for her.”
Hard to believe, but okay.
“Red is one of the first female members, right?”
“She and Bev are actually two of the founders,” he says with a nod.
“Do they have their own bikes?”
Hawk seems amused by my questions. “They do, although Bev prefers to ride with her man.”
I already felt intimidated by the two accomplished women, and now that I know that they’re apparently also badass bikers, I’m terrified of meeting them.
Spending time with the women who hung around the Wolves, whether as old ladies, girlfriends, or club girls, was always fraught with a certain tension, as if we were competing with each other for status and resources. The resources, of course, being the club brothers.
And then there was our Queen Bee Boy Mom, Angie, who was constantly trying to convince herself and everyone around her that her relationship was better than theirs, that her child was the most precocious genius, that her tits were the perkiest, you name it.
I sigh at the memory.
The women in this club actually are better than me, and it has nothing to do with their looks or their delusions of grandeur.
“There’s a women-only riding academy in cooperation with Harley-Davidson that you can attend if you care to learn, or when you get bored of riding with me,” he says, oblivious to my darkened mood.
I smile weakly.
“This is Uncle’s house, and here’s me,” Hawk says as he pulls into the driveway in front of a two-car garage.
All the houses are gorgeous. They’re Spanish colonial style, with thick, textured, stucco walls and red-tiled roofs. The doors and windows are arched, and the decorative railings and small gates on the courtyards are made of wrought iron.
I unbuckle DJ and grab his diaper bag before stepping outside. The beds in the gravel yard house various types of agave, succulents, and cacti. Hawk watches me take it all in.
“Those three houses are empty. And the big one over there,” he says as he points to a house on the other side of the street and a little way away from the others, “is Prez and Bev’s. When they started the club, they had young children, so everything that they did when they built this place was for them. A safe, nice neighbourhood, their workplaces right next door, the Rio Salado trail nearby so they can get out into nature whenever they want, and only twenty minutes from downtown Phoenix.”
