Chapter One:
1982
Jesse
“Goddamn it, Jesse, will you stay out of my stuff!” Butch stormed as he came towards me!
I dove off my bed with Butch following me quickly, my hand still clutching the magazine I’d found under his mattress. I threw open our bedroom door and ran down the short hallway to the main part of the clubhouse, taking a good look at the breasts of one of the club skanks as I raced past her.
“Looking good, Bernice!” I called, laughing my ass off. She blew me a kiss and kept on walking, her pert ass swaying hypnotically.
Butch was already tiring, and there was no way he would catch up to me. He may have been big, but I was fast. And he was still hungover from the night before. I slowed down and turned around, finally dropping the magazine and flipping him the bird with both hands while laughing.
And then I was flying through the air and landing on my ass.
I looked up at the ceiling, the wind completely knocked out of me, wondering what the hell had just happened, when Dom’s face came into view, his wolf-grey eyes staring down at me. He grinned and then moved out of the way for Butch to grab me.
“Shit!” I swore as he grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and dragged me up to my feet. He was taller than me, but not by much considering our five-year age gap. He was much stronger, though; it would be years before I could catch up to him. That much I was certain of.
Butch was almost six foot already, and built like a machine. So much so that I’d worried for a while that he was using steroids or some shit. But no, it was all just good, honest, home-grown Hardy DNA. His skin was, so far, bare of tattoos and piercings, though I’d seen him flipping through magazines for weeks picking out what he wanted.
Butch slammed me against the wall of the clubhouse and glared at me, and I waited for his fist to hit me. But it never came. Instead he shook his head and started to laugh and dropped me back on my feet. He scrubbed the top of my head and tapped the side of my face with the back of his hand.
“Thought you were gonna piss yourself then for sure, little brother,” he laughed and started to walk away. Dom, another member of the club and Butch’s best friend, was laughing and followed Butch.
I looked around the clubhouse, noting some of the other members were watching us with annoyance. This wasn’t a school house and it sure as shit wasn’t a playground, yet I treated it as such because this place was all I had. The bikers grumbled and cursed when I ran around the place causing havoc. The women, though, they loved this shit.
“Ladies,” I said, taking a quick bow, and a couple of the skanks gave me a wink.
I jogged to catch up to Butch, and started following him outside, matching my stride with his. He was my big brother, and despite how annoying I could be—his words, not mine—he didn’t mind me hanging around him all the time. He was seventeen, almost eighteen, and prospect for the Devil’s Highwaymen, our dad’s MC club, and I was proud as shit to be able to call him my big brother.
He’d been looking after me since I was a baby, and had never made me feel like anything I did was any trouble to him—more of a father than my own had ever tried to be. We pretty much lived at the clubhouse, which was normally unheard of, but Dad spent almost all of his time there, so it had made sense to convert one of the wings of the old motel into a home for me and Butch to live in. At first we thought it meant we’d see our dad more, but that wasn’t the case at all. We probably saw him less, though neither of us really cared. Hardy, our dad, was not father material. He was a brutal dictator to both of us, though he had a particular dislike for me, for some reason.
Outside the day was hot, and Butch straddled his bike and slipped on his shades and a helmet. Dom did the same and they both started their bikes. Butch rode a custom Harley Davidson Road King, and he smoothed his hand over the dark green body as if it were a woman’s body. My brother loved that bike.
He saw me watching him and smiled. “You still saving up?”
I nodded.
“Good, because me and you, little brother, we’re going to build you the best damn bike there’s ever been.”
I smiled broadly. “It’ll be ours,” I said.
He reached over and scrubbed at my hair, and I darted out from under his grip self-consciously even as he and Dom laughed.
“Where you going?” I asked, wishing I was going with him.
“Club business, little brother,” he said with a smile. “Just waiting on Gauge turning up.”
“When will you be back?”
“Soon enough,” he replied, not even the slightest bit irritated by me.
“I want to come with you,” I said. I hated it when he left.
“You’ll be prospecting soon enough, little brother, then we’ll both get patched in and the real fun will start.” He smiled again.
Despite my father being the president of the club, I wasn’t really a member of the club. I was too young right then and if I was honest I wasn’t even sure if my dad would let me join. The man always seemed to have beef with everything I did. So I got told two things about club business: jack and shit. It pissed me off, but Butch assured me that he was saving a spot on his right-hand side, just for me—no matter what our father said. I just needed to grow up some more was all.
