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Hawk said Joker was a member of Lost Sons MC, but his cut is free of any club colors. Though it looks like some were ripped off very recently.
He scoffs and takes a long swig of his beer, slamming the bottle down against the table when he’s done.
“I’m between MCs at the moment. So if the Devils are recruiting, I’m listening.”
Is this where his friendliness has been leading to? He wants us to take him in, so he can fuck us over from the inside?
Why is everything I find out from him a new question? It’s getting annoying.
“I’m not involved with any of that.” I need to talk to Hawk about this request. As it stands, members can suggest prospects, but the checks are way more convoluted these days before anyone’s allowed near. And Joker here has already failed them.
“But you can put in a good word?” he asks, leaning over the table and looking at me intently. “The fuckers I was riding with… The Lost Sons… they accused me of some shit I didn’t do, stripped my colors and are now out for my blood over some shit I did do after all that, if you feel me.”
“What? You want revenge?”
“I want justice.”
I take a swig of my beer too. It’s gone warm and disgusting. “Why don’t you join Karma and the Forsaken Outlaws? They’re also looking for justice.”
“I want the bloody kind of justice. The kind you Devils deliver,” he says and finishes off his beer without breaking eye contact with me. I can read absolutely nothing from that look.
And I have no idea how to respond.
He laughs. “Relax, dude. I don’t need the answer right now. Just put the feelers out, OK?”
“I can do that,” I say. “But I’m not all that high up… my word doesn’t count for shit with the Devils.”
“I bet it counts for more than the word of your drunken, brawling friends,” he says.
“Not much more,” I say.
He stands up and stretches, yawning loudly. “I gotta get some shut eye.”
And that’s all he says before striding out of the bar like a guy with all the energy in the world. Times like these I wish my life so far taught me how to recognize who wants to fight or kill me, or who I should fight or kill first. I’ve just always done the latter to be on the safe side. I have no idea what to make of any of that. And I feel like I’ve been played somehow. I’ve spent the whole night thinking I was the one luring him in, but I think it was the other way around. That he was the one befriending me so he could ask me to let the Devils know he’s looking to join.
Maybe Edge is right, maybe Hawk just made up that story about Joker getting ready to lead the war against us. It never made any sense that the MC would trust me with a mission as important as finding the snitches responsible for the deaths of at least ten of our brothers. Maybe we’re being tested too. Or I am. Edge took that bullet for Cross. I’ve done absolutely nothing of note since I joined.
But it’s been too long a night to try and figure any of that out. I kick Fossil’s chair a few times to wake him up, then have to let him lean on me as I take him to bed. Now I can sleep too. And hopefully dream of Ariel and how fierce she looked with my Desert Eagle in her hands. Like a warrior. Nothing weak or broken about her.
14
Ariel
No one followed me to the guest house after I left them in the living room. Not right away, anyway. But about an hour later Veronica and Mom did come. But I’d already turned off all the lights and was lying in bed in the dark, thinking back on the day. I didn’t answer their knocks.
My memories of the day were crystal clear. The power I felt shooting the gun and the thrill of the bullet leaving the barrel buzzed through me. The exhilaration when that bullet also hit the intended target was off the charts. That only happened when Ruin was supporting my arm, helping me aim. And the feel of his body against mine, his hand wrapped around mine, his strong arms holding me steady… that featured prominently in those crystal-clear memories too. Or rather, how much I liked it did.
I didn’t think getting touched by a man could ever be pleasant for me. But maybe it can.
I stopped those thoughts as soon as they arose, because hope, I’ve found, just makes everything hurt worse when it doesn’t materialize. Before I was saved, I had a few glimmers of hope that I would be. In the beginning. A man who told me he loved me and would get me out of there. An open door and no one in sight. A run down the street into the night.
Only to be abandoned by that man, faced with a locked gate, and run down by motorcycles and dragged me back.
I lost all hope before the cops finally busted in one night and I was free again. Maybe I even stopped wishing for it. Because wishing and hoping are pretty much the same when it comes to causing unbearable pain. So I don’t engage in either.
But I fell asleep wishing for another shooting lesson with Ruin and hoping it would come soon.
I wanted to text him as soon as I woke up the next morning. But by then the hope had faded and the thing I could remember most vividly was the hurt and shocked looks on my family’s faces.
