Hot Shot grunted and lifted his hand in a half-hearted wave.
“Road race last night. I didn’t win, but this chick didn’t seem to care. She was all over me—”
“Never mind,” I hastily cut in, moving faster to escape. “Forget I said anything.”
Hot Shot twisted around on his bar stool and called after me as I fled.
“I’m telling you, brother. Get rid of that Harley. Trade her in for a sports bike. It would get you laid in a heartbeat. Then maybe you wouldn’t be so damn grumpy all the time.”
“Over my dead body,” I muttered.
I found my bike when I was in a bad place, clawing my way through the worst PTSD flashback I’d ever experienced in my life. For days on end, I couldn’t eat or sleep. When I looked in the mirror, I didn’t recognize the gaunt skeleton that stared back at me, eyes haunted with horrors that wouldn’t stay buried.
By that time, I was fresh out of the military, wandering and aimless. Noah invited me to join him in his hometown of Brightwater, Montana, but I didn’t have my cabin yet. Just a shitty motel room with cockroaches that scuttled across the floor and mold on the carpet.
So, I did the one thing that always calmed me down when my brain went to shit.
I disappeared into the woods.
With the scent of impending snowfall sharp on the biting wind, I lost track of time and the days blurred together in a sleep-deprived haze.
Until I stumbled acrossher.Half-buried in the moss and forest rot, brittle with rust, strangled by weeds. She was a twisted lump of metal that used to be a motorcycle—a Harley Davidson Softail Springer. She was just as broken as I was, used up and tossed aside.
I dragged her three miles out of the forest, and thirteen miles back to town. It took months to get her into shape, but I dedicated every spare moment to piece her together again until my knuckles were bleeding and my muscles cramped. Breathing life into that hunk of abandoned junk.
Ever since then, my Springer has been with me through thick and thin. She’s a glossy emerald now, like the depths of the evergreen trees that sheltered her for so long. She purrs like a kitten, too, with a smooth, easy glide that would put a baby to sleep.
Hot Shot could keep his zippy little Suzuki. Nothing and no one could convince me to give up my bike.
At the back of the clubhouse, a handful of private rooms were available for anyone who needed a warm bed and a roof over their head. Most brothers had places of their own, and I certainly didn’t spend the night if I had a choice. It was too fucking noisy.
I pounded on the last door in the hallway, making the hinges rattle.
“What the hell?” came the grumbled response from inside.
Without waiting for an invitation, I shouldered the door open and stepped into the room, flicking on the light. Crash squinted in the glare and jammed a pillow over his face.
“Get up, Prospect,” I barked. “I have a job for you.”
Gavin “Crash” Fowler had been earning his keep for the past year, proving himself to the club. And we had put him throughhell, piling on the dirty work we didn’t want to do ourselves—cleaning the clubhouse from top to bottom, sweeping floors, fetching takeout.
“You guys kept me up all night being your errand boy,” Crash growled. “I’ve barely been asleep for two fucking hours.”
“Not my problem.” I grabbed his jeans from the floor and threw them at his head. “Put your clothes on. I need you to shadow someone for me today. And if you let her out of your sight for even a second, I’ll skin you alive.”
Crash heaved a sigh and sat up, scowling.
“If I do this, will you finally take a vote on my patch?”
I arched an eyebrow, fixing him with a long, silent stare. As the Sergeant-at-Arms, my rank was supposed to come with respect. Crash was just a Prospect—not even a fully fledged member yet—and his whining was about to get his ass kicked. He was supposed to obey orders. Not bitch and moan, attempting to bargain his way out of them.
Last year, when Crash became Prospect, he used to scuttle around like a kicked puppy and he never talked back. But he was growing bolder now, eager to cut his teeth on his membership and become a real, honest-to-God biker.
“That’s not how it works, kid,” I said. “We take the vote when we take the vote.”
Crash snatched his jeans and yanked them on over his boxers. I didn’t say it out loud but he had a point. Among the Blackjacks, Prospects were granted one year to earn their membership.
But Crash blew past that one-year-mark a few months ago. And we hadn’t taken a vote on his patch yet.
