"Don't tell me to keep my voice down. Dad's lying in a hospital bed dying and you're out here spreading your legs for a man twice your age? You know what Dad wants, Sara."
The words hit me and I flinched, stopping a few steps from him where I could see his angry glare in full detail. "You don't know anything about Garret."
"I know enough. I know he's forty-three years old and you're twenty-five and he's patched into a gang that sells drugs and breaks bones for a living. What else do I need to know?" He gestured at the cut I was wearing. "You're literally wearing his colors, Sara. Do you understand what that means in their world?"
"I know what it means."
"Then put it down." I ignored him, moving toward the shop. "Dad would lose his mind if he saw this. You know that, right? After everything he did to keep Danny and me away from those people, his daughter is out here having sex with one of them behind his shop. While he's on life support." Andy's voice cracked on the last part and I could see his eyes glistening. "What are you thinking?"
I didn't have an answer for him because he wasn't wrong. Everything he was saying was everything I'd already told myself a hundred times, and hearing it come out of someone else's mouth didn't make it easier.
"I'm going to bed," I mumbled, and didn't bother turning over my shoulder. The ache in my chest was too raw to stand here fighting with my brother.
"Sara—"
"I said I'm going to bed, Andy."
I slipped inside and went straight to the bathroom and locked the door. I peeled off my clothes and turned on the shower and stood under scalding water and cried.
Andy was right. Dad would've lost his mind. Mom would've cried. And if either of them knew the full truth, that the man I'd just been with in the grass was the father of the little boy sleeping down the hall, it would've been so much worse than a lecture.
18
GARRET
The Cardinals were down by three in the seventh and I couldn't have cared less. I'd been sitting on my couch for two hours staring at the tv without registering a single pitch, turning the same problem over in my head until the edges were worn smooth.
My cut was at Sara's house. I'd left it spread on the grass behind the engine shop and I needed it back before the club rode this weekend, because if Lightning noticed I wasn't wearing it he'd start asking questions. And if those questions led back to Sara I'd have a bigger problem than a missing patch.
How many times over the past three days had I tried to send a message to her to let her know I needed it? When I rolled by the diner and saw her bike there, I just kept riding. Facing her felt impossible now, and foolish. Andrew held a gun on me to chase me off—an actual gun. It didn't matter if Sara and I wanted this thing to work. Clearly, her brothers felt the same way Peter did.
And Lightning would make things ten times worse anyway. It wasn’t safe for Sara to be in my life at all. It never had been, and I'd been stupid enough to let myself crave her.
I picked up my phone and typed out a message again, and this time I left the emotion and explanation out of it. It was direct and to the point to send a message that needed to be sent, and it wouldn't send any mixed signals. At least I hoped it didn't.
Garret: 7:14 PM: I need my cut back. Can you meet me behind the Griddle tomorrow after your shift?
I set the phone on the couch cushion and went back to trying to distract myself with the ball game. The batter struck out and the inning ended, and I was reaching for my beer when headlights swept across the front window of my trailer. The rumble of a few bikes rattled the old bones of this dump and a few seconds later, Butch and Rusty came through the door without knocking.
Butch had a pack of cigarettes in one hand and a six-pack in the other, and Rusty was already pulling a joint from behind his ear. They were joking about something, laughing it off as they strolled into my living room and took up residence like they owned the place, which wasn’t abnormal after my wreck. They were the only two club members who acted like they cared much at all for me.
"You watching the game?" Butch asked, dropping onto the other end of the couch.
"Trying to," I said, bringing my beer to my lips to slurp it. Neither one of them noticed the scowl on my face or my missing cut. Or if they did, they said nothing about it.
"Cardinals are getting killed." He cracked a beer and handed it to me, then cracked one for himself and took a long drink before settling back into the cushions.
Rusty grunted and nodded at the screen saying, "They gotta put in their back up pitcher. This guy is a joke. He can't throw nothin'." I didn't have an opinion considering I wasn't really watching the game nor following along with the season. It could've been figure skating on the thing for all I cared.
"You hear what happened with the new prospect?" Butch asked before taking a few pulls from his beer. I'd been hiding out for so long club life seemed to move on without me lately, more so than when I was laid up.
"Which one?" I asked.
"The kid from Hollister. Tall, skinny, had a beard that looked like Shaggy…" Butch shook his head and set his beer on his knee. "Lightning beat the living hell out of him yesterday over at the shop—in front of everybody."
"For what?" I asked, narrowing my eyes. It was just like Lightning to teach a prospect a lesson but a beating that warranted gossip about it wasn't like him.
Rusty lit the joint and took a drag, holding the smoke in his lungs before he answered.
