“You can’t just fu—”
“Believe me, I know. But they did. They asked us for help. They turned on the club, put Rabbi fucking away and gave up their colors… blacked out their tats…”
“Fuck…” I trail as I nod at him again. Thinking about my own very large piece which covers my back… well, what used to be a tat, now it’s just black… a large blacked out MC logo. I’m honestly just lucky that they didn’t cut it off. I’m positive that I would have bled out right there.
“Come on, man, they’re all excited.” He encourages me, and I slowly nod my head.
“Why? Why would they do that?” I ask him and he shrugs.
“I dunno, you should probably ask them that. Cause I have no idea what they see in you. You’re kind of a dick.” He looks over at me before we both laugh out and walk inside of the church. It opens up into the sanctuary. There’s still the stage in the room, but all the pews have been removed and replaced to make it into a lounge. There’s a bar on one side in front of what I’m guessing has now been converted into a kitchen. A majority of the club is already in the room, and I can hear the excitement grow.
“What the fuck did you guys do?” I laugh out as I take in the kuttes in the room. The handful of Midnight Syn kuttes as well as the blank ones that all of my brothers wear.
“You like it?” A laugh erupts from Tally as he tosses his arms out, gesturing to the surroundings.
“I mean, it’s fucking something, isn’t it?” I look around the room as I hear him laugh at my response.
“It seemed fitting enough. Hold church… in a church. Get it?”
“Oh, I fucking got it right away.” The entirety of the club erupts this time as all the guys embrace me. It’s weird being around so many people and not have to watch my back. I mean, I still am going to, but I probably don’t have to. “Why?” Is all I can say because I feel like if I add the, why would you do this if I fucking shut you all out for the last 4 years, that my voice will crack, emotion will show. And the last fucking thing I can do after the shit show that past 5 years have been is to show any emotion.
“Because we understood the way that everything looked. We got it.” I stand in disbelief as I stare at my surroundings, thinking about how alone I have let myself believe that I was for the last few years. When in reality, I’ve had a family here this whole time. A family that was refusing to fucking give up on me.A family that I damn-well don’t deserve.
“How the fuck did you guys do this?”
“We got most of the club money out before we defected. We pulled a lot of our own money in…” He trails off and I know that still wasn’t enough to buy this massive of a place in So. Cal of all places.
“And we may have helped some.” Khan says, shocking me slightly as I turn and look at the him and the rest of his club behind him.
“What?”
“Think of it as helping family.” He assures me.
Ash laughs out, “Yeah, you’re like the pain in my ass brother-in-law that I never wanted.” He’s right, though. He is exactly like a brother-in-law that I never fucking wanted.
They began to party afterwards, and I watched them, staring off, not feeling like this is actually real. How can it be? This whole time, I thought these men turned their backs on me. Left me out to fucking dry. I didn’t trust them like I knew I should have; I shunned them away, and in all, I was mistaken.
Still, after all that, they didn’t fucking give up on me.
I stand at the bar, still just watching my brothers as they mingle together and with the Midnight Syn. Khan walks up to me, looking over and leaning against the bar, almost mirroring my stance.
“Doing alright?” He asks me, making me shake my head. “Yeah, I get that. It’s weird to come home.”
“Yeah,” I mumble as I look around.
“You know, you can trust them.” Turning, I look at him, nodding my head before I look back, still stuck in a surreal moment.
“How long have they been doing this?” Nodding around the room at the surrounding area.
“A couple years.” He shrugs. “Tallahassee talked to Billie and Caroline to come in a race a few more times. Ya know, help everything get going.”
“They didn’t.” I groan as I look over to him, rolling my eyes and he nods his head, laughing.
“There was no stopping those two. As soon as they told the girls what they were up to, they were all in. Granted, it had to stay extra quiet. Couldn’t let them know what we were all up to.” I knew as soon as I was arrested that the club would take over the circuit I had built up all those years, overrun the warehouse in the desert, and that was that. All my damn hard work, for nothing. That’s why it had to stay quiet. They didn’t want the Marauders to know they were holding a race, cause if they did, they would have put together what it was that they were doing. And encroaching on someone's territory, exactly what it is we’re doing, is grounds to go to war. “Something about them changes when they get in there.” It’s overwhelming what the notion of them racing again means, since they swore the last time would be the absolute last…
But like I said before, Caroline can never be done with this life, and Billie, well she would never leave Care high and dry.
“I know.” I nod my head because it always has. The two of them are good, no, fucking great. I ran these races for a damn decade and for some reason, the two of them bring in more people than anyone else. It doesn’t matter how long they go without racing or how many fucking times they win, either. It’s as if the more they win, the more pissed off the men racing them get, and the more people will come in and bet on it. Sadly, men tend to bet against them, thinking every time that the last was just a fluke, that girls can’t drive like that. But the girls don’t slip. They don’t fail.
