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“Let me guess.” Danielle brings her index finger up to her chin and taps it playfully. “Is it road rash?”
I push a few stray strands of hair out of her face. It’s the first time I’ve touched her, and it feels like electricity kisses my fingertips. “You’d be lucky if it was just road rash. If we crash and you’re not wearing a helmet, you could die.”
She rolls her pretty blue eyes and sighs. Then, in a deadpan tone, she recommends, “Maybe don’t crash then.”
“I wish I could say I was the only person on the road and therefore the only person responsible for if we crash, but you know, other cars exist,” I respond matter-of-factly.
It was a good idea to get away from the high school. Seeing her out here in the wild without the pretense of her being a student and me being a teacher changes everything. I feel comfortable around her, like this is the person I was always meant to be with.
Danielle reaches up and pulls the clip out of her hair. Dark locks fall around her shoulders as she shakes them free. “I guess you make a good point. But if I have helmet hair, I’m going to be super upset.”
I help her fit into the helmet and adjust the strap under her chin. “You look adorable.” I can forget that she’s eighteen when we’re like this. I can forget that she’s my TA and I’m an authoritative figure.
“Do I look like I could be a big, bad biker chick yet?”
I almost break into a fit of laughter. I know all types of women into motorcycles, from the prim and proper girls like Danielle to the leather-clad women I call my sisters among the Kings Of Carnage motorcycle club. The woman standing in front of me is the last person I expect to don leather chaps and get a tattoo. “I think you’re a few steps away from intimidating anyone older than ten, but I’m not saying it isn’t possible.”
Danielle reaches up to brush her fingers over the patch on my leather vest. “I used to wonder what this meant,” she admits, changing the tone of our meetup. “I always saw you or other guys around town wearing patches like this.”
I raise a curious eyebrow at her. “And do you know what it means?”
She meets my gaze and nods slowly. “I had to do some research, but I figured it out. What’s KOC, though?” Danielle runs her thumb across the patch for a second time, feeling the sewn fabric beneath her fingertips. “I know it’s your motorcycle gang or whatever. But what’s it stand for?”
“It isn’t a gang,” I correct. That notion has foiled too many of us before. I was lucky to get my job at the Manhattan High School. I had tattoos and drove a motorcycle, but when I came to my interview, I showed up in a respectable long-sleeve shirt and drove my truck. I am not ashamed of the men and women I call family, but we all need a job. Some members of the KOC haven’t been as lucky.
“Motorcycle club,” Danielle nods her head. “Sorry. I know,” she pauses and slows down, “I know there’s a difference between gangs and clubs.”
Yes. And no. We have all the makings of a gang, I’ll give her that, and some days it’s hard to tell the difference. We have members that sell drugs and do shady shit. We’re mixed up with the Valenti crime family from time to time. We’ve been known to take out our rivals and pin it on an innocent. But I like to think we’re more than the dark parts of our history, present, and future. “I think the difference is these patches.”
I bring my hand up to cover hers, and the electric feeling courses through my veins this time. “We are united by this patch. We identify brothers and sisters by this patch. If a family member is in need, we will move heaven and earth if they’re wearing this patch.” It takes a lot to earn a patch; that’s why they’re so sacred. “The KOC, Kings Of Carnage, started as an all-male motorcycle club of friends that just wanted to get together and ride. It became a brotherhood that transformed lives over the years. Now we have sisters and mothers. We have the feminine presence needed to keep us level-headed. We aren’t innocent people, but we’re family. Family is the difference between a motorcycle club and a motorcycle gang.”
Danielle holds my gaze. “Family,” she repeats after me. “Family is good.”
“Not always,” I warn her with a shake of my head. “Saint didn’t want me to see you. He said you’d ruin my life.”
Tension builds in her fingers. I can tell as I hold her hand to my chest, and she tries gently to pry it away. “Y-you told your brothers about me?”
Not my actual brothers. I have two of them, and neither would be too keen on listening to me drone on about a girl. “Saint,” I shrug, “and a few other guys in the club. Guys I’m close to.” I don’t tell her the vulgar things they said or admit the crude things I told them. “They’re worried about your age and that you’re still a student. I think they’re also worried about your father.”
“My dad?” She snorts and pulls away from me. “He’s a kitten. He’d do anything to see me happy.”
I doubt that. If he knew that she was out late on a school night having a secret rendezvous with one of his employees, he’d call the cops. “I think there’s a difference between seeing his daughter happy with a boy her age and seeing her happy with a man who’s forty.”
A lump forms in Danielle’s throat for half a second before she swallows past it. “You don’t know my dad,” she replies with a half-hearted smile. “We’ve been through a lot together. My mom left when I was really young, and it’s been the two of us ever since.”
Funny, we almost have that in common. “My dad left when I was five,” I admit. “I can relate. My mother and I were really close until she passed a couple of years ago.”
We share a sympathetic look, our emotions comprised of raw magnetism for one another and a shared connection. For the first time, I know that what I’m feeling for Danielle isn’t lust fueled by late-night stalking. It is genuine and real.
“I think I could bring you home tonight, and my father would allow it,” Danielle says after a few moments of silence. “He’d be upset for a bit, but once I told him I loved you, he’d get over it.”
She loves me. It’s strange to hear those words on someone’s lips. “I think he’d be mad enough to fire me.”
Danielle purses her lips to think about it for a minute before coming to the same conclusion. “Yes, he probably would. But he’d eventually accept it.”
I don’t know what to make of that if I’m being honest. If all I can hope for with Danielle is for her father to accept the two of us together one day, then what’s the point? I always thought I’d share a special bond with my future father-in-law. Growing up without a dad was hard. I imagined that my father-in-law would treat me like his son and not some guy that stole his baby girl from him.
Danielle goes on. “Your relationship wouldn’t be with him, though, so it doesn’t matter. What matters is what I think of you. And I’ve been in love with you since I was fourteen.”
