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Nothing but a fuckup. An animal. Nothing but the feral kid. Throw him some scraps. Don’t worry about how he feels. He doesn’t have feelings.Itdoesn’t have feelings. That’s me, right down to my skin, cells, and DNA.
When I finally find a place to belong, when I finally find a brother, what do I do? What sort of dumbass choices do I make? I growl inside my helmet, and the bike growls louder beneath me as I pick up the speed and blaze across the asphalt. It would be better if I could hate myself for this, but that would mean regretting what we did. It would mean regretting every single moment. Still, I go faster.
“Kai,” I hear her yelling, the only voice that could pierce this fog. I’m growling and grunting like a crazy person, shaking all over, wishing I could just keep riding until the wheels fall off or I do. “Kai,Kai.”
With my woman on the bike, too, I slow down. I can’t risk her life. I bring the bike to a stop at the side of the road, take off my helmet, and throw it on the ground. I’m embarrassing myself, but the anger takes over as I cave in the helmet with my boot. I keep hitting it, over and over, until it’s crushed. I’m panting and sitting in the dirt.
“Kai,” Kay whispers, her voice shaking as if afraid of me.
I sit with my fists resting on my knees, staring off at nothing, trying not to think about the past and all those countless moments. The time Ryan threw a baseball so hard, it smashed a neighbor’s window, and I said I did it, and then he bought me a pair of boxing gloves to say thanks. Or all those shooting sessions in the dusty wild together, honing our skills—him laughing and me laughing—and everything was good.
Kay leans down, gently placing her hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay.”
I clench my teeth so hard I wonder how I don’t shatter them. I almost want to let them explode, let all the tension erupt out of me. Instead, I reach up and touch Kay’s hand.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “This isn’t about me. I need to get my act together.”
“You’re allowed to have feelings.”
I almost tell her,Look where our feelings have led us.We’re sitting in the dirt, Ryan betrayed and half-dead, but she’s not in the dirt. It’s just me. I stand, trying to stop myself from trembling, the ruin of my helmet staring up at me like a distorted grimace.
Kay touches my arms and squeezes them gently. “It’s going to be okay. I know it is. Ryan’s so tough. He can fight anything. Hewillfight anything. You’ll see.”
I’m supposed to be the tough one, but here she is, comforting me. “You’re right. I don’t know what came over me. It’s just…”
“What?” she says, with almost a note of desperation in her voice. “Kai?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Leaning down, I pick up my helmet. It was expensive and sturdy, and now it’s a wreck. “We need to get moving.”
“Itdoesmatter.”
She takes my hand and spins me around. We’re surrounded by what feels like our natural setting—dusty miles, the sun already setting, and the dust turning orange. The remaining light shines in my woman’s eyes as she steps forward, gazing up at me. For a second, a paranoid part of me thinks about Ryan watching us. Then I remember the shootout. He’s not watching anything.
“We need to—”
“You can talk to me about anything. This is all moving so fast.” She holds my eye contact stubbornly. “That doesn’t mean you can’t share your pain with me. That’s why I’m here. I hope you know if we ever could be…”
Together. She can’t say it, and I don’t blame her. It’s agony to acknowledge things like that while thinking of Ryan.
“If you’re that concerned for me,”he taunts in my mind,“why are you just standing here?”
“You’d talk to me,” Kay says, “about anything. That’s what I’m here for.”
“It’s nothing. Just about before, when I was a kid. A memory.”
She smooths her hand to my shoulder, threatening to melt me with her delicate features and kind eyes. “What memory?”
“It’s—”
“If you sayit’s nothingone more time, we’re going to have a problem. I don’t care how big your muscles are.”
We both laugh, somehow, through the pain. Her eyes gleam playfully when she looks at me, but then she gets serious again.
“It’s about before I came to live with my aunt and found the club. I told nobody what happened except for Ryan.”
She swallows, moving closer to me. A car passes on the road, and I scan it, thinking of the rival club and the threat of violence. The never-ending need to keep my woman safe, no matter what happens or threatens us.
“They treated me like an animal and forced me to fight other kids in a muddy pit in the woods, a bunch of drunks and druggies laughing, cackling, watching. Looking back, it doesn’t seem real, but I once met one of the other kids. We went at it pretty hard on my ninth birthday. He remembers it all the same, too.”
