Chapter 7 Dean
Dean
Rain, the color of lead and old bruises, fell in sheets over the cemetery, pooling on the granite and bleeding down the fresh mounds like ink off a shoddy tattoo.
It flattened the grass, beat the flowers into the mud, and did nothing to clear the sour rot of a world gone wrong.
My father’s stone was already three years old, the dates hard and final; Ma’s was so new they hadn’t even set the real marker yet.
Just a cheap plastic stake, her name scrawled in magic marker, already smudging to blue in the rain.
That’s how quick it happened. That’s how little the world cared.
I stood over both graves, boots leaking cold, the rain matting my hair and soaking the collar of the cut.
The Bloody Scythes patch—once a badge of ego, now just a sodden, dark shape against my back—didn’t keep the chill off any more than the leather did.
I rolled the dog tags between my thumb and forefinger, the only thing in the universe that felt solid.
My hands, for once, didn’t shake. Maybe it was because I was past the shaking part.
I didn’t look behind me, but I felt them.
The club, fifty strong, in a loose ring around the cemetery, boots in the puddles and heads bowed.
They didn’t care about rain; to them, weather was another opponent to stare down.
Their bikes lined the chain-link, front wheels turned out for a fast exit, pipes gleaming wetly.
Some of the prospects passed a flask, but the full-patchers just stood with arms folded, eyes always scanning the horizon.
It was what they did best—show of force, shield against the world.
No one from the Sultans or any of the other bottom-feeder crews would dare crash this funeral, but Damron made sure the perimeter was tight.
Off to the side, beneath the sagging branches of an old pinon, Emily waited.
She wore black, not out of respect, but because it was all she owned that wasn’t already stained with bleach or animal hair.
The rain soaked her straight through, but she never moved, never tried to huddle deeper beneath the tree.
She watched, arms crossed, her face sharp in profile.
She looked out of place among the battered men and the raw angles of the graveyard, but she also looked like the only living thing left after an extinction event.
I’d told her she didn’t have to come. She came anyway. She always did.
The priest—white-haired, voice like an empty bottle—rushed the prayers, probably hoping for a fast escape before his collar shrunk to his throat.
When he said my mother’s name, I didn’t listen to the words.
I watched the earth, watched the rain as it erased the boundary between old and new dirt.
It made it seem like nothing ever really got covered up, just mixed in with the rest of the shit.
When the service ended, most people drifted off, flinching against the cold or ducking into cars.
The club didn’t leave. They just waited, patient, rain beading on their vests and trickling down the bridges of their noses.
It was their way of saying I wasn’t alone, even if I never wanted to hear it.
I stayed until the last shovel of dirt settled, until the groundskeeper had left to warm his hands, and until even the club started to shift uneasily, ready for the wake but unwilling to drag me away.
Only then did I take my hand off the dog tags.
Only then did I realize Emily had moved closer, her boots squishing in the mud just off my left shoulder.
She didn’t say anything. Not at first. She just waited in the way animals do when they sense you’re hurt bad enough to lash out. I respected that. I respected her even more for not trying to fill the silence.
We stood together, the rain coming down harder, wind picking up so it stung against the skin. I watched the names blur on the grave marker. My hands were empty now.
After a while, I said, “I thought it would feel different.” My voice sounded strange to my own ears, thin and wrecked. “All my life, people told me you don’t really become an orphan until the second one goes. Like there’s a switch that flips in your head.”
Emily cocked her head, listening. Her hair was wet against her cheek, dark and streaked, and she looked at me with those eyes that missed nothing and judged even less.
“I always figured I’d die before either of them,” I said. “It was the running bet in the club, too. Medina’s the kind of guy who throws himself between trouble and the world, just so he can say he was there first.”
She smiled, but it was the kind of smile you give a feral dog before you try to check its wounds. “You talk about yourself in third person now?” she said. “Is that the biker version of therapy?”
I barked a laugh, short and bitter. “Therapy’s not a luxury we get.
You know what my dad told me the day I got patched in?
He said, ‘You picked this family, so it’s on you when they bury you in a patch of mud next to all the others.
’ He didn’t even mean it mean. He just wanted me to know what it cost.”
Emily stepped closer, rain running off her jacket in thin rivers. “And your mom?” she said.
I looked at the new grave, the crude stake, and the mounded dirt. “She just wanted me to be happy. I never was, so she settled for alive.”
Emily nodded, arms wrapped tight now, not from the cold. “What were you like as a kid?” she asked. It sounded like a strange question, but I understood what she meant… tell me the version of you before you belonged to the club, to grief, to the cycle of loss.
I shut my eyes and tried to picture it. “Fat. Quiet. Used to read the library dry every summer, then spend the rest of the year figuring out which parts were lies. Ma worked at the college, so I hung around the campus after class. Sometimes the security guards would let me sit in the shade of the old labs, watch the technicians blow stuff up behind safety glass. Dad was overseas more than he was home, but when he was, he’d take me out to the gun range and teach me how to shoot lefty, then righty, then with my eyes half closed.
I guess I liked the discipline of it. The repetition. ”
The rain fell steadily. Emily brushed a strand of hair from her face and looked at the grave. “You ever wish you’d done something else?”
“All the time.” I thumbed the dog tags, their edges worn smooth. “But college felt like a scam, and the club felt like family. For a while, anyway.”
She was silent, letting it hang. Her patience made it easier to keep talking.
“My mom,” I said, “she never stopped calling me her boy, even after I was a full-patch secretary. Even after I had a record, after I’d buried half a dozen club brothers who didn’t know when to quit.
” The words stuck in my throat. “She’s the only person who never made me feel less for choosing this. ”
Emily’s hand found my elbow, light as breath. She didn’t squeeze, didn’t try to turn me to face her. Just enough contact to say: I’m here, I’m not leaving, you can let it out.
“Sometimes,” I said, voice rough, “I think she was relieved when my father died. Like she could finally admit how scared she’d been every time he deployed, every time the phone rang after midnight.
She told me once—just the once—that the worst thing about living with a soldier was you never got used to waiting for bad news.
You just built a thicker wall against it. ”
I looked at the dirt again. “I thought I could build one, too. But I’m not her.”
The rain slowed for a second, wind dying. Emily’s voice was softer than the rain. “You’re allowed to fall apart, you know.”
I felt the pressure build behind my eyes, the old ache that wanted to turn into tears but only ever made it to rage or numbness. I wiped my nose on the sleeve, angry at myself for needing to.
“I was supposed to protect her,” I said, almost a whisper. “That’s the fucking deal, right? You lose your dad, you step up. You make sure nothing gets past you. And I let her die for nothing. Not even a reason, just a fluke, a couple of Sultans trying to score rep with a robbery gone sideways.”
Emily shook her head. “You did everything you could. You can’t be everywhere. You can’t fix everything.”
I stared at her, searching for the lie in her face, but there wasn’t one. Just a calm certainty that made me feel naked.
“Tell that to the part of me that wants to dig up the bastards and bury them alive,” I said.
She looked away, blinking rain from her eyes. “Would it help?” she asked.
I wanted to say yes. I wanted to say it would fix everything, that revenge was the only justice left in a world that ran on cruelty. But the words wouldn’t line up.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But it’s all I have left.”
She was quiet for a long time. The rain started again, lighter this time, more like static than bullets.
“You going after them?” she said.
I nodded. “The club’s making a move tonight. Damron wants it quiet, but he doesn’t care how much blood gets spilled as long as it stays out of the news. There’s a motel on the edge of town, full of Sultans and whatever trash they picked up from Arizona. After the wake, it’s open season.”
Emily stood beside me, boots in the mud, hands now in her pockets. She didn’t argue, didn’t try to change my mind. Just stood, waiting for the rest.
I turned to her, face numb, and asked, “You think it makes me a monster?”
She tilted her head. “I think it makes you human. I just don’t want to see you end up in the dirt next to them.”
Thunder rumbled far off, a promise more than a warning. I looked down at the names, the dates, the fresh scar on the earth. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t sure who I was supposed to be anymore.
We stood together until the rain soaked us through, until the club started filtering back to the bikes and the cemetery emptied out. Even then, neither of us moved. Emily’s hand rested at my elbow, steady, an anchor to keep me from flying apart completely.
“Will vengeance bring you peace?” she said, voice so quiet I almost missed it.
I didn’t answer. I just looked at the graves, the dirt, the horizon drawn flat under a storm-bruised sky. And for the first time since it all went down, I wondered if the answer mattered.