Chapter Twenty Five
The Yamaha screamed beneath us, feral and desperate to outrun the world.
I twisted the throttle harder, the roar deepening until it felt like the engine was dragging fire straight through my veins.
I didn’t know where I was going. Didn’t matter.
All I knew was that I couldn’t stop. Couldn’t let them catch us.
Sporadic headlights blurred past in streaks of white and gold. My mind was a blur too, all jagged edges and noise. I’d just signed my own death warrant back there. Every rule broken, every brother I’d turned my back on. They’d never forgive that. Not for her. Especially not for her.
If they caught me, I wouldn’t even make it off the bike before they put me down. I knew how that went. You didn’t get second chances in the Rats. Loyalty was everything, and I’d just spat in their faces.
I leaned into a turn too hard, tyres skidding for a fraction of a second before biting back into the tarmac.
My heart was thundering, not just from the speed but from the clarity that came with it.
This was the point of no return. There was no crawling back to the clubhouse, no talking my way out. My patch was as good as burnt.
Didn’t matter. Not now. Not with her pressed against my back, her arms locked around me like I was the last solid thing in her world. The thought made something in my chest twist and settle all at once.
Getting her safe. That was all that mattered.
The road stretched on ahead, empty, open.
Streetlights gave way to the black sprawl of countryside.
Fields, hedgerows, the odd glint of a farmhouse light miles off.
I couldn’t go home. Couldn’t risk the shop and my apartment.
They’d check there first, and the Kings would too once word got out.
Every set of eyes in Middlesbrough would be looking for us before sunrise.
She shifted slightly behind me, the weight of her small movements grounding me more than the road ever could. I could feel the tremor in her arms, the cold biting through both of us. She was running on nothing. No food, no rest, just survival. And I’d dragged her back into the night.
But it was better than the alternative. Better than what those bastards had planned. My brothers.
I dropped my gaze for a second, just long enough to see her hands knotted in the folds of my t-shirt, and then looked back up at the road.
The wind tore the air from my lungs. I could taste the exhaust, the cold metal tang of it biting at the back of my throat.
And the freezing air clinging to my skin.
I didn’t have a plan. I needed one, fast. The Kings’ compound was too obvious.
Every biker on the north side would know the route there.
The Rats would expect me to take her straight home to her brother.
Fuck, if I were in their boots, I’d block the A-roads in an instant.
Muster patrols. Cut off as many routes north as I could.
No. I couldn’t go there. Not yet.
The lights of Middlesbrough flickered again on the horizon, dull orange glow against the night. We couldn’t stay in the open, not for long. I slowed the Yamaha slightly, mind spinning through options. Safe houses, garages, old contacts. New fucking contacts.
Baz fucking Winspear.
The sort of bloke that kept his blinds closed and his head down. The man too scared to say no to us. And more importantly, the sort the Rats never gave a shit about unless he owed them.
They wouldn’t look twice at his place. They’d be too busy looking for the traitor who took out four of their brothers.
The thought solidified in my head like concrete.
I’d stashed the bloke’s address in my memory without even meaning to, always thinking it might come in handy one day.
Tonight, it was going to save our skins at least for a day or two.
It would give me time to think. To plan properly.
And fuck did I need to stop acting on fucking impulse.
I took the next junction sharply, the back wheel kicking out before catching again. Jazz’s arms tightened around me instantly, her helmet knocking gently against the back of my shoulder.
“It’s alright,” I muttered, not sure if she could even hear me over the engine. “I’ve got you.”
The words came out rough, gravelly. Not a promise, but close enough to one that it made my throat tighten.
Every time I slowed, the weight of what I’d done pressed harder on my chest. Skinny’s face, the blood, the noise. It all replayed in my head. I clenched the throttle tighter. Couldn’t think about that now. Couldn’t think about the cost.
The town blurred past in fragments; countryside gone now that I’d turned back.
Closed pubs. Empty streets. Neon signs flickering like dying fireflies.
The Yamaha’s headlight carved a thin line of silver across the cracked tarmac.
Hemlington had been something once. A place where pay checks bought driveways and front lawns, not pawned rings and boarded windows.
The ghosts of better days lingered in the peeling paint and half-collapsed fences, a suburb that had outlived its promise.
A cluster of terraces sat ahead, rows of crumbling brick and boarded-up windows. Baz’s street. I killed the headlight before we turned in, letting the dark swallow us.
The Yamaha idled low, a predator’s purr in the silence.
I pulled it to a stop a few doors down from number forty-three.
The mid-terrace house was almost asleep apart from the slight flickering of neon light through the curtains of the big bay window on the ground floor.
Half the render on the outside of the house had fallen off, piles of it in a heap under the window.
Paint peeled from the door, the number three upside down where the screw had fallen out of the top of the number.
Jazz didn’t move at first, still clinging on like she wasn’t sure the world would hold steady if she let go. Slowly, she loosened her grip, her breath trembling, half from cold, half from exhaustion as she spoke.
“Where are we?”
“Safe,” I said. It wasn’t a lie, not exactly. Just a fragile truth. “For now.”
I killed the engine, the sudden silence a resounding slap across my face. My ears rang, vibrations still thrumming in my head. I sat there for a second, both hands gripping the bars, breathing like I’d just finished a fight I hadn’t trained for. Maybe I had.
I looked over my shoulder. Jazz had pushed the visor up. Her face was pale underneath it, eyes wide, pupils blown from the dark. She was shaking, but she was still upright. Still alive.
That was enough.
For now.
I swung my leg over the bike and stood, my knees unsteady under me.
The world felt too still after all that motion.
My chest still buzzed from the adrenaline, from the speed, from her pressed against me.
I tilted my head up, scanning the street.
Quiet. No lights, no movement. Just the hum of some distant traffic and the occasional bark of a dog.
The knock on the door sounded obscene in the sleepy street of neglected terraces.
A curtain twitched inside, someone peeking out, trying to be discreet, but failing as his eyes met mine.
He looked defeated, letting the curtain drop slowly and then after a long minute a chain rattled from behind the door.
“Baz,” I started, not giving him time to speak. “I need somewhere to lie low for a couple of days.”
Baz glanced at me and then at the woman standing with my bike on the road.
“I’ve no room,” he said quietly.
“You’ve a fucking two-up two-down mate. We’re not looking for a fucking mansion.”
He glanced at Jazz again.
“Don’t have a garage.”
“Yard’ll do.”
Eventually he nodded.
“Come round the back. I’ll open the gate.”
“Come on, Tiger,” I said quietly, sliding back onto the bike and waiting for her to climb on behind me. “Let’s get you inside before the world and my brothers catch up.”
*****
“You two can take the front bedroom. I mostly sleep down here anyway,” Baz said as we followed him through the house.
Inside was cosy in the way old habits were, not comforting, just familiar.
The air was thick with stale smoke, damp plaster, and the sour-sweet tang of weed that had seeped into the wallpaper.
It clung to everything. The curtains, the sofa, even the air itself.
Rolled and smoked until the haze blurred the edges of his life.
The wallpaper had once been cream but now wore a jaundiced tint, yellowed by years of cheap tobacco and even cheaper paint jobs.
A dado rail split the wall halfway up, the bottom half a glossed maroon that had run in places.
The carpet underfoot was threadbare, a faded swirl of beige and green pressed flat in the centre.
We followed him further into the bowels of the house stuck in the nineties.
Probably the last time he had cared about it.
A mismatched sofa sagged in the lounge and a clunky old CRT television sat on a pine unit, screen smeared with dirt and dust. The electric fire in the middle of the room flickered, more for show than heat, surrounded by a fake stone mantel.
Everywhere I looked, something was half-finished.
A torn strip of wallpaper left dangling, a plug socket hanging loose by its wires, a crooked shelf clinging stubbornly to the wall.
It was warm, though. Lived in. The kind of place the world forgot about and Baz with it.
And for tonight, that was exactly what we needed.
Jazz staggered beside me, dragging tired legs. She looked drained. Defeated. The adrenaline surge quieting in both of us but with hers she looked completely washed out.
“You hungry, Jazz?” I asked, following Baz up the creaking staircase.
“Not really. A shower would be good though.”
“You got food in your cupboards, Baz?” I asked to his back. He had to have something in. There was no way he could smoke the way he did without constantly having the munchies. “Freezer he grunted. There’s pizza and chips.”
“Good. We need a shower too.”
“Only got enough hot water for one. Unless you double up.”
The stairs groaned and creaked under our combined weight, to the point I wasn’t sure whether one of us would fall completely through or trip to our deaths on the chunks of carpet that had come loose.
Baz pushed the door open, flicking a switch on the left as he stepped into the room. It was like something from a Pulp song, woodchip wallpaper covering the entirety of the walls and the ceiling. It had been painted white at one time but was now marred with grime and water stains.
“Bathroom next door,” Baz grunted, rummaging around in a cupboard opposite the bed and pulling out some towels. “Don’t leave it running too long or it’ll use the hot water up quicker.”
He looked at us again, long and hard, as if he wanted to say something but changed his mind, shaking his head as he left us alone.
When I turned, she was sat on the bed. My hoodie swamped her like she was wearing a tent.
Her face tilted up at me. I recognised the lips, plush and full, but chapped now with dehydration and cold.
Her cheekbones seemed more prominent, weight dropping off her face from days of starvation.
But it was the eyes that burned up at me.
Rich, dark brown, partially hidden by the longest eyelashes I’d ever seen.
And deep inside them, I should be seeing fear, pain, defeat.
But there was none of this. Only something I couldn’t quite describe.
Defiance for definite, burning as bright as the fucking moon out there.
Yet there was something else. Resilience?
Radiance? And just a hint of exhaustion.
Like she couldn’t wait to close her eyes and go to sleep but was too scared to.
“Chase?” Her voice was soft. Pushing to her feet. “I need that shower. Desperately.”
“Oh. Right. Yeah,” I said, realising I’d been staring at her silently. Saying nothing. Just looking like a psycho. “You need a hand?”
She tilted her head inquisitively.
“Reckon I can handle it.”
I stepped away holding out one of the towels, watching her walk slowly past me with each laboured stride.
If I couldn’t have seen into those beautiful eyes, seen that hint of rebelliousness, I would have felt sorry for her.
She might have looked broken in that instant, as she walked away on wobbly legs, but those eyes told me the opposite.
They told me there was much more fight left in her, no matter what her body thought.
In the other room I heard the shower turn on, water splattering down the walls.
The sound was relaxing, the gentle rhythm threatening me with sleep.
And fuck how I could sleep for a week right now.
My jaw ached from where Shade had tried to choke me, his forearm clamped against my face as I fought against the choke hold.
I pulled off a boot, letting it fall to the floor with a soft thud.
Underneath the bedroom the TV babbled in dull tones.
Not loud enough to make out, but loud enough to hear. I yanked at the other boot.
A clatter rang out around the house. A bang against the wall. My heart raced, my brain frantically scrambling to make out the noise.
Jazz.