Chapter Four
Sunridge
Leon thinks of Sara often. His days are full of club business and adhering to elementary school schedules, but his nights are full of her.
The feel of her skin pressing against his as he makes her say his name in that sinful way of hers, how tight she grips him when she comes on his cock.
He jerks off in the shower fantasising about it all, reliving the time they spent together in Lake Tahoe.
More than anything, he misses that breathless laugh of hers when he drew her to him that night in the Casino, the glow of the fireplace illuminating her skin as she dozed on his chest after the whiskey tasting.
When he receives that postcard from Thailand, he smiles to himself because he knows that she’s thinking about him too. She’s written her phone number on the bottom and signed it with a kiss. He snaps a picture of it on his fridge before Whatsapping it to her with the words ‘Where to next?’
He receives a text later on in the evening with a picture of Tokyo Tower followed by several Japanese flag emojis.
He checks the time difference on his phone; it’s her morning over in Thailand so she’s just gotten up.
He finally puts his phone down after midnight because he needs to be up early to take his daughter Melina to school the next day.
Sweet dreams, she texts him and that night he dreams of her in his bed, his fingertips tracing over the tattoos that decorate her body.
Her messages become the highlight of his day after spending time with Melina.
Things with the club are complicated. While his presidency is new, his leadership isn’t.
He’s been running this chapter over the past year because the original president Concho had spent most of his time in Vegas shoring up their alliance with the Satan’s Kings MC.
At least that’s what they’d thought until he was killed on his way back to Sunridge by a drunk driver and Leon had taken over.
The reality, they’d discovered, was that he’d emptied the chapter’s coffers playing high stakes poker with riverboat casino owner Benedict ‘Benny’ Kelly, trying to win his way into his gambling operation in Laughlin.
Leon can already imagine the reasoning behind every stack he took out of the safe. It was an investment in the club, he would have told himself, even as he watched the cards fall the wrong way.
It was a death sentence to some of their members because that money was used to pay protection for their brothers in prison, the ones who had been expendable when it came to Concho’s schemes.
He’s paying that shit out of his own funds for now but soon that cash is going to run out and the chapter has its own expenses to cover.
He’s already arranged a meeting with his counterpart King, the OG of the club, to discuss what the fuck he’s supposed to do next.
It’s going to kill him, putting his cards down on the table like that, admitting how desperate they are for financing.
The Palmino Cartel have been pushing him to partner up in the past couple of months, running transport of their coke and heroin shipments over state lines but he can’t stand the misery that drugs like that bring.
He wouldn’t be able to look his kid in the face, knowing he was contributing to the narcotics crisis that killed his brother, her uncle.
Sara’s communications are a reprieve from all of this; when he’s talking to her, he doesn’t have to think about this weight that sits on his shoulders. He can just be Leon from Black Bear Lodge, the one that spent three days ruining her.
He must underestimate how intuitive that woman is because she videocalls him that night.
It’s the first time the two of them have spoken face to face since they parted in Lake Tahoe.
She’s in a hotel room in Japan, the sun shining in through the window when she appears on the screen.
He finds the knot in his chest loosen when he lays eyes on her in a dusky blue pyjama shorts set.
“Hey,” he says softly.
He can tell she’s just woken up. She has a mug of coffee cradled to her chest and her hair pulled back into a messy bun, ruby tendrils falling around her delicate features.
“You wanna talk about it?” she asks him.
His lips purse together grimly because the wall of silence between his personal life and the club was always a point of contention between him and his ex.
He could never discuss the shit that happened with her, the good or the bad but she would see the fallout from it.
He’d withdrawn from her, so he didn’t have to see the hurt in her eyes everytime they got into another fight about the secrets he kept.
“Club business,” he says, his voice rough.
Already he can see how this ends, his silence being the thing that kills it. He wonders if it’s better to cut off contact completely because already he knows he’s falling in love with Sara. That it started in Lake Tahoe and now it’s playing out in the months that follow.
“Ok,” she says, nestling back against the headboard. “Tell me what you and Melina got up to instead.”
He’s surprised by the change of topic, but he welcomes it. He forgets that Sara’s been involved with a club member before, that that is something that he’s going to have to address with Duke if this thing between the two of them turns serious.
He pushes that away for now, focusing instead on being in the moment.
He tells her how excited Melina is about the science fair, that he has no idea where she got that enthusiasm from because he runs his own construction company and his ex is in admin.
The two of them discuss STEM programs, how the world needs more female pioneers.
She makes him promise to send her the video of Melina’s ‘Elephant’s Toothpaste’ experiment before she hangs up.
He goes to bed with a smile on his face and a lighter heart because Sara, she always has this way of doing that, of dissolving the tension he feels in his body.
When the postcard from Japan arrives a few days later, his fingers trace over the writing as he studies the message she’s written in her looping slant.
Twenty Third of February – Los Angeles x