Chapter 2
Maverick
“Aren’t you supposed to not be around computers or something?”
Scythe appears out of the gloom, his massive figure casting eerie shadows on the unfinished concrete basement walls.
He appears more demon than man, at least until he flicks the light switch.
Some people might still say demon, given his shaved, tattooed head, the scar that cuts along his cheek, gauged up ears, and his leather club jacket with all the patches.
My eyes land on the one that says ‘ENFORCER’, as if regular lettering wasn’t enough to get the point across and it had to be screamed in all capitals.
It’s ironic. I needed a place to go when I got out of jail, but even after ten years on the inside, I look less like a thug than my mom’s cousin.
I hadn’t seen Scythe since I was a kid, and back then his name was Dalton.
He once winked at me and told me that family was everything, and if I ever needed him, all I had to do was call.
I think he meant to reassure me. My mom’s life was never all that predictable, code word, stable, and it sure as fuck wasn’t easy.
I didn’t take him up on the offer for a good eighteen years. I called last week because I had no money and nowhere else to go. He didn’t hesitate to come pick me up and bring me straight back to his house.
It’s nicer than I imagined. An older bungalow but nicely renovated, in a pretty regular suburb.
He’s even got a two-car garage. He let me sleep on the couch the first night, but by the second, members of his club brought over all sorts of furniture to fill up the basement.
It might be unfinished, a lot of concrete all around, but I don’t give a shit about that.
He gave me a couple of grand as an advance that I could pay back once I found a job, and the keys to a beater truck that I could have wept over being able to use.
I could have wept over it all, honestly, if the past decade of my life hadn’t beaten the tears, and most other proper emotions, right out of me.
I know that I probably look guilty as fuck, sitting down here on this old blue leather couch, curled around a secondhand laptop that I bought this morning from a pawnshop.
It’s beat, but whoever owned it upgraded the shit out of it, and it wasn’t a bad machine to begin with.
Either way, I still have the ability to hack the shit out of most places on a child’s tablet, so it doesn’t matter what the specs are.
“It wasn’t a condition of my sentencing.
” I shut the laptop and toss it aside. Scythe walks with the grace of a lumbering ox.
If I’d wanted the laptop to be a secret, it would have been.
“I guess I can thank the judge for that, if not for the last ten years of my life.” It’s hard not to sound bitter when I went into jail a naive twenty-three year old kid with starry eyes and a fucking Robin Hood complex, and came out a wizened, hardened thirty-three year old man.
There were many people who couldn’t believe that I got such a stiff sentence.
Especially given that people who commit murder and dark shit often get far less jailtime.
All throughout my trial, there were protests in the city.
Some of the large ones almost turned into full scale riots.
It turns out that many people felt that stealing money from men who had done unspeakable things was right.
However, the ones who make the rules, they just saw the crime.
I suppose that wrong and legal are two different things. Is justice ever just?
“I’d suggest taking you down to the clubhouse tonight, but I don’t know if you’re ready. I want to give you a few more days.”
My cousin is a good man. He might look rough as fuck, but he’s wise, kind, and probably the kind that would rather help a spider outside than squash it.
I promised myself that I wouldn’t do the typical ex-con thing and be a maladjusted fucker who refuses to reintegrate back into society.
I know that Scythe is worried that I’ll go off halfcocked with the vigilante shit again.
I don’t want him out there, trying to live his life, worrying about me every second of the day.
“I appreciate that you gave me a place to go. I’m not here to make your life hell. Or your club’s.”
Scythe crosses his arms. His leather jacket doesn’t appreciate having to contain his bulk in that stance. It looks like it’s going to pop a few stitches. “That’s good. There are too many women and kids involved with my club brothers now, and they’re good men too.”
I give a tight nod, because I do know that. I wouldn’t have been able to come otherwise, and not because the law prevented me. I don’t believe in thug organizations. I hate men who abuse women and children, and those weaker than them.
Scythe switches it up. “Have you given any more thought into what you’d like to do now? The club owns and operates a bunch of businesses here, but I could talk to other places too. I know just about everyone.”
I know he hopes that I’ll show some interest in his club later on, but I don’t know if I ever will.
I never owned a bike and I’m not all that interested in owning one in the future.
I grew up rough, like most of those guys probably did.
I never knew my dad, and watched my mom take up with man after man, in an effort to survive.
She died when I was sixteen. She only ever used drugs lightly, so the heart attack wasn’t an overdose.
She was thirty-five, and she was just worn down, inside and out.
I was a loner growing up, more interested in computers than people.
One of my mom’s ex’s left a fairly decent laptop at our grungy apartment, and that pretty much sealed my fate.
I was a lone fucking wolf then, and now, I have no interest in packing up with a bunch of men who figure that having a rough background makes me brotherhood material.
I spent the last ten years institutionalized, on someone else’s schedule, doing what they told me to do.
I followed the rules. I behaved. I kept my head down.
I was determined to survive, at all costs.
I don’t know what made me get involved with the prison writing program, except that it was put out there after I’d already done six years and maybe something in me just needed that change.
I still had four damn years left, and I was getting tired.
I couldn’t change my scenery, but I could change myself.
Loreena. I roll the word over in my brain like I’ve whispered it during the past week, unfurling the syllables from my tongue. I didn’t know her real name until I was released.
Scythe is the kind of guy who thinks he does well with long silences, but he gets uncomfortable with mine. I could go all day without talking. He clears his throat. “I’d just like to know if you have any plans. I’d like to help you, Maverick, even if you don’t exactly want it.”
I don’t have to tell him that it’s humiliating having to rely on him. He’s a man with a man’s pride. He knows.
“I’m going to Seattle tomorrow.”
Scythe is a big hand talker. He unfolds his arms just so he can start gesturing, a little bit madly.
“You can do what you want with your life. I’m not here to tell you not to.
I’m just saying that you have to be careful.
You staying with me is one thing, but I’m a part of something bigger than me.
” He points at himself, then windmills his hands to encompass the whole room.
“I’ve taken fucking vows and I mean them with my life.
If you can’t stick to that, or at least promise me that you’ll take care, I need to know that now so I can keep this part of my life separate from my club. ”
I never meant to come here and tear a good man in half. He didn’t ask for any of this. He might be rough as hell on the exterior, but on the inside, he’s soft. He believes in his club, but he also believes in family. He didn’t say he’d turn me out.
“I’ll be careful. The last thing I want to do is go back to prison.”
“Why are you going to Seattle?” he asks carefully, like he doesn’t really want to know the answer.
“I have some business there.”
“Fuck! This is exactly what I’m talking about. You have business there,” he parrots. “What goddamn business? Because the way you said it, it ain’t anything fucking good.”
“A woman.”
“A woman.” He falters back a step. “That’s even worse.”
“It’s not like that.” I can’t help the protective edge to my voice. “She wrote to me when I was in prison. We’ve been corresponding for four years. She agreed to leave her address.”
“Yeah. So you can write to her, not show up in person without warning, and scare the living shit out of her.”
“I’ll call ahead.”
“Did she leave her number?” Scythe’s eyes narrow. “You can’t just creep her. That’s a sure way to scare her shitless.”
“She left her number.”
“For real?”
“Yes.”
“Why do I still get the impression that this isn’t going to go well?”
I stand up and stretch, then give him a smarmy smirk that I half wish he’d punch off my face.
“Probably because I’m an ex-con who just spent a decade locked up, and no matter what you go in for, innocent or guilty, minor or major, that changes a person.
I’m not acclimated to the outside world yet and you’re terrified I’m off my fucking head, or at least that I don’t have enough common sense not to get thrown right the fuck back in. ”
He starts pacing, back and forth, over the same spot of concrete.
“I know you’ve ruminated plenty in the past decade.
It’s a long time.” He stops and turns back to me.
“But you’re right about being freshly out.
The world has changed in the past ten years.
Some of it for good, probably a big portion not.
I’m worried about you going out there into it, but not because I think you’re going to hurt anyone or anything.
I think you might be the one getting hurt. You’re like a brand new baby.”
“Does that make you my unfortunate mother?”
He rolls his eyes, but his heart isn’t in it.
I know how much we both miss my mom. At times, Scythe probably missed her more than I did.
They were close, growing up. More like brother and sister than cousins.
I don’t know that those times were ever happy, but they did share happy moments before everything fractured.
“It makes me someone who wants to be in your corner because I love you, Maverick. I’m not too afraid to tell you that. It’s not that I don’t trust you. I just want to keep you safe. Your mother would want me to, but I also want me to.”
“It wasn’t you that failed me.”
He nods, but the sadness in his eyes is unmistakable. Guilt gnaws at me sharply.
“I’ll check in,” I promise. He got me an older cell phone my second day here, along with most of the furniture that arrived.
“You can have your tech guys track me if you want.” I have no doubt that the phone is being monitored.
I’m not bitter about that. They’re protecting their own, and like Scythe said, they’re trying to keep me safe as well.
“Please check in.” He lets the silence linger between us for a moment. “Maverick would naturally be a great club name for you one day, down the road, if you ever want in.”
I’m not going to stand here and be any more of a disappointment than I already am, so I just nod to everything. Checking in. Staying out of trouble, and one day, maybe prospecting for a biker club that I have zero interest in.