13. Mila
13
“Hey. Mila, right?” a cute guy from my Video Storytelling class follows me out of the lecture hall.
“Yeah. Your name was… Chris?”
He grins. “Yep. I was wondering if you wanted to work together on the first project.”
“We could probably do that. What were you planning on—” I lose my train of thought when we come out of the building and I almost run straight into a group of girls who are staring at something across the way.
Mack.
It's Mack they're all looking at, who's leaning against a brick wall, his cut closed to hide the gun in his belt, and with one leg bent with the flat of his boot resting on the bricks. He's not looking my way right this moment, because he’s too busy talking to some bitch with candy pink hair and a protest sign. She’s broken away from the usual group of activists on the green, and is excitedly talking to him about who knows what. Somehow I doubt it’s related to her cause.
She’s gorgeous and I hate her on sight.
I can’t even blame her for being interested because he stands out like a man among boys, with his impressive arms bare and tattoos showing. The streak of jealousy that slashes through me catches me off guard. He might not be mine, but he sure as heck isn’t theirs. She puts a hand on his wrist and everything that isn’t him vanishes from my mind. Including Chris who is still standing right beside me.
“Mack,” I call out.
He looks up, and I swear every woman around us sighs in disappointment when he smiles and it isn’t at them. I smile right back, at least until his deep blue eyes cut to the side and I swear the temperature drops a few degrees. He kicks off from the wall and strides over. “Mila. Was starting to think I was in the wrong place.”
“Is this a friend of yours?” Chris asks, obviously annoyed.
Without a hint of warning or hesitation, Mack puts an arm around me, placing his palm right above my ass and then brushes my hair out of my face with the other, before cupping the back of my head and using both of them to pull me against him. My heart skips a beat when his full, soft lips slant over mine. I open to him, and our tongues slide together. He kisses me like I’m the only woman here, and we have all day. My knees go weak. Heck, every knee within two hundred feet probably does the same. Holy crap.
When he finally lets me up for air, he's looking very pleased with himself. “Yeah, I’m a good fucking friend, kid.”
“What are you doing here?” I don’t even notice when Chris and the pink haired girl leave. With Mack around, everyone else just seems unimportant.
The rumble of his laugh goes right through me like a wave of pleasure. “Looking for you, baby. C'mon, let me buy you lunch.”
It isn’t until now that I remember his warning last night about wanting the full story. I sigh and play with the strap on my laptop bag. I wasn’t really thinking straight last night, but in the light of day, I realize I owe them more of an explanation than just bad luck. “Where are the others?”
“They have other assignments, and I thought maybe you’d find it easier to talk if it wasn’t three against one. How’re you feeling?” He leads me towards a motorcycle parked on the edge of the lawn. It's black with a soft dark blue gradient along the edges. Stylish, elegant and powerful. “There's a burger place around the corner if that’s okay with you. They make a good fucking milkshake if you’re interested.”
“I’m a college student. You had me at free food, but I’ll definitely take a milkshake. And I’m good. A little sore but it’s not as bad as it felt last night.”
He gets on, and I climb on behind him. My side throbs a little when I throw my leg over the saddle, but it isn’t too bad. After getting a good grip around his waist, I look over my shoulder, finding what looks like every girl at the whole college watching me with acid green envy. I run a hand up the inside of his shirt, feeling the strong ripple of his abs.
Mine.
Then we're off with a roar. We go to McAlister’s, a place I’ve seen before but never been in because it’s a pain to get to without a car.
“Jake! Two burgers with everything, fries and onion rings.” Mack breaks off and looks at me. “Sorry, if you want something different that’s fine. I just assumed.”
“No, that’s fine. But you owe me a milkshake.”
“What flavor?”
I study the sign over the register. “Cherry cheesecake.”
“Good choice,” the guy I’m assuming is Jake says with a grin. “Your usual, Mack?”
“You know it.”
“What’s your usual?” I ask as we wait on the order.
“PB&J.”
It doesn’t take long before we have our food, and Mack carries it outside on a tray so we can eat at a picnic table under an umbrella. I wrap my lips around the extra wide straw and suck. It takes a second before the milkshake starts flowing, but when the flavor hits my tongue, I groan. “Oh that’s so good.”
Mack makes a slightly strangled noise in his throat. “Glad to hear it.”
“So…” I pick up an onion ring and break it in half, eating the soft bit of onion before dipping the salty, fried breading in ketchup and eating that on its own. “Where should I start?”
“How about at the beginning?”
This time it’s my turn to watch him, and the sight of his tongue licking hot sauce off his thumb almost makes me forget what we’re here to talk about.
“Mila, who’s Mullerby?” Mack prompts. “I heard your roommate say you were going to meet him and it didn’t sound like a fucking date.”
“It’s a little complicated.” I sigh, trying to figure out where to start and still not sure I want to spill all the details just to have someone else tell me to drop my investigation. “I have an older brother, Danny. He’s been in prison for the past six years.”
“What’d he go down for?” Mack asks, curious but not judgmental.
It’s nice to talk to someone who doesn’t react like I just said I’m related to a serial killer. “He was nineteen when he got busted at an underground rave for selling weed and E. My parents were exhausted and refused to help him. I think we all assumed he would get a couple years and Mom and Dad hoped it would help scare him straight.”
Mack shakes his head, frowning. “Fucking system swallows kids like that whole, does jack shit to help them, and then spits them back out with no skills and a bunch of new friends who are just as fucked.”
“You sound like you know from experience.”
“Because I do.” He puts down his burger with a sigh. “I was an angry fucking kid, Mila. I’m thankful every goddamn day that I was young enough that I got thrown into a program for at-risk teens instead of prison. My mentor was in the Screaming Eagles. If it wasn’t for Zero, I’d be doing time right now, but that old bastard kept my head above water long enough for my brain to fucking mature. He took one look at me and knew I was never going to fit into the productive citizen box, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t worth it. So yeah, I’ve seen what the system does to people who just need a fucking chance, and it’s usually not pretty.”
I nod. “You’re right, but for Danny it was even worse. While he was waiting on his trial, they suddenly accused him of a whole bunch of other stuff, worse stuff like armed robbery. Danny begged our parents to hire a real attorney, but they refused and instead of a couple of years, suddenly he was saddled with thirty-eight. By the time they realized it had really happened, it was too late. He was sentenced and put away. Mullerby was his court appointed defender.”
“Jesus Christ. You were what? Sixteen?”
“Fifteen. I couldn’t help him back then, but something about it always felt wrong to me. I’ve never believed Danny was guilty of all those things and now I can finally maybe find out what happened.”
I walk him through my plans, how Meghan got me the flash drive and how I’m using my senior journalism project to see if I can get some clues into what’s going on at City Hall. I let him listen to my interview with Mullerby, and then show him the message that led to my attack. Somewhere between kissing me silly after class and feeding me, I seem to have forgotten to hold anything back. It’s actually a little annoying because I’m supposed to be the one that’s good at interrogation.
“You should do what Zero did for you,” I suggest. “You’re so easy to talk to.”
He laughs, a deep infectious sound. “I do. I started volunteering there when Zero was still around to help him out. I’ve got a fucking social work degree, baby.”
My jaw drops.
“What? You think we all sit around bikering for a living? Being a member means always having the club and your brothers at your back, and my first loyalty is to Eagle-eye and the Screaming Eagles, but a lot of us have fucking jobs and families outside the club because we want to. That account? FixerUppers? We’re tearing that shit out because Scrapper’s dad owns a construction company and Scrapper works with him. A lot of the guys do when they need extra cash.”
“But you…” I remember all too clearly how easily the three of them dealt with the men who attacked me.
“Lemme ask you a question. Let’s say you do this. You get your brother out of prison. You think he’s going to settle down and start selling houses or repairing air conditioners?”
“I—I haven’t really thought about it.” In my head, Danny is just Danny, my older brother. Up until I saw him the other day, he’s been eternally nineteen in my head. I’ve only focused on getting him out of jail, not what comes after.
Mack shrugs. “Maybe he will, I don’t fucking know, but not everyone’s cut out for that. I didn’t start volunteering in order to make more productive tax paying citizens. I do it so that the kids who’ll never fit into that mold no matter how hard they fucking try will know that they are still fucking worth it. That they can choose to stand for something.”
I swear my heart flips in my chest. “Will you… if I get to the bottom of this and Danny gets out. Will you help him?”
Mack is quiet for a long time before finally nodding. “Yeah, yeah, baby. If he’s willing to accept it, I’ll see what I can do. But you gotta know, if he ends up like us, can you live with that?”
Fifteen year old me would have been destroyed by the idea of her brother in a motorcycle club, living outside the rules and at risk every day. But when I think about Scrapper, Reaper and Mack, all I can think is that he would be lucky to have people like this around him. “Yeah, I can.”
He leans back and takes a deep draw on his milkshake. “Listen, I'm not gonna tell you what to do because I know if I was in your spot I’d do whatever I thought was right, no matter what the fuck some biker told you. I bet your brother warned you the exact same way, and if you're not listening to your own goddamn flesh and blood, you're not gonna listen to me either. So I'm gonna tell you this instead. You don’t do shit without us as backup. You got that?”
“Mack… I don't know what to say. Why?”
He grins. “Think of it as saving lives.”
“What do you mean?”
“Whoever touches you will fucking die. I mean that. I’m all for second chances, but not if it puts the people under my protection at risk.” His tone is light, but there’s murder in his eyes. He means every word.
“And I’m one of those people?”
“Darlin’, I’ve felt you come on my dick, and when the cards were down and you thought you were done, you called us.” He flicks a fry at me. “You fucking know you are. Now finish your damn burger.”