6.
Bear
D espite what he had said, Gods hadn’t told me shit after my shower. He’d given me a set of clean jeans, a T-shirt, and a box of new underwear, and then he’d thrown my cut and leather jacket at me—both of which smelled surprisingly good, given that I didn’t remember the last time either had been washed. Maybe they hadn’t ever been washed.
We rode our bikes to the clubhouse—someone had brought mine over from wherever I had left it and parked it next to Gods at some point in the hours after me passing out. It felt good to be on the back of my bike again. My head was hurting like I had drunk my body weight in liquor last night…mainly because I had, so I had no one to blame but myself for that. But Gods had made me something to eat, shoved a cup of coffee in my hand, and then he’d given me a couple of vitamins he had in the cupboard, and now I didn’t feel sick for the first time in a long time. Gods was a weird motherfucker, but he had his head screwed on way more than most people gave him credit for. Even if most people tended to stay away from him because of how he looked.
That’s the thing about looks: they can be deceiving.
We rode the endless black ribbon of rode in silence, just the roar of our bikes and the wind in our faces, and I let my mind quiet as the open road stretched out before me, winding through the rugged, natural landscape of my hometown of Rocky Pines. The roar of my motorcycle echoed against the towering peaks and vast valleys surrounding me. The air was fresh and crisp, the scent of pine filling my lungs. The streets of Rocky Pines were bustling with people and cars, each of them taking their turn in looking at me and Gods as we drove by them. It was a busy metropolis framed by the majestic Rocky Mountains, and I wouldn’t ever want to live anywhere else.
A long time ago, before I joined the club, I had lived in New York City. It was a place of towering skyscrapers, incessant noise, and a relentless pace that never seemed to slow. It was indeed, as Frank Sinatra had once sung, the city that never sleeps. It was the love story that everyone wanted to be a part of, but it was bad through and through—completely rotten to the core. At least to me.
My life had been awful from the day I was born, but I had always tried to make it work. I had been dealt a shitty hand, but despite everything I had worked my ass off and gotten a scholarship to a good college, and that’s when I had thought things would change for me. That maybe it was finally my turn to have something good. But then I had fucked it all up.
I had fallen in love with the girl of my dreams, and then I’d made the biggest mistake of my life—I’d gotten mixed up with the wrong people and I’d had to leave the city and leave her to stay alive.
I could never go back to the New York City.
None of that mattered anymore, but sometimes I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if I wouldn’t have messed things up so badly. If I had finished college, gotten the girl, the job, the house and the 2.4 kids like everyone else. Sure, I would never have found my brothers— my real family —but I would at least still have had her. And the nightmare I was currently living would never have happened.
The bike hummed beneath me as we leave the city behind, ascending into the heart of Colorado. Out there, away from the busy streets, the terrain was gentle and yet its winding roads promised one hell of a ride. The hills were dotted with wildflowers, and scrub oak swayed in the breeze. Deer and elk roamed free up there, not giving a shit about the noise of our bikes as we drove by.
We pulled up to the busy clubhouse twenty minutes later, windswept and wide awake. If I had my way, I would have stayed on riding. Just kept on going all the way to the summit so I could look down on the valleys and lakes beneath me, the sky reflecting of their glassy surfaces like shards of broken pictures.
I climbed off my bike, a welcoming ache in my muscles and bones that reminded me of who the fuck I was and what the fuck I’d been missing. I hated that at the back of my mind was the call of things I didn’t want to think about and the whisper of whiskey.
“You good?” Gods asked, and I grunted a yeah. “Good, because you’re gonna need to have your shit together for this, brother.”
“You gonna tell me what’s going on?” I asked.
“Not my place,” he said before stalking away.
I followed him, hating the mystery and suspense surrounding all of this, and dreading what JD was going to say to me, but curiosity and the obligation of brotherhood were relentless. Deep in my gut, I worried that this might have been my last ride as a King and I was about to be kicked out on my ass. And who could blame him? I had been absent recently, so consumed by my own demons that I couldn’t even find it in me to care that someone had tried to kill my prez. I was a worthless piece of shit and I deserved whatever they threw at me.
Inside, I stared longingly at the bar, wishing I could have a beer just to calm the jangle of my nerves, but there wasn’t a chance in hell Gods was going to allow that. Nor would any of my brothers, going off the looks on their faces.
They looked at me briefly, not a single one of them letting on to me as I passed them and instead turning their backs one by one to show their displeasure of me.
This was going to be even worse than I had first thought.
At the back of the clubhouse, we passed along the hallway to the chapel, and inside I found JD, Moose, Ink, Dollar, Swampy, and Confessor all sitting around the table looking serious as shit. I gritted my teeth as Gods took a seat next to JD at the table. I scowled, hating their judgmental stares and wanting to say just as much to them, but I didn’t. I refrained from saying anything. Because if I wanted to stay part of the Kings, I knew that I had to take my beating like a man.
“You sittin’?” JD asked, his rich whiskey droll calm. He was always calm. I don’t think I had ever seen that man raise his voice or lose his shit in the ten years I had known him. It was unnerving, and I think that was why he had started doing it, but over time it had just become a part of him.
“If I can,” I said, looking either side of me for a spare chair.
Swampy kicked out the chair next to him and it screeched across the short distance toward me. A cigarette hung from between his lips, and he eyed me with disdain.
I took the offered seat without a word, keeping my gaze on JD. Swampy was quick tempered and had a tendency to lash out. I figured I had a couple of his punches heading my way real soon. I didn’t even care.
JD sighed and sat up a little straighter. He tucked his long hair behind his ears before finishing off his cigarette and stubbing it out.
“You got anything to say for yourself?” Ink said, his wrinkled old face scowling.
I shrugged. “What’s there to say? I fucked up.”
Ink slammed his hands on the table. The guy was pushing sixty but was still built like he was a man half that age. And he was a scary fucking dude. When I first joined the Kings as a prospect, he had been the one to show me the ropes. And he had been the first one to kick my ass when I screwed up. I figured today was no different.
“Fucked up is an understatement. You’ve been gone.” He stared at me, his mouth a thin line of disapproval.
“Ain’t that what I said?”
Ink pushed back from the table abruptly and stood up. He jabbed a finger in my direction but looked at JD as he spoke. “He’s got no respect for us or for himself. He’s done.”
I should have been defending myself, but what was there to say? I couldn’t deny it, not when he was telling the truth. I had lost all respect for myself three months before. My brothers and my club were a different story. I did respect them, but when you felt worthless, what good were you to anyone.
JD looked over at Confessor, jutting his chin at him. “Thoughts, brother?”
Confessor glanced in my direction. “I still believe he can come back from this.”
“You would say that,” Swampy gritted out. “Always up Bear’s ass trying to be his best fuckin’ friend. He’s using you, and the sooner you see that, the better.”
“He’s lost a lot,” Gods said. “Just needs his family to have his back for a little while is all.”
Moose laughed, a deep sound which came from somewhere filled with rage and not humor. “Have his back? Where was he when—”
“Gods ain’t wrong. Bear’s messed up, but he’s our brother, and we don’t just throw family to one side when they disappoint us,” Dollar said without looking up from the table. He rarely looked anyone in the eye, and most would take that to mean he couldn’t be trusted, but not us. We knew what he had survived. We knew he should be dead, and the fact that he had survived what he had—well, that made him the strongest motherfucker out of all of us.
“Messed up is what you do when drop a bottle of unopened eighteen-year-old Scotch on the floor. This asshole has been running all over town getting so drunk he’s passed out and then sending for his brothers to come bail him out of whatever situation he’s gotten himself in. It’s been going on for months and it’s getting worse.” Ink continued ranting, his voice rising with each word. “He’s fuckin’ done. Nothing left in his tank.”
Shame filled me as my brothers argued back and forth about the things that I had done. The mistakes I had made and continued to make. The mess I had become.
“I never asked anyone to come bail me out,” I said quietly, but it was enough that Ink shut up and everyone stopped and listened.
“What was that?” Swampy snapped.
He leaned forward on the table, bringing his face closer to mine so he could try and eyeball me. I wasn’t afraid of him; I wasn’t afraid of any of them. I was only afraid of what I might do if I was pushed too much. So I kept my head down, my eyes lowered, and my hands where they could see them.
“I said I never asked anyone to come bail me out,” I repeated.
The room fell silent, seconds and then minutes going by before I dared look up. I looked at JD, seeing the disappointment on his face and hating myself even more.
“I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry I haven’t been around. That I’ve missed some shit.” I took a deep breath and sighed. “I’m sorry that I wasn’t here last night. I heard someone tried to shoot you, and it’s on me that I wasn’t here. I can’t say it won’t happen again, but I’m working on it. That’s all I’ve got and it’s all I can do.”
I wasn’t beyond begging if I needed to, but deep down I wondered what the point was. They didn’t want me there and I wasn’t sure I deserved to be.
“Feelin’ fuckin’ sorry for yourself. Pussy,” Ink said.
I looked over at him. “I have been. You’re right.”
“And?” he replied.
“And what? I don’t know if I can change. I don’t know if I have it in me anymore. I’ve lost everything, brother. I know I’m a piece of shit and I don’t deserve the club. There’s nothing more to say. If you want me to turn in my cut then I will.” My tone got harder and harder as I spoke, the words barely making it out between clenched teeth.
“That what you want?” Confessor asked.
“No,” I snapped.
JD lit a cigarette and blew out a mouthful of smoke. “All right then.”
Every set of eyes swung to look at him and the air shifted, the tension growing heavier.
“All right?” Ink snapped.
“I said all right,” JD replied. “You got a problem with that, Ink? You got somethin’ to say about it?”
Ink looked between JD and me, the ferocity of his rage growing. “Yeah, I got something to say about it, Prez. Someone tried to take you out last night, and this fucker was ankle-deep in his own puke and piss.”
JD chuckled. “There wasn’t any real worry about me being taken out by her. She was angry, and rightly so. She blames me—us—and I get that too.”
“And her aim was for shit,” Confessor added, making JD laugh a little more.
“Yeah, and her aim was for shit.”
Swampy was still eyeballing me, his eyes blacker than the fucking night staring deep into me like he could reach into my chest and drag out my soul.
“Well how about then,” Swampy began, giving an unnecessary pause, “the fact that he should have been on the road the night Rocky was killed.”
The air was charged with electricity, and I felt a jolt of it shoot through my body at a hundred miles an hour. The words ignited in my head, their meaning, the somber faces, the realization that he wasn’t here…everything came together in one horrifying moment.
Swampy’s words wormed their way into my brain, feeding on the useless gray matter inside my skull, working their way to my cold, dead heart. It didn’t make sense, and yet, as I looked around the table, I knew what he was saying was true.
“Rockey’s dead?” I said, the nausea I had become so accustomed to returning with a vengeance. “You’re lyin’.”
“No, asshole, we’re not,” Moose said. “He’s dead, and you were too drunk to even notice it.”