Chapter Nine
The man tapped the glass again. Forceful. Impatient. For a moment I stared straight ahead, not sure whether to look at him or pretend he wasn’t there and hope he would go away. Go away. I was parked right outside their clubhouse. The man in the leather cut wasn’t just going to go away.
He tapped the glass again. I breathed out, a little swirl of cloud forming where the air was growing colder around me. Then I cracked my window, pressing the button on the door handle until it opened a couple of inches.
“Can we help you?” His voice rumbled. Polite, but there was an edge there.
“I… I was just passing.”
“Passing? This is a dead end. Nowhere to pass.”
“Yeah. Got a little lost.”
I tried not to wince. Not to show that I was clutching for any excuse I could find to explain why I was here and staking out an outlaw motorcycle club.
The man in leather looked over his shoulder at someone, and that someone approached.
Another in leather. Their cuts different from what I’d seen Ryan in.
Plainer. The rectangular badge on their left breast read ‘prospect’.
Trainees. That’s what my dad would call them.
And he’d tell me they were no less dangerous than the fully patched ones.
More. They were the ones who had something to prove.
“Gonna need to know who you are and what you are doing here, sweetheart,” the other said.
The word wasn’t kind the way he said it. It was clipped. A warning. It should have sounded harmless; instead it sounded like a threat.
I stared ahead a second longer. I could push my foot to the floor. Run. Take off toward the dead end, reverse, shuffle around in the middle of the pothole-riddled road and screech off past them like a lunatic. And then what? Hope I’d run into Ryan another day?
“I was just passing. Looking for an old friend, I guess.”
The prospect tilted his head sideways. The one beside him fiddled with his mobile, then nudged his friend, pointing the phone towards him. The man now resting his hands on my door nodded.
“We’re gonna need you to come inside while we verify who you are.”
A shiver brushed my skin, but I nodded anyway. My dad would be furious. I could hear him in my head.
‘Never let them take control of the situation,’ his voice echoed. ‘Once you step inside, you’re playing by their rules.’
“You can put the car over there.” The other one beckoned to a space to the left of the doors, right under the camera I’d seen earlier.
I didn’t nod. Only swallowed. I was being watched.
Not just by these prospects. As I hit the button and killed the engine, my stomach fluttered.
My fingers curled around the handle, the car unlocking automatically, and then I paused.
I shouldn’t have come. All the stories. All the warnings.
My father had instilled them in me. I knew better.
‘This is a different world, Soph. It’s not a world you belong in.’
He was right. I should have left this alone.
I should have forgotten I’d seen him. The tap on my window startled me again.
Then my driver's door opened, and suddenly I wished I’d kept the car doors locked.
I inhaled. Air filling my lungs. Adding pressure.
And beneath it all, my heart galloped. Out of control.
I followed a prospect, watching the back of his cut as he walked in front.
It was plain on the back apart from a bottom rocker.
Newcastle upon Tyne. And another badge sewn to the right.
MC. Just in case I needed any more convincing.
The other man walked behind. Just a few steps.
Just in case I turned and ran, I guessed.
And then we stepped inside the pub. Inside their clubhouse, into their space.
Away from the outside. Away from escape. My chest tightened.
“You have a name, sweetheart?”
That word again. Harder than it should be. A hint of control buried beneath it. And I was under their control now, wasn’t I?
“I… I just came here to see Ryan.”
“Who?”
“Ryan.”
“There’s no Ryan here.”
The group of prospects circled me. I counted six. A small army in itself, and with me covered on every side, there was no escape.
“Your name?”
“Sophie,” I answered reluctantly. “Look. I’m sorry. I must have made a mistake. I was looking for Ry.”
“Why did you think he’d be here?”
“I thought this was the Northern Kings clubhouse.” I shrugged, trying not to show the panic filling my chest.
“It is.”
I frowned.
“Oh. He was definitely a Northern King,” I muttered, as if I needed to convince myself. “The patch on his back.”
The men looked at each other, a frown pulling across one of their faces.
“Better tell Reap to get down here,” someone said from behind me.
“Yes. Reap. That’s him. Reap must be his biker name or something.”
I wanted to feel the flood of relief. I wanted to see the recognition on their faces.
But instead, I saw a darkness. Suspicion.
Then the mood shifted. The same quiet way it sometimes did in the emergency department, that moment when voices dropped instead of rising, when people stopped talking and started watching.
The two prospects directly in front of me exchanged a look. Not confused. Measuring.
“That’s convenient,” the one who straightened muttered, stepping in a little closer.
I shuffled backward. Involuntarily. Already seeking space. But behind me, a wall of leather stood, and I had nowhere to go.
“Yeah,” a voice rumbled low, dangerous. Fear swelled in my chest. “You were looking for me?”
The prospects moved instinctively, and he filled the gap they left, towering above the other men. His leather cut sat heavily over a black hoodie. His beard was darker in the dim light.
My stomach tightened.
Not long ago he’d been sitting on the edge of an examination bed in A&E while I stitched that deep cut along his ribs. Quiet. Watchful. The kind of patient who looked like he was measuring the room rather than being treated in it. And now he was here. Watching me the same way.
His eyes flicked to the prospects.
“Yes, I know her,” he acknowledged, though no one had asked. And then he turned towards me, his voice softening just a fraction. “What are you doing here, Soph?”
Soph.
My heart stuttered and my chest filled like someone had pumped air into it in a hurry. Heat burned behind my eyes. A flurry of memories rushing at me all at once. Overwhelming. For a moment, I couldn’t answer. There was no answer to give him. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t know.
“I don’t know,” I mumbled eventually.
Ryan tipped his head, the movement so small that I would doubt anyone would notice. Yet the men surrounding me moved away, and even in the dullness of the pub, it suddenly felt lighter. Ry pointed to the semi-circular booth beside me, and I slid across the crumbling leather seat.
“Is everything ok?” he asked tentatively, sitting down beside me.
The seat submitted to his weight. Air exhaled from the upholstery, and now I could smell him.
The scent reached me before the memories did.
Leather and smoke but layered now with something darker.
Aftershave, wood and spice. Ryan had never smelled like this.
He’d been petrol, rain and cheap soap, a fresh spray of deodorant to cover the smell of cigarettes.
Like the backstreets and bikes he used to disappear into.
This man smelled like something harder. Someone who’d spent years learning how not to be that boy anymore. Now it was wood and spice. Something sweet lingering underneath, hinting at something dangerous. Something that stirred a feeling buried right down in my stomach.
Why was I here? I couldn’t even answer myself.
That night in the hospital car park, when I realised it was him, something had switched inside me.
A memory, for sure. But it was more than that.
It was intense curiosity. The sort that burned you from the inside out.
The sort that haunted your dreams and fuelled your nightmares until you acted on it. So here I was. Acting on it.