20. Garret
GARRET
Fox's bike needed new plugs, a fresh oil change, and a chain adjustment that was long overdue. The man hadn't ridden in weeks and the machine showed it, covered in dust and leaking from the gasket where oil had been sitting too long.
Fox himself was in worse shape than the bike.
He sat in a folding chair near the workbench with a bottle of whiskey between his knees and his eyes half closed, mumbling something about a poker game from years ago that nobody else remembered.
He'd been drunk since nine in the morning, which was early even for him, and his words ran together when he spoke.
"You need anything while I'm under here?" I asked, pulling the drain plug and letting the oil pour into the pan.
"I'm fine, Crank." He took a long pull from the bottle. "I'm always fine."
He hadn't been fine since Mandy died, and four years of whiskey and grief had hollowed him out until there was barely enough left to fill the chair he was sitting in. The club had been his whole life once. Now it was something that happened around him while he drank.
I felt sorry for the old man, but there wasn't a thing in the world I could do about it.
The shop door opened and Lightning walked in with a roll of cash in his hand. He crossed to Fox and held it out.
"From the prospects," Lightning said. "They finished the run this morning. No problems."
Fox took the money without counting it and shoved it into his jacket pocket. Lightning watched him do it but I saw his expression of contempt. I didn't even think he saw me watching the whole scene.
"You eaten today?" Lightning asked.
"Not hungry," Fox grumbled but his cut hung from his body loosely. He'd lost a lot of weight and I wondered if he was sick now too, cirrhosis or something. None of the brothers spoke about stuff like that but as much as he drank, I wouldn't be surprised.
"You should eat something. Can't run a club on an empty stomach." Lightning pulled a flask from his back pocket and set it on the workbench beside Fox's chair. "Here. That's the good stuff. Better than what you've been drinking."
The last thing Fox needed was more alcohol. Still I kept my head down and my hands on the bike, but I was listening.
"Those Locust bastards have been quiet the last couple of days," Lightning said, leaning against the bench. "Don't let that fool you. They're regrouping. They killed Mandy and now they're biding their time, waiting for us to get comfortable so they can hit us again."
Fox's eyes opened a little wider and his grip tightened on the bottle. The pain on his face was fresh, the same raw wound it had been four years ago, and Lightning knew exactly where to press.
"We're going to make them pay for what they did to her, Fox," Lightning continued. "Every last one of them. You have my word on that."
"Yeah," Fox said quietly. "Yeah, we will." It was sad how bad that man wanted justice, deserved it too, but Lightning was pushing him toward an inevitability that wouldn't give him the peace he hoped for.
Lightning clapped him on the shoulder and walked out without acknowledging me once. The door swung shut behind him and the shop went quiet except for the oil dripping into the pan and Fox's heavy breathing.
I slid the drain plug back in and started filling the new oil, turning over what I'd watched Lightning do.
Every visit was the same routine. Show up, hand Fox money, pour him another drink, and remind him that the Locusts were the enemy.
It was calculated. Lightning wasn't comforting a grieving man.
He was keeping one broken on purpose, feeding him anger and alcohol so Fox stayed stuck in the past and Lightning stayed in control.
There was no proof the Black Locusts killed Mandy—none. Four years of fighting and not a single piece of evidence had surfaced tying them to her murder. The whole feud was built on suspicion that Lightning had fanned into certainty, and Fox was too deep in the bottle to question it.
And every attack the Locusts had made on Gravehound territory had been a response to something we did first. Every single one.
Lightning would send prospects to hit their runners or vandalize their property, and when the retaliation came he'd point at the damage and tell Fox the enemy was escalating.
The cycle only kept spinning because Lightning kept feeding it.
I tightened the oil filter and wiped the housing down, and my mind drifted to Andrew holding that gun telling me to get off his property.
The kid was right. He had every reason to chase me off with a shotgun, and if I'd been in his position I'd have done the same thing.
Peter would've been proud of him for it.
But knowing Andrew was right didn't change the fact that being told I couldn't have Sara made me want her more.
That was the problem. Every man in her life was drawing the same line—Lightning ordering me to stay away, Peter asking me years ago to leave his daughter alone, and now Andrew with a twelve-gauge making the same point.
And every time one of them told me no, the rebellious streak in me dug its heels in harder.
It wasn't safe for her to be with me. I knew that.
The Locusts, my club responsibility, Lightning's volatility—all of it made Sara a target if anyone figured out what she meant to me.
My head understood the math perfectly. But my head wasn't running the show anymore, and telling my heart to stay away from Sara Ducette was about as useful as telling the rain to fall upward.
"Fox," I said, setting the wrench down. "Can I ask you something?"
"Go ahead."
"If we let this thing with the Locusts simmer down instead of hitting them again, do you think that's what Mandy would've wanted? She wouldn't want you dying over this, would she?"
Fox set the bottle on the workbench and stared at the wall for a long time, and when he spoke his voice was clearer than it had been all morning.
"Mandy was incredible," he said. "She had this wild streak that drove me crazy. Flirted with every man in the club and didn't care who saw it. Half my guys were in love with her and she knew it and she loved the attention."
A ghost of a smile crossed his face as his eyes waxed over and he seemed to remember her fondly. "But she was my angel. End of the day, she came home to me."
He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand.
"Protecting her was my whole world, Crank.
That's why the club doesn't mean much to me anymore.
When you lose the person you built everything around, the rest of it turns to noise.
That's why Lightning handles things now.
I don't have it in me. Whatever he says goes, 'cause I can't make the right decisions if my mind ain't right. "
"She wouldn't want you fighting," I said.
"No." He shook his head slowly. "She'd want peace. She'd tell me I was being a stubborn fool and she'd be right."
He paused and looked at me with something almost lucid behind the glaze of whiskey.
"When a woman gets under your skin the way Mandy got under mine, nothing else matters, Crank.
Nothing. You protect her or you lose her, and if you lose her…
Well…" He lifted the bottle up to show me and then took a long swig. I got his message loud and clear.
Fox pushed himself out of the chair, unsteady on his feet, and shuffled toward the back office. "Finish the bike. I'm gonna lie down."
The office door closed and I was alone with Fox's words ringing off the walls.
You protect her or you lose her.
That was the part I'd been getting wrong. For weeks I'd been trying to convince myself that pushing Sara away was what would keep her safe. And every time I put more space between us I told myself it was for her own good.
But Fox hadn't kept Mandy safe by pushing her away.
He'd kept her close. He'd built his world around her, and when she was taken from him it destroyed him because she was everything.
The grief was proof of how much she'd mattered, and Fox would've chosen that grief a thousand times over the alternative of never having her at all.
If something happened to Sara while I was busy keeping her at arm's length, I'd end up in that same chair with that same bottle and those same hollow eyes.
I'd become exactly what Fox had become—a man too broken to stand because he'd lost the only person worth standing for.
And the worst part would be knowing I'd had her right in front of me and kept choosing to let her go.
I was in love with Sara Ducette, and no amount of logic or loyalty or fear was going to change that. Not Lightning's orders, not Andrew's shotgun, not Peter's memory. None of it. Damn the costs, damn the danger, damn every voice telling me to walk away.
I pulled my phone from my pocket and typed the message before I could talk myself out of it.
Garret: 6:38 PM: Meet me where we first met. 10 tonight. Make sure you're not followed.
I set the phone on the workbench and picked up the wrench and went back to the bike.
It was settled in my mind once for all.
Sara Ducette was mine, and the only way that would change is if she pushed me away again, because I was ready to tell her I was in love with her, and nobody was going to stop me this time.