Chapter 5. Kit
A full week has passed since Ni first brought Soren to Redline.
Apparently, the man has decided to come back.
The heavy bass from the Redline MC main room speakers constantly vibrates up through the scarred concrete floor, traveling straight through the rubber soles of my boots and settling into my bones.
I am holding court from my regular barstool, perfectly positioned near the edge of the long wooden counter.
Dex is leaning heavily against the bar to my left, while Sol and Ni are to my right.
Allie is sitting on the couch, talking to Anya and the girls.
My right hand grips my glass. I raise it slightly, letting the amber liquid slosh precariously near the rim, holding the undivided attention of my audience.
Then my gaze sweeps casually past Dex’s shoulder, and I clock him.
Soren.
He is sitting near the far end of the long bar, partially obscured by the shifting bodies moving through the aisle.
I have seen him twice since that first Friday now, always with Ni, always quiet.
Apparently, once Ni finally managed to drag his best friend through the door, Soren discovered he didn’t hate the place enough to stay away.
He is watching me again.
He isn’t watching me the way the others do, half-distracted by their own drinks, highly entertained by my volume. He is simply observing. His attention is entirely steady, completely unhurried. His dark eyes are fixed directly on my face.
He has a full, neatly trimmed beard, and he’s big and muscly. Probably at least twenty years my senior.
Just how I like it.
“I completely butchered it,” I say loudly.
“It was late July. The track was out past the county line, and I am running the back sweeper. I’m carrying way too much corner speed.
Entirely too much. I totally misjudge my primary braking marker because I am entirely too busy admiring the carbon-fiber exhaust on the guy I just passed. ”
Dex laughs. Sol shakes his head, taking a slow sip from a dark bottle.
“So, I pitch the bike into the corner, right?” I continue. “I am absolutely committed. My knee slider is completely dragging the deck. I am scraping the paint off the curb. I scrub way too much speed riding the front brake all the way to the absolute apex of the turn.”
I sweep my left arm violently outward to illustrate the aggressive slide of the tires. My elbow collides sharply against Sol’s bicep.
Sol grunts, almost dropping their phone onto the sticky bar top, and forcefully shoves my shoulder back. “Watch the hands, Kit,” he warns.
“My bad, my bad,” I say, flashing another massive grin.
I know Soren is still looking.
He is exactly the kind of man I used to actively seek out. He radiates the classic protective authority of a Caregiver. He possesses the steady presence that makes my buried Little side violently slam its hands against the inside of my ribcage, begging to be let out.
I cannot let it out.
I do not have the keys anymore.
“So I lose the front end,” I say. “The tire completely washes out. It just gives up entirely. The front end tucks underneath me, and I immediately low-side right onto the asphalt. I am sliding on my ass for a solid fifty feet, just totally surrendered to momentum, watching my beautiful, highly tuned racing machine violently cartwheel itself into the gravel trap.”
Dex is openly laughing now, completely engaged. He’s my best friend. Ni nudges my boot with his.
But I am suffocating.
The noise isn’t enough.
The physical space of the club feels too restricted. If I turn my head exactly thirty degrees to the left, I will see the back corner of the room. I will see the Daddy/little section. I will see the low, comfortable couches.
I will see Charles.
I will see him resting his large hand heavily on the back of John’s neck.
I cannot stop talking.
If I stop talking, the silence will crash into me, and the agonizing reality of my complete isolation will crush my spine.
“The best part is the track marshals,” I ramble on.
“The marshals come running out with the fire extinguishers, acting like I just initiated a nuclear launch sequence. I’m lying in the dirt, completely fine, just furious about the scratched fairings, and this guy is actively trying to spray me down with chemical foam. ”
The crowd laughs.
I grip the heavy base of my whiskey glass, rotating it slowly on the wet napkin beneath it.
Against every single survival instinct wired into my brain, I steal one more glance down the length of the bar.
Soren is still looking at me.
Again.
The first Friday could have been curiosity. I was new to him. He was new to me. We caught each other’s eyes for one horrible second before I escaped.
But this is not the first Friday anymore.
He has seen me since.
And he keeps looking.
He has a dark bottle of beer resting on the wood in front of him. His expression hasn’t shifted. He isn’t entertained by my frantic hand gestures, and he hasn’t been fooled by the laughter.
He is looking at me, and I know he sees me.
That stillness is infinitely worse than the frantic noise of my own head. It is even worse than Charles and John settling comfortably onto the couch.
I immediately break eye contact, violently ripping my gaze away and staring blankly down at the melting ice at the bottom of my glass while my heart attempts to hammer its way through my ribs.
I last another fifteen minutes.
Then I’m done.
I don’t announce my departure this time. I don’t make another joke. Dex is arguing with Sol about tire compounds, Ni has wandered over to speak to King, and Allie is still occupied with Anya.
Nobody notices when I leave my empty glass on the bar and slip away.
At least, nobody I am willing to look back at.
I cross the room quickly and throw my shoulder against the metal push-bar. The door yields, swinging open to expose the dark night.
It’s cold.
All of the noise instantly vanishes.
I walk rapidly down the rows of parked motorcycles until I reach my bike near the back of the lot. My helmet is hooked over the right handlebar. I pull it free, jam it forcefully down over my head, and swing a leg over the saddle.
I ride home, and I completely obey every single traffic law.
The streets are entirely empty. The engine whines beneath me, frustrated by the low RPMs. I keep the digital speedometer absolutely precisely at forty-five miles an hour.
I stop completely at every red light, planting my boot firmly on the asphalt, entirely consumed by the oppressive quiet inside the helmet.
By the time I finally pull into the small parking lot behind my apartment building, my entire body feels like it is composed of lead.
The apartment is dimly lit when I push the door open. One lamp is on, positioned in the far corner of the small living room. The rest of the space is completely dark, overwhelmingly quiet, and there’s no warmth at all.
There is a couch I barely sit on, a television I never turn on, and a total lack of anything that proves a human being actually resides here.
It is just a secure storage unit for my own physical body.
I hate it.
I pull the heavy leather jacket off my shoulders, letting it slide completely off my arms and hit the back of a kitchen chair.
I force myself to walk forward. My boots feel incredibly heavy on the cheap carpeting of the bedroom. I don’t turn on the overhead light. I don’t need to. I navigate perfectly by memory toward the tall bookshelf situated against the far wall.
I reach my hand up to the absolute highest shelf.
My fingers brush against something completely soft.
I pull him down.
It is a small stuffed bear.
His name is Pretty.
The material is incredibly worn, totally softened by years of desperate handling.
One of his rounded ears is permanently flattened tightly against the side of his head.
I have physically moved him exactly three times since Charles packed up his belongings and finally walked out the door, and every single time, I relocate him somewhere significantly harder to reach.
I have never been able to throw him into the trash.
I carry him slowly toward the mattress.
I sit heavily right on the edge of the bed, my boots still securely strapped to my feet, and rest my forearms entirely on my thighs. I hold Pretty in both of my hands.
I reach up with my right thumb and slowly run the pad of my finger along his flattened ear.
My face does something it hasn’t done all night.
The grin vanishes, replaced instantly by a frown.
I don’t make a sound at first.
I just sit hunched over in total darkness, entirely alone, with only Pretty, staring directly at the worn bear resting in my lap while my vision rapidly blurs. My eyes go hot, and I can’t stop the tears.
A ragged sound violently tears its way out of my throat.
It is a terrible, broken sob.
I lean entirely forward, curling my body aggressively over the small stuffed toy, pressing my face down toward my knees, and I begin to cry into the echoing dark of my own apartment, fundamentally broken, totally exhausted, and entirely sure that absolutely no one in the world is watching.
I don't know how long I sit there before the memory comes.
It doesn't ask permission. It just arrives and it hurts worse than anything else has hurt all night.
Redline used to look different to me.
It was a Friday, almost two years ago. I remember because Dex had lost a bet earlier that week and had to buy the first round, and he was still sulking about it. I remember because I wasn't wearing my cut. I wasn't anyone's biker that night. I was just small.
Charles had dropped to the floor in the Little corner, folding himself down onto the low carpet with a groan about his knees that made me giggle, and he hadn't asked me if I wanted to come down with him. He never asked. He just patted the space beside him, low and warm, and I went.
I always went.
There wasn't a version of me that didn't go when Charles patted the floor.
I had a coloring book open in front of me, the good kind with the thick cardstock pages that didn't tear when you pressed too hard, and a fan of markers spread out like a rainbow between my knees.
My tongue was poking out of the corner of my mouth in concentration.
I remember that specifically, because Charles reached over at some point and tapped the tip of my tongue with one blunt finger and said, "You're gonna bite that thing off one of these days, baby," and I laughed.
I also always laughed about how a motorcycle kink club had a space where we could be soft and color together.
Allie was across from me, small and sleepy, curled into a beanbag with her thumb resting against her bottom lip, not quite sucking it, just resting it there the way she did when she was calm.
Her Mommy, Dee, was braiding a section of her hair, humming something tuneless.
There were two or three other Littles I don't remember as clearly, building something enormous out of foam blocks near the wall, shrieking every time it toppled.
I wasn't drinking. I hadn't had a drop all night. I didn't need to be anywhere near triple digits on an empty county road. I didn't need my throat raw from talking. I was coloring a lion a shade of blue that didn't exist in nature, and I was completely, entirely at peace.
"Daddy, look," I said, holding the page up without looking away from it, because I wasn't finished and I wanted him to see the whole thing eventually, not yet, but I wanted him to know I was making something.
"I see it, bug," Charles said. His voice did that thing it always did—it dropped low, went slow, like he had all the time in the world and nowhere else he'd rather spend it.
His hand found the back of my neck, heavy and warm, his thumb brushing once against the knob at the base of my neck.
"That's a mighty strange color for a lion. "
"He's a space lion," I told him, like it was obvious. "Space lions can be any color they want."
"Can't argue with that logic."
He didn't let go of my neck. He kept his hand right there, anchoring, the entire time I colored, only lifting it to take a sip of his own drink. Every few minutes, without any real reason, he'd press down, just slightly.
A check-in.
A here I am.
I didn't have to ask for it. I didn't have to perform being okay or perform being not-okay. I just had to exist, small and quiet and coloring a lion blue, and he kept his hand right there like it cost him nothing at all.
At some point, I got tired, the good kind of tired, heavy-limbed and soft-headed, and I put the markers down and crawled the two feet between us and put my head in his lap without asking.
He didn't act surprised. He just shifted his beer to his other hand and let his fingers sink into my hair, scratching lightly at my scalp, and I remember closing my eyes and thinking, distinctly, clearly, the way you only think something when you're young enough or safe enough to think it without irony:
I never have to be fast here. I never have to outrun anything here. I can just be small, and someone bigger than me will hold the weight of it.
I fell asleep like that. Actually asleep, in the middle of a biker clubhouse, surrounded by noise and leather and motorcycle exhaust drifting in from the main room, and people screaming from the spanking benches, curled up on the floor with my head in my Daddy's lap, and nothing in me was screaming.
Nothing in me needed to be numbed.
I was just a boy, held.
He carried me out to his truck later. I don't remember that part. Allie told me about it afterward—said Charles scooped me up like I weighed nothing, tucked Pretty under my arm before I even asked for him, and didn't let anyone else touch me on the way out.
I sit up.
Pretty is still clutched in my hands, one flattened ear pressed beneath my thumb, exactly where Charles's finger used to rest when he tucked him in against my chest.
I don't have that anymore.
I don't have any of it.
I have an empty apartment, and a bear with a ruined ear, and a body that only knows how to go fast enough to stop feeling.
I press Pretty against my chest anyway, curling forward over him in the dark, and I let myself cry until there's nothing left to cry with.