Chapter 19
Humbug
Scowling at WHORE scrawled on her building, I knock on Carol’s door, and no one answers. Immediately, I know something’s wrong. Not the kind of wrong you fix with words or whiskey. The kind that leaves a hole where your pulse should be.
I do what any biker would, I break down the damn door.
The apartment isn’t empty. Her scent, peppermint, still clings to the air, faint but fresh enough to haunt me. I stand there too long, listening to the silence, waiting for her voice, the sound of her humming.
Nothing.
I call Sugar. She won’t talk, just confirms my hunch, “Carol’s gone. Leave her be, Jack.”
Like hell I will.
The club calls it running. Trina calls it karma. I call it my fault.
So, I ride.
I run the highways thin, two lanes and truck-stop coffee, the kind that scalds and never wakes you up.
Small towns. Diners with pie glassed in like a museum exhibit.
Motels exuding the scent of aged smoke and bleach.
I sleep in fits. Every brunette with a red coat yanks my heart sideways.
Every time it ain’t her, I tell myself good.
She’s safer without me. That lie gets harder to swallow mile by mile.
Evervale keeps spinning its music box in my head. The square. The spruce. Carol’s peppermint flavored lips when she says the word, hope, like it still belongs to people like me. I want her back, but I’m also ashamed of what I did to lose her.
Back at the clubhouse, I don’t stay long. I can’t. Every wall has ears. Every brother has questions. Prez, too. I don’t have answers I like.
Trina finds me behind my shop, the dark where men go to think and screw up. She leans on my bike like it’s hers. Hell, she might win it in the divorce. Her eyes are black and bright with the kind of trouble that comes cheap and costs everything.
“You think she wants you back?” she asks. “That little Christmas girl? She’s moved on, Jack. You should too.”
I don’t answer. She reads it anyway. The way her words bounce off me like rain off chrome.
She pushes. She always was good at that. Shows up drunk another night, lip gloss smeared, tears right where the lighting will catch them. Talks about old times like those were holy days. Says we could start over. Says she misses the way I used to look at her.
Trina’s on my lap before I can protest, close, warm. She grinds down against my cock. It springs to life, remembering the fun we once had.
I almost give in. Not because I want her.
I don’t. Because numb is easy, and I’ve been sharp enough to bleed for weeks.
Nevertheless, as she moves nearer, I see Carol's features, tender eyes, messy hair… the aroma of peppermint on her skin. My hand comes up like instinct, a flat stop at Trina’s sternum.
“Don’t,” I say.
She stares a heartbeat, then punches me hard enough to sting. “You’ll regret this,” she spits.
She’s right. Just not the way she means.
The snow melts, then freezes back meaner. I fix what’s broken, generators, clutches, a brother’s split knuckle. Nothing in me gets fixed with it. Nights I lie on the office couch and stare at the ceiling, counting the ribs in the beams, not the sins in my chest. I quit counting both.
Frost pokes his head in one morning. “You look like hell, brother.”
“Feels familiar.”
He watches me. Biker can hear the things you don’t say. “You bringin’ any more heat on the club?”
“No,” I say, because that’s still true. “Just on me.”
He nods. “That, I can live with. For a while.”
I nod, thinking that’s the end of it.
“You still sweet on the runaway?”
“None of your damn business.”
“Humbug, this ain’t like you. Getting hung up on someone so… sweet. Trina’s not sweet.”
“You’re right. Carol isn’t a thing like Trina. She didn’t deserve to get played.”
“You played her?”
“No,” I say, blowing breath.
“So, what’s the problem?” Frost cocks his head like he’s confused.
“I wasn’t pretending to save her. You know damn well, I was only there to ensure nobody got hurt, and that’s what I did. But Carol thinks I played her.”
“And you stayed quiet for the club. The robbery’s club business. Women never understand that.”
“Yeah, and Blizzard got cocky. He pointed a gun at her. Carol thinks it was all a lie. What happened between us. But it’s not.”
“Have you told her this?”
“No. I don’t know where the fuck she is.”
“I’ll ask around.”
“Already have…”
“Maybe someone will tell me,” Frost says, already scrolling his phone.
Damn Frost, sweet as frosting. At least he can put on like he’s harmless.
Sugar finally cracks.
“You didn’t hear it from me,” she says, voice low. “She’s workin’ in Pine City. Bakery off Main. Don’t be stupid.”
I hang up before I thank her and make it messy.
An hour later, I’m chewing highway in long bites, rain carving a thousand needles into my face.
Pine City appears, city bones showing through a shiny coat.
Unlike Evervale, the place is dull, reminds me of wet cardboard.
One bright spot, I find the bakery by the cheerful signs. Sweet and warm and clean, like her.
I don’t go in. Not yet. Afternoon, sky the color of bad dishwater, I stand in the shadow across the street and watch her move behind glass.
Hair up, hands quick, face soft when she checks a timer, sharp when she counts change.
She laughs once with the kid on dishes, eyes going bright, then the light dies when she turns away from the register and thinks no one’s looking.
I step into the street, then stop. Pretend restraint is honor. Pretend distance is good for her.
Then she looks up. It’s nothing, just a flick of her eyes to the window, but it cuts me open. I swear she sees me through rain and reflection, right down to the part of me that still believes in whatever comes after sorry.
Ragged breath out, courage in. I push the door. I walk in. The bell is a cheap jingle. The heat hits like a hug I didn’t earn. She’s right there, close enough to smell sugar and mint.
“Humbug,” she says, careful.
“Jack,” I say, voice rougher than I like. “You look good.”
She doesn’t smile. Doesn’t swing, doesn’t run. Just holds the counter like if she lets go, she’ll hit the floor. “What do you want?”
I want a hundred things I don’t deserve, I think. I don’t say. “Coffee,” I say. “Black.”
She pours. The cup shakes just enough to make me hate myself more. I slide cash across. She tries to hand change back and I won’t take it. We stand there, two cowards in a room full of cinnamon rolls.
“You look tired,” I say, and instantly bite my tongue. Fuck, what am I doing? Insulting her? I run my hand through my hair.
She takes it in stride. “You look like you haven’t slept since… I saw you in Evervale.”
“Not much,” I admit.
We talk about nothings like they’ll save us. Weather. The bus schedule. The price of sugar lately like we’re old people on stoops. The kid on dishes drops a pan and swears. She laughs, small, unguarded, then bites it back, like joy is something she owes someone else.
Not me.
A man comes in wearing a city badge. He orders like he’s sorry he’s alive. I step aside. She moves, smooth and quick, all business. I take my coffee and go because I’m smart enough to know the first cut is cleanest.
But I don’t leave town.
I take a room at the Pine City Motor Lodge, the kind of place that has rates by the hour. The clerk clocks the beard and the cut and decides to be friendly. “Weekly rate?”
“Nah,” I say. “Couple nights.”
For days, I park a block away and drift the edges, never right at the glass again.
Nights, I walk past her building and keep going, like a wolf checking fences.
I leave one small thing where she’ll find it and never see me do it.
A red-and-white peppermint ornament, cheap plastic, hung on the knob of the bakery’s back door with a twist tie like it blew there.
I call no one. I drink coffee until my hands buzz. I smoke behind the motel where the dumpster sweetens everything with rot. Trina rings twice. I watch her name blink and burn out. Frost texts a photo of Evervale’s new tree, lopsided, lights wrong.
I don’t respond.
He writes: You forget how to hate Christmas?
I thumb back a middle finger.
On the third night I cave and call Sugar. She doesn’t bother with hello. “You better not blow up her life.”
“Just watchin’ her,” I say.
“Creepy.”
“Making sure she’s safe.”
A pause. “Who’d want to hurt her?”
“Trina,” I say automatically, though I’ve not been really worried about her following through on her threat.
“Well, that’s one reason she’s hiding.”
“I’m another.”
“Yeah, of course. You broke her heart. But there’s more.”
“Has she said anything?”
“She’s not speaking to me anymore.”
“What do you mean more?”
Click.
Day four, the bakery owner keeps Carol late. I circle twice, pissed at the night for getting so big in this city. She comes out with trash bags and a hand at her belly that wasn’t there before. It freezes me. Small, protective. The “more” Sugar spoke of.
I step out of the shadow of the alley like I’m meant to be there.
Carol jolts, then covers it fast with that bartender calm, chin up. “I don’t take out the trash for free, big man. Move out of my way. I’m on the clock.”
“I’ll take it,” I say, and I do. My hands want to shake. They don’t. I walk to the dumpster and kill the bags like they’re a favor that could make up for a robbery and a hundred stupid choices.
When I come back, she’s got the door propped with a flour sack and her arms folded like armor. “You can’t be here.”
“I know,” I say. “I’ll leave.”
“Good.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, and it comes out like gravel. “For Evervale. For the lie. For the way it made you look at the world after.”
She doesn’t blink. “A lie is a lie. Doesn’t matter if you put a bow on it. Jimmy’s insurance scam. Your clean hands. The whole town’s stupid act. I can’t…” Her voice thins. She swallows it back. “I can’t do that anymore.”
“I get it,” I say. I don’t. I want to. “I came to tell you I’m done with lies. You can hate me for what I did. I’ll carry it. But I’m not leavin’ you to carry anything else alone.”