Sprog (Black Saints MC Portland #7)

Prologue

SAVANNAH

The ceiling of Austin's bedroom has a crack in it that runs from the light fitting to the far corner.

I've stared at it so many times over the past three years that I can trace it from memory with my eyes closed.

I noticed it the first night I slept here, when I was fifteen and too nervous to sleep, while Austin was already out cold beside me, with one arm thrown over my waist like he was afraid I'd disappear.

Back then the crack made me feel like the room was holding its breath.

Tonight it feels like the whole world is holding its breath.

"I love you, Austin."

He leans down and kisses me as he thrusts a few more times and unloads inside me.

I love that feeling of having him inside me, the warmth of it, the intimacy of it, the way it makes me feel like we're the only two people who exist in the particular universe of this room.

He rolls off me and we lay looking at the ceiling, both breathing hard, and his hand finds mine between us without him having to look for it. He always knows where I am.

That's what's going to wreck me. Not the distance. Not the different lives. The fact that for four years, this boy has always known exactly where I am.

"I love you too, Savannah." He turns his head to look at me and his eyes are dark and soft and serious in the way they get when he means something more than the words he's saying.

We've been together since we were freshmen in high school.

Four years of Friday nights and Sunday mornings and everything in between, and I'm about to leave for college.

Three weeks. Three weeks and I'll be gone.

I don't want to leave him behind.

But I can't go. Medicine has been the plan since I was eight years old. Since that day I sat in Dr. Foster's surgery and watched him calm down a crying child with nothing more than a steady voice and a sticker. I’d thought, I want to do that. I want to be that person.

Austin knows this. He's always known this.

"Why won't you come with me?" I ask one more time. I know it'll cause an argument. I've asked three times already and each time the answer is the same. The curious part of me can't stop pulling at it, like a loose thread I know I should leave alone.

He closes his eyes briefly. He’s not frustrated with me, just steadying himself. "You know I can't. My uncle Brick has promised me a job as a prospect for the Black Saints MC. You know I've wanted to join them for as long as I can remember."

I do know that. I've always known that, the same way he's always known about medicine for me.

It's one of the things I've loved about us, that we've both known exactly who we are and never asked each other to be something different.

Until now, when being exactly who we are means we can't be in the same place.

"I know," I say. "It's important to you."

"As college is important to you."

The symmetry of it is almost cruel.

"What are we going to do, though? Do you think long distance is going to work?" I know in my heart it won't, but the thought of losing him closes my throat. I need to hear him say something that makes it feel survivable.

He shifts onto his side and looks at me properly. "Babe, you need to concentrate on college. I'll be here waiting for you when you come home."

"No, you won't," I say it before I can stop myself, and once it's out I can't pull it back. "As soon as you step foot in that clubhouse, you'll be with all those women and you won't even remember who I am."

I know what goes on in there. I'm not naive. The parties, the sweetbutts who hang around hoping to catch a man's attention, the whole culture of it. Austin has told me enough and I've heard enough from other people to understand what that world is. It scares me more than the distance.

His jaw tightens. "Sav, I’m never going to forget who you are. You're going to be taking a piece of my heart with you. Don't forget that."

I look at him and I want to believe it so badly that the wanting hurts. His eyes are steady and clear and he means every word. I can hear the honesty in his voice and I tell myself it's enough.

"I’ve three weeks left," I say as I roll into his side and press my face against his chest. The world almost feels right again when I feel his arm come around me. "Let's just enjoy our time together."

"I agree." His lips press against the top of my head. "Three weeks of being inside you is my idea of heaven."

I laugh despite everything, because that's Austin. He can make me laugh in the middle of the worst moments, and I hold him tighter and the ceiling crack is up there in the dark above us. The room is holding its breath and I try very hard not to think about what comes after.

Two Weeks Later

Austin invited me to the clubhouse today. I've been a handful of times before, always briefly, always when it was quiet. When it was just Brick and a couple of the other men around. It didn’t prepare me for what it is like on a regular afternoon.

I park my car outside the compound gates and sit in it for a moment longer than I need to.

Through the windscreen I can see the main building, a big converted industrial space with Black Saints painted on the side in letters that have been there long enough to weather and fade at the edges.

There are bikes lined up outside in a row so neat it looks deliberate, which I suppose it is.

Big bikes. Most of them custom, all of them expensive looking in a way that doesn't match the general scruffiness of everything else.

There are men outside in leather cuts, three of them leaning against the wall by the entrance.

They look up when my car pulls in and one of them says something to the others before they go back to their conversation.

I get out of the car and one of them nods at me, just barely.

I nod back because I don't know what else to do.

I've been to the clubhouse before, but always with Austin beside me, one hand on the small of my back, his presence making everything make sense. Without him I'm just a girl who doesn't belong here, and every instinct I have is reminding me of that.

I push the door open anyway.

The smell hits me first. Beer, leather, cigarette smoke and with a scent underneath it all that I can't name but that's warm and almost animal.

The main room is big and open, pool tables at one end, a bar running the length of the far wall, sofas and low tables filling the middle.

Music is playing somewhere, a song with bass that I feel more than hear.

And then I see what's happening on the sofas and my face goes hot so fast I feel dizzy.

There are people openly having sex. Not hidden, not even particularly tucked away, just happening, in the middle of a room where other people are drinking and talking and playing pool like it's the most normal thing in the world.

A woman with her top off in a man's lap.

Another one on her knees in front of a man in a cut who's got his head back and his hand in her hair.

I don't know where to look. I don't know how to arrange my face.

My heart is hammering in my chest and I'm thinking about Austin stepping into this world every day, about what Brick told him, about what the women here are for, and everything I promised myself I wasn't going to feel is flooding through me at once.

How is he going to stay away from this?

"Hey, Savannah. You looking for Austin?"

I spin around. There's a guy about Austin's age leaning against the wall near the door, arms folded, watching me with an expression that's somewhere between sympathetic and amused.

He's got a cut on with PROSPECT stitched under the Black Saints patch, the same as Austin will have soon, and I recognise his face from around town.

"Seb," I say, relieved to have a name to put to him. "Yeah, have you seen him? He knew I was coming."

Seb glances around the room at a couple of the other men who are watching us. There's an edge to his look that I don't fully understand, a warning that passes too quickly for me to catch.

"He's in his room. He asked that you go on up." He pauses, and I get the impression he's choosing his next words carefully. "Good luck in college, Savannah. You'll be great."

The way he says it makes fear twist in my stomach, but I can't work out why. I'm already moving toward the stairs.

"Thanks, Seb."

I walk through the room with my eyes straight ahead and my jaw set and I tell myself I'm not going to react to anything I see and mostly I manage it. The stairs are at the back. I take them two at a time.

Austin's room is the third door on the right.

I know because he showed me once, a quick tour of the upstairs when the place was empty, both of us laughing about something I can't remember now.

I walk to it and I don't knock because it's Austin and I've never needed to knock for Austin in four years.

I open the door.

For a second my brain doesn't process what I'm seeing.

The light is different in here, late afternoon coming through a gap in the curtain.

There are two people on the bed and one of them is Austin and the other is a blonde woman I've never seen before.

She's moving on top of him with her hands on his chest and her head thrown back.

Austin's hands are on her hips and the sound she's making is the kind of sound I only make for him.

The world goes very quiet.

I stand in the doorway and the quiet stretches out until I become aware of tiny things with terrible clarity.

The way the light catches the woman's hair.

The fact that Austin's boots are on the floor by the door in exactly the careless way he always leaves them.

The sound of music still coming up from downstairs, faint and distorted.

Then Austin sees me.

The colour drains out of his face. His hands go still on the woman's hips and his eyes find mine. What I see in his eyes is fear, sharp and immediate, and underneath the fear is an emotion I can't read. Can't or won't.

I want to pull her off him by her hair. I want to find something sharp and use it on both of them. I want to scream until the walls cave in. Instead I stand very still because if I move I'll do one of those things and I'll never get out of this building.

"Sav, I'm sorry, it's not what it looks like."

I hear my own laugh come out flat and strange. "Oh, so she's not bouncing up and down on your cock. It just looks like that. Did she tie you down and fuck you?"

The woman on top of him turns her head and looks at me and has the absolute nerve to smile. "Oh girl, that sounds like a great idea. Maybe we can do that the next time, Austin."

My hand moves before I decide to move it. I pull back and I hit her across the face with my open palm, hard enough that the crack of it echoes off the walls and she shouts and grabs her cheek.

"Sav, what the fuck are you doing?" Austin's voice is sharp, but he still doesn't move her off him and that detail lodges in my chest like a piece of glass with jagged edges.

"I want to kill you right now." My voice comes out steadier than it has any right to.

"But I know if I do that I won't get out of the front door alive.

I hate you with every part of my being. I hate that you cheated on me, but I hate more that you cheated when you knew I'd find out.

You're a fucking coward, Austin. You could have just told me, or waited until I left in a week's time. "

"But…" he starts.

"Don't." The word comes out like a door slamming. "Don't even try. I can't believe I wasted four years with the one man I thought would be my everything, and you do this to me." My throat tightens around the last part. I won't cry here. I won't give either of them that. "I hope she's worth it."

I turn to leave.

"Believe me, girl, I’m worth it," the woman says to my back.

I stop. I turn back slowly, and I cross the room. I take a fistful of her hair and pull her head back until she's looking up at me from an angle that can't be comfortable, but I don’t care. I look into her eyes, letting the hurt fuel the rage I can feel blazing from my eyes.

"Don't think he'll keep you around," I say quietly. "He clearly wants to fuck everything that moves."

I hold her eyes for another second before I spit in her face. I let her go and walk out of the room, pulling the door shut behind me with enough force to make the frame rattle.

The walk through the clubhouse is the longest I've ever taken.

I keep my spine straight and my chin. I look at nothing and no one as I tell myself one more step.

One more step, just get to the door. A man speaks as I pass but I don't hear the words, only the tone of it, half mocking, half curious. I keep walking.

The door. The compound. The car park. My car.

I sit in the driver's seat and grip the steering wheel with both hands and then the first sob tears itself out of me.

My shoulders come up around my ears and I cry in great ugly gulps that hurt my chest. The outside of the clubhouse is exactly the same as it was twenty minutes ago.

The bikes are still lined up, the painted letters are still weathering on the wall, and none of it knows or cares what just happened to me inside it.

I trusted him. For four years, I trusted him completely. I thought he was the one person in the world who would never do this to me. I thought we were different from other couples, that what we had was something you didn't throw away for a blonde woman on a Tuesday afternoon. I thought he loved me.

Maybe he did. Maybe that's the worst part.

I sit there until the crying stops and then I wipe my face on the back of my hand, before I start the car to drive home. When I get to my bedroom, I get into bed and I sob my heart out all over again.

The next morning, I call the university housing office and ask if I can move in a week early. I’m relieved when they say yes.

I tell my parents I need to find a job before the other students arrive and flood the market.

It's not entirely a lie. But mostly I need to get out of this town before I do something I can't undo.

Or worse, before I knock on Austin's door and beg him to explain it in a way that makes it make sense, because I know myself well enough to know that's the real danger.

I pack in two hours. I don't look at my phone to check for messages.

I leave before I can change my mind.