Chapter 1 #2
"He said something about Brick’s old lady.
No one does that on my watch." Seb shrugs like the memory of it is mildly embarrassing rather than violent.
"Razor's point was that I should've handled it without making a scene at a party where half the town was watching. Same principle as yours, I think."
"Handle it quietly."
"Handle everything quietly. That's what the patch means, apparently. You stop reacting and start deciding." He picks at the label on his water bottle. "I'm still working on that bit."
I turn back to the chain and work for a while without talking. The sun's moved around to come in through the bay doors and it's warm on the back of my neck and the familiar smell of grease and rubber is doing what it always does, making things feel slightly more manageable.
"She's going to be a doctor," I say, not quite to Seb, not quite to myself.
"You said that last night."
"I know." I tighten a bolt and move on to the next one. "I just need to keep saying it until it's the first thing I think instead of the second."
Seb is quiet for a moment. Then he says, "What's the first thing you think?"
I don't answer that.
He doesn't push it.
We stay there in the warm bay for a while longer, him leaning against the wall and me on my back under the Sportster, and the radio plays a song I don't know the words to and outside I can hear brothers arriving for the afternoon, bikes pulling in, voices calling across the yard.
The ordinary sounds of a place that's becoming mine.
"When she comes back," Seb says eventually, casually, like he's talking about the weather. "After she's finished all her studying, she comes back here with her degree and her practice. She will come back. I know the type."
"Seb."
"I'm just saying."
"Don't."
"I'm just noting that you've got a few years to become someone worth coming back to." He stands and finishes his water. "Which, full disclosure, I think you already are. But maybe work on the staging-dramatic-scenes-to-push-women-away strategy. That one's got flaws."
He drops the empty bottle in the recycling crate by the door and walks back into the yard, and I listen to his footsteps fade and I stare up at the underside of the Sportster's engine and I think, he's not wrong about any of it.
A few years.
I get back to work.
I've been staring at the same carburetor for twenty minutes and I haven't done a damn thing to it.
Brick walks past the lift, glances down at where I'm crouched on the floor of the garage, and keeps walking. Then he stops, backs up, and looks again. "You planning on fixing that thing or just making friends with it?"
"Give me a minute."
"You've had forty of them." He crouches down next to me, forearms on his knees, and picks up the carburetor from where I've set it on the mat. He turns it over once, twice, and then sets it back down. "You're thinking about her."
It's not a question so I don't answer it.
Brick exhales through his nose and stands. "She's gone, Austin. And you made sure of that. So, either be proud of what you did or regret it. But pick one and get back to work, because that bike is due back this afternoon and I'm not taking the hit for it."
He walks away before I can say anything, and maybe that's the point.
He knows I don't have an answer that doesn't sound like self-pity, and he's got no patience for self-pity.
That's been the one consistent thing about being Brick's nephew in this club: he holds me to the same standard as everyone else, maybe harder.
He's not going to let me sulk over a woman when there's an engine that needs fixing.
I pick up the carburetor and get to work.
It takes me another hour to sort the bike out and by the time I wheel it back into the storage bay, my hands are black to the wrists, and my back is complaining from being bent over so long.
I wash up at the sink in the corner and try not to think about the fact that Savannah has been gone for exactly three days. Not that I'm counting.
I'm counting.
Cam is behind the bar when I walk through the main room, and she has that look on her face, the one where she's deciding whether to say something or not. I drop onto a stool, and she puts a bottle of water in front of me before I've asked for it.
"What?" I say.
"I didn't say anything."
"You were about to."
She leans on the bar. "You did the right thing, you know."
My jaw tightens. "I know that."
"You don't look like a man who knows that."
"Cam."
"I'm just saying." She stands back and picks up a glass to polish, which is something she does regularaly. "She's going to be someone extraordinary. You knew that. That's why you did it."
The water bottle is cold in my grip, and I turn it slowly without drinking from it. "She already was someone extraordinary."
"I know." Cam's voice is quieter now. "That's the part that makes it brave instead of just stupid."
I drink my water and I don't respond to that, because if I do I'm going to sound like a man who's feeling sorry for himself, and I promised myself I wouldn't do that.
I ended things with Savannah on purpose.
I made her hate me on purpose. She's going to go to med school and become the doctor she always talked about being.
She's going to have the life she was always supposed to have, and my job now is to make the choice I made mean something by becoming someone worth the sacrifice.
That sounds a hell of a lot better in my head than it does when I try to explain it to anyone else.
Seb drops onto the stool next to me and steals my water.
He's been a prospect a couple of months longer than me, and he's got the easy confidence of someone who grew up around the club, who always knew this was where he was headed.
I ended up here through Brick and sheer stubbornness.
We're different in a lot of ways, but we get along because Seb doesn't ask questions he doesn't need answers to.
"Bike done?" he asks.
"Yeah."
"Razor wants us on gate duty tonight. Both of us."
I groan.
"I know." Seb grins and hands my water back. "But Knuckles is bringing some brothers from the Eastside chapter through tonight and Prez wants fresh faces on the gate, not the same two guys who always look like they're about to fall asleep."
"Who falls asleep?"
“Bri fell asleep last week. Don't tell anyone." Seb stands. "We're on at eight. Don't be late or Knuckles will make your life a misery."
He leaves and Cam smirks at me from behind the bar. "You love this life, don't you."
"Ask me again after eight hours on a gate in a cold September night."
She laughs, and some of the weight in my chest shifts, just slightly.