Chapter 13 Shade
SHADE
As we ride to Jinx’s house, my head’s a fucking mess. A turbulent storm of thoughts.
I can’t stop thinking about the conversation with Grizz and Birdie days earlier.
I look over at Kai. He’s younger than me. And if the road doesn’t get us, I’m likely to go first. But I can’t imagine a world that doesn’t have him in it, and never want to face what Grizz is facing.
We talked for a few more minutes before we left, and we found out the cancer is stage four. And even with some limited health insurance, the copayments and non-covered expenses have ruined them.
They’re the kind of bills that would take a lot to fix. And a part of me wonders if Wren would ever be open to hacking all those health insurance and big pharmaceutical companies to steal money for the club to use to cover this kind of bullshit.
My teeth grind at the injustice of it all. Would Grizz be facing the loss of his partner if the insurance company hadn’t said no to so many treatments and options?
What good is paying so much to cover your health if, in the end, they won’t cover your health?
Fuckers.
Who gets to decide what a person’s life is worth?
Certainly not some guy in a fucking suit who talks about quarterly results and profits. It’s the definition of conflict of interest.
And another thought churning in my mind is Isla and Kai. They look so goddamn pretty together. Happy too. They’re like a matched pair. But is it selfish to want them both too?
Is it selfish to tell Kai I’ve changed my mind on the polyamory thing? And what if it doesn’t work out? What if Isla doesn’t want what I’m thinking? What if I open us up, and she says no, but then the door is open for Kai to love anyone?
And who the fucking hell am I to tell Kai who he can and can’t love, anyway? I’m being a selfish prick because, while I could see a path to us both loving Isla, I can’t imagine a world where he loves anyone else but the two of us.
“You okay?” Kai asks when we pull up outside Jinx’s house.
“No. I’m really fucking not. But let’s do this anyway.”
Jinx lives in a trailer that looks like it’s being held together by duct tape.
Like Grizz, he’s been skipping work rotations, missing his security shifts at some of our legal enterprises, and generally been an ass about anything that doesn’t include beer or poker when he does show his face at the clubhouse.
Feels like today was just him reaching the end of Grudge’s rope.
We don’t need to knock. Jinx opens the door, shirtless, scratching his chest. The guy used to be built, but now he looks like all that muscle has congealed in his stomach.
“Oh, it’s you two,” he says, then looks to the steps and spits. It lands on Kai’s boot.
Once, I put a gun in a man’s mouth and pulled the trigger while he was pissing his pants.
I’m tempted to do the same thing here. Instead, I climb up the steps, put my hand around Jinx’s neck, and shove him back so hard into the fragile siding of his trailer that it leaves a head-shaped dent.
“Get down on your motherfucking knees and clean that spit off his boot.”
Jinx huffs, but his eyes are wide with fear. “Fuck you. It was an accident.”
“Do it, or they’ll never find your fucking body.”
He freezes, then. Realizing he’s not in the negotiating position he thought he was in.
“Fine,” he says, his voice rough.
I let him down, but I place my hand on the handle of my Glock.
When Jinx falls to the floor, reaching for a rag sitting on his porch, Kai looks at me over his head. “I love you,” he mouths, as if I haven’t been an ass.
And the corners of my lips twitch in a smile as Jinx cleans the spit off.
“Done,” he says as he stands. “Sorry about that, Jackal. Wasn’t aiming for your boot. The wind must have got it.”
Kai licks the tip of his finger and points it in the air, as if testing for this imaginary wind. “Yeah, I can see how that happened.”
Jinx’s cheeks flush red, and I can’t decide if that’s embarrassment or shame.
I shove him toward the chair on the small deck area outside the trailer door. “Sit your ass down and listen.”
I’d like to think that, in a pack, a dog knows when it’s beaten. That it recognizes who the alpha really is and falls in line. But Jinx’s color is returning, and his shoulders fall back as his nose turns up.”
“You’ve been skipping responsibilities,” Kai says.
“So?” Jinx shrugs. “Didn’t think it mattered. You got all these new members, like the two of you. And a load of prospects wanting to join. Young blood and all that shit. Let them do it.”
Kai steps closer to him. “You don’t get to stop pulling your weight because someone else joined. That’s not how the Outlaw family works.”
“I already paid my dues,” Jinx says cockily.
I stand shoulder to shoulder with Kai. My favorite fucking place, in spite of the turmoil I currently feel. “Thing about dues is, they get paid annually. No contribution of effort, you don’t get a share of the pot.”
“Fuck you,” Jinx says.
“Careful,” Kai says. “There’s a line between a difference of opinion and blatant disrespect for an officer of the club.
You don’t get to sit on your ass and do nothing because you turned fifty and got bored.
You don’t get a payout of money that other men stepped up and earned.
You want the patch, you continue to earn it. Every month. Every year.”
I cross my arms. “You miss a shift in the next thirty days, you’re going onto a six-month probation.”
“Probation?” Jinx asks, his eyes wide.
“You heard him,” Kai says. “And it’s generous, because I’d vote to yank your patch in a heartbeat for your disrespect alone. Your salary will be halved.”
Jinx lowers his face into his hands. “And what if I don’t show up at all?”
I grab his chin and force him to look at me. “Then you got a week to pack up and get the fuck out of here before I come looking for you with a blowtorch to burn that ink off your fucking body.”
Jinx shoves out of my grasp. “Fine. I’ll show up.”
“It starts now,” Kai says. “Get your ass dressed and get yourself over to the clubhouse for your shift.”
“Catfish is standing in for you until you get there,” I say, taking a step away from him. “And you’d better be fucking apologetic when you see him because he was pissed at you when we left to come find you.”
Kai taps my shoulder, the sign that we’ve done enough, and we walk back to our bikes. “You think he’ll show?” he asks.
I throw my leg over my bike. “Kinda hoping he doesn’t. Might be fun to have someone to torture.”
“I haven’t forcibly removed someone’s ink in years. You remember Jonathan Paltrow? Sidekick?”
“That sick fuck crossed lines even bikers never cross,” I say, thinking of the loner biker and former friend of Kai’s who deceived everyone. “You shouldn’t have had to do that on your own.”
“It was before I met you.” Kai looks at me, and I can see the uncertainty in his eyes. “Are you ready to talk to me, now?”
“Let’s take a ride, first.”
Kai looks back over to Jinx’s house, and when he realizes Jinx can’t see us, he reaches for my hand and squeezes it. “Okay.”
We head back to the clubhouse, the road winding between the pine trees and scrub. It’s cold. Probably too cold for my knuckle joints. But I’ve been hankering for a long ride since the first real snowfall last year.
“You wanna go for a ride up Heeney Road to the reservoir?” I ask, thankful our helmets are mic’d up. “See how far we can get if the snow’s gone over there.”
It’s one of the things I love about mid-April here. It feels like spring in town, but it’s still winter up in the mountains.
“Yeah, let’s do that,” Kai says.
It’s gonna take us at least an hour, maybe longer, depending on how the conditions change and whether the road has been cleared.
I can’t explain what being on my bike does for me. It’s like freedom and exhilaration seep into my chest, making it feel as expansive as this fucking beautiful view. Hugging the bends, watching the white lines in the middle of the road fly by—all of it is meditative.
Pushing the accelerator, we fly, riding side by side like we have a million times before.
We’re almost there when I see an alert pop up on my phone and notice it’s from the camera software.
“Shit,” I say, pulling over to the side of the road.
“Everything okay?” Kai asks, pulling in next to me.
I take off my gloves and grab the phone from its holder to open the camera app. There are two people, and one of them launches a rock from the front of the property through the window.
“Motherfuckers. We gotta turn around, someone’s breaking into our house.”
“Isla,” Kai says, concerned.
“She’s at work today.” A detail I remembered from our conversation, her schedule.
We head toward home, passing the clubhouse, but we’re about a mile out when a tan-colored truck comes around the bend behind us and clips my back wheel, sending the world to a tilt.
“Garrett,” I hear Kai yell as my tire fishtails across the gravel.
I grip the handlebars of the bike, but momentum gets the better of me.
If this is it… If this is the moment I die, I can’t think of a better way to do it. I’m on my bike. In open space. With a man I love, now settled in our forever home.
But I’m not fucking ready.
The bike tips over. Like a painful waltz, we skid the first track of road connected, my leg trapped beneath the bike. The sound of my helmet getting shredded on the tarmac is like an explosion through my skull.
Jarringly, I bounce, the weight of the bike on me.
Everything spins so fast, it’s impossible to know exactly how I feel or what damage is being done.
Then, we separate.
Metal grinds, my bike hitting boulders that sit along the edge of the road. Thankfully, I stop just shy of my bike, only nudging into the rocks.
I don’t move. I simply lie there, sucking in air, putting off the moment I have to decide what hurts. Adrenaline and panic flood my system, leaving me with shakes that run through my body.
Kai slides to his knees next to me, throwing his helmet to the ground. “Bear,” he cries, not moving my helmet but opening the visor. I want to kill that fucking driver for putting the look of fear on his face. “Stay down. You know better than to move.”
I try to look around for the truck, but Kai’s hand sits firmly on my chest. “They didn’t stop?” I ask.
“The guy was wearing a balaclava. Only his eyes. Flipped me the bird, then U-turned.”
I try to sit up, but the world goes even more tilted.
“Go after him.”
“Yeah. That’s what I’m gonna do when you’re lying on the asphalt in a mangled pile.” He reaches for his phone. “Greer? You busy?”
“I don’t need Greer,” I say, but my words do sound a little mumbled. Butcher, our old president, hooked up with Greer after she operated on him after a shooting. Now, she’s expecting his baby and runs a mobile emergency clinic from a renovated ambulance Butcher bought for her.
I don’t hear the rest of the conversation because I close my eyes. Probably the worst fucking thing I can do.
“You two okay?” I hear someone say, then hear Kai explain what happened. They talk about roadblocks and shit. I don’t really pay attention. Just dial into Kai’s voice. Wishing the worry wasn’t there.
“Tell me what hurts,” Kai says.
“My fucking bike.”
“We’ll buy you a new one. Hell, you can have mine. Can you wiggle your toes?”
I wiggle them to check. “Are they moving?”
Kai looks down at my boots. “Yeah, can’t see your toes but your boots are moving. What about your fingers?”
I wiggle them too. One of them in sight. And the relief I feel that my spine has come out of this unscathed causes me to start shaking again.
Without moving me, Kai squeezes my forearms. “You got any numbness going on? Buzzing? Anything feel weird?”
“Felt like I got thrown through a brick wall. Pretty sure it all feels weird.”
“At least you haven’t lost your sense of humor. And don’t try to move. One of the locals came out with their teen kid. They’re flagging traffic and telling them there’s an obstruction and to go around.”
“Never been called an obstruction before.”
Kai runs his fingers along my nose. “Should be your road name, because you often forget to get out of your own way.”
I try to laugh, but my ribs hurt.
There’s the sound of bikes approaching. And Kai presses his fingers to his mouth, kisses them, and then presses his fingertips to my lips. “I love you, Bear. And watching you spin was terrifying.”
“Put your hand in mine,” I say, and he does as I ask. I squeeze his hand gently, until the vibrations beneath my skull get too annoying to ignore.
First off the bike is Grudge, who drops to one knee next to me. “Talk to me, Jackal.”
“A truck raced up behind us and clipped the bike,” Kai says. “Flipped me the bird, then U-turned out of here.”
“You think he clipped you on purpose?” Grudge asks.
Kai runs a hand through his hair. “Whatever he meant or didn’t mean, he fled the fucking scene before Shade had finished marking up the road.”
Atom comes up behind Grudge. “You get a plate?”
“I didn’t,” Kai says. “But I’ll know the sound of that engine in my sleep.”
Catfish arrives, pulling up near me without getting off his bike. “Bit dramatic, Shade.”
“Don’t make me…laugh. Ribs…feel like they’re falling apart.”
There’re more logistics. Description of the truck and the balaclava’ed driver. Kai tells Grudge about the windows being smashed at home. I hear bikes leave and Greer’s mobile clinic arrive.
Before I can process much more, there’s a board being placed beneath me, and straps being tightened around my body for transit. But in my mind, I’m already out seeking the people who want to hurt me.