Chapter 7 #2
“What do you want?” he asked.
I almost said her.
That was how gone I was.
Instead, I said the thing that had been circling me for months.
“I want a trade.”
Nate blinked.
Callum said nothing.
“I got my GED,” I said.
Nate’s mouth dropped open.
I glared at him. “Close it.”
“You got your GED?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Online. Nights. After runs. Before runs. When you thought I was sulking.”
“You were sulking.”
“I was multitasking.”
Callum’s mouth twitched.
Just barely.
But it mattered.
“I’m taking community college classes now,” I said. “Remote. Construction basics. Business math. Building codes. Project management intro. Stuff like that.”
Nate stared. “Who are you and what did California do to my brother?”
“Shut up.”
“No, no, this is amazing. Does Edge’s daughter know she accidentally inspired a biker educational renaissance?”
I ignored him and kept my eyes on Callum.
“I want my contractor’s license eventually,” I said. “Learn the trade right. Not just swing hammers and patch drywall. Build houses. Real ones. Remodels. Developments. You can make a mint in L.A. and San Diego if you know what you’re doing and have the connections.”
Callum looked thoughtful now.
The room shifted around that silence.
“Club has connections,” I said. “Land. Investors. People who need work done and people who need work. We’ve got men who can ride, collect, enforce.
But there’s legitimate money sitting around us, and we keep letting men in polo shirts take it because they know how to file permits and talk to inspectors. ”
Nate slowly grinned.
Callum’s eyes sharpened.
There he was.
Prez.
Strategic.
Hungry in a way that had nothing to do with violence.
“JD does that for Santa Fe,” I said. “Not construction, but the clean-side stuff. Legal. Money. Pressure. He knows how to walk into a room with rich people and make them think he belongs there while he’s cutting the floor out from under them.”
Callum nodded once. “JD has credentials.”
“I’m a far cry from JD.”
“Everyone is.”
“Thanks.”
“But you’re not wrong,” Callum said.
That stunned me more than it should have.
Nate slapped the table. “Holy hell. Dylan’s going to become our JD with a tool belt.”
“Do not call me that.”
“Contractor Daddy?”
“I will end you.”
Callum ignored us both. “You serious?”
“Yes.”
“Classes cost money.”
“I’ve got money.”
“You’ll need time.”
“I’ll make it.”
“You still ride.”
“I’ll ride.”
“You still answer when called.”
“Always.”
Callum studied me for a long moment.
Then he nodded.
“All right.”
The word hit me strangely.
Permission.
Not to leave.
To become.
“Club will cover half if you pass,” Callum said.
My head snapped up.
“What?”
“Investment,” he said. “You pass, we cover half. You keep going, we talk more. We could use a man with a degree. Or a license. Something clean enough to put on paper and useful enough to make money.”
Nate looked weirdly proud.
The elders were worse.
Once word got out, they gave me hell for two straight weeks.
College boy.
Professor.
Blueprint.
Homework.
Every insult they could think of, and half of them weren’t creative enough to land.
But then old Rafe clapped me on the shoulder one night and said, “Good. World’s changing. Club’s gotta change with it.”
Another elder said, “About time one of you younger idiots learned numbers instead of just counting bullets.”
They laughed.
But there was pride under it.
That got to me.
More than I wanted to admit.
So I worked.
Runs when Callum needed me.
Classes when he didn’t.
Remote lectures with bad internet from motel rooms. Quizzes done at two in the morning after twelve hours on the road. Flashcards taped inside a cabinet at my place. Building code PDFs on my phone. Math I had not touched since high school coming back ugly, slow, and humiliating.
I hated it.
I loved it.
Both.
It made me feel like I was stealing something back from the boy who had washed his jeans in the bathtub and gone to school with wet cuffs because his mother couldn’t be bothered and his father couldn’t stay sober.
That boy had thought the world was made of locked doors.
Turns out, some doors opened if you were stubborn enough to learn the damn code.
Destiny had done that to me.
She didn’t know it.
Probably never would.
But watching her take the wreckage of her life and turn it into nursing school, ocean views, matcha runs, new friends, and Dean’s List grades made every excuse I had ever made taste like ash.
If she could become more than the fire, I could become more than the smoke.
That didn’t mean I stopped thinking about her.
I didn’t.
I knew things I should not have known, because security updates were a blessing and a curse.
She had a roommate named Lily from Idaho who apparently looked like she got lost on the way to a library and accidentally became Destiny’s best friend.
She and Destiny found a stray cat and named it Cupcake, which sounded like a crime against the animal’s dignity.
They drank matcha tea lattes. They went to concerts.
They studied like maniacs. Destiny made Dean’s List.
Regan told Callum.
Callum told me sometimes.
Nate found out because Nate found out everything.
I pretended not to care.
No one believed me.
Then came Georgia.
I met her in an online community college discussion board, of all humiliating places.
The assignment was about sustainable building materials, and half the class had posted nonsense copied from the first page of the internet.
Georgia wrote three paragraphs about reclaimed wood, insulation efficiency, and how her uncle had remodeled his house in Escondido using salvaged beams from an old barn.
I replied because she seemed like the only person in the class who knew what a paragraph was.
She replied back with a joke about men in construction acting like drywall was a personality.
I laughed.
Then we started chatting about assignments.
Then studying.
Then coffee.
Georgia was easy.
That was the best word for her.
Easy smile. Easy laugh. Bright blue eyes.
Tan skin. Blonde hair she admitted came from highlights and not God because, according to her, nobody in Southern California should be trusted when they claimed their hair color was natural.
She wore sundresses to study sessions and brought colored pens in a little zip pouch.
She had parents who lived in a tidy middle-class house with a lemon tree out back and a father who grilled on Sundays.
Her mom hugged me the second time I came over.
Actually hugged me.
No fear. No sizing me up. No looking at my bike and deciding what kind of man I was before I opened my mouth.
Georgia’s dad asked about the club once.
I gave him the careful version.
He nodded and said, “Everybody needs people.”
That was it.
No judgment.
No lecture.
No threat.
Clean.
Georgia was clean.
Not pure. I wasn’t stupid enough to believe people didn’t have layers just because they smiled easily.
But she had no ghosts standing behind her eyes.
No shadow that crossed her face when someone said mother.
No past chasing her through parking lots and graveyards.
No bloodline turned into gossip. No men like Edge or Tarak or JD circling her life with weapons and guilt.
Georgia was a fresh start in a yellow dress with a highlighter behind her ear.
And after a while, I gave in.
Not all at once.
First, it was study dates. Coffee shops with bad lighting and sticky tables.
Library rooms where she quizzed me on building codes until my brain felt like wet cement.
Afternoons with her knee bumping mine under the table while she laughed at how badly I butchered terminology she had memorized in ten minutes.
Then dinners.
Nothing fancy. Tacos. Burgers. Thai food. Pizza eaten out of the box on the hood of my truck while she told me about her family and asked me questions I only half-answered. Georgia was good at that. Letting me give half-truths without grabbing for the rest.
Then movies.
Her couch. Her parents’ den when they were out. My place once, though I cleaned for two hours before she came over and still felt like she was walking into all the parts of me I didn’t know how to make respectable.
She curled into my side during a movie she claimed was a classic and I claimed was two hours of people making bad choices in expensive coats.
“You have no culture,” she said.
“I’m heartbroken.”
“You’re not. That would require having one.”
I looked at her.
She immediately softened. “I didn’t mean?—”
“I know.”
But she had meant it as a joke, and the reason it landed wrong was not her fault.
Georgia kissed me that night.
Soft.
Warm.
Nice.
That was the word again.
Nice.
Her mouth was sweet from the strawberry candy she kept in her purse. Her hands rested on my chest like I was something she wanted but wasn’t afraid of. There was no desperation in her. No storm. No graveyard. No fire licking at the edges of everything.
Just Georgia.
A good woman with a good laugh, kissing me in a quiet room while a movie kept playing and the world asked nothing brutal from either of us.
I kissed her back.
Because I wasn’t dead.
That was the ugly truth.
My body worked. My blood moved. Georgia was beautiful.
When she shifted closer and my hand settled at her waist, I felt it.
When her breath caught and she pressed into me, I felt that too.
When things got warmer, when my palm slid over the soft curve of her body through her shirt and she made a small sound against my mouth, I knew exactly what kind of man I still was.
Not dead.
Not numb.
Not noble enough to pretend a pretty woman in my lap did nothing to me.
Georgia’s body was soft and warm and willing. Her kisses were gentle until they weren’t. She wanted me. Openly. Easily. Without history cutting up the air between us.
And for a few minutes, I let myself want her back.
Almost.
That was the hell of it.
Almost.
My body was there.