Chapter Seventeen
T he compound parking lot was packed with vehicles and people; SoCal had arrived minutes before Mel swung his Wide Glide through the gate. That was one item on Badger’s list of How Mel Had Fucked Up when he’d called this morning:
He’d peaced out in the middle of a club party with invited guests that had become tense.
He was—Badger asserted—the reason relations with said guests had become tense.
He’d blown off multiple calls and texts from Badger and other brothers since.
SoCal had called with an ETA of that morning, and there was shit to do he wasn’t helping with.
The Harvest Festival opened today, and there was shit to do he wasn’t helping with.
Probably, if there hadn’t been so much going on, Badger would have found more bullshit to list, but he was busy, so he contented himself with those five and a threat to “fine your ass to hell and back” if Mel wasn’t in the clubhouse within thirty minutes.
Mel was pissed, too, which was why he’d blown the club off since he’d left.
That, and the fact that he’d had something much more important going on: making things right—making things excellent —with Abigail.
Yesterday, and still today, the Night Horde MC was mostly a source of frustration and irritation to him.
But it was his club, his family, and he prided himself on being a good brother. So he’d clamped his teeth shut and let Badger rant, he’d said “Okay” to Badger’s demand to get his ass back to the clubhouse, and he’d hung up.
Then he’d taken his fucking time to make sure he and Abigail were all the way through their heavy talk and back to lightness between them. After last night, he was not about to walk away from her until they cleared out that gunk and understood each other completely.
They’d come to a compromise of sorts—she’d given up the truly crazy notion that he’d jumped in to defend her because he’d been embarrassed of her, and she’d understood that he would not simply stand by when someone disrespected her or worse.
And he’d acknowledged that he’d handled that particular situation like an asshole and agreed to try to avoid a scene in the future.
Mel was not a habitual scene-maker. Yesterday had been a weird damn day, and he’d been off his game. Also, his feelings for Abigail had him keyed up; he’d never felt so strongly for anyone before. He was fucking in love with her.
Telling her so had kind of derailed the Big Talk, while also intensifying the need to finish it.
When they were back on sure footing and he’d finally left, she’d put her mouth to his ear and whispered, I love you, too .
So yes, things were back to lightness with Abigail, they’d taken a huge, momentous leap together, and he didn’t give one single fuck that almost an hour had passed since Badger had demanded he get back to the clubhouse in half that time.
He might get off unscathed for this latest transgression, though; it looked like just about everyone was outside to greet SoCal, and a true party atmosphere had taken hold.
Everybody was laughing and chatting, hugging and back-slapping.
Loki and the SoCal and Montana prospects were heaving packs and bags from a pile near the door and lugging them inside, while the patches and their assorted ladies (and a some kids from SoCal, too) ignored them.
Mel slid his bike between Thumper’s and Cox’s and hopped off to join in the mass greeting.
Sherlock, a SoCal patch, saw him first and grinned as he held out a hand. “Hey, brother.”
Sherlock was a tech geek, the primary intel officer in Madrone and also a hardcore gamer. He and Mel, and Sherlock’s wife, Sadie, had played an online RPG together for a few years, in a group with a couple other non-Horde folks. Through that, Sherlock was the SoCal brother he knew best.
He clasped Sherlock’s hand and pulled him in for a bro-hug. “Hey, man. Good ride?”
“Smooth all the way, yeah. Hey—you remember my son, Noah?”
He set a hand on a good-looking kid about thirteen or so, tall and lean, with shaggy dark hair and blue eyes. It had been a few years since Mel had seen anybody from SoCal, and no, he did not remember this boy among the frankly absurd number of kids in the SoCal family.
He put on a big grin anyway and held out his hand. “Sure! Hey, Noah. Good to see ya.”
Noah shook with firm resolve, clearly trying to behave like he thought a man would. “Hello. It’s good to see you again, too.”
That kid didn’t know him from Pedro Pascal. Mel laughed and tousled his head a little. “You’re a good kid.” Turning to his father, Mel asked. “Did your lady join the fun?”
Sherlock grinned and nodded to a large cluster of old ladies performing a complicated group-hug dance. Little Sadie was in the middle of the throng.
“No way she’d stay home from something like this. The “First Ever Full-Club Rally?” Are you kidding?”
Mel sincerely appreciated Sherlock’s sarcastic tone and his deployment of extremely rhetorical air quotes. He rolled his eyes in agreement and added, “Hey, any excuse to party, right?”
Sherlock’s expression took on a new twist, and he turned to Noah. “Hey, go over and see if Mom needs anything, okay?”
“Yes, sir,” Noah said and headed off toward the women.
As that had been just about the least subtle ridding of a child Mel could imagine, he lifted an eyebrow and waited for Sherlock to tell him why they needed privacy.
Sherlock glanced around the lot before he tipped his head down a little and asked, “Is there a vibe? We just got here, so maybe I’m nuts, but it kinda feels like we walked in on something.”
Mel did his own scan of the lot before he answered.
On the surface, it looked like a great big family reunion, everybody glad to see everybody else.
But a second pass showed how far apart Rhett and Badger were, and how they kept looking to make sure they knew where each other was.
In fact, there was a lot of that positioning going on.
Like they’d paused a big argument to put on a show of friendship for the latest arrivals.
For all Mel know, it was exactly that. For sure, Badger was as pissed as Mel had ever known him to be, and that was saying something. The president could be a crusty fucker.
“Yeah, maybe a vibe. There was some ... shit ... yesterday, I was in the middle of it, so I checked out right after. I’m just back now so I don’t know if it tanked again after that or what.”
“ You were in the middle of it?” Sherlock asked, a teasing grin trying to land on his mouth. “That your style now, stirring up shit?”
“No, not really. Long story, ultimately amounting to not much,” he replied with a shrug. Not much, except how the aftermath had exposed a band of contempt in Montana’s feelings for the Horde mother charter.
The urge to say something like that pressed on the back of his head. Montana was freaking him out right now, and he hadn’t talked in depth to anyone about it yet.
But Sherlock’s clubhouse wasn’t this clubhouse. This was a Missouri issue. He needed to find Thumper and Dom and get the dish on what he’d missed last night.
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~oOo~
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“I think it’s Rhett ,” Dom said as he rolled out several feet of cable and gave Mel some slack. “That dude gives me the twitches—even more than Gravy, and ol’ Grave looks like Stephen King dreamed him up.”
They were at the main stage of the Harvest Festival, setting up the lights and laying out the base cabling the bands would use.
All of the Missouri and SoCal and most of the Montana patches were at work setting up.
Rhett, Gravy, and Maniac had planted themselves in camp chairs, a cooler between them, and were making a show of watching the work.
Definitely a vibe happening here—and the vibe last night had been even more fragile, with lots of small scrapes and bickering.
But apparently nothing that had come to enough of a head to lance and clean out.
Mel thought that was the most foreboding feature: all that hostility simmering under the surface, like Montana had a plan it wasn’t time to put in motion yet.
“Yeah, but what the fuck is it about?” Thumper asked, as if he’d heard Mel’s unspoken musing.
His job was to cover the cables with thick tape so nobody tripped and got litigious.
“Like, there’s no job to fight about. They don’t even have to help set up here.
It’s just a fuckin’ party. That they’re not hosting or paying for. So what’s crawled up his ass?”
Mel had some insight, and he didn’t see a reason not to share it with his friends. “I think it’s bigger than one job. Gravy said some shit yesterday in Badge’s office that ...” He paused, seeking a way to express his thought clearly, though it hadn’t yet fully formed.
“That what?” Dom asked, his gaze sharpening. Dom was both smart and savvy. Thumper was more of an ‘act now, worry later’ type, but Dom thought strategically. He was also their intel officer, so he had a depth of club knowledge no one but Badger shared.
“They got no respect for us. Gravy said right out we were pussies for riding straight. And for being so involved in town events like this. They think women are running the show, and that’s why we came over to the light side.
They were mad about Maniac not because I scrapped with him, or Cox stuck him, but because we did it over what they called ‘chick shit.’”
He stood up straight and turned to study the Montana patches in question.
They sat there drinking beer and exchanging glances.
It looked suspicious as fuck. Either that, or he was seeing ghosts in every shadow.
“I don’t know. I feel like something’s up.
” Turning back to Dom and Thumper, he asked, “Badge and Dub didn’t talk about it with y’all later? ”