Chapter Nineteen
T he bonfire was rolling great; flames already rose a good twelve, fifteen feet into the night sky, and dozens of couples, families, and groups of friends were setting up blankets and camp chairs, or settling on one of the good, big logs that ringed the fire in two rows.
Four people had acoustic guitars on their knees, a couple had fiddles on their shoulders, and one hippie dude from a kid-music band who’d played early in the day had an African drum between his knees.
They were all playing, though not yet really together.
Just quiet notes floating through the night.
As usual, the Horde had rolled their smoker over, along with their biggest Yeti cooler, and No Place had their rolling bar set up beside it as well. Brats and burgers, French fries, macaroni salad and coleslaw, beer and soda for anyone who wanted it, courtesy of the Night Horde MC.
Most attendees of the Harvest Festival left around dusk.
Even in a year like this, when summer stayed overtime and late October was still only jacket weather, the temperatures dropped with the sun, and a lot of people thought hanging around in the dark chill wasn’t so fun.
Those folks probably left superhero movies before the credits ran, too.
The people who knew better hung around for the bonfire like they hung around for the stinger at the very end of the credits.
This year was a strange one; the Horde presence, with all three charters in attendance, was overwhelming to a lot of the civilians, and the vibe throughout the club was way off.
Petty jealousies and minor conflicts were hotter than they should have been.
Relations were sour with Montana, which was a potentially serious problem—maybe as serious as war.
If SoCal hadn’t arrived and immediately been a calming presence, maybe Missouri and Montana would have really gone at it.
Instead, they were trying to be brothers, though that brotherhood felt performative, in at least one direction.
Mel was more convinced by the minute that combining a club ‘rally’ or reunion or whatever the fuck it was with an established town event was stupid as hell.
But the bonfire was the bonfire, and that was always calm.
No longer on the clock, he could look forward to it wholeheartedly.
A beautiful fall night to be cozy with his lady.
Wending through the settling crowd, Mel led Abigail to the far side of the field, where Thumper and Dom had made them up a station: three big wool blankets, two personal coolers, one collapsible wagon full of snacks and supplies, and an assortment of pillows and extra blankets.
They’d chosen a perfect spot: a little distance from the crowd, so they could be chill, but close enough to enjoy the fire and the music and the general ambiance. A romantic bonfire spot.
Dom was, surprisingly, on his own. The guy was pretty shredded and had long, gold hair like a shampoo model, so he was popular with the ladies.
Looks like his were like a +10 buff to the bad-boy mystique, and he generally availed himself liberally of the feminine offerings.
Tonight, though, he sat alone—which appeared to be exactly as he wanted: he was propped up on a couple cushions he’d taken from his couch, his legs stretched long and a bottle of Stella in his hand, gazing quietly at the fire.
The really shocking sight was Thumper, who sat on a side of their patchwork of blankets with his arm around Mindy Jasper.
Mindy was ... well, she was a skank. It was a shitty thing to call a woman, yeah, but sometimes shitty words fit best. Just about every unattached patch had gone spelunking there—including himself—but that wasn’t what made her a skank.
Most club girls had been with all the single patches, and a few had been around long enough to know some of the attached guys carnally as well.
(In Signal Bend, once guys got attached they stayed where they belonged, as far as Mel knew).
Guys tended to favor one or two, but any girl who hung around the clubhouse long enough was going to get the full tour eventually.
It was what the club wanted: women who willingly, and hopefully eagerly, fucked patches.
Mindy was a skank because she was a scheming, back-stabbing cunt who had been exiled from the clubhouse for being a scheming, back-stabbing cunt. And here Thumper sat, arm around her shoulders like they were on a date.
Vividly aware of Abigail’s fingers linked with his, Mel didn’t want to start a thing about Mindy in front of her—and Mindy was famous for starting a thing on the tiniest provocation, real or imagined. Besides, Dom didn’t seem bothered by the skank incursion on their little turf here.
So Mel simply said a general, “Hey” to the group and helped Abigail down to the blankets as Thumper and Dom echoed the greeting. He flipped up the nearest cooler and snagged a couple sandwiches, a bottle of water for Abigail, and a Stella for himself.
Abigail arranged herself gracefully on the striped wool of Mel’s camp blanket and smiled at the others as she said, “Hi, y’all.” For Mindy, she deepened her expression into something more personal and said, “Hey, Mindy. You have a good day, hon?”
Settling at her side, Mel heard something substantial in that slight change of tone. He read it as Abigail being who she was, patient with everyone, always giving the benefit of the doubt, and making a little extra effort for those who didn’t normally get that benefit.
It was a reason he was reluctant to tell her who’d attacked her home during the summer: she’d forgive them—especially knowing they were kids—and he didn’t want that.
He should want it, it made things better for the Horde if the problem simply went away, but fuck.
They’d killed a man over it. Tommy had been badly hurt, maybe permanently, because of it.
And Abigail had been attacked . It was too big to just stop mattering.
Even if he was the only one who still cared, he still cared a lot.
But he loved her compassion, how readily she trusted, how easily she forgave.
“I did, Miss Abigail,” Mindy was answering. She glanced at Thumper with a shy smirk. “I had a real good day.”
Thumper smiled back and gave her a squeeze.
Mel needed to get with him in private and have a chat about this.
It wasn’t a good look to get close to a girl who’d been exiled.
She could not be trusted with any kind of secret, and even these days, when the club worked mostly straight and was mostly boring, they had their share of dangerous secrets.
Badger would lose his shit if Thumper truly got close with one of the Jasper girls—and he would be right to.
This moment was not the moment for that talk, however, so Mel sent a pleasant smile to Thumper and his misguided choice of companionship, and he focused instead on his own woman.
She looked so beautiful, with her hair loose and her pretty apron, white with embroidered flowers across the chest, still over her flowery yellow dress.
He hadn’t had much opportunity to spend real time with her today, but he’d had plenty of time to watch her while he worked security—and in doing so, he’d fallen even deeper into his feelings for her. His love for her.
Abigail was like ... he didn’t know. Like a light source or something.
Or a magnet. She drew people to her, and they were always better, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, for having been in her company.
He’d never known anyone like her, with no edge at all, but not because she was a pushover or a cipher.
He’d seen her hold her own boundaries firm, and he’d seen her get firm when somebody needed a truth delivered directly.
She had no edge because she’d shaped herself that way, smoothed down any rough point, so that she would be a gentle, welcoming force in the world.
This was a woman who had never known a parent.
During one of their long evening talks, strolling along the creek on her property, she’d told him she’d been born to an eighteen-year-old girl, a high school senior, who’d simply walked from the hospital without her, called the nurse’s station from the parking lot with a message for her mother, Abigail’s grandmother, saying that she should have had an abortion; she didn’t want to be a mother and her boyfriend didn’t want to be a dad.
They drove off and disappeared into the ether of the world.
Abigail’s grandmother, Kathleen Freeman, had collected her from the hospital and raised her all her life.
Mel had done some minor snooping and learned that the whole thing had been a town scandal at the time, and that Kate Freeman had been regarded as a weirdo hermit.
Abgail had memories of people laughing and calling her ‘Nell’ when she was little, something meant as an insult but lost on her because she hadn’t known about the movie until she was grown.
As a girl, she’d simply thought they’d gotten her name wrong.
He thought that was the root of her invulnerability to insult: the first one had failed because she hadn’t understood it, and maybe she’d intuited a defense against such meanness: even when she did understand the intent, she could simply not believe it, and that robbed the insult of every ounce of its power.
What a mighty will she had, to shape herself and then to shape the world around her.
A burst of love shot through him, and he reached out to take her chin in his fingers and turn her toward him. She’d been chatting with Mindy, but he didn’t give a fuck about interrupting that.
Her pleasant smile for Mindy became a private one for him—with a faint cast of worry, too. “Hey, there. You okay?” she asked.
He answered her by pulling her close and kissing her fully.
“Oh my!” Mindy laughed lightly. “Miss Abigail, you got yourself a hottie!”