Chapter Sixteen
Amelia
Derby is in jail because of me.
That is the only thought in my head for a long time.
Not technically true, maybe. Not legally true. Not the way someone like Sophie would frame it if she were here with her calm voice and her careful hands, trying to stop me from turning myself into the crime scene. But Sophie isn’t here. Legend isn’t here. Derby isn’t here.
Derby is in jail.
Because Jeremy sent a toy to August.
Because I ran.
Because I came to Hell.
Because I brought my son and my broken marriage and my cheap boxes and my dead mother’s stories to Derby’s porch.
Because I let myself believe a biker’s house could become shelter without turning into another battlefield.
The house feels too quiet without him.
That is ridiculous because Derby isn’t quiet.
Even when he says nothing, the man takes up space like a dare.
The couch looks wrong without his boots near it.
The kitchen looks wrong without him burning something and blaming the stove.
Widowmaker is gone from the driveway because he rode after Jeremy and got himself arrested by Deputy Twila Dix, which somehow makes everything feel worse.
The motorcycle had become proof he was near, black and mean outside the window, a warning to the world.
Now the driveway is empty except for my truck.
My keys sit on the counter.
I keep looking at them like they are evidence too.
August is in Derby’s bedroom with Janie, asleep after crying himself into a worn-out little heap. He did not understand everything, but he understood enough. Kids always do. He heard Lottie take the call. Heard her say Derby’s name. Heard jail. Heard Jeremy. He asked if Derby was bad now.
I told him no.
Too fast.
Too sharp.
Then he asked if Derby was coming back.
I said yes.
I keep making promises with no paper underneath them.
Lottie stands at the sink washing the same coffee mug for the third time.
She is tall, sturdy, and meaner than her floral shirt wants anybody to believe.
Her hair is pulled up in a messy clip, highlights threaded through brown, and her earrings are little rhinestone skulls that wink every time she turns her head.
She hasn’t fussed over me.
That is how I know she is worried.
Janie fusses. Sophie steadies. Becki threatens. Cider haunts. Lottie watches, calculates, and waits until the right place to put the knife.
I’m starting to understand that biker women aren’t decorations in the room. They are the rooms men survive in.
“Sit down before you wear a trench in Derby’s floor,” Lottie says.
I stop pacing. “I can’t.”
“You can. You just don’t want to.”
“Derby is in jail.”
“He’s been in jail before.”
That should not comfort me.
It doesn’t.
I stare at her. “That isn’t the point.”
“The point is Derby punched your husband outside a county building full of cameras because your husband is a smug sack of preacher-washed horse shit who sent a toy to a child he scares.”
My throat closes.
Lottie sets the mug in the dish rack with a sharp clink. “That about cover it?”
“He told me not to blame myself.”
“Good. Saves me breath.”
“But I do.” The words tear out of me. “I knew this would happen. I told him Jeremy wanted him out of control, and he went anyway. He got arrested anyway.”
“Derby’s a grown man with a temper and a road name, honey. You didn’t crawl inside his fist and steer.”
“He did it because of us.”
Lottie turns then.
Her face isn’t soft.
I’m glad for that.
Soft might break me.
“Yeah,” she says. “He did.”
The honesty punches harder than comfort would have.
I grab the back of a kitchen chair to steady myself. “Then how is it not my fault?”
“Because a man choosing to fight for you ain’t the same as you ordering him into the ring.”
“But if I wasn’t here…”
“If you weren’t here, Jeremy would still be a bastard.
Derby would still be a man with gasoline in his blood.
Legend would still be ten minutes from burning half the county over sister blood he ain’t even proved yet.
Pearly Gates would still be missing girls in the walls and preaching over the screams.” Lottie dries her hands on a dish towel, then tosses it onto the counter.
“You did not invent ugly by needing help.”
My eyes sting.
“I feel like I brought it.”
“You brought it where people could finally see it.”
That stops me.
“There’s a difference,” she says.
I laugh once, but there is no humor in it. “That sounds like something Sophie would say.”
“Sophie says things prettier. I say them while holding bleach and a shovel.”
A tiny, broken laugh gets out of me.
Lottie points at me. “Good. You ain’t dead.”
“I feel close.”
“Dramatic.”
“My fake boyfriend is in jail because my real husband sent my son a psychological warfare dinosaur.”
She considers that. “That’s a little dramatic.”
The laugh that comes this time hurts less.
Only a little.
Lottie steps closer and studies me with eyes that have seen more than she will ever say in one sitting. “You done letting men decide where you stand, honey?”
I blink. “What?”
She reaches up, pulls the clip from her hair, and lets it fall around her face. Then she turns her head and gathers the hair at the left side, lifting it away from the skin behind her ear.
A tattoo sits there.
Tiny.
Black.
A crown.
Not cute. Not decorative. Not the kind of little symbol women get after too much wine and a dare. This one looks deliberate. Sharp. Almost hidden, but not ashamed. A mark meant to be shown only when the woman showing it chooses.
A warning.
My mouth goes dry. “What is that?”
Lottie lets her hair fall back down. “A reminder.”
“Of what?”
“That my head belongs upright.”
I stare at her.
She clips her hair back up like she has not just opened a door in the wall. “Vale got too close.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t. Not all the way. He got close enough to Derby’s porch. Close enough to August. Close enough to make Derby stupid and Legend dangerous and every man in this county start sniffing around like bloodhounds with leather cuts.”
“Derby was trying to protect us.”
“Of course he was. Men love protection. Makes them feel useful while they’re digging graves with both hands.”
My stomach twists.
“Lottie.”
“I’m not saying they don’t mean it. Some of them do. Derby does. Legend does. Oaks does when he ain’t pretending he’s allergic to feelings and basic sense. But a man’s protection still keeps the man in the middle. Sometimes a woman needs a place men don’t get to enter.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know.”
She picks up her phone from the counter.
It has a cracked purple case and a sticker on the back that says I brake for bourbon and bad decisions.
She taps the screen a few times, then holds it out to me.
The caller ID reads:
Hot Mama
I stare at it.
“No.”
Lottie’s brow lifts. “You don’t even know what I’m offering.”
“I’m not taking a call from someone named Hot Mama while Derby is in jail and my life is already this weird.”
“Honey, your panties nearly killed a biker on a Kentucky back road. Weird has been driving the bus for a while.”
The phone rings.
Once.
Twice.
My pulse picks up like something in my body knows this isn’t a normal call. Not gossip. Not comfort. Not someone checking whether I need casseroles and prayers.
A woman answers.
Her voice is rough. Low. Older. Smoke and gravel and honey left too close to a flame.
“Lottie.”
The way she says the name makes Lottie stand straighter.
Not scared.
Respectful.
“Got Caroline’s girl,” Lottie says.
My breath stops.
There is silence on the line.
Then the voice says, “Put her on.”
Lottie pushes the phone closer.
I don’t take it.
My hands refuse.
Lottie’s eyes sharpen. “Take the damn phone, Amelia.”
I do.
The plastic is warm from her hand. I press it to my ear like it might bite.
“Hello?”
The woman on the other end exhales.
“Well,” she says. “Amelia Bell Welles. If you’re Caroline’s girl, then you’re late getting home.”
The world tilts.
Not because she says Welles.
Because she says Caroline like she knew the taste of the name.
My knees go weak, and I sit in the kitchen chair because standing suddenly feels like too much ambition.
“You knew my mother?”
“Knew her when she had more mouth than sense and legs fast enough to run from any consequence but love.” A pause. “She was wild. Beautiful. Too proud. Too scared when she left.”
My throat closes.
My mother was many things in my memory. Tired. Bitter. Funny when whiskey made her loose. Mean when shame made her sharp. Loving in spurts she couldn’t sustain. Dying with Mike Welles’s name in her mouth like a last confession.
Wild and beautiful feels like a stranger wearing her face.
“Who are you?” I whisper.
“They call me Hot Mama.”
“I gathered that.”
A laugh scrapes through the line. “Caroline would’ve liked you.”
Pain hits so suddenly I press a hand to my chest.
“Where are you?” I ask.
“Lonerock.”
Oregon.
My childhood rises up in broken pieces. Dusty roads.
Pine shadows. My mother packing too fast. A woman with red nails handing me a cookie from the window of a camper.
A motorcycle engine outside a bar. A sign I couldn’t read because I was too little.
My mother crying in the bathroom and telling me not to open the door for anyone.
Lonerock.
“I left there when I was little,” I say.
“I know.”
“How?”
“Because your mama came through us before she ran.”
I look at Lottie.
She says nothing.
Hot Mama continues. “Listen close, because I don’t repeat myself unless I’m naked or angry, and neither one’s happening for you today.
There’s a place out here. Women’s shelter.
Campground. Some call it rehab. Some call it spa.
Some come for bruises. Some come for withdrawals.
Some come because the man they married turned their house into a coffin with curtains.
Kids come too. We keep them fed, safe, and mean enough to survive. ”
My fingers tighten around the phone.
“A shelter?”