Pigpen pulls off the gravel road near the house and severs the engine. I go to open the door and he stops me. “Talk to me for a second, and I don’t mean me talking and you nodding your head like that’s acceptable conversation.”
I release the handle of the door and look in his direction. It’s the best I got at the moment, especially with the cracked code weighing on me: RMC equals the calling card of the Riot Motorcycle Club.
A million questions form in my mind. How current are those codes? Do they have anything to do with my mother? The detective said he found them recently, so it may not be related to her, but could be shit going down with the club now: the Riot shooting Eli this summer, the detective coming to town, the RMC running through the streets of Snowflake when they’ve never done that before...
“What’s going down in your brain?” Pigpen asks.
“Who shot me?”
“We don’t know.” The way he makes direct eye contact, he’s not lying.
“Do you have ideas?”
“We got shit we’re looking into, but nothing definite. You gotta trust us that we won’t let you down.” Which means they aren’t letting me in. It also means I could dump what I learned about the Riot onto Pigpen and he’d once again shut me out.
I stare out the front windshield and watch as Dad greets the guys who drove over with us. That woman, the one with the blond hair, she walks out of the house in a black tank and a pair of jeans and smiles when she wraps herself around Dad. “What’s she still doing here?”
Pigpen taps his steering wheel. “He’s in love with her, but he won’t fully commit until you’re on board with her or at least talk to him again.”
The muscles in my neck tighten. “Commit? Commit how?”
Pigpen inclines his head for the obvious answer and I swear. “He doesn’t know how to commit. Do you have any idea the amount of women that’ve been through this house?”
“He married your mom and was with her for over thirteen years before she passed.”
I could ram my fist into Pigpen’s face for bringing up my mother, but because of club code, I’m not allowed to strike a brother. “Yeah, Dad did commit, but that was before she drove herself off a bridge. Where’s the keys to my bike?”
“That’s not how it went down. You gotta learn to let this go, because if you don’t—”
“Save the bullshit.”
“It’s not bullshit. You need to trust—”
“You want me to talk?” I cut him off. “How about this? You weren’t part of the Terror when my mom was alive and you sure as hell weren’t there when she cried herself to sleep and you sure as hell weren’t there when Dad brought home his first drunk chick to sleep with. So you can shut the fuck up about what I should or shouldn’t do.”
Proving he’s a crazy son of a bitch, Pigpen flashes me that guilty-by-definition-of-insanity grin. “See, was talking so bad? A few weeks with me and you’ll be ready for full-on family therapy.”
“Fuck you.”
Pigpen goes silent and that causes my bones to quiver. The two of us get along because I’m the silent one and he’s the one who can’t shut up.
“Your dad would do anything for you. He’s been arguing with the board. Disagreeing with them. I shouldn’t be telling you this, but this fight you got inside you, it’s not with him.”
I’m terrified to believe him because if he’s wrong and I let myself have hope that my dad and I could work through this...that false hope could kill what’s left of an already weary soul. “Keys to my bike would be nice.”
“Your dad has them and you can’t drive until tomorrow. Guess you’re stuck here.”
With another curse, I’m out of the truck, slamming the door to piss Pigpen off. He follows as I go up the stairs, then brushes past me when I pause.
He grins at me from over his shoulder before opening the screen door. There’s a loud round of laughter and, in a house as small as ours, it doesn’t take long for the noise to be unruly. The scent of meat loaf teases my stomach and I turn away. That’s my favorite and I’d bet this new girl is trying with me...again.
My heart clenches and I bend over to rest my arms against the railing. Attached to it are the flower boxes that have remained empty since Mom’s death. Every fall she’d plant mums. Different colors and sizes. Every year I’d help. I never got enough of being beside her.
The screen door creaks and Dad steps out. I focus on our property and the surrounding woods darkened with the fading evening light. He leans on the railing beside me and the creak makes me wonder if the failing wood can handle both of our weight.
“Proud of what you did out there, son. Eli said you had his back and shot true, even when you were injured.”
I join my hands together and continue to scan the woods. I’m not quiet because I’m proving a point. I’m quiet because I have no idea what to say to the emotions tearing me up.
“You scared me.” His voice is so low I can barely hear it. “There were a few minutes this weekend I was scared I was going to lose you...like I lost your mom.”
There’s hurt in his tone. The same agony mirrored within me.
“I don’t want that.” He talks like the words are a struggle. “I don’t want to lose you. Not to death... Not in life. I miss you here... I miss you at home.”
“Do you remember when Mom would laugh?” Because I’m not sure I can continue to listen to him. He’s saying what I want to hear, but it’s stuff I’m not sure how to process.
“What?” He’s confused and I understand why.
We don’t talk about Mom... I don’t talk about Mom. “Do you remember when something would hit her as funny and she would laugh?”
Because sometimes when I dream, I remember, but as each year passes, the memories become foggier and her laughter seems too far away.
“She’d get the hiccups, then she’d laugh harder.”
I smile at the memory that’s a mixture of a balm and acid on my heart.
“Your mom liked to laugh,” he says.
She did, and I hate I can barely recall the sound. “She cried that last month she was alive.”
Dad drops his head and doesn’t deny it.
“I tried to make her better before she left for work that day.” I clear my throat as I tell Dad something I never told anyone. “I gave her flowers I had picked outside.”
I half expected her to be mad. Three of them were from her flower box, but they were red and that was her favorite color.
Mom hugged me. Longer and tighter than she had before. She hugged me like she’d never hold me again and I held on to her believing that a ten-year-old’s love was enough to fix any wound. There’s a burning in my eyes and I fucking hate the loss of control.
Mom peeled me off her, grasped my shoulders and said those last words. Words that have haunted me since. Your father is a man worth forgiving.
I lower my head and scrub my hands over my face. I don’t know how to forgive him, Mom. Not if he hurt you. I don’t know how to forgive him for disrespecting the memory and love I had for you by bringing a parade of trash through our house. He kicked and spit on every good memory I had, and if you left me on purpose, then you destroyed anything that was good in me to begin with and I’m not sure I can forgive you for that.
“I miss her,” Dad says. “Every damn day.”
“Then why did you do it?” I demand. “If you loved her, why did you bring those women to her house? To my house? To our home?”
Dad grimaces and the fading rays of the sun hit the red in his hair. Mom loved his hair, saying they should have another child—a girl—so they could have one with hair like his.
“I wanted to forget the pain,” he says like he’s broken. “I wanted someone to erase the hurt, but the sad part was, they never did. Not one of them did.”
/>
“Until now?” The pain leaks out of my voice before I can stop it.
There’s hurt in his eyes and I’m not sure why. Because he’s still in love with my mother, because he’s fallen in love with someone else, or a combination of both, I don’t know and after what’s taken place between us it’s hard to find a reason to care. But fuck me, I do. I do care about my father. He’s all the blood family I have left.
“Can we put away the shit that’s between us?” Dad asks. “For tonight. I promise our problems will be there in the morning, just like they have been since your mom died.”
I nod, and when I straighten, Dad hugs me high. Hands off my patch and he’s careful of my arm. It’s fast and strong and I hug him just as quick and with the same amount of emotion.
Dad keeps a hand on my neck as we walk in, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say he had wiped his eyes. The door shuts behind us and Dad calls out, “Let’s eat!”
Breanna
THE DEFINITION OF AWKWARD: riding home with a girl who knows my boyfriend better than I do and yet we have absolutely nothing to talk about on the twenty-minute drive.
Violet is pretty. Fire-red hair, a bit taller than me. She has this bohemian look I’ve envied since middle school. Why it works with her—the ton of bracelets on her wrist, the whimsical way she can wear a pair of ripped jeans and a tank top with gemstones in a way I can’t pull off—is because she has the I-don’t-care-if-I’m-not-going-the-same-way-as-the-world outlook.
Pathetic thing? I just now realize it’s not the clothes she’s wearing that make me envious, but the attitude. I wish I could be in every aspect of my life what Razor says I am—I wish I could be fearless about telling Kyle that his pictures have no power over me, but in this area, I’m drowning in defeat.
“Can I ask you something?” I probe.
Her car is old, possibly older than me and her combined. The windows of this overly large bucket of metal are rolled down because either the car was built without air-conditioning or the system is broken. Because of the age, either is feasible.
“Sure. It’ll beat the hell out of ignoring each other.”
“It’s personal.”
“You saw my mother’s bra on a wall. It doesn’t get much more personal than that.”
I choke and she smirks. It’s true. When Rebecca and I raced past the main room, I spotted bras hanging on the walls of the clubhouse. “Is your bra on the wall?”
Violet breaks out into a full grin. “No. I’ve never decided to donate one, and even if I did, I’m not sure they’d accept it. As much as I try to push them away, they still consider me a child of the Terror, which means each man in that club tries to act like my father. It would creep them out if their ‘daughter’s’ bra was on display.”
“So those bras...” I drop off.
“Are a contribution to the cause—whatever that means. There’re different stories of how and when the first bra went up, but since then when women come to party, they see the rainbow of colors and want to add theirs to the mix. It’s become a thing. A thing I don’t get, but a thing.”
Violet glances over at me and her hair blows wildly in the wind. “I would love to have been in your head for thirty seconds when you saw it. What horrible story did you invent for how the bras got there?”
Honestly, none. When I first darted by, I was too sick at the thought of getting caught, and the second time, I was still numb from Razor declaring me done with the code.
“Half the stories about the Terror aren’t true,” she says. “Some of them are, but most of the real bad ones aren’t. I still don’t think you should hang with the Terror, but that’s not my decision to make.”
“You didn’t have to bring me today.”
“True.” She hesitates. “I hurt someone recently because I was too dead set on making them think the Terror are evil. Call this my penance.”
“Do you still think they’re evil?”
“As sure as I am that Satan’s real, and in case you’re wondering, he is. I still think you should run and never look back, but you’re a big girl and can make your own choices.”
I digest that and decide to switch the subject. “That’s cool—that they look out for you.”
Her smile falters. “My dad died. I’m not interested in anyone replacing him.”
Wrong change of subject. “I’m sorry.”
“Me, too. I have a feeling that isn’t the question you were going to ask.”
No, none of this is the conversation I planned on having. I rub my forehead and push forward. “How bad was it when that picture of you was posted on Bragger?”
Violet eases her foot off the gas and the car slows from her breakneck speed. I find the courage to look over at her and she mirrors the agony I felt when Kyle sat across from me in the library. “How bad is the picture they have of you?” she asks.
My throat tightens as the urge to share and the self-preservation to keep this secret quiet wages war within me. Violet focuses on the road again and her knuckles go white on the wheel. “Those assholes never know when to stop, do they? I mean, me? I walked into that mess, but you, what the fuck have you ever done wrong?”
“I went to Shamrock’s. I drank and I ended up outside with Razor and someone took a picture. Razor was leaning into me, but we didn’t kiss. We didn’t do anything. We were talking, but the picture looks a million times worse and they were going to...” My chest constricts and my eyes burn.
“Label you a whore,” she finishes for me. “They were going to post it and label you a whore.”
Violet slams her hand against the steering wheel and pain slashes through me. She’s lived through this torment. Even worse than me because people have gossiped about her for as long as I can remember, since she’s a child of the Terror.
“I’m not going to lie. I knew you were being blackmailed. Not because Razor told me, but because Razor asked about the picture taken of me.”
My eyes widen and she waves me off. “I put the pieces together. He didn’t tell me, and because he’s so damn set on playing rogue, I bet he hasn’t said anything to anyone else. And, by the way, it’s in direct violation of club rules for him to keep a secret like this, but that’s neither here nor there. Tell me what they’re blackmailing you for.”
“I’m being blackmailed to write papers.”
“Kyle Hewitt is a fucking moronic asshole,” she spits out with enough venom that a chill courses through my blood.
“Was he the one that posted the picture of you?”
“No. Someone else. I was being blackmailed, too, but I didn’t give in and look what happened to me. What sucks is, I have given in to keep more pictures from going up, but the damage was already done.”
“What was it like?” I whisper, almost terrified of the truth. “When the picture went up?”
Violet’s expression clouds over. “Awful. So awful I considered if life was worth living. So awful that some days I don’t want to get out of bed. So awful that I have made myself a whore just to not go through it again.”
It takes several heartbeats to ingest her honesty. She’s painting the horrible future that I’ve created in my mind. “Razor’s trying to help. He’ll fix this for both of us.”
She yanks out a chain around her neck that had been hidden by her shirt, and she fingers a silver cross. The charm is about two inches long and it’s thick, like it belongs to a man. “Computers?”
“Yes.”
“He’s smart. But I’m not sure he’s smart enough. Before Razor pulls the trigger on whatever he has planned, make sure he’s a hundred percent sure he’s keeping you safe. Otherwise this group of guys will make it rain brimstone and fire.” Pity fills Violet’s eyes. “No offense, Breanna, but you’re not the type to dance in the rain. Especially the type that burns.”
 
; Hysteria wells up within me. “What do I do, then? Because I’m starting to go crazy. Always wondering if he’s going to put it up, the guilt of keeping a secret, and if I do give in, I’ll be doing something wrong. I’m not sure how much longer I can keep going like this.”
Violet plays with her necklace and drives. Waiting for her response is skull-crushing and each second that passes makes this entire situation nauseating.
“I was up for a scholarship,” she finally says. “To someplace far away from here and I was told by a college recruiter that they were seriously considering me until they did a search for me on the internet. He told me their board of trustees couldn’t in good faith give scholarship money to a candidate with a questionable reputation.”
Hot moisture pools at the bottom of my eyes.
“No matter what happens, don’t let Razor talk you into going to the club with this,” she says.
“Why?”
“The Terror plays by their own rules when push comes to shove and I don’t want blood on my hands.” It’s not an answer, yet it is one at the same time.
“You said most of the stories were lies.”
“I did, but I didn’t mention which ones were true.”
My bottom lip trembles and I suck in a breath to prevent tears from falling. Violet places her hand over mine and I link our fingers together. “What am I going to do?”
“One of us is going to get out of this town. When you make it, remember me when I come asking you for a job.” Violet squeezes my hand. “In the meantime, I would plan on writing those papers.”
RAZOR
BREANNA IS STRANGLING my hand so tightly she could rival a tourniquet. Gotta admit, the girl may be frightened, but she owns a bigger pair of balls than most men.
It’s Friday and we’re still standing near the row of parked bikes. We arrived at the clubhouse a few minutes ago. She took her time to gain her land legs and then bought more time by combing her fingers through her hair, then checking her cell to see if her cover story is holding. It all adds up to stalling.