Patriot Read online

  When we got on the bike, the exact same thing happened as last time. Even though I knew what was going to happen, I could still feel the tension growing between my legs, threatening to burst across my entire body and make me want to feel glued to the bike and Michael. At least this time, as downtown Los Angeles came into view, the ride wasn’t as long, or it didn’t seem as long, so the line I wasn’t ready to cross didn’t come as close as it had before.

  But unlike the last place, where I wasn’t sure where we were going, here, I knew exactly where we were because it was one of the most notable and most recognizable locations in all of Los Angeles—the Griffith Observatory.

  “Wow,” I said, unable to contain my surprise. “You know, I know this isn’t a great thing to admit, but I honestly didn’t think you’d be so cultured.”

  Thankfully, Michael took what I said in stride and only chuckled at it.

  “Not sure where you get that image of us,” he said. “Well, I have an idea. But some of us are cultured. You know I am.”

  “True,” I said.

  Things were going pleasantly enough, and it would have been easy enough to just let things happen. But I had to frequently remind myself that I did not know enough about Michael to truly declare him different from the rest. Appearances, as I saw daily at the hospital from patients who got hurt in double lives, could not only be deceiving, they frequently were.

  “Where did all of this, your experience, where did it come from? You said your father got you into whiskey, but surely, he did much more than that.”

  “Oh, true,” Michael said, leading me inside the observatory and to one of the viewing decks. “Well, I guess I’ll start from the beginning. I was born in Texas, but I’ve lived in so many different countries from my father’s time in the military that I’m not even sure I’d believe them all if I didn’t experience them. There was Japan, Germany, Guam, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, California...”

  He shook his head and laughed.

  “Dad and I—we got around.”

  But what about...

  “And your Mom?”

  The casual smile faded.

  “Mom was never the most reliable person, unfortunately,” he said. “She had a drug problem. My dad divorced her when I was three, and she, unfortunately, passed away a couple years later. I do have some memories of her, but they are so distant and so far removed that I don’t even... it’s not that I don’t think of her as my mother.”

  But he doesn’t have a stable female presence in his life. Maybe that’s why he’s so easy going. He’s always trying to win over someone.

  “I get it,” I said, even though I didn’t. I just didn’t know what else to say. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

  “Oh, it’s totally fine,” Michael said. “It’s tragic, but it’s not like I haven’t had time to process it. Sure, I’d like to have my mother in my life, but I’m past the point where it’s emotional for me. At this point, it’s more of a historical fact than a tragedy.”

  “Sure,” I said. “So then, what about the Reapers?”

  He shrugged.

  “It’s the closest thing to a brotherhood.”

  That wasn’t good enough for me. Jason probably would have said the same thing to Kristina.

  “There are fraternities, sports teams, friend circles... maybe they’re not as much like the military, but the bonds are still close. Why are you guys so violent?”

  Michael chuckled. He wasn’t the only one that could get right to the point on some matters.

  “A lot of us don’t trust anyone but ourselves,” he said.

  “And that makes you violent?”

  Michael shrugged.

  “I don’t consider our group violent. The Reapers, I mean. We are capable of great violence—that I will give you. But the Saints? The ones who initiate violence? They’re like us to some extent. They don’t trust the outside world, in large part because we’ve been shunned away. But we understand ‘freedom’ as our right to live as we wish, up to the point of common sense. They see ‘freedom’ as their right to live, regardless of any bounary.”

  Like how Jason felt he had the freedom to murder my sister.

  I went silent as I turned my attention away from Michael and out toward the downtown lights of Los Angeles. It wasn’t like Michael had just dropped some ultimate truth on me that I’d known all along but failed to recognize. I hadn’t done much empathizing with Jason for obvious reasons, but I had always been able to see that Jason was a violent, unwelcome member of society.

  Now, when Michael said those words, it was like I could see Jason confessing them. And it somehow... I don’t know. It somehow made the whole thing even more fucked up. I just wanted to see all bikers as savages with no conscious who deserved to suffer a cruel fate.

  But that wasn’t true at all. It was more muddled than that.

  Most bikers weren’t Michael, but most bikers weren’t Jason. They were somewhere in the middle, maybe leaning a little more toward Jason than Michael, but that was still a far cry from all of them being vengeful, murderous sociopaths.

  “You okay?”

  I smiled and looked at Michael. My eyes were feeling the early stages of being watery, recalling my sister, but this wasn’t the place to confess it all. Michael’s story was tough, but he had had time to process it. I was clearly still trying to make sense of my family’s.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “I’m ready to head back, though.”

  One too many leaps tonight.

  “Okay,” Michael said.

  I thought he was about to kiss me, the way he kept his gaze on me, the way he kept looking into my eyes. I all but prepared for that to happen.

  But something told me that doing it out here, with many people walking around, far away from home, was not the place to do it.

  And so, before anyone could get any ideas, myself included, I began walking toward the exit of the observatory, beckoning Michael to come. He looked slightly disappointed, but I just wanted the silence and comfort of privacy.

  When he pulled into my apartment twenty minutes later, Michael took my hand. Although I was exhausted, things somehow seemed perfect. I could see it in his eyes. The night was going to end with a lovely kiss.

  He leaned in.

  Without hesitating, I leaned in.

  And then the sound of gunfire erupted.

  Patriot

  BAM BAM BAM BAM!

  The gunfire was nowhere near us, but it was unmistakable where it was directed at. The Fallen Saints didn’t wait for anything. They chose to bring the fight to us.

  “Stay here,” I ordered Kaitlyn. “You asked about the violence? It’s happening right now at our clubhouse.”

  “You’re going in there?” she said, a look of horror on her face.

  The sound of gunfire had put me on edge, and it took a great deal of strength not to scoff at her. I probably would have if we hadn’t had such a great evening up to that point.

  “I was in the military. I know what it’s like for us to run into battle. I’ll be fine.”

  I hadn’t told Kaitlyn this, but I always carried a pistol with me. Though technically illegal in California—let’s just say what few licenses went around were definitely not given to us—I didn’t trust life to let me skate by free. It wasn’t out to get me, but we had too many enemies on the other side of town for me to think that life would be sunshine and rainbows.

  I started my engine and drove off before she could say anything else. I didn’t know how bad of an attack it would be, nor did I—or could I—care. I could only hope that the help we already had would be enough to treat any and all casualties we suffered, but there was no way that I was staying back or that she was coming in. Someone else would have to help, or we’d just have to use the hospital.

  I may have stayed close to the speed limit during my date with Kaitlyn, but now, I was speeding like a demon. I felt guilty that I wasn’t there to help out. I felt guilty that I had left my friend
s behind to suffer the attack of the enemy. Just like... just like I had in...

  The drive from Kaitlyn’s to the base was quite short, but by the time I arrived, the damage had been done, and the Saints had left. I hopped off my bike, barely getting the kickstand up, and ran into the building. One club member, a guy in his mid-thirties who had been with us for three years, named Eagle Eye, was dead. Four more were injured, three of whom looked like they needed medical attention quickly.

  So, too, it turned out, was Red Raven, but his injury didn’t look severe. I couldn’t help but think that an old person suffering such an injury, though, wouldn’t recover as easily as someone my age. But for now, he was waving off medical attention, telling us to focus on those who needed it.

  Cries of confusion went up around me.

  “How the hell did this happen?”

  “Where’s the fucking nurse we have?”

  “It was like they knew we wouldn’t suspect a thing.”

  “Shit, man!”

  The cries... the screams... the shouts... it was all... it was all...

  “Do you need help?”

  I turned around in my surprise to see someone I never expected to see.

  Kaitlyn had followed me.

  “Ask someone else,” I said. “I can’t…”

  I was in no condition to advise her who to help. I was beginning to lose my mind... the parallels of this to the last time I’d gotten ambushed and seen people die...

  “Michael?”

  “Just fucking help!” I snapped, but then I tried to lower my voice. “Just ask around. I can’t... I can’t...”

  Kaitlyn finally seemed to get it. I watched her run toward the wounded, just as I had seen nurses run to the wounded we had evacuated from the battle. Medical triage, they called it, when they had to decide who would get service and who would have to wait… and who would have to die.

  It was a bitterly tough process to watch, knowing that people who had gotten shot or somehow wounded otherwise would just have to sit there and bleed out because a medical professional had somehow made the decision they would not survive.

  “Do you need help?”

  Why is she asking me that again? Why the fuck—

  But this time, when I turned around, it wasn’t Kaitlyn at all. It was someone shorter, with blonde hair, striking green eyes, and someone who looked much more comfortable being here than not. It took me a second to recognize her as a nurse whom we had brought here from time to time, but it had just been so long since I’d seen her, I didn’t remember her name—if I’d ever learned it in the first place.

  “Just talk... talk to the other nurse,” I said.

  “Other nurse?” she said.

  She looked over and saw Kaitlyn. She gulped.

  “Devon!” Lane shouted, his voice breaking through the muddled chaos. “Over here!”

  She ran over to Lane. I shuffled over, trying to make sense of the chaos. By the time I arrived in the corner of the club where the wounded were being treated, I could hear Devon, Kaitlyn, and Lane all having an argument.

  “I told you to stay away!” Kaitlyn said.

  “Oh, that’s rich, is that why you’re here?”

  “I’m here because I’m in the area!”

  “Argue later, treat now!” Lane said. “We don’t fucking have time for this!”

  The two nurses started treatment, but they continued to take potshots at each other. What the fuck? Why the... people were dying, and we were yelling at each other about why someone was or wasn’t here? What sort of fucking nonsense was this?

  “How much are they paying you, Devon?”

  “How much are they fucking you, Kaitlyn?”

  “You know the Good Samaritan—”

  “Spare me your pompous bullshit, Kaitlyn—”

  “ENOUGH!”

  I had not expected my roar to cut through the entirety of the noise. Not only did the two nurses shut up, but so did everyone else around me.

  Honestly, I was yelling at myself, to try and cut off the flashbacks in my head, the voices that were coming to me, reminding me of that awful day in Ramadi. I was trying to tell the inner demons that I’d had enough. But since the nurses were contributing in their own way and the general chaos of the shop was maddening enough, I wasn’t exactly apologetic about the current situation.

  “You’re all still alive,” I snapped. “Every single fucking one of you. We only lost one person, and it’ll stay that way if you just do your fucking jobs. You know what it’s like to lose way more? Way fucking more? And we’re here arguing about if someone isn’t supposed to be here or not? What the fuck is... what the fuck...”

  My voice trailed off when I realized that every question I was asking could be answered in the affirmative. Yes, multiple people in that room knew what it was like to lose multiple people in one night. Hell, such a night for Lane is what had led to him and Cole turning into the modern-day Cain and Abel. Anyone who had fought against the Fallen Saints had witnessed multiple nights.

  And as for the nurses...

  It was all too much. My PTSD, it seemed, had led me to believe that I was special. But I wasn’t fucking special. I was just a shithead who yelled when things got stressful. I was just a child who wore the mask of a charming adult.

  Looking around in silence as everyone stared at me became too much. I put my hands on the back of my head, bowed, and walked out. I wasn’t on the verge of tears by any means, but I felt utterly crushed—reality had beaten me down. It had won.

  I wasn’t special.

  I wasn’t the only person to have lost friends to combat.

  I wasn’t the only member of my unit to have survivor’s guilt for what happened that day.

  I wasn’t the only man in this building that knew what profound loss felt like—in fact, with Lane standing right there, I was probably not even the one who had suffered the most.

  I slowly walked out the front door, my hearing fading out. I think someone may have called my name—Lane, maybe, or perhaps Axle, I didn’t know. I heard something, but I wasn’t listening. Not even close to it.

  I went outside to the night sky, where the smell of the Fallen Saints’ oil and gunfire still lingered in the air. It was funny in a really fucked up way. Though we both drove gasoline-powered motorcycles that used the same oil, it was as if I could just ever so slightly smell a difference between Fallen Saints’ bikes and our own. It was like the Saints’ just lingered a little bit more of death. I couldn’t tell you in a sophisticated way why that was. It was more of just an intuitive, gut feeling.

  It was like smelling that death had come.

  I sat on a bench, looked up at a sky with a few clouds here and there, and just shook my head. Some soldier I was. I’d joined the Black Reapers because it reminded me of the military, but if I’d acted this way in the military, I’d have gotten my ass thrown out faster than I could have asked for it.

  In fact, right now, I was beginning to wonder if Lane would even want me around. I certainly wouldn’t want me around.

  How fucking stupid of me. How awful of me.

  I just sat in silence for what felt like an eternity. In what sounded like the recesses of my mind but was actually the back of the clubhouse, I could hear the nurses working. I could hear club members yelling in agony as treatments got applied.

  But I didn’t hear anyone do what I had done. I didn’t hear anyone panic.

  “Michael.”

  Only one person who was in this building would have called me that.

  “What do you want, Kaitlyn?” I said.

  My voice wasn’t quite accusatory or rude, but it definitely wasn’t inviting.

  “To understand,” she said. “To understand what’s going on in your head.”

  I laughed at that, but the laugh was trying to push away the fear that I had of actually telling that story. There was nothing funny about her request or what the story would entail. Losing one’s brothers to a stupid death wasn’t the kind of thing that
you punctuated with a “lol” at the end.

  “You don’t want to know,” I said. “I don’t want to know. I’ve been trying like hell to forget for so long.”

  “But if you can’t forget it, then maybe it makes sense to share it,” she said, very cautiously taking steps forward as if approaching a wounded but still ferocious lion. “Shed some of the burdens that you carry in your head. Let me, if not others, help you carry it.”

  Again, I laughed. Again, the more I laughed, the more uneasy I felt.

  “You can’t release some of my burdens,” I said. “You’re not the one that failed to speak up when it was most needed. You’re not the one who failed to voice concerns in the face of danger. You’re not the one who has to tell the tale of what happened because you didn’t risk your life like your friends did.”

  Kaitlyn was now close enough to touch me, but her hands remained folded behind her, making it obvious she wasn’t going to touch me.

  “I can offer you a listening ear,” she said. “And I would guess that no one else has done that. People might have done that, but with an agenda. To file an official report. To get what they wanted out of you. Who has listened to you just to understand? Just to be present?”

  I wasn’t laughing now.

  “I appreciate it, but I’m—”

  “You’re not good, Michael, but that’s okay,” she said. “If you were good, well... but it’s okay to not be good. I want to understand. I’ve suffered loss of my own under tragic circumstances. I can’t believe that I might share it with a biker. But here we are.”

  Maybe she was right—she understood it perhaps more than I was giving her credit for.

  “You are right about one thing. I’ve never told the story to anyone.”

  I let out a long sigh.

  “Part of the problem is that telling the story isn’t just tough for others to hear. It’s hard on me. Every time I remember the story, let alone tell it, I suffer my own sort of PTSD.”

  “Then tell it at your pace, if you even want to,” Kaitlyn said. “I support you either way.”