Axle Read online

  But a side effect of that was that he had nothing to say. He shared eye contact with me one more moment before he walked out. I heard him saying goodbye to Shiloh, followed by the door opening and then closing.

  I knew he’d gotten the message. If I had to guess, I figured he would make an effort to treat me better at first.

  But would it last? Would it continue to get better? Would it be a sustainable kind of change?

  Only time would tell on that.

  For now, as Shiloh came back to my room and jumped on the bed, immediately cuddling me, I knew where my focus had to lie—on improving myself and my financial situation. It had to lie with making my life better.

  Even as I kept LeCharles on my mind, I had to act like LeCharles was not in the picture. Strength, it seemed, was a bit of a paradox. It was acknowledging that the person of interest existed, but also pretending like that person didn’t exist for the sake of goal-setting and progress.

  No wonder being a strong person was so damn hard.

  Axle

  I really don’t know Rose at all.

  The Rose I thought I knew never spoke so honestly.

  But the Rose I know right now, or what I know of her... what is going on?

  I made my exit from her apartment relatively quickly, mostly because I needed some space to process everything that had happened. I had to admit that coming that close to getting off and then having it stopped before she had even stroked me was disappointing. It had taken quite a bit of self-control not to lash at her with some sort of smartass remark when she decided not to have sex.

  But it only took a few seconds for me to realize that she had made a great point. Even though sex itself was something I got pretty regularly and not something that I struggled with, sex with Rose was a very, very, very different matter. If I went inside of her, especially after all of the events of that night, there was no telling what would happen. There was no telling what sort of fights or passionate moments we would have as a result.

  So, yeah, it made sense for us to make sure we had a stable ground to build off of first.

  But damn, blue balls sucked.

  And so did having to try and make sense of an incredibly complex and awkward night and morning.

  So I just left. At least Rose had been nice enough to give me instructions as clear as anything else I’d ever heard. But she wasn’t the only one who needed something.

  I needed to see what in the world was going on with Rose’s life. What had driven her to the point of choosing to go to fucking Brewskis on a Friday night like that? Even if she didn’t realize how bad things were...

  And then I remembered she had left her car at Brewskis.

  I let out a long sigh. It was going to be really fun having to go back up there and explain why I had returned. It wasn’t really something I wanted to do, but, well, I guess I was done being an asshole.

  I walked back up, knocked, and put my hands in my pockets. When Rose opened the door, she didn’t look the least bit surprised to see me. I guess she didn’t get that many guests on a Saturday morning.

  “Need a ride back to Brewskis?”

  She chuckled.

  “That would be nice, huh?”

  Neither of us really said a word more. I waited by my bike for Rose to get dressed. She threw on a simple red t-shirt and jeans.

  “Ready?” I asked when she got down.

  “Got my keys, my wallet, and my phone,” she said. “So yeah.”

  “Good enough.”

  I hopped on the bike and waited for her to wrap her arms around me. I really hated how good it felt. Not because I didn’t want it, but because the more I got it, the more I felt compelled to skip the process and just get straight to the bedroom.

  Funny, wasn’t it? The moment Rose got her strength and fortitude back, I became the one desperate to try and make it work.

  Well, desperate was a bit too strong of a word. But it was something I leaned more toward than I had before. I just reminded myself that I still needed to see Rose’s life in action first to understand why she’d gotten to where she was.

  I drove to Brewskis with a nervous pit in my stomach. What if the Saints had done something to her car? It wouldn’t be enough to see a car clean of any damage. There was always the chance they would have put a bomb or something else on it. One could never take too many precautions.

  Still, the good news when we pulled up was that the car was apparently untouched. Apparently.

  “Let me examine it really quickly,” I said after I killed the bike.

  I hopped off and looked under the vehicle, behind the tires, and even in the exhaust pipe for anything that could have caused trouble. Much to my surprise, everything was clean and good. I guess the Saints recognized that if they hurt someone that us Reapers cared about so much, they’d all be dead in a matter of hours.

  “Good to go.”

  “Thanks, LeCharles.”

  She shot me a sweet smile, but it was brief. She got in the car and turned it on. I held my breath as I watched her back out and head back home, but as far as I could tell, there was no damage and no problems done. She was in the clear completely.

  That in itself was something of a minor miracle. But so too was the fact that, by all accounts, things were starting to somehow progress toward something more meaningful between us.

  I rode toward the clubhouse, needing to get a debriefing from Lane and anyone else there on what had happened. When I pulled up, most of the prospects were there, cleaning up the aesthetic damage done by the Fallen Saints. Lane and Butch were overseeing the process, each of them sipping a beer while leaning against one of our club trucks. When Lane saw me, he held his beer up to me. Butch had no apparent reaction.

  “Guess the damage wasn’t too bad, all things considered,” I said, nodding toward the bullet-riddled building.

  “Could have been a lot worse,” Lane said. “Come on. I’ll tell you everything inside. Butch, can you watch the boys?”

  Butch nodded. I felt like he was watching the two of us as we went inside, but I was more concerned with whatever Lane had to say than whatever Butch had to think. We walked past Father Marcellus, speaking to one of the club members in what looked like a somewhat light conversation, and walked into church. Lane locked the door behind me.

  “We alerted all the officers before we got back,” he said. “Patriot and I nearly got hit, but we got back just in time. The rest of the club was well-prepared to repel the Saints’ attack, so no harm really came of it.”

  “Good,” I said. “But we don’t have any indication of any spy?”

  Lane shook his head.

  “I don’t think this is a real great example of something we can use to accuse someone of anything,” he said. “Remember, the three of us were staring Lucius in the face last night. He didn’t have to have a spy to know we were away from the base.”

  “True,” I said, disappointed.

  “And in any case, like I said, we decided to call all of the officers. Butch, Father Marcellus, Red Raven. Maybe if we’d called one and nothing had happened, we’d have our guard up, but we called all of them. We weren’t going to take any risks for this one, not when we had done the equivalent of dropping our guard in a boxing match.”

  “Understood. But the damage was just aesthetic, right? We’re not hiding the fact they somehow hit us harder than we want to let on or anything like that, right?”

  “Promise.”

  So then really, all we had to do was just clean up, maybe throw a minor strike back at them, and all would be equal. There could be no mistaking the fact, though, that we had dodged a pretty big metaphorical bullet with this one. And because of how I feel about Rose.

  Shit. I really do care for her. Even after all these years, even after everything that got ugly...

  “Oh, there was one thing I forgot,” Lane said.

  I snapped out of my thoughts on Rose. But even if I hadn’t, what Lane said next would have been enough to grab my attention.


  “Jerome got word of what happened last night. Said he wanted to make sure everything was good and that you were good.”

  “Jerome? As in, the Hovas' Jerome?”

  Lane nodded. I became suspicious.

  Just because we had a good relationship didn’t mean we shared everything that happened. In fact, more often than not, it was more about sharing only the bare minimum to sustain our partnership. I began to believe our spy was someone who had informed Jerome, perhaps somehow hoping that his insertion into everything would wedge me out or just create an obnoxious distraction for the Reapers.

  “Strange,” I said.

  “Why?”

  I explained my entire thoughts to Lane, talking about how I believed that it was the work of the spy.

  “You know, when we last met, Jerome pitched me on the idea of going back to the Hovas. I told him that wasn’t going to happen. But I wonder if he let that slip to the spy, and the spy is trying to use that to his or the Saints’ advantage.”

  “Maybe,” Lane said, but his mind was obviously racing far farther than he was showing here. “Are you going to say anything to him?”

  “Might as well, not like I’d be going to meet a Saint or someone I need to keep my guard up around. He’ll continue to tell me I need to be with my people, but you don’t have anything to worry about. I’m more likely to move to Mexico than leave this group for another club.”

  Lane chuckled. We didn’t have much more to say, so after some pleasantries, we both stood up and left.

  But I was far from leaving behind the topic of discussion. In fact, as soon as I was out of range, I called Jerome.

  It was late at night when I pulled up to his house—and this time, it really was his house and not some abandoned warehouse that had functioned as their headquarters.

  “Right on time,” Jerome said.

  “As if my past training would ever let me late,” I said.

  Jerome didn’t react, instead taking a step to the side and holding his hand out, as if gesturing for me to make a grand entrance into his house. I walked inside, taking in the decor of the place, which felt surprisingly...

  Plain.

  Make no mistake about it, Jerome lived comfortably. He had bookcases, nice couches, a large TV, and some nice lighting fixtures. But it was by no means extravagant, and the Jerome I had known that used to wear gold chains and other large jewelry had seemingly traded it in for something more akin to an upper-middle-class lifestyle.

  “I wasn’t kidding when I said we ain’t like we were years ago, man,” he said, clasping my shoulder. “We get older. Hopefully, the shit in our heads gets a little smarter.”

  I nodded, genuinely impressed.

  “I can’t keep you all night, though,” he said. “The lady’s going to be home at some point.”

  “You’re married?”

  Jerome chuckled.

  “What, a brother’s not allowed to settle down?” he said. “I told you, we’re all growing up.”

  Fuck, man. I really underestimated things with the Hovas.

  “I heard about what happened to your clubhouse,” he said. “What the hell went down?”

  Did I really want to tell him everything? Including things with Rose? Jerome knew of Rose, but only through the lens of the last couple months of my relationship with her. Jerome didn’t know that Rose had once been the best thing in my life. As far as he was concerned, she was nothing more than a parasite that I couldn’t shake.

  “Well,” I said. “Lane, Patriot, and I had a situation that merited us going to Brewskis. And…”

  When I turned to look Jerome in the eye, his look of bemusement was so great that even I had to laugh. He had exaggerated an arched eyebrow and a gaping mouth to drive home the point that he knew I was hiding something.

  “And what, the fucking hell, Mr. Axle, took you all the fucking way to Brewskis on a damn motherfucking Friday night? Did you, I don’t know, worry the bar was going to burn down because the Saints were smoking too much weed in there?”

  I bit my lip.

  “I had personal matters to attend to.”

  “You had to rescue some pussy, it’s cool,” Jerome said. “I don’t need to know anything more. But go on.”

  “Yeah, so, I took care of my personal business, but that left us open. Fortunately, we warned the rest of the club that an attack was coming, so we suffered no casualties, but it was pretty worrisome there for a second.”

  Jerome nodded, rubbed his chin, and nodded some more, looking like a professor deep in thought.

  “Sounds like things are getting pretty tumultuous over there, am I right?”

  “That’s club business.”

  “So yes, they are.”

  Say this for Jerome—the man may have been aggressive in his takes and the way he treated us, but he was rarely wrong in figuring out what was and what wasn’t a weak point.

  “You’re on a sinking ship, just like you were when I first met you.”

  Really better not tell him I almost hooked up with Rose last night, then.

  “But it’s cool. You do you, brother. You know full well that I am here to throw you a life raft if you change your mind. All you have to do is ask for it, and you’ll get it.”

  “Thanks,” I muttered.

  A few seconds of silence passed as Jerome casually went to the fridge and grabbed two beers. He cracked them both open and gave me one. I initially declined, but it only took a single encouraging look to get me to change my mind.

  “You really want to be there, huh?” Jerome said. “Like, damn, you’re for real sticking it out?”

  “For now,” I said.

  I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth. It implied that my mind could be changed. Which...

  I wanted to say that was wrong, but between last night and the rat in our club, I couldn’t pretend that things were perfectly stable and unchanging in my life. It really did feel like a lot of seismic change was just on the horizon, and if that happened, who knew what sorts of things would be going down in the coming days?

  “For now,” Jerome repeated. “For now. Alright, man, alright. I—”

  “Who told you what happened?”

  Jerome chuckled.

  “So, you’re going to keep quiet about why you went to Brewskis, but you’re expecting me to tell you everything?”

  “Is it a big deal?”

  “It’s not, man, but I doubt you’d believe who it was. It ain’t like Lane or Patriot are on my speed dial.”

  Like I couldn’t have figured that out since they were right by my side.

  “Look,” I said, chugging my beer quickly so I could make an out depending on the news. “I know this is short, but we got things going on at the club. I need to know who told you what went down.”

  “The hell why?” Jerome said. “You got some sort of a—”

  “Jerome,” I said sternly. “I’m not asking you as a member of the Black Reapers. I’m asking you as a friend and a brother. Tell me. Who told you what happened?”

  Jerome got the hint. He put his beer on the table.

  “Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you. You wouldn’t believe it.”

  He took a deep breath.

  “Butch.”

  Rose

  Two Days Later

  I woke up before the sunrise to an unusual feeling.

  Happiness and hope.

  When my alarm went off, I didn’t beg to be back asleep where I could have dreams that would be better than the day. I didn’t wish to be back in Utah or to be a few years younger. I didn’t wish I was in a residency program now. I was really, genuinely happy to be where I was.

  Of course, I would have preferred for my circumstances to be different. I took no pride in being broke and being a vet tech. But I felt very happy that I was finally asking myself to pick up the pieces, rather than hoping that someone else would do it for me. I didn’t think that LeCharles or a new job could finally make me happy. I just believed that I
alone, with some work, could do so.

  I reached over for my phone, turning the alarm clock off in the process. I hadn’t gotten any messages since I last checked the night before, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have some messages to read. In fact, since Saturday morning, LeCharles and I had texted each other quite a bit.

  “Hope you’re having a great day,” he’d texted Saturday afternoon.

  “A little hungover, but a little relaxing. :-) How are you?”

  “Same. Going to see some friends tonight.”

  “That sounds wonderful. Hope you have fun.”

  That was the last I heard of him Saturday, but it was just the kind of casual, easy conversation that I would have read into far too deeply before. Here, though, I just felt happy to be talking to him, but I wasn’t desperate for it. I wasn’t begging and yearning for the chance to be with him. I was just happy at the moment, and everything that followed was a continuation of my happy mood.

  I had texted him Sunday, talking about how unusually hot it was for this time of year. I sensed that LeCharles was not quite as talkative as the night before, or at least he wasn’t as fluid and easy-going. Maybe the encounter with his friend hadn’t gone as well as he had hoped, but he still made an effort to ask about me. I finally had to end the conversation when our texting hit ten p.m.

  “Fun as this is, I gotta go into work at 7 tomorrow at the vet clinic. Animals don’t wait for us to arrive.”

  “I thought you were a nurse?” LeCharles wrote back.

  I knew he didn’t mean it condescendingly. He just really didn’t know everything that had happened, so of course, from past knowledge, he would just assume I’d come back to be a doctor or other human medical professional.

  “Not quite :-),” I wrote back. I wanted to save the whole story for a later time when we met in person. LeCharles didn’t write back after that, but that didn’t signify anything to me.

  “Buddy!” I called out.

  Shiloh, emerging from under the bed by me, rose up, his tail wagging as he jumped up onto the bed and started to lick my face. He then pawed at me, trying to get me out of bed.