Patriot Read online

  And two weeks later, she was dead.

  I took a swig of that lemonade. I wished that it was spiked with a little vodka to try and forget everything that I remembered from that relationship, but unfortunately, now that I’d gone down that road, there was no stopping the recording in my mind of what had happened.

  She’d just gotten crushed by an ex, Robbie, whom she deeply loved and thought she would marry. She and he had not broken up for any reason other than circumstance. He’d gotten a job in Boston, and she could not see herself moving with him. The two of them tried like hell to make it work, doing long-distance for several months, but in the end, things just didn’t line up. On the prowl for his complete opposite, she found... that fucking asshole.

  A guy named Jason. Tall, white dude, bearded with earrings, wore sunglasses frequently, had neck tattoos... he was, in every way, the exact opposite of Robbie. If anything defined a rebound relationship, Jason was that man.

  I never exactly inquired into why she liked him, but I didn’t doubt that the sex, the flair for being so exotic and different, and, well, yes, his love of motorcycles had something to do with it. At first, I just let it go, hoping that she would ride it out.

  But then I began to notice signs. The Kristina I knew, the one who would laugh and giggle at just about anything, became something of a recluse, quiet and detached in our time together. I didn’t notice any physical signs at the time, so I just chalked it up to complex feelings for Robbie and Jason duking it out in her head.

  But then she came home with a bruise on her neck. She tried like hell to hide it, but I knew full well that it was from Jason.

  And then, one day, Jason came into the hospital. He talked about how the asshole Reapers had done something to him, and they would pay as a result. It was the first time I ever learned the levels of violence that the Black Reapers and Fallen Saints could go, but unfortunately, it wasn’t even close to the worst I’d see from those two fighting.

  I had to take Kristina out of town—so far out of town, in fact, we wound up in Mexico—to talk some sense into her. Admittedly, she didn’t break up with Jason as soon as she got home, but it didn’t take long. She was scared at first, but after a month away from him, we went to that wedding, and I thought that everything was fine.

  Two weeks later...

  I was on shift when I got the call. A couple was talking loudly in their house, fighting even, then a gunshot went off.

  When the paramedics arrived, Kristina was already dead.

  I would never learn the details of why she had gone back to Jason’s house, who, to this very night, still had not been arrested, even though to me it was clear as day he had done it. I still did not know, nor would I ever know, if she had gone back out of sympathy for him or under the threat of violence if she did not.

  But all I knew was that my only sibling was dead, gone at the hand of motorcycle gang violence. Yes, gang. A club wouldn’t do any shit like that.

  And as I finished remembering the story, something I was seemingly destined to replay every night for the rest of my life, and as I felt the tears fall down my cheeks, I knew that there was now no way that I could ever do anything with Michael. Not even meet him for drinks again. Granted, Michael, at least with clothes on, was far more presentable than Jason ever was. Jason was the kind of guy you looked at and instantly knew he was trouble, whereas Michael could throw on a suit, and no one would suspect him of being anything more than a typical businessman.

  But that’s how they got you. They either sucked you in with the promise of a “good time being bad,” or they made you think they were good guys with a flair for the dramatic. And then, once trapped...

  No. No. No!

  I was not going to see Michael again. Bad enough that I would never see my sister again in this lifetime. Bad enough that I’d never hear her laugh, never see her smile, never listen to her giggle at even the most innocuous of statements.

  I was not going to compound that and put my parents through worse.

  I was done.

  When I woke up the next morning, it was after nine a.m., far later than I usually woke up. I was very much used to rolling out of bed around seven, relaxing a bit before work, and then starting my shift.

  But it being Friday, I didn’t have to work today. I still typically rose at the same time since my body struggled to be flexible, but I guessed after having a meeting with a biker, my body needed more time in recovery.

  I fumbled for my phone, trying not to look at the photos of my family and my sister at this hour. Some memories were best held back until later. I really need a younger photo of us. Or a photo that won’t unearth such memories.

  If such a thing even exists.

  I finally grabbed my phone and nearly dropped it. I pulled it forward, unlocked it with my thumb, and stared at the one text message that I had.

  “Thanks for coming out last night. Really appreciate your taking the time to talk to me.”

  Michael. I gave him my number?

  Yeah, I did. I remember now…

  Shit.

  I stared at the text for a long time, far longer than I really should have. Just as intellectualizing my way past our meeting last night had not really worked, trying to reason my way into what I should do with this text wasn’t going much better. For all that I had thought last night, for all that I was thinking this morning, the choice should have been easy. I’d be polite about it, but the end result was the same.

  And yet...

  Michael was just different.

  It was just an intuitive feeling. I hated that Kristina had probably felt the same way about Jason. It was just the reaction that there was something about him that made me feel like Michael wasn’t violent, at least not to women.

  And it wasn’t like he’d asked me out on a date in this message. It wasn’t even like he’d asked me to anything in this message. He’d just thanked me.

  Just.

  I was pretty sure Jason had not done that. In fact, I knew Jason had not done that. Every time that Kristina talked about Jason, she’d say how he was so bossy and dramatic.

  “Hey, Michael, thanks for inviting me out.”

  I wrote those words out, but I sat on them for what felt like a good couple of minutes, trying to decide if that was how I wanted to rephrase my response. Eventually, I just hit send. What was I doing? The only time I acted this way, being so utterly precise with my words, was when I liked someone.

  I put the phone down and went to the kitchen to start preparing food. I needed something mindless and time-consuming to take me away from something I didn’t need to be mindful of.

  But after cracking just three eggs and laying out some blueberries for an oatmeal mix, I was already feeling pulled back to the room, back to my phone, to see if he’d responded. He’s a biker. He’s not going to respond this early. He works afternoons and evenings.

  But do you even know when he sent the most recent message? What if it was at some point this morning?

  What the hell are you doing, Kaitlyn?

  “Ugh,” I groaned out loud, giving in to the desire to check my phone.

  I walked back in and checked. No response. Of course not—I’d sent the previous message less than five minutes ago. And on top of that, Michael had sent the original message after one in the morning.

  And then the bubble popped up that showed he was responding, and as if captured by a hypnotist, I stared at the phone, waiting to see what he said. Maybe he, too, hadn’t slept much. Or maybe he’d sent the message just before going to bed.

  Stop thinking this. He’s not going to be anything, remember?

  “Of course. Would you like to meet up soon?”

  The immediate reaction was one of hope and excitement. But the one that followed right after was a sinking feeling, the kind that reminded me why meeting up with him was a bad idea. I stared at the phone, my thumbs just barely hovering over the keyboard, when I heard something flame up in the kitchen.

  “Oh, sh
it!”

  Fortunately, it was nothing that couldn’t be fixed, and I quickly removed the pan from the stovetop to prevent a far greater disaster from occurring. Granted, my eggs had been ruined, but I still had my oatmeal and blueberries.

  “Okay, get it together, Kaitlyn, come on.”

  You need space. You need time to figure this out.

  I knew what I needed to write.

  I went back into my bedroom, typed “I’ll answer in a few days,” and left it at that.

  Even if I had a feeling I already knew what the answer would be.

  Patriot

  I shouldn’t have been awake so early in the morning.

  But, then again, there were a lot of things that I wish weren’t the case that actually were. I didn’t know if that was a common thing for former soldiers, but for me, it was like a virus that just never left. I could not get “the should haves” out of my head, and I definitely could not get it out of my dreams.

  And last night was no different.

  I’d gone to bed around two in the morning, as I usually did. I had gone straight home after leaving Lane, so it wasn’t like I’d drank myself to sleep, though that had certainly happened before. I also hadn’t drugged myself to sleep, which had also happened in the past.

  Maybe I should have done it, because as soon as I slipped into sleep, I found myself wishing I could do anything to get out of the sequence that had become so familiar I could recount it in exact detail the next morning.

  In this dream, I was in a Humvee heading on a mission to the inner limits of Ramadi. With me, however, were not my brothers from the military, but my brothers in the Black Reapers. Driving the vehicle was Axle—whom, not coincidentally, had been in the military in real life—and to his right in the passenger’s seat was Butch. Around me were the rest of the officers—Lane, Father Marcellus, Red Raven, and even Cole. There was also Red Raven’s son, whom we referred to as Pink Raven, and a couple of other members.

  “We’ve arrived,” Axle said when we pulled up to the compound.

  Unlike in real life, though, in this dream, the compound seemed to have no ceiling, no point at which its height ended. It just extended to the stars, as much a part of the night sky as the Moon. The sight of a “real” Tower of Babel intimidated me, but as a man on a mission, I didn’t have time to let fear prevent me from doing my duty.

  We streamed out of the Humvee, moved silently through the night, and took up our positions outside the front door. For some reason, though, whenever I tried to move to the point position, my legs just wobbled. I could not move, no matter how much I wanted to; it was like my legs turned to jelly underneath me, and I was physically incapable of being useful. One step forward and my leg would buckle.

  “We’ll take it from here, Michael,” Lane said.

  That was another sign that this was a dream—Lane never called me Michael in Springsville. He and the rest of the club members called me Patriot, but to hear “Patriot” from a fellow soldier would have been like getting the nickname “Player” while on a sports team—it was not specific, it applied to everyone, and it would have been meaningless.

  But just because I knew I was in the dream didn’t change what happened next.

  All of the Black Reapers charged in. All, that was, except me, who had to crawl forward with my arms. But every time it seemed like I had made progress to the door, the door moved further away. It was impossible for me to actually get any closer than a few feet away.

  And then, after about a dozen seconds of struggling to move mere feet, gunfire erupted.

  One-sided gunfire from an ambush.

  I heard the screams of the Black Reapers falling. I heard them cry out for help, help I was not able to give. I tried to reach for the door to prevent my comrades from dying without me, but as much as I tried to extend my hand, I could not. I was worse than a coward—I was a failure.

  No matter how often I had this dream, no matter how lucid I became in these moments, the screams felt real. They felt real because they weren’t really the screams of the Black Reapers, not as time went by, and I understood what they really were.

  They were the screams of the brothers that had fallen during that fateful night in Ramadi. They were the screams of the men that would not be alive when I woke up.

  “Why?” I shouted, only able to rise to my legs when everyone was killed. “Why? Why?!?”

  “You know why.”

  The voice came from behind me. It chilled me to the core. I knew who spoke with that voice.

  “I was the one that sold them out. I killed those men.”

  I slowly began to turn, knowing what awaited me, even though I was terrified of it. I prayed that it wouldn’t be who I thought it was, but the voice was unmistakable. I’d heard the voice every day while on tour, and I continued to hear that voice to this day.

  It was me.

  I sold them out. I killed my men.

  The clone, projection, mirror, whatever the hell it was, of me, raised a gun at me, pointed it at my head, and smiled.

  And that’s when I woke up in a cold sweat. The Black Reapers were still alive. I was still alive.

  But for those who had gone to war with me…

  It was not even eight in the morning yet. The sun was out, but the sun was just a reminder that I had a limited amount of time before it became dark again, before I had to face the potential of confronting that nightmare again. And again. And again. And fucking again.

  That, perhaps, was the cruelest part of this dream. Not that it happened, but that it happened repeatedly. I could know it was coming, I could know that I would experience what I’d felt all over again, I could know that I’d wake up in a cold sweat, and I would still wake up wanting to smash a bottle against the wall in frustration. Nothing that I had tried, from therapy to trying to forget it ever happened to everything in between, had worked. I was seemingly destined to be haunted by this dream, by this PTSD, forever.

  Honestly, the only time that I ever truly felt relief, truly felt free, was when I was on my bike. There was something about the freedom of being on two wheels, of having no protection from the air around me, of knowing that my life was entirely in my hands and my hands alone that invigorated me and liberated me from suffering. It didn’t always work—some dreams were so vivid, and some stress was so intense, that not even the bike could save me—but it was the only thing that even had the potential to mitigate some of the moments.

  I rolled over to the side of the bed. Kaitlyn hadn’t responded yet. I got up, did some stretches, and headed to the kitchen to make myself some breakfast. At this point, there was no nap, nothing I could do to feel better or pretend to feel better.

  That was the other cruel part about this. I had thought that there would be steps that I could take to heal myself.

  First, I thought joining a brotherhood that resembled the military in some fashion—the Black Reapers—would help.

  When that didn’t work, I thought that getting into combat would pump de facto new blood into me, give me new experiences of triumph and success.

  When that didn’t work, I thought that talking to someone about it would help.

  When that didn’t work, I thought that trying to use alcohol, sex, and the occasional drug would work.

  Finally, when none of those worked, I accepted I’d just have to deal with this the rest of my life.

  Part of me held out hope that maybe accepting this would work, but, surprise, that didn’t work either.

  Eventually, I decided that I needed to head to the shop. If I couldn’t escape the suffering that plagued my life, I could at least distract myself in the company of friends until the evening. Maybe I could even get drinks at Brewskis with Lane again. And figure out this spy situation...

  I went to my room and grabbed my phone. Kaitlyn had finally responded. That brought a bigger smile to my face than it should have.

  I told myself to wait—that texting her so quickly would give hints of wanting more than just a b
usiness partnership with her, but just as I could not control my dreams, I could not really control my gut instinct to text her. My anxiety, not my attraction, was compelling me to reach out to her, but I went with it anyways.

  As soon as I wrote to her asking if she wanted to meet up, I headed straight for my motorcycle, my sole respite from the world and my mind.

  My freedom from myself.

  Upon arrival at the shop, I felt immediate ease that had not been there in the morning. I wasn’t lying when I said that the only thing that helped the memories was the bike, but being around my brothers went a long way toward easing my general anxiousness. Here, I could be myself. I could be a relaxed, chill guy who said “man” a lot and liked to drink whiskey whenever possible.

  Although I wouldn’t get paid for coming in early, none of us had ever joined the shop for money. Let’s face it, aside from the Carters, none of us were raking in cash. We were paid enough money to make ends meet, and our savings accounts were the club’s business account. If we had to, we’d tap into it, no questions asked. But we were expected—and we preferred—to live a simple lifestyle devoted to the club.

  I walked into the first garage, expecting to find a couple of prospects, only to see with some surprise that Lane was hunkered over the hood of a Ford, right next to Axle.

  “You signed up for that shit, man?” I said in a gently teasing tone.

  Lane looked up, smirked, and turned his attention back to the engine of the Ford.

  “Axle’s teaching me a thing or two,” he said. “When you’re the President of a club that involves motorcycles and vehicles, you’d probably be wise to learn a thing or two about those vehicles, wouldn’t you say?”

  Damn. He really is getting more involved. But then a more sinister, manipulative thought came to mind. Or he’s getting close to everyone to try and see who the rat would be.

  As a fellow veteran, Axle could not have been the rat. There was just no way. But of course, the name Benedict Arnold existed as an archetype for a reason, and it wasn’t because he was some hero.