A Leap in the Dark (Assassins of Youth MC Book 2) (24 page)

“Believe you me. You’re going to want the video a year from now. Especially twenty years from now. Listen. Dad sends his regrets that he and Mom can’t come.”

I know Mahalia was trying to be helpful, but she was only making it worse. “Oh, those assholes.” It just slipped out of me. But there, I’d said it. Maybe my nerves were making me honest, like a truth serum. “They basically disowned us for living with men who are bikers.”

“I know,” Mahalia said kindly. “But think about their religious background, Oak. They’re steeped in this philosophy of what’s right and what’s wrong.”

I angrily adjusted my flashy rhinestone necklace. “Yeah, well. Their so-called monopoly on salvation is bullshit. How can a few million people alone be the chosen ones? If we don’t follow their churchly precepts, we’re damned.”

“I know,” Mahalia repeated. She had one last piece to hand me—a real diamond bracelet she’d somehow scored from our mother, probably before she’d realized how damned we were. I had to hold my wrist out while she did the clasp. “But remember. We’re not damned eternally in their eyes. Don’t forget, we can still accept their ways on the other side of the veil.”

“Oh, screw the veil,” I said, though I didn’t really mean it. I actually liked the idea of a premortal existence, the idea of eternal progress. I actually embraced some of my parents’ ideas, and rejected others. The idea that I couldn’t marry a man in an MC was one of my rejects, of course. If it meant my relationship with them would be strained the rest of my life, so be it. “I’ve got parents who will never even stoop to meet the man I love. I reject them.”

Mahalia finally caved. Her positive demeanor disappeared for a few seconds. “I know what you mean. We’re thinking of doing our wedding in the fall, once the glamor of yours has faded. I’m not even bothering telling mom and dad about it. You stole all my ideas, though. I was going to do the cowboy boots on top of some Zion steeple, too.”

“Get married in city hall!” The idea actually excited me. “That’ll show those fucking fundies what’s what.”

“Yes, city hall!” Kimball appeared around our side of the portable john. “Oo, I can’t wait. Show those pervs a thing or two. Oaklyn, you look gorgeous. I’ve never seen you this gorgeous!”

“Well,” I said shyly, “normally I wear clothes that make it easy to ride on a Harley’s pussy pad.”

“You guys.” Deloy’s voice made all of us jump. He was Levon’s best man, and he’d ridden to the parking lot down at the trailhead on his Dyna Super Glide wearing a tuxedo. “Levon’s wondering where you are.”

“Is he getting cold feet?” I asked anxiously.

Deloy put a hand on my forearm. “No, no, not at all. You know that, Oaklyn. He wants to hurry up and marry you!”

Kimball said, “The justice of the peace needs to go to another wedding, and he barely made it up this trail.”

The trail had been the source of some frustration. It wasn’t wheelchair accessible, so for awhile we’d thought Levon’s Nana couldn’t come. After a bit, though, the men had decided the trail wasn’t that steep. Levon and Sledgehammer carried her up in a light lawn chair, and all ninety pounds of her was delighted.

I peeked around the toilet and gasped at the sea of faces. It had not been prudent to carry much furniture up the trail, so everyone stood around, milling. Of course booze had not been sacrificed, though. Dingo and a new Prospect named Gomer had carried an ocean of booze up the trail, and a few of those prefabricated hors d’oeuvres, those rolled up turkey things and carrot sticks no one ever ate. These were placed on a convenient flat rock while we waited for the sun to hit the Great White Throne at just the right angle to light it up like a beacon.

“Okay,” I said. “I’m ready.”

“Breathe,” suggested Mahalia. “And ignore the video camera.”

“Oh, why did you have to remind me of the video camera?”

“Shut up about the video camera,” Kimball whispered.

So I went down the “aisle” followed by Mahalia and Kimball to the blasting tune of the Allman Brothers “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.” Brothers and sisters parted as we moved sedately. I know my bouquet of pale pink roses and jasmine sprigs was shaking like a tambourine, I was so nervous. I smiled at Nana and at Deloy’s mother, who had boldly taken a day pass from Cornucopia to finally see her son again. My boss, Dr. Lee, was there.

There were lots of non-bikers, folks from the community, and other business owners. The new mayor Maximus Antioch was surrounded by his political people, guys who hung out at his barber shop and discussed the future of Avalanche. After Ladell Pratt’s mysterious death in an abandoned elementary school, the fundies had thrown a new hat into the electoral ring, some ancient old creeper with deep ties to Cornucopia. Maximus had won by a landslide anyway. It was the end of an error, as he said. People wanted to meet the new boss, and he wasn’t the same as the old boss.

To be honest, I don’t remember much of the wedding ceremony. It all went in a nervous blur. All I could think was
this is the most important moment of your life. You’re pregnant standing on top of a mountain marrying a man in a leather vest.
It was completely surreal.

Not many people knew I was pregnant. It was one of those situations where I wanted to be sure of it before announcing it. Anyway, I didn’t want to make it look like that was why we were marrying. Not at all. He’d asked me before I discovered I was pregnant.

He said I was the first woman to make him feel deeply. The more he loved me the scarier it became, but he wanted to move
toward
that fear, not away from it.

I knew what he meant. I had a new house, a new job, and now I was creating a new family around me. I was terrified, but I knew I was on the right track.

In a bow to Levon’s literary leanings, I quoted Dostoevsky. “‘For the humble soul…worn out by grief and toil, and still more by the everlasting injustice and everlasting sin, his own and the world’s, it was the greatest need and comfort to find someone or something holy to fall down before and worship.

“Among us there is sin, injustice, and temptation, but yet, somewhere on earth there is someone holy and exalted. He has the truth, he knows the truth, so it is not dead upon the earth. So it will come one day to us, too, and rule over all the earth according to the promise.’

“This is my promise to you, Levon Rockwell. While we grow old together, I promise to love, honor and respect you, to hold you dear in my heart, but not shackle you to my will. I will stand by your side and sleep in your arms. I will work as your partner and live as your family.”

I remember that because I wrote it down. I still have the sweat-stained, crumbled-up piece of paper. Oh boy, was I nervous when Levon slipped the band onto my finger. He wore a nice linen shirt and Italian silk tie under his leather cut, a sort of a combination of the best of both worlds. He wore new black jeans instead of the usual worn 501s, and I’d never seen those black cowboy boots before. Lazarus sat placidly at his side, tongue out. For once he didn’t need to be held on a leash. He wasn’t going anywhere. Everyone he loved was here.

Levon said, “‘Do not forget. Some give little, and it is much for them. Others give all, and it costs them no effort. Who then has given most?’”

I remember that because I’ve got the video. It was a Knut Hamsun quote, he told me later. He echoed back to the arguments we’d had about how little he supposedly cared about life, how his unfeeling suit of armor protected him from life’s barbs.

“Oaklyn. You are my motive for everything. You are the one thing I believe in regards to my relationship to this unknowable universe around me. My destiny will always wind up with you no matter which road I travel, and my end goal determines everything. This makes you my religion, the end all and be all of my world.”

He kissed me somewhere in there. I really think I swooned, like they do in old gothic romances. Because the next thing I knew, I was in his arms upside-down, looking up at him, the sky, our friends, the face of a giant furry beast.

LEVON

“I know you
want to cut the ribbon at the farmer’s market grand opening,” said Slushy to Maximus, “but I’d like that honor. I worked hard on making it a reality, coordinating with all the appropriate agencies, greasing the right palms.” I had just met Slushy a couple of months ago. He was the club’s lawyer, normally living on the other side of the Grand Canyon in the bosom of The Bare Bones’ backyard. He advised us on all manner of things, from the downtown farmer’s market to business licenses, to how innocent to act when anyone brought up Ladell Pratt, the mayor found mysteriously strangled to death while committing some perverted act involving handcuffs. In an elementary school, no less.

“Oh, absolutely!” declared Maximus, hands up in surrender. “That’s your baby, Slushy.”

“We know you like that kind of stuff,” said Yosemite Sam, pointing at the lawyer with his can of Bud. “I saw that Christopher Guest movie rental in the back seat of your Prius.”

Everyone laughed. Sledgehammer added, “Alongside the empty bottle of Kombucha and Ray-Ban Wayfarers.”

I said, “He just asked me where he could skinny-dip around here.”

Everyone loved the lawyer who didn’t fit in with the rest of us. His fuchsia pink shirt set him off loudly from the crowd, and he was passionate about things like hummus, heirloom tomatoes, and cutting ribbons. He’d seen the Avalanche farmer’s market come to fruition, babying it through all the stages of production. I hadn’t needed him for my Chop Shop business license, though. That had been promptly hand-delivered by Hyrum Shumway himself a couple days after the mayor went missing. Signed, sealed, delivered.

Maximus said, “We had to push the grand opening back a week to accommodate Levon’s honeymoon. So the grand opening will coincide with the Fourth of July.”

Slushy gestured at me with his craft beer. “Where you going, hot stuff?” I wasn’t the only “hot stuff.” I’d heard him call Sledgehammer and Gideon that moniker, too.

“Carmel,” I said. It was actually too soon in both of our new jobs to take much time off. We really wanted to go to St. Petersburg in Russia, but that would have to wait. Carmel-by-the-Sea in California didn’t take as long, and was almost as gorgeous.

“Listen,” said Gideon, “let’s move this party down to the Elks Lodge. It’s getting dark and I don’t want to stumble with your Nana on the path.”

“Thanks for taking her,” I said, clapping Gideon on the back.

He added, “And we’ll take her back to her house in Mahalia’s cage.”

That settled, I could give in to the urging of the bird-like wife under my arm. Oaklyn wasn’t an old lady anymore, not in my mind. She was a wife, which was an old lady and then some. I knew I would never regret having caved in to the love that had taken ahold of me last winter. My resolve was doubled when Oaklyn revealed, somewhat anxiously, that she was pregnant. I had always wanted kids, deep down, but hadn’t dared to presume it would ever happen to me. That’s why I had gathered all my men around me. I was the oldest Lost Boy out at Liberty Temple, the den father. I was the alpha bad boy of the pack. But now I only had Deloy with me. I couldn’t believe how much I was looking forward to the arrival of my new kid. We had purchased our house from Gideon, and my weight room would be turned into a nursery.

Oaklyn said, “Remember that time Maximus was shooting that commercial, and we went down to the Virgin River?”

“How could I fucking forget?” Something occurred to me. “Did you want a repeat performance?”

Oaklyn beamed at me. I knew the ceremony had made her nervous, and she was experiencing the comedown, the relief, now. Sort of like subdrop after a scene. “Of course. But I’m not walking a mile down that cliff.”

“No. I was thinking more of going behind that rock.”

We headed toward the red boulder. No one dared stop us newlyweds, and people were heading back down the path to the parking lot. There were no tables or chairs to put away, just a lot of booze.

“What time should we head to Carmel tomorrow?”

“Whenever,” I said lightly. We were spending the first night in Vegas at the Venetian. Neither one of us was a big gambler. We just wanted to revel in the relaxed, upbeat atmosphere, maybe see the Blue Man Group. We’d never been to Vegas.

“Hey!” yelled Slushy, running over in his patent leather shoes. You’d think he was the groom, the way he was dressed. Deloy was behind him, also duded up in a tux with a frilly shirt. “Just one more item before you go balling behind that pinnacle.”

Under my arm, I felt Oaklyn giggle. “Balling behind a pinnacle.”

Slushy didn’t laugh. “Ah, young Doc Holliday here was wondering one last thing.” Slushy nudged Deloy with his elbow.

“Yes,” Deloy said, his lower lip trembling. I knew that look. This was some serious shit. I let go of Oaklyn to fold my hands before my crotch respectfully. “We need to know what you’re going to do about Hosea Cluff.”

Hosea Cluff had been identified as the last body in the mine. Deloy also identified him as acting in several of Pratt’s darknet sex tapes. He’d been an associate of Deloy and Kenyon Stout. Like most Lost Boys, no one had missed him.

“Right,” said Slushy. “Do you intend to use the body as leverage in future negotiations with the town council?”