Broken & Burned (16 page)

“What?” I asked, looking sharply in her direction.

“I was saying you drove us here in your car…” Everett said. I frowned.

“Why does that matter?” I asked.

“Dude where have you been!?” Reaver asked laughing. I scowled at him.

“I’m still getting used to this getting up at three in the morning bullshit, give a guy a break!” I lied. Everett went very still. Shit. It had sounded better than what I’d actually been thinking. I sighed.

“What does Matilda have to do with anything right now?” I asked, using my bike’s name.

“Who the fuck is Matilda?” Shelly asked and made a weird face.

“His bike.”

“My bike,” we all chorused and laughed.

“I was just saying, it’s dry out and not too bad, we haven’t done a night ride in a while and we should take a cruise down Main. Hit a bar, join the rest of society for a change then bring the after party back here.” Trigger said.

“I told him your bike was at home, you drove us here in Sadie.” Everett supplied. I nodded.

“Doesn’t matter.” I put my leg back down and slid my unfinished Fireball to the center of the table. Hadn’t had more than a sip or two, I was good to go. I kissed Em, a quick press of lips.

“I’ll be back in a bit.” I stood up and strode out of the club house Em staring wide eyed after me. I fired up Sadie a minute later and made the drive home. I ran into the house and pulled my old leather jacket from high school out of the back of my bedroom closet and pulled down my spare helmet off the shelf before going out to the garage to get my first born.

Matilda was a 2002 Harley Davidson Fatboy cruiser. I’d gotten her for a steal back in ’09, when I was seventeen, at an auction. Someone had laid her and she’d needed some love and attention so I’d rebuilt her. I’d slaved in the garage over her, she was my coping mechanism. I’d found her after my mom had died and she was in some seriously rough shape but something about taking on the project called to me. So I’d laid down seven hundred bucks and picked her up.

I’d been at the salvage auction with a high school buddy of mine and his dad, who was lookin’ for some cheap hulks to part out of his back yard. He’d run an illegal wrecking yard of sorts for years. They’d left the auction empty handed but had their flatbed tow truck with us just in case. My pops had been pissed
off
when he’d sobered up and found out what I’d done. I hadn’t cared much.

I walked my baby out of the garage and closed it up behind me. I stowed the jacket in one of my saddle bags and clipped the helmet around the sissy bar, or passenger seat’s backrest.
That
had been a custom piece that had cost me a pretty penny. The back rest on my passenger seat was a chromed out gothic cross with roses at the base. I’d had it laser cut by a custom metal shop in town. Somewhere along the line of building her, my bike had turned into a memorial for my mother.

The skin, or paint job on the gas tank and fenders, I’d had done in a glossy black overlaid with ghostly, deep red, roses that were in full bloom. My mom’s favorite flower. She had ‘em growing all around the house and would fill vases in the house with the deep red blooms. When the sun caught the roses on my bike they sparkled, on a cloudy day they were barely there.

The exhaust pipes, engine and the like remained shiny and/or chrome but by no means was my bike, or myself, suffering from chromeitis, hell no. I kept it tasteful, that shit’s just too damned hard to keep clean. My mother’s rosary hung from my right handlebar. I’d taken it to a jeweler and had all of the links reinforced and soldered shut to make it strong enough to withstand being there. It was so my mom would always be at my right hand to guide me and it sort of acted like a get back whip, flashing and fluttering to attract attention. On the back fender between the seat and tail light I’d had an artist freehand a memorial in a gothic script.

Matilda “Tilly” Draven

1973 – 2009

Gone. Never Forgotten.

My dad didn’t cry after my mother died. When I’d rolled my bike, completed, out of the garage and into the sun two years after I’d started her, he’d looked her over with a stern gaze. When his eyes had fallen on the memorial script, he’d paused, when he’d put his hand on my shoulder it had been with tears in his eyes and he’d had me patched in that night. A year after that he’d made me his VP.

Most clubs had a voting process on their VP, not my dad’s. He’d always held true to the belief that when it came to being the leader of anything that you needed to be able to trust the man at your side implicitly. The three other positions in the club, the three votes able to sway any decision, held at this time by Trig, Reaver and Doc, those positions are up for club vote. A man could choose his successor and nine times out of ten that was who would assume the mantle of whichever given office, but the club had final say.

I started Matilda up with one kick and headed back for the club while I continued roving down memory lane. I was proud of my baby and ecstatic that I was going to have Everett warming my back tonight. I wanted to share this with her and a night ride as a club, small as we were at the moment, was the perfect opportunity to ease her onto the back of my bike. I was really hoping she would take to it.

I pulled up and hit my signal to make a left through the club’s gate. Coming at me was Ashton in her Jeep. She waved through the windshield and turned up into the driveway, her friend Hayden pulled up and into the drive right behind her in some black Lexus SUV. That was Sunshine for you. Agreed to take my girl to her dancing in the morning and didn’t even have her car here to do it. Swear to God that woman would give you the shirt off her back. She and Trigger were a lot alike that way. I rode up into the lot and backed my bike into its spot. 

There was a small crowd forming outside the clubhouse by now. It was warmer than it had been in days but still crisp enough that my nose was trying to run from the cold of the ride. Still. It felt really damn good to be on the bike again. I shut her off and got off, pulling off my helmet and the clear lensed, black framed wraparounds I was sporting to shield my eyes from the wind. I tucked the glasses in my jacket and hung the helmet off one of the handle bars.

Everett glided up in that effortless walk of hers and I pulled her against me, kissing her temple while she got a good look at the bike under the flood lights. She reached out tentative fingers and I smiled.

“Go ahead.” I murmured against her ear and let her slip free of my grasp. She touched the rosary and picked it up letting the ornate crucifix rest in her palm. She walked slowly around the bike and asked.

“Am I seeing things or does it have roses on the gas tank?” She smiled at me and I smiled back.

“They’re roses.” I affirmed. She’d seen the bike before, outside her coffee shack but I hadn’t really given her time to really
look
then. Now she could have as much time as she wanted while we waited for Trigger’s boys to arrive. She trailed a fingertip reverently along the edge of the gothic cross sissy bar and paused, bending to read the inscription below the fender rack, above the tail light. She frowned, a cute little crease forming between her eyebrows and leveled that steely blue gaze of hers, the one that I swear saw through everything.

“Matilda… Your mom?” she asked.

“Matilda is my bike.” I went on to explain, “My mom was Tilly, she hated the name Matilda and you called her Matilda at your own peril.” I smiled and felt the familiar ache of loss in the center of my chest.

“You built it for her?” she asked.

“Yeah.” I said shortly and one of her brows arched, the look on her face said she clearly knew the story didn’t end there but then she shot a look over to the crowd of people close by.

“Will you tell me about her?” she asked quietly.

“Not something I typically talk about.” I said honestly and her face smoothed into solemn lines. “Maybe someday.” I said quietly going to her and pulling her against me.

“Okay.” She smiled at me and it was beautiful. I smiled back and a feminine voice cleared her throat behind me. I spooked, tensing. Only one person that freaking quiet around here.

“Yeah Ash?” I asked, voice harder than I meant it to come out.

“I’m sorry Dray, I didn’t want you thinking I was eavesdropping or creeping up on you on purpose.” Her delicate almost ethereal voice drifted from behind me. I turned with Em in my arms and spied Ashton and her straight laced rich friend Hayden standing pretty close.

“I know you don’t mean it Sunshine.” I said, voice a little smoother. She’d gotten better at not crumbling under one of my looks or admonishments which was saying something. Sometimes it was even easy to forget that she was as delicate as she was emotionally. She’d crumble or cry or have one of her hysterical fits but she always bounced back pretty quickly from them.

Em looked up at me and smiled and I didn’t miss her grateful look. Seems like there was another follower in the cult of Ashton, which I couldn’t really bitch or throw stones. She’d made a convert out of me too. Hell I’d even been instrumental in killing her husband for her. I shot a look over my shoulder to Reaver. We’d done it together. I blinked realizing that his glacial blue eyes were fixed in our direction. For a second I was gonna get my back up thinking that he was eye fucking
my
girl but then I realized that his stare was fixed on Hayden and it was as hopeless and grim as I’d ever seen him. Em distracted me by laughing at something Ashton said.

“I don’t know, I’ve never really ridden on a motor cycle before but something tells me I’m going to learn how.” She eyed me dubiously and I smiled.

I let her go and pulled my old jacket out of my saddlebag. When I’d started really coming into my own and hit that final growth spurt between sixteen and eighteen it had gotten a touch too small through the shoulders and too tight around my upper arms. I flipped up the hood on Em’s hoodie and held open the jacket. She shrugged into it obediently and I tried not to think about how I’d worn it the day my mom died. It fit her near perfect if a touch too big. It looked like what it was, that she was wearing her boyfriend’s jacket and I smiled. I liked that. I liked that a lot.

“I thought it’d fit.” I said judiciously. She smiled up at me and adjusted her hood on her sweatshirt so it would lay comfortably outside the collar of the coat. Zander pulled up on his custom chopper and behind him Squick on his vintage Beemer. Some cheers and calls went up from the small assembled crowd. Ashton and Hayden had moved off when I’d been fussing over Everett and Ashton hugged Squick who leaned his tall frame, nearly folding himself in half to hug her back. Em and I sauntered over. I clasped hands with Zander and then Squick. We were all familiar with Zander’s custom ride, so the talk immediately turned to Squick and his bike.

“Let’s get a look at this thing.” I said and smiled.

Trigger was right. The kid had done an amazing restoration job on it. The skin gleamed pearly white under the flood lights, and I mean that. The rainbow sheen of pearlessence was subtle but noticeable. He didn’t have the extended seat for a passenger but that was okay. From the snippets of conversation I’d just heard he was just learning how to ride and didn’t need to be taking any passengers.

Everything that was supposed to gleam, gleamed and the sound it had put off when it had come up the drive was one of a fine tuned, well-oiled machine. A sound my mechanic’s ear totally appreciated. In short, I was impressed, it may not be a stereotypical biker’s bike but fuck, who cares? It fit Squick’s personality and it was a bike. Only rule on bikes in our by-laws was none of that jap-crap, and I’m not talking about sturdy Hondas, I’m talking the plastic shit. No rice or pasta rockets. In short, I wasn’t going to be too picky, we really did need good members. The Beemer, it worked for me. My dad came out of the club house with a bundle under his arm and I gave him a chin lift. He gave me one back and I nodded. Hang around cuts. Black Denim no frills vests with a top and bottom rocker, a precursor to the leather cut of a prospect.

My dad’s gaze lingered on Em, tucked up against my side for a split second but then he got busy strapping the material wadded in his hands to his fender rack. Em’s attention was rapt on something nearby. I followed her blue eyes to Reaver standing pretty damned close to Hayden who was smallish like Ashton but still a few inches taller than Ash’s five foot nothing.

“Do you trust me?” I heard him ask. She was looking past him at his bike like it was going to jump up and bite her. I raised an eyebrow. Hayden was getting hitched to some rich blowhard banker type come summer. The dude was hardly ever around, always traveling on business and since she and Ashton had become like BFF’s or something she’d taken to hanging around with her and by default the club whenever her fiancé was out of town. None of us minded. The woman was easy on the eyes and Trig and Reaver kept her clear of trouble. I watched fear slide behind her clear green eyes and sighed inwardly. Now I knew it was a done deal. Reaver would be getting her on the back of his bike come Hell or high water. Shelly called across the parking lot to her cousin.

“Hey Cuz! Can I get a ride?” she asked.  He called back without taking his eyes off Hayden.

“Sorry Runt! Seat’s taken!” I smirked and decided to help Shells out before she caused a scene.

“Prospect!” I barked. Em jumped in the circle of my arms and I chuckled.

“Yeah!?” Derek called back.

“You’re giving Shells a ride!” I ordered. He grinned.

“You bet!” Shelly looked at me aghast. I knew she liked the Marine and this pretty much served her right for being such a pain in the ass on the regular.

“That was slightly mean.” Everett whispered, but she was smiling this impish smile that made me laugh outright.

I explained what I expected out of her as a passenger and she listened rapt. I didn’t think she would have a problem with keeping balanced but the last thing I wanted was her counterbalancing and fucking up mine and Matilda’s flow. Taking on a new passenger was always risky though; you never knew what you were getting into with one until you were moving.