Riding Him (Ghost Riders MC 5)

“I thought you might be disappointed. Wanted me to go like you or Dad. Join the force.”

He lets out a little laugh. “You’ve never done a thing that people expect.” He stands. “I wouldn’t want you to start now.”

I can’t help but smile at that. No, I’ve never done anything like people thought I would. That thought makes something warm take hold in the pit of my stomach because the look on Vincent’s face is showing me that this is something that he loves about me.

I close the distance between us and pull him into a hug, which he quickly takes over, engulfing me with his arms, lifting me off the ground a few inches and taking the air right out of my lungs. Then he gently puts me back down on my feet.

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a knife that makes me gasp at the sight.

“Pulled a few strings, but I got it back.” He flips the butterfly knife open and the closes it again. “Thought you might want it.” He holds it out to me.

“It wasn’t mine.” I stole that knife from Vincent’s room so many times, and he’d always just steal it right back, saying I was going to hurt myself. I loved the damn thing. Something about it. I couldn’t stop playing with it, and it’s where my little knife obsession started. It was where I’d gotten my first taste of blood.

“It was always yours.” He moves his hand closer to me, and I reach out and tentatively take the knife from his palm. I feel the metal against my skin. This time when I hold the knife, there is no fear like there had been the last time I had it.

“How’d you get it back?” I look up at him.

“Called in a favor and got it out of evidence. Not like it matters anyways.” No, it didn’t matter. That case was long closed. It closed when they put Frank Steed six feet under and all charges against me were dropped.

Self-defense, they called it. Me, I wasn’t so sure. Six years ago and I still remember the day like it was yesterday. Being lured into a cop car on my way home from school. It wasn’t hard when the man had said my father’s name, that my dad had asked him to pick me up, but I wasn’t taken to my father. I was taken to an abandoned house not four houses down from my own at the time. I can still remember the smell of alcohol coming off the man. I had looked down at his badge with so much confusion, not understanding how a cop could be doing this to me. The things he’d said he was going to do to me, words that were branded into my brain.

I didn’t think, or maybe I did.

I didn’t pull the knife to use it to get away from him. I pulled it to kill. Never did escape even enter my mind, and I’d known right where to strike to make sure that happened. I didn’t just stab him once with the blade. I turned it and dragged, watched the light leave his eyes before I pushed him from my body.

When the cops finally came, they had to fight me for the knife. I just couldn’t seem to release it, even when I’d tried. Vincent was the only one who could talk me into handing it over.

We’d never really talked much about that night after it was all said and done. The case closed up tight. The judge said it would never be seen. My name was sealed away with it because I was a minor. The one thing that did change was Vincent started teaching me about knives until I was better than even he was.

I flip it open and then closed again like he did before I slip it into my pocket. The knife means so much more than I think even Vincent knows. It was the day I started to see the world was not black and white. That there were rules that many followed, but I wasn’t so sure they would work for me. I seemed to walk my own line, looked at the world a little differently.

That’s what I like about the Ghost Riders. They don’t hide who they are. They don’t have a badge that makes you feel safe. They are who they say they are. That day the thought of being a cop like my dad and Vincent slipped away, just like I’d watched the life slip away from the man who’d grabbed me. I knew that day I could never be the one to slap cuffs on someone and take them down to a precinct, to see a judge and to face a jury of peers. I have a feeling I’d have the same reaction I did before.