Hard Rider

But we weren't married four months before he got hurt. And it was like Mama all over again. The doctors gave him prescription heroin, the company gave him a worker's comp settlement, and the government gave him disability checks. When the settlement check was gone, it was just the disability. But the pain pills stayed. And it was just me, earning for two. And unlike Mama, Jase wasn't nice when he was flying. He was even meaner when he wasn't. It got bad enough that I would sit in my car after work, parked outside the house, for hours before going inside. He never hit me, but his words...

Fat bitch, ugly bitch, lazy bitch. Whore, slut, cheating cunt.

He looked through my phone every single night. He thought I was sleeping with Johnny, with Slick, with Dirk, with our customers. I couldn't have friends, because I didn't want him to have more people to accuse me of sleeping with. And he'd threaten me, all the time. He'd back me into the corner, fist raised, two inches from giving me a black eye, screaming the whole time. He'd grab my hair and pull, only just enough to make it hurt. Sometimes, he used the good kitchen knife, against my neck. And once, he used the gun.

Why'd I stay? Well, I didn't. We had four good months, and I endured two and a half years of torture, and then I left his ass. Sure, it took me too long. But I did leave, and I didn't look back. Jase was the one left looking back. He cleaned up, quit the pills. But he didn't get nice again. He just got meaner.

He wouldn't sign the divorce papers. He spent every day and every night making my life hell. Stalking me. At work, at home. He wouldn't be satisfied until I checked into the state mental hospital. The police didn't do shit. Dirk could keep him out of the club, and he did, but I didn't have a Dirk waiting for me at home.

More excuses. This time, I guess, I'm trying to justify what I was doing to Cross. A boy – a man now – who'd never been anything but good to me. Who'd shown me what love should be like, so that when Jase turned his corner, I knew it wasn't love anymore. And I was going to repay him with betrayal. Lies and betrayal. I'd come waltzing back into his life, promising him that sweet love we'd once had, but it was nothing but rotgut moonshine.

Maybe he won't even want me, I thought, torn between hope and dismay at the thought. As much as I was over him, and knew he was over me, it was hard to believe wouldn't want anything to do with me. But if he did deny me, I could take the money and run. Not all the money, but the half I already had. Enough to leave Helena, and hopefully get away from Jase.

At any rate, I had ten hours to mull it all over and worry about who I'd be once this was all over. If I could live with myself, really live with myself. If Cross still felt anything for me, and what it would mean if he did, and I used it like a weapon against him.

Closing my eyes, I remembered my mother, slipping me that pill when we left Cutter. I'd never taken another pill. But right then, I wanted one – real fucking bad. I knew why Mama used, I knew why Jase used. I knew how it took everything away, made the whole world soft and sweet and simple. I was just stronger than them, didn't need to make the world that way. But maybe the new Bex Carter wasn't so strong. Maybe she was bound and determined to destroy herself, just like her mama before her.

Dutch

“I think you’re being sloppy,” Sylvia said, turning the razor around in her fingers, careful to keep the blade away from her skin. She was dressed in one of those long, black dresses, sleeves sweeping out like bells, ethereal and stark against her white skin. Her lips, plump and red, puckered as she watched Dutch watching her.

“And I think you’re treadin’ where a lady ain’t s’posed to tread,” Dutch snapped. His eyes were red as stop signs, flicking from the pile of powder on the table to Sylvia’s own pale blue eyes.

“If it wasn’t for this lady, you’d be pinching pennies in your retirement,” Sylvia hissed back.

“Watch your mouth,” Dutch growled, matching her eye for eye now, his temper rising to her challenge. “You been takin’ a lot of liberties with those purty lips of yours. I have half a mind to rip them right off your face.”

“Then who’d be kissing you below the belt, baby?” Sylvia cooed, eyes narrowed but voice going soft. She lowered the razor to the brown powder on the desk, idly cutting it into smaller piles. Dutch watched, fuming but silent. If that damn woman wasn’t so…magnetic…he’d have her hog-tied and thrown in the river for her attitude. But he couldn’t bring himself to get rid of her. Something in Sylvia’s eyes just called to him. Made a man feel lucky. Made a man feel blessed.

Or made a man feel like proving himself. Like shoving the whole damn world into her arms and daring her to find fault with it. Made a man feel like killing himself to hear her say she loved him. To hear her say she was his.

Dutch had been avoiding women like this, women he could love, for the better part of forty-five years. He figured you got one, every lifetime. He just ran into his a little later in life.

“I’m just saying,” Sylvia went on, daring a glance at him, “you can’t be too careful. We know Cross will be a problem. What makes you so sure Blade won’t be just as bad?”

“Because I know my men,” he said. “Don’t you underestimate me. I know my men. Blade may be smart as a whip, but he’s a follower through and through. Once I get the boys on my side, he’ll sway that way, too.”

“The boys,” Sylvia mused, lips pursed. She took one of the small piles and divided it further, until she had a series of sloppy lines before her. Dutch’s fingers curled against his palm. It was 2am, and he wanted to sleep.

“Yeah,” he growled, eying the lines, her long, red nails, elegant fingers sliding the razor through them, tightening them up, making them straight. “The boys.”

“Which boys?” Sylvia asked, looking down at the table, at her work.

“Why you always gotta act like we ain’t been over this a hundred, two hundred times? It’s late, woman. Let’s get steady and get to bed.”

The meth wouldn’t let him sleep. That’s what the smack was for. Something to balance him out. Would Sylvia sleep at his side? He didn’t rightly know. She’d certainly lay at his side, and wake him up in the sweetest of ways, but he wasn’t sure the woman ever actually slept. The way she was, almost inhuman, made him think that maybe she didn’t need to sleep. Maybe she just shut down for a little while, like a robot.

He’d never seen or heard her dream.

“Because,” Sylvia sighed. “We’ve talked about it plenty. But I haven’t seen you do anything about it.”

“I got that bitch up here,” Dutch pointed out.

“Sure,” Sylvia said. “That’s one thing. It’s not enough. How long are we gonna wait to take what should be ours, Dutch? It’s been long enough.”

Dutch grumbled, rubbing his eyes, his body sick and sore and wanting the fix that Sylvia was preparing.

“I’ll work on it,” he grunted. “Tomorrow. I’ll start talkin’ to some boys tomorrow.”

She smiled, then. A smile that could chill you to the bone, or get your bone hard as shit. Her tongue slid slowly across her lips, her eyes always smoky and narrow, like a cat. She was temperamental as a cat, too. Which made owning her body all the more rewarding. Suddenly, Dutch felt like that fix could wait, after all. She read his mind, rose from the table, swayed back to the bed and crawled onto it, on her hands and knees, hitching her long dress up in the process.

“I love the way you talk business, baby,” she cooed. “You know that, right? I just love hearing you take charge…”

“Yeah,” Dutch grit out, rising to meet her at the bed, undoing his zipper on the way. “I know, baby. I fuckin’ know.”

Bex

Somewhere between Branson and Kansas City, I fell asleep. And for the first time in years, I dreamed of Cross.

I was 14. Maybe 15. A freshman, at least, while Cross was barely qualifying as a junior. By then, he was skipping more days than he attended, and spending his nights fighting for money. He considered it training for his future in the Dead Crusaders, and a halfway decent way to make some extra cash. Enough t

o buy his own bike by the end of October. A rusty old Yamaha with two wheels that turned and an engine that purred.

He was picking me up after school. I didn’t know where he’d been all day, and I didn’t exactly ask, either. Those days, he was more than itching to become a Prospect, and spent a lot of time at the clubhouse. I did too, for that matter, but in a different way. Cross spent his time there to drink and act tough with the guys. I went there because it’s where my father and mother spent their time, where the other club kids hung out. And it was where Cross was.

Even all the way back then, I guess, I was a sucker for him.

But that day, we had plans outside the clubhouse. I ran down the high school steps two at a time, old backpack slamming against my lower back. I wasn’t running from excitement. I was running from them.

“Club whore trash!”

“When ya gonna start strippin’ for tips, Carter? Wanna start now?”

“Bex Carter gives great head!”