sure why my eyes keep sliding from the parade to them. I don’t recognise a single face, and they certainly don’t know me from any of the other coat-clad revellers here but these days, anyone wearing a cut instantly forces my hair to stand on end.
I wrap my arms tight around Ana’s waist and pull her into the warmth of my jacket. She’s got to be freezing. Earlier, the sight of just a sheer lace bra beneath her jacket nearly had me tearing off her knickers and nailing her on her father’s work bench, and wouldn’t that be fun to explain to her old man come Monday once he’d seen the security feed footage? But I made a promise to myself that I’d never touch her in anger and, after talking to that scumbag of a father of mine, anger didn’t begin to explain what I was feeling. Ana deserves more than that, deserves more than some angry ex-con shithead just looking to get his dick wet.
And speaking of shitheads … one of the guys across the street must feel my eyes on him because he meets my gaze, makes a show of checking out Ana and then salutes me with his beer. He’s big, about my height actually, and equally as ripped, but I reckon I could take him because he has about fifteen years on me. I can’t take him with his biker boyfriends standing around, though. Audience or not, they’d have me on my knees and crying for my mummy in seconds.
“You need to be wearing more clothes,” I gripe as I tug her zip up to the hollow between her collarbones.
“Alright, who are you and what’ve you done with my boyfriend? Because he seemed to lurrrrve my outfit earlier.”
“Baby girl, every man with eyes loves you in that outfit. That’s the problem. I’m gonna wind up behind bars defending your honour.”
Ana has some witty reply, but it’s lost on me on account of the group across the road. It’s grown in the time I’ve been distracted with her, and now there are six sets of eyes on us, and only four sets of those are unfamiliar.
My heart thunders inside my chest. For a moment, I’m frozen where I stand while I watch recognition set in. The two new additions know my face just as well as I know theirs, and several heartbeats pass in the time that I glance between their eyes and their Hell’s Angels patches. Patches I should have been wearing, and the lack of those patches will more than likely mean the end of me. My mind is running through an endless and really unhelpful cycle of
Ana lets out a delighted little squeal as a pair of drummers begin beating out a rhythm, and a troupe of belly dancers twirl and twist in front of us. I glance from the dancers to the bikers, and it’s as if our standoff suddenly shatters.
“Time to go,” I whisper and yank on her arm.
“But the parade hasn’t finished yet,” she protests, but hurries along behind me anyway.
My bike’s parked down the road and around the corner, but we’ll never make it there without being seen by the group that’s pursuing us, and I know without having to look behind me that they’re pursuing us. I know because I can hear the protests from the crowd and the parade affiliates as the guys cross the road to come after us.
“Oh my god, are you seeing this? Those guys just—”
“Ana.” I grab hold of her shoulders and give a gentle shake her to get her attention. “Is there a back alley we can use to get back to the bike?”
“What? It’s just around—”
“Yes or no?”
“Yes. Elijah, what’s going on?”
“I’m gonna need you to run.”
“What?”
I don’t take the time to explain, because if I did we’d both be dead. Instead, I yank her along with me and we take off running, pushing past the throng of people. I gotta hand it to her; she may be the only woman I’ve met who can run in heels and still look fucking sexy doing it.
“This way,” she yells and we slip into an arcade that I wasn’t even aware had been there until we were running through it. We come out the other side into a dark alleyway; no street lights, no people. I don’t think they’ve followed us, but that doesn’t mean they won’t find the bike before we do. And, though the license plate was changed the minute I got out of prison, it’s still the same bike my grandfather handed down to me, and there really aren’t a lot of 1979 Moto Guzzi California’s in Australia.
I should have traded the thing in, or at least let her gather dust in storage for a few years. Instead, my simple decision to cling onto the one thing I truly loved from my past could cost us both our lives. And maybe I even deserve to go out like a rat, to be strung up by the balls and beaten bloody, but Ana sure as shit doesn’t deserve to be anywhere near that.
We come tearing out of the alleyway into the empty street. We’re alone. For now.
“What the hell was that all about?” Ana’s standing beside me with her helmet in her hands, but she’s not moving.
“Put on your helmet,” I command and find my patience stretched to its breaking point when she stands there demanding an answer. “Ana, put on your god damn helmet and get on the fucking bike!”
“What the hell is wrong with you, Elijah?”
“Ana, baby girl, if you don’t get on this bike right now, you’re going to get us both killed,” I plead, and my fear must finally resonate with her because she hurriedly straps on her helmet and jumps on behind me. The engine roars to life and I twist the throttle and gun it down the road. We’re almost to the town limits when two single headlights appear in my side mirrors.
My head is pounding, my heart racing, veins running cold with fear. Not for what they’ll do to me. Sure, it’s gonna fucking hurt like a bitch, because that’s what we do to traitors. We take them apart, slowly. We poke and we prod and we strip them of their cuts and burn off their marks and we hurt the ones they love—not because we’re sadists, but because once you patch in, the club doesn’t just become your family, it becomes your whole fucking world. And once you fuck with a good thing that good thing fucks with you.
When it comes to taking someone’s old lady it’s never personal, it’s just the quickest way to rip out a man’s heart and force him to watch it beating in his hands. Even though I was merely just a prospect when my arse was carted off to prison, I grew up in the club. My dad is sergeant-at-arms, I’ve been privy to what goes on in those darkened rooms beneath the clubhouse countless times and I’ll be dead before I let Ana see the inside of them.
I shout to Ana to hold on and thrust the throttle all the way. The bike shudders and lurches forward. I check the speedo and feel a weird swell of pride that my little baby’s still got some kick in her. I can feel the tension in Ana’s grip around my waist and for once I’m thankful for the fact that we can’t communicate freely on the bike, because I know she’s dying for answers that I’m still not ready to give her.
The headlights in my side mirrors are rapidly gaining on us and fear has my balls disappearing inside me. I should have left Ana behind, somewhere she’d be safe until Bob or Holly could come get her. Instead, she’s holding tight to my waist and my stupid decisions will more than likely get her killed.
Ana points to a turn-off up ahead and I slow the bike just enough to take the corner without gutting the underbelly. Once we’re flying down the straight I breathe a bit easier because my vision isn’t hindered like it was in the winding hills outside of Lismore. I can see exactly what lies ahead of us, and at the moment it’s nothing but cattle fields and straight bitumen. The relief is short lived, though, because I’m already pushing the bike as far as she’ll go and the two Harleys are no longer in my rear view. Instead, they slide up beside us playing some kind of fucked up game of pong where we’re the ball, caught dead in the middle, drifting back and forth across the road between them.
“Pull over!” one of them yells above the roar of our engines.
I shake my head at the Angels’ VP, Rocker—nicknamed that because he’s completely off his—a man who scared the shit outta me as a kid and still does. “Fuck you!”
“Come on, Moose,” Kickstand says—yeah, you guessed it, his road name came from the fact that he forgot to put his kickstand up while taking off in front of a bunch of uber hot girls one day. And mine? Well, it’s kinda self-explanatory.
Kick and I were close, both made prospect at the same time. We’re both the same age, and both came
