“You think there’s no place for a woman in this club?” he asks. “Because you take a good look around you. Some of our brothers, they’ve found themselves an old lady and they’ve been smart enough to hang on. Put themselves the fuck out there and get down on their knees if that’s what it takes to make her stay. And if you think that’s a weakness, you’re dumber than I think. Those old ladies are the heart of this club, so that makes them the best fucking part of us. Sometimes it’s easier to do your thinking with your dick, but they make us more. Make us better.”
“Didn’t know it was national poetry day. Don’t see you wearing any old lady arm candy.”
Prez cuffs my head hard. “Just because shit’s sweet doesn’t make it candy. You find an old lady, you do whatever you need to do to keep her. If fate drops someone into my lap, I’m gonna throw an arm around her and hold her tight. Not ashamed to admit that there can be more than a quick fuck. Sometimes, you meet someone who belongs by your side and at your back, not just under you.”
“She’s not my old lady,” I say.
Not about to share my sex life with my club president. It’s none of the club’s business, and I’m not a porn channel he can surf. Sex with Harper was amazing. It’s just that...Harper’s looking for that shit, too. She wants forever and family and a goddamned dozen qualities I can never be for her, and not just because I don’t own a suit. Some brothers settle down, while the rest of us ride on.
“Hear you,” Prez says slowly. “Not a question of what she is now—because the answer to that would be not fucking here. More interested in what she could be if you were man enough to let her.”
“Yeah, well, what if I don’t want an old lady?”
“Jesus,” Romeo mutters. “You don’t want to win the lottery, either?”
Harper would not only know the odds on winning the lottery, but she’d know what came next, too. She never could wrap her head around my old man’s love of scratch-off tickets. Said it would be just as effective to burn your dollar or use it as toilet paper. Plus, she’d trotted out all sorts of sad sack stories about winners who went bust or ended up worse off than before because a lottery win’s a onetime thing and not an evergreen money tree you plant in your backyard.
“Harper and me are over,” I tell them.
Prez mimes shooting himself in the head. “Stupid as fuck.”
On that we’re agreed.
It’s time to ride, though, and so Prez stands up on the seat of his bike, hand balanced on Romeo’s head. The rest of the club immediately shuts the fuck up.
“We’re gonna say goodbye to a good brother today,” he says. He adds a few sentences about who my old man had been, his service to his country and how he and Prez had met. They’re good words, but I’m itching to ride.
My brothers listen, heads bowed in respect. Planting my old man in the ground had seemed too much like tying him down, so I’d had the body cremated. We’d let him ride, fly free over the highway he’d raced down so many times. I wait for the familiar stab of pain, and sure enough it comes. We’d had our differences, but we’d had our good moments, too.
We hit the highway at sunset, going balls-out as the desert stretches away from us on either side. It’s a good night for a ride, and when we crest a little rise in the highway, I know it’s time. I pop the lid on my old man’s urn and hold it overhead, letting what’s left of him fly free. Might be some people who think this is disrespectful, but he loved the road and the desert. He was happiest here, so this is the right spot to send him on ahead of us on his next ride. Someday sooner or later I’ll catch up with him, and he’ll give me shit for screwing things up with Harper.
I can’t wait to see him again.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Harper
I’M SITTING OUTSIDE Vik’s place having a painful moment of personal reflection that Cosmo promises will bring 100 percent personal growth, but which makes me think the universe is one sadistic bitch. Yes, I’ve come looking for Vik. No, he didn’t ask me to be here. I’m torn between labeling this a gutsy all-in move on my part and recognizing that it smacks of desperation. I know he laid his father to rest today, or tried to. Not one but four bikers texted me. I want to be here for him in case he needs anything, but I’ve also been sitting outside long enough to realize a few things. The most important revelation is that I don’t have a key to his place. I have free access to his dick but not to his front door.
And if I need any confirmation that today’s been rough, he arrives in a truck. In the passenger-side seat. Vik hates letting anyone else drive, so he must be half-wasted. The biker doing the driving helps him out, shoving a broad shoulder underneath Vik’s arm so he can steer him toward the front door.
“I’m unavailable tonight,” Vik announces, bracing his forearm against the door. His voice is a liquid, drunken slur.
“You’re unavailable every night,” I point out.
Biker buddy just kind of shakes his head. He’s built like a mountain, which appears to be a requirement for joining the Hard Riders, and his long blond hair has been pulled back in a thick tail and braided. He’s got
