The Bull Riders' Lost Princess

“Hannah. Stay calm,” Raymond said. “I am calm.” “Your hand is on the door handle.” She looked down. It was. A rider in a black Kings Riders jacket strolled to Raymond’s window... About five minutes earlier, Raymond's car passed a battered sign that read Welcome to Love Valley. Someone had spray-painted a crown over the word Love, and someone else had crossed it out with a dragon. “Friend of yours?” Hannah asked when she saw the motorcycle behind them since the highway. “Kings Riders.” Raymond didn’t glance at the mirror. “He picked us up at the county line. Ignore him.” “Do they always follow people?” “Only the ones they’re curious about.” Six years. Hannah had rehearsed this homecoming in motel rooms and her apartment and in every version Love Valley looked exactly as she had left it. The low thunder of engines was still there. Everything else had changed. She noticed a black banner with a gold crown hung from the old hardware store. Kings Riders. Two blocks later, red-and-green colors snapped over the pharmacy, a dragon coiled through the lettering. Men in leather stood under both, smoking, watching the car pass. “Since when does anyone else wear colors here?” Hannah asked. “Since your father stopped being around to forbid it.” Your father. He said it gently, the way you handle something that might still be sharp. Fernando Montague was dead. She had read the message four times in a laundromat two states away, and her mind had refused to make it a fact. Her father had been a mountain. Mountains did not die. They stayed where they were, huge and difficult and impossible to forgive. She had braced for grief and for resentment. She had not braced for a trespasser’s feeling in hometown. At the corner of Main and Third, two motorcycles swung across the road. Raymond braked hard such that the car rocked. Behind them, the headlight that had followed for forty miles finally drew close and stopped, and the engine cut off. The rain suddenly sounded very loud. “Hannah. Stay calm,” Raymond said. “I am calm.” “Your hand is on the door handle.” She looked down. It was. A rider in a black Kings Riders jacket strolled to Raymond’s window and rapped it twice with a knuckle. Raymond lowered the glass an inch. “Raymond Mills.” The rider smiled. He had a gold tooth. “Heard you’d gone fishing. Looks like you caught something.” “Move the bikes, Tully.” “Is that her?” Tully bent and peered past him, and his smile widened. “Well. Mr. Ferdinand will be pleased. He’s been wanting a word with the Montague girl.” “Mr. Ferdinand can put it in writing.” “He prefers conversation.” “Then he can have one. After her father’s funeral.” “Funeral.” Tully tasted the word. “Funny. I heard it keeps getting postponed.” Hannah lowered her own window. Cold rain hit her face. “My name is Hannah Montague,” she said. “I have been in a car for six hours. I would like to see my mother. Please move your motorcycle.” Tully looked at her. For a moment, she thought he might laugh. Then something in her tone, or maybe just the name, made him glance at the other riders, and none of them met his eye. “Course, miss,” he said, a half beat too slow. “Wouldn’t want to keep family waiting.” He waved a hand. The bikes rolled aside. Raymond pulled through without speaking. Only when they were two blocks clear did he let out a breath. “That was reckless.” “It worked.” “It worked once.” But the corner of his mouth was lifting. “Remind me never to bet against you.” “You found me,” she said. “I would think you already knew.” He laughed, short and surprised, and she turned her face to the window so he would not see how badly her hands were shaking. The car swung onto Cooper Street. Her breath caught. The Bull Riders’ clubhouse sat at the end of the road exactly where it always had, long and brick, with a wide gravel lot. Above the double doors, the old emblem hung there: a bull in mid-charge, the paint peeling at its horns. Her second home. Her father’s kingdom. Men stood under the awning. When the car pulled in, every head turned. She stepped out. Rain soaked through her jacket in seconds. It gave her something to feel besides the hammering in her chest. One of the men, gray-bearded and broad as a doorway, took off his cap. “Little Montague,” he said, voice rough. “Well, I’ll be damned.” “Hello, Walt.” “You got tall.” “I was eighteen.” “Still.” His eyes were wet, and he scowled at the rain as if it had insulted him. Raymond touched her elbow. “Inside. Graham’s waiting.” Graham. The name hit harder than the rain. She had not said it aloud in six years. She had trained herself not to think it, which was a lot like training yourself not to blink. The doors swung open. Leather air, coffee and cigarette smoke worked into the walls. The big room looked smaller than she remembered, the pool tables scarred, the same cracked stools lining the long bar. Dozens of riders filled the space, and conversation died in ripples as she crossed the threshold. She walked through it with her chin up. Her father had taught her that. Never let a room decide who you are before you do. Then the crowd parted, and she saw him. Graham Melville stood at the back with a folder in one hand, talking to two men who had stopped listening. He was taller than she remembered, broader, the boy’s lean frame replaced by something heavier and more settled. Dark hair, a little too long. He looked up. The folder slipped from his fingers and hit the floor. Nobody laughed and nobody moved. Six years of rehearsed speeches vanished. She had planned to be composed. She had not planned for his eyes, still that same impossible gray, finding hers across the room as though no time had passed. And then she saw what had changed in them. The boy who had looked at her like she was the best thing he had ever seen was gone. The man looking at her now was guarded. A door had been closed, and it had been closed for a long time. That’s my doing, she thought. I closed it. He crossed the room slowly, as though sudden movement might make her vanish. He stopped an arm’s length away. Close enough that she could smell rain on his jacket and, underneath it, something she still knew by heart. “Hannah,” he said. Just her name. His voice was lower than it used to be, rougher, and it undid something she had spent six years sealing shut. She had a dozen answers prepared. I’m sorry. I should have called. What came out was, “Where’s my mother?” Something flickered across his face. Surprise, then hurt, then a stillness so complete it frightened her. He had waited six years, and she had spent her first breath asking about someone else. “Where is she?” Her voice sharpened. “Graham.” Behind her, Raymond shifted. “Maybe we should sit down first.” “Where is my mother?” Graham glanced once around the room, at the listening men, the open doors, the rain at her back. When he looked at her again, his voice dropped so low that only she could hear. “She’s alive.” Relief hit so hard her knees nearly gave. She pressed her fingers to her mouth. “But you need to understand something before you see her,” he said. “Something you won’t like.” “Tell me.” He held her gaze. There was no softness in it now, only the plain, tired honesty of a man who had buried too many people. “Your mother is the only reason this town hasn’t buried another Montague.”