CHAPTER FOUR: FIRST SUNDAY
620 Words
She almost talked herself out of it four times before sunrise.
The first time was at midnight, lying in bed staring at the ceiling. The second was at three a.m. when she got up to make tea and stood in her kitchen thinking about Dutch's voice in that alley — nerve doesn't stop bullets. The third was at five-thirty when she was loading leftover pastry into the fridge and caught herself wondering what you wore on a motorcycle. The fourth was at six-fifty, standing at her bathroom mirror, when she realized she was actually nervous and couldn't remember the last time she'd been nervous about anything that wasn't a catering deadline.
She went anyway.
The Saints' garage was on the south edge of town, a long converted warehouse that smelled of oil and metal and coffee. Seven bikes were lined up outside. A handful of men moved around them with the quiet efficiency of a ritual — checking tires, adjusting straps, not much talking. They looked at her when she walked up. Not hostile, exactly. Just assessing.
Rafe came out of the garage with a helmet in each hand. He was in jeans and a worn leather jacket with no cut over it — just the jacket, just the man underneath the president. It was a small thing but she noticed it.
"You came. Not surprised. Just noting it."
"I said I would."
"People say a lot of things."
He handed her a helmet. Matte black, her size — which meant he had guessed, or paid attention, and she wasn't sure which was more unsettling. She buckled it without comment.
The bike was a deep charcoal grey, lower than she'd expected, and when he started it the vibration moved through the ground and up through her boots and she understood suddenly and completely why people did this. Why they gave their lives to it.
"Hold on to the jacket, not me. Then: Unless you need to."
"I won't need to."
She needed to within the first mile. Not from fear — from the simple physics of acceleration, the world tilting as they leaned into the first curve of Route 9, and she grabbed two fists of leather and reminded herself to breathe.
By mile five she had found the balance. By mile ten she had stopped thinking about the club and the rivalry and Dutch's warning and everything that was complicated and wrong about this, and there was just the road and the speed and the cold morning air and the mountains opening up ahead of them like a door.
She understood, then, what he'd meant. This is what it looks like when it's not trying to scare you.
· · ·
They stopped at an overlook above Blue Ridge just as the sun fully cleared the peaks. The other riders spread out along the railing, thermoses of coffee appearing from somewhere. Rafe leaned against the bike and didn't speak, which she was learning was not uncomfortable silence but a different kind of attention — present without demanding anything back.
"Why'd you invite me? she asked finally."
He took a moment. The valley below was gold and green and impossibly still.
"You asked if I was okay. In an alley where most people were trying to figure out which way to run."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I've got."
She looked at him in the early light. He was watching the valley with his jaw relaxed and his shoulders down and he looked, she thought, like a man who had been carrying something heavy for a long time and had briefly set it down.
She didn't push for more. Some answers needed the long road to arrive.
- Writer
