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“Mateo, I’m sorry, but I’ve got things under control. You don’t need to worry.”
“Are you sure? You mean a lot to me, Alex. More than you know.”
There was a time when those words would have broken through my willpower and had me jumping to agree with him.
But that was before Dixon.
“You mean a lot to me, too, but I’ve got this, Mateo.”
He pauses, frowning. I know him well enough to know there’s something more he wants to tell me. There are words — angry, frustrated words — lurking in his eyes. Maybe he’s upset that I’m not letting him in.
“Alex, you really should let me help you.“
“Why can’t you respect that I have this under control? I’m the only one who has been looking into Lucas’s death this whole time. You, my father, everyone else, you all just gave up on him.“
“Gave up on him?” He explodes. “I didn’t fucking give up on your brother. What the fuck, Alex? I was there. I saw the Road Kings shoot him. I saw the bullet go into Lucas’s head and saw his brains and blood come out.”
“Then why the fuck did you come here? To argue with me? To tell me how stupid I am for looking into this? Because, if you did, you’re a really shitty friend, Mateo. A shitty friend to me, and a shitty friend to Lucas.”
That last line hits him with the force of a punch from a prime Mike Tyson.
His eyes go blank for a second and his jaw works furiously.
“I came out here because I care about you and I wanted to help you get over all this nonsense.”
“It’s not nonsense. Why can’t you see that?”
“I came out here for one other reason, too. I found something, and I thought you’d want to have it,” he says. He reaches into his cut and pulls out a photograph. It’s worn, wrinkled, sun-faded, and he handles it like it’s the more precious than gold.
He passes it to me.
My breath leaves me in a gasp. “I remember this… Where did you find it?”
It’s an old photo. Just me, Lucas, and Mateo. I must be eleven, maybe twelve, and my brother and Mateo are both nineteen. I’d skipped school, and they took me north to southern Oregon to go to a biker rally. It was a day of barbecue, riding, and getting to have fun without thinking about how I was the daughter of an MC president who would murder anyone who looked at me cockeyed. That day, Lucas and Mateo bought me a Honda Super Cub, and I rode it for all of two-hundred feet before I got scared; that day, I drank an entire beer, and discovered it’d be awhile before I could see what all the fuss was about; that day, Lucas and Mateo both taught me how to shoot a gun. We took a few pictures of that trip, but Lucas and I never kept them because we were scared our dad would see them. I’d thought they’d all been lost.
“In my attic. I’d kept it in my wallet for a while — I loved that day, it was so much fun — but after everything that happened with Lucas, I put it away. I had to. Then, not long ago, I was cleaning my attic, found it, and thought you’d want it.”
“Wait, are you giving this to me?”
“Yes. If you want it.”
For a moment, it’s all I can do to just look at that photo and relive that day. All three of us are smiling, just a trio of kids free from trouble and with no idea of the pain waiting for them. I can hear my brother’s laugh. I remember what it feels like to have him alive beside me. There’s a tear in the corner of my eye. Then another.
“Thank you.”
Mateo opens his mouth to say something, but pauses, listening.
Then I hear it, too — the sound of an approaching motorcycle.
“Are you expecting someone?” He sounds wary. Not that I blame him. These are dangerous times, and he came here because he’s worried about me. But I smile. Because I know what that sound means: Dixon is coming. He’s coming, and that means he must have news.
“I am,” I say.
“Who?”
Now it’s my turn to pause. How much do I tell him? He rode all the way here because he cares for me, and the photograph in my hand reminds me of how deep our connection was. How do I tell the man I had a crush on for most of my youth that the man arriving on a motorcycle is the man that, for so long, we all believed murdered Lucas.
Fuck, this could be bad.
