Page 39 of Bram

“The club is tracking down your mother’s whereabouts right now,” Bram said.

“I’ve got a feeling that wherever she is, she’s making someone miserable.”

Bram laughed and then grabbed at his side. “You don’t seem too worried about her.”

He’d not spent 27 years with her. She was a bulldog that most men, except Rusty, were afraid of. “He won’t hurt my mother. If he has her, it’s because he thinks it’s leverage. He thinks we’ll swoop in and try to rescue her.”

“You don’t want to do that,” Bram said.

“No, because that’s what she wants.” I took a sip of the whiskey he’d brought me. “Let this ride for a bit. I guaran-fucking-tee you she’ll show up with a necklace full of ears and teeth.”

I didn’t tell Bram, but I was ready to set fire to all of Barstow. Just burn the motherfucker down, and then there’d be no more bullshit. Rusty had stormed out of the club as soon as he knew Emma was okay. Though none of us were okay and never would be until my father was dead. I didn’t just want to punch him in the throat; I wanted to put a bullet through his head.

“I need to get out,” I said. My voice sounded wrong, even to me—gravelly and hollowed out.

Bram flicked his gaze over me, a slow vertical scan that stuck for a second on my arms, which I’d knotted tight across my ribs like I was bracing for a punch. “Where to?” he asked, not soft but not hard either.

I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter. Just—out.”

He stared, contemplating his next move. He was always contemplating, and I assumed that’s how he stayed ahead of all the dumpster fires. After a while, he leaned forward, exhaling smoke like he was pushing it through a cheese grater. “Get your shit,” he said, standing up. “Back gate in five.”

He didn’t look at me when he walked past, just put out his cigarette, finished his beer, and disappeared into the dark toward the row of bikes. I listened to the first four seconds of nothing before my nerves started clawing at each other.

I grabbed my phone. Thought about a gun but decided against it. If tonight went south, nothing I could carry would matter. Outside, I found Bram crouched by his bike, a matte-black ’72 Shovelhead with no chrome and a solo seat that looked like it’d been patched up by a medieval leather worker. Men loved their old bikes.

He jerked his chin at me. “Helmet.” He had a spare, the dings and streaks of white paint still visible under fresh flat black. I took it. He threw a leg over the bike and waited for me to climb on, then kicked it to life with a rumble so low it sounded like the aftershock of something much bigger. He rolled us out slow, never looking back at the compound or the horizon, just aiming us into the nothing like that was the only thing that made sense.

Out on the service road, the Mojave was flat and endless, the sky a velvet sheet hammered full of cheap diamonds. There was no moon. The only light was from our headlamp, and even that was more suggestion than illumination, sweeping the asphalt ahead with a faint halo the color of cigarette ash. I wrapped my arms around Bram’s middle, palms splayed over his ribs, and felt the constant tremor of the engine radiating through the frame, up my legs, into my teeth. He didn’t say a word and neither did I. What was there to say?

The road peeled out ahead, twin stripes of nothing bracketed by lower-than-low scrub and gravelly wasteland. The air was warm and dry and tasted like minerals and burnt rubber and the memory of rain. At first, I was stiff—shoulders jacked, hands locked in place, chin tucked to his back so hard I could feel the friction of my jawbone on his kutte. The seat was nowhere near big enough, but we managed. The farther we got from the compound, the more that tension started to bleed out. After ten miles I could unclench my hands. After twenty, I stopped watching the odometer.

Somewhere around the outskirts of nowhere, he let off the gas and coasted us to a slow roll. The engine dropped from a snarl to a murmur. I felt him glance down at the tank, then over his shoulder. He pulled to the side of the road and killed the engine.

“Hop off,” he said.

“What?”

“You heard me. Hop off.”

His eyes never veered from mine. He was fucking serious. I climbed off the bike and watched him scoot back, his ass barely on the seat. He patted the seat in front of him.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” I said.

“I got you.”

“Who has us when I lay this big bitch down on the road going sixty?”

“Get on, Julie.”

There was no asking in his voice. It was a direct order with only one option.

“Shit, this is a bad idea.” Then I did what he asked, sitting in front of him, his thighs bracketed around mine, his chest flush against my back. He reached around me to grab the bars, his forearms a cage, his chin just above my temple. I could feel the scratch of his beard on my hair and the steady thump of his heart against my back. He twisted the throttle and the bike lurched forward, our bodies moving in tandem, a single animal.

I don’t know what it was about this man, but every time he was around, my pussy was wet and needy. Even years ago, when he’d come to my office about the Colonel, no matter how angry he was, I felt myself dripping around him. Back then, it was easier to fight this feeling.

For a while, that was all there was: the road, the wind, the two of us pressed together in the center of the world.

I forgot about the club, about the job, about the reason the universe brought us together. I just let the night stretch out, empty and infinite, and let myself be carried forward by someone who never needed to explain anything twice. At least for now, he’d pushed the world away, and it was only us.