Page 9 of Thunder

My whole family, right here where I can see it, and not one of them mine to walk up to.

I sling my things into the side-by-side and point it toward my cabin.

And I don’t look toward the back of the property, toward the second house past the barn, toward the man with a rattlesnake healing on his throat who came to my pens at sunup for no reason at all except that he's not done with me and he wanted me to know it.

I don't look.

But the whole ranch pulls in that direction the entire way home, the way water knows which way the ground falls, and I grip the wheel, and I drive, and I tell myself, the way I have every day for weeks, that missing a man and going back to him are two different animals, and I'm strong enough to keep them apart.

I almost believe it, too.

Right up until I catch myself touching the side of my own throat at a stop sign that isn't there.

My fingers pressed to the bare skin where his snake would sit if I were the fool who wore my heart where everyone could see it.

I put my hand back on the wheel.

I drive home to my empty cabin, and I don’t cry.

I count that as a victory, because these days I've learned to take the small ones where I can get them.

CHAPTER TWO

Thunder

My hip's already screaming at me by the time we hit the county line, and we've still got the better part of the day's ride to go.

I don't let it show.

That's what I have to do right now—not let the pain show—because the second Blaze or Spur clocks me favoring the bike, this becomes a conversation about whether the Sergeant at Arms ought to be on a run at all, and I'd rather ride all day on a bad hip than sit through that at a table.

So I keep my line, keep my mouth shut, and I let the highway do what highways do, unspool out ahead of us flat and pale under a sky going white with heat.

I ride where I've ridden every mile since I got back on a bike a couple weeks ago.

The back.

I never used to ride in the back.

A Sergeant at Arms rides where he needs to, and where he needs to is usually up front with Phantom or swinging wide to watch a flank, because watching is the job and I’ve always been damn good at it.

Now I ride drag because it's the one spot where nobody's behind me to see how long it takes me to get a boot down at a stop.

And because if my leg quits on me at seventy, I'd rather take myself down than take a brother with me.

Blaze is up front.

He's got the VP flash on his cut and rides like he was poured into the seat, easy and loose, a big blond bastard who's never had a nervous day in his life as far as anybody can tell.

Spur's off his right shoulder.

The three of us, running up to Roan's charter with a saddlebag full of the paperwork two chapters don't trust to a phone, and it's a milk run, is what it is.

Simple.

The sort of thing you send three patched men on so it looks like nothing while it's really something.

Everything's something since the bunkhouse.