Page 27 of The Reservoir Tapes
Maybe it’s the black surrounding me that made it easier to confess. I was scared at first, but now it’s comforting. Like I can say anything into it and it will take it and consume it and send back only comfort.
“I heard once, from a guy passing through Hart, that the land has a heartbeat and a memory. Everything is alive. Trees. Grass. Moss. Rocks.”
I tilt my face up. There are still no stars.
I’m not allowed to go on club runs or rides, but I’ve always enjoyed riding my bike at night. I love getting out of the city and letting the constellations guide your way as they have for people across millennia. It’s a heady feeling, knowing that the ancients looked to those same stars to find their way.
“Alright, since you went first, I’ll give you something.” He’s made up the rules. I was just asking a question because I wanted to know the answer. I didn’t need him to match me truth for truth, but I stay quiet, letting him speak. “My mom and dad pretty much pretended I was dead after I went to prison. Before that too, but that was really the point of no return. When my mom was diagnosed, my dad called me. I picked them up from the doctor’s because he was a wreck. His calling the clubhouse because he didn’t even have my number—it was an unspoken apology. We never did say we were sorry. We never truly made anything right. I’m not even sure they apologized to Lark for cutting her off either for years, telling her she couldn’t come home as a single mother.”
“What the fuck?” I didn’t know that. “Is Gray’s daughter not his?”
“She is.”
Raiden tells me the whole story, about how Lark always loved Gray. He finally saw her as a grown woman when he took her to her prom because Raiden was in prison by then. Gray looked after her and checked in on her when she went to Seattle for college. When Lark found out she was pregnant, it was the worst possible timing. Raiden had just been shanked by some asshole he had no beef with when he was in jail. Lark took a hard look at what life would be like, raising a kid with the club’s president, which she didn’t fully understand before, since Hart was always peaceful, and she’d been sheltered from what club life was really like. She did what she had to do to protect her child. She stayed away for years, only coming back when she found out that her mom had cancer and didn’t have long.
“Jesus,” I breathe. “I had no idea. They act like they’ve been together forever. Maybe that’s why they’re so fiercely protective of each other. I’m surprised you didn’t kill Gray when you found out.”
His forceful swallow is like a gunshot in the quiet night. “Zale almost did that for me. Lark fought for him. She fought me and I went to the club. We all rallied around him because the hard and short of it is that we love him. Gray was always going to be our prez. Anyone can step into the job, but no one would do it like he does.” He pauses and shifts. I hear the muddled sound of his boots shuffling along the ground. “How long was Zale watching us? Gray figures it had to be months. Zale knew everything, as a former insider, but he also waited until Lark went to Gray’s. She had Penny with her that night.”
I shift, but it does nothing to alleviate the pain in my chest at knowing what that little girl went through that night. “I don’t think he ever stopped watching. I never knew much aboutit, honestly, until recently, when he came to me and asked me to come here.” I wait, but he’s quiet. “Gray seems like the kind of man who sees injustice in the world and wants to make it right. That’s the kind of club Satan’s Angels are. I… don’t believe that it’s real or that it can work. That’s why I’ve scoffed at it. But, if it fills some of the emptiness in the world, maybe you’re right to try.” That’s as close of an apology as he’s ever going to get from me.
He knows it too.
I hear him shift, the creak of leather, another hard swallow.
I’m amazed at how easily we’re speaking now, when all we hurled at each other before were taunts and barbs. I don’t know what’s changed, besides getting lost out here together. We only have each other to depend on.
Even before we got lost, he was sorry. I could tell he was trying to say something about it all day. I locked myself away in my little room in the club so I could think. Search. Try and get my head on straight. It sounds cheesy, but I want to do the right thing. Be a good person. I don’t want to betray my dad, but he’s the one who told me to come up here. I trusted my father because he seemed to move mountains for me before, but what if that’s only what I thought? It’s hard to know someone who just appears in your life out of nowhere. I don’t regret going with him, but looking back over the past years, I can see how everything changed and shifted. HowI’vebecome a different person.
He talked about his parents, so I match him with another truth. “I miss my mom. I’m sure she’s in my heart, but that feels more like a meaningless platitude. I miss not having her to goto, to call, to ask for advice, just to laugh with. I miss literallyeverything. When she died, I went straight back home. I sat with her body in the funeral home for hours, not making a sound, but I wish I had screamed and lost it and been an animal. Losing a parent is hard. That’s all there is.”
“I’m sorry that before this is all over, you’ll probably be an orphan.”
I choke on my outrage, swallowing it back with bitter understanding. I don’t have to ask him how he can plan for peace, ask for a truce, and still want to murder my father. The answer is pretty obvious. That anger burning inside of him like his own cancer is never going to go away. Five years is a long time to get hollowed out. His thirst for vengeance must be unquenchable.
“Hate just works against logic and blinds.” My stomach rumbles loudly, an embarrassing blessing in disguise. I would never mention my discomfort, especially when there’s nothing to be done.
“I shouldn’t have left the bikes and the supplies. I’m an idiot.”
“They’re safe there. We’re in the middle of nowhere. The most harm it’s going to come to is a bear.”
“I was thinking more about us.”
I shrug, even though he can’t see it with his back to me. “I’ll live.”
“You’ve hardly drank anything. I’m the one with the water.” The backpack unzips, then the bottle is thrust my way. “You weren’t going to ever ask, were you?”
“No.” I take a small sip and try not to start greedily chugging it back. This might have to last longer than until morning.
“This is probably the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to me.”
I hold the metal bottle in one hand, the top off, craving another sip, but I want to force myself to wait a few minutes and savor it. “Tell me about you. What were you like when you were younger?”
“Before the club?”
I smile into the darkness. I didn’t expect an answer. “I guess so. Were you a jock?”
“You’d think so. I’m made like one, and I did play sports, but only because my friends were into it. Not to belong, but for something to do. Hart’s pretty small. There’s not a lot going on. I liked working with my hands. Liked… numbers. I’m still doing the club’s books even though I’m technically VP now. Gunner moved aside for me, but if it’s possible to have two men share the position, I’d be grateful.”