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  “Yeah, and so I started med school there shortly after and have been doing that ever since.”

  Tracy nodded, took out a cigarette, puffed it—much to my chagrin, knowing what I did about the health effects of smoking—and smirked at me.

  “How much of that do you think I picked up on?”

  “I don’t know, I, uhh, you’re a smarter guy than you let on.”

  Tracy chortled as he flicked his cigarette in the ashtray before taking another puff.

  “You’ll have to forgive me for this lung-killing habit,” he said.

  “Have you tried to quit?”

  He shook his head.

  “Not sure what the point is. If I live long enough to get killed by lung cancer, I’ll consider that a win.”

  “I see,” I said, finding the statement unusually dark and taking the lull in conversation to get myself a drink and an order of wings.

  “You worried I’m not taking care of myself, doc?” he said, but he did so with a smirk.

  “I worry about every patient of mine.”

  “Oh, please,” he said, rolling his eyes. “You’d be overloaded with too much grief if you cared about every patient.”

  I shrugged as I took a sip of my beer, acknowledging the truth of the statement but, taking a page from the Saints’ book, not quite giving it to them so explicitly.

  “But thank you,” he said. “I don’t like to reveal my thinking around the boys. Not surprisingly, if it doesn’t involve blowing shit up, booze, ass, or some other vice, there’s not much room for discussion in there.”

  “I know,” I said, remembering the conversation topics that my father would have with his boys that he didn’t have with me. “I knew that you were smart when you tried in school. Pops said as much.”

  “Really.”

  “Mmmhmm. That’s why he made you president. He knew that you had an intellect you didn’t show much and that you had a relaxed demeanor.”

  “More so than Splitter and BK, that’s for sure.”

  I tried not to let on that I knew all of this. I tried not to make it apparent that, despite being away from the club for a decade, I had never quite forgotten everything that was involved with the group. I never did forget all the nicknames, the terminology, the rules… It wasn’t something so easily left behind.

  It didn’t help that I still had to pay them back.

  But I knew on some level that even when I did, because of what the club had meant to my father and because of how much my father meant to me…

  “Well, I suppose I could tell you about the club,” Tracy said, only then making me aware that silence had filled our conversation for several seconds. “We introduced a new officer. Krispy. A little bit older than me, but a mean motherfucker. Think like Splitter but more into arson and less into animals and feelings.”

  “Damn. So he’s a real asshole, huh?”

  “Huh? Ohhhhhh.”

  “I was about to say, don’t make me retract my comment about you being intelligent!”

  “Just because I don’t get one pun? Ouch!”

  “It’s…”

  I let it go.

  “Yeah,” I said, smiling sweetly and taking a swig of my beer.

  “Yeah. But the club is doing well. Money is a bit tight, admittedly. The mechanic shop is a bit slow. And our other revenue streams… maybe not quite as up and with it as before. But we’re nowhere near going out of business.”

  “Please don’t,” I said, surprised at the concern in my voice.

  Tracy picked up on it because he put a firm hand on my forearm and squeezed.

  “I know what the shop means to your family, Jane,” he said.

  He started to speak more, but right at that moment, with his hand on my arm, our eyes locked, and the vulnerability and honesty coming from him like never before… the way I felt the hairs on my arm stand up and the way a shiver went down my spine… the way my mind raced with thoughts about how no one could better protect this town, this club, and me than Tracy…

  You’re in trouble, girl.

  “I’m not going to let anything happen to Peters Auto Repair. Nor would I let anything happen to the Saints. I’d sooner be the last man standing than make the decision to fold. That is just simply not an option.”

  He smiled, shook my arm a bit, and then patted my knee, which only intensified the feelings that I had.

  “I know that you’re trying to go into a different world right now, and I think you’re well on your way. But I also know that you want to keep everything of your father alive as long as you can. And—”

  “Damnit, Tracy, stop before I lose control,” I said, but I found my hand folding into his, squeezing. I stared down at it, but I didn’t have any problem with it. I looked into his eyes and saw those dark blue gateways to his soul staring back at me as if saying “go ahead, lose control.”

  “I, uh, I…” I said, using the hesitation in my voice to pull back.

  I couldn’t go through with this. No, I couldn’t. It wouldn’t be professional. It wouldn’t be right.

  Or are you just afraid of losing another man in your life to violence?

  “I appreciate all of your words,” I said, tucking my hands between my knees so I wouldn’t be tempted to touch him again.

  “Well, it ain’t nothing,” he said as he lit another cigarette—something that I couldn’t help but feel a shred responsible for, given that if I still had his hands, he wouldn’t be lighting it up. “What really matters is the work we do on the streets. The cops got rules. We don’t. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have morals. And you know who established that? Your Pops. Your Pops, for everything he did, helped make the Saints as close to real life religious Saints as possible. We aren’t that, no one’s delusional. We kill. We sell weed. We steal. If I went to a confessional right now, God would just have me give the cliff notes version. If we all went to a confessional right now, we’d break the lines of prayer from having so much to say. But I’d like to think if the road to hell is paved with good intentions, we were the ones laying out most of the concrete.”

  Tracy didn’t get much into good metaphors and speeches like this unless he got on a roll. He always deliberately kept himself somewhat short—not one-word responses, but maybe one or two sentence responses—when his Saints were around, but this was a side I wished I saw more of. At least it’s as clear a sign as anything that he came alone. If BK was nearby and overheard this, Tracy would never have said such a thing.

  I wished it so much, in fact…

  “You know I left,” I said as my wings came, a handy excuse to pretend to be engaged in something else. “What about you?”

  “What, leave?”

  “Yeah. Would anything ever get you out of town?”

  Tracy was already shaking his head no before I had even dipped my first wing in ranch.

  “My brothers are my life.”

  “OK, I’ve heard that before,” I said. “But really. Is there anything about the outside world that attracts your attention? Anything about it that makes you want to leave Green Hills? I mean, when was the last time you took a vacation?”

  A long pause came as Tracy finished his cigarette, smothering it in the ashtray.

  “I don’t take vacations, Jane,” he said. “Where would I go? Santa Monica? San Francisco? I make decent money, sure, but I keep most of it in the club. I don’t want to see it go, and a good way to do that would be to pay myself or take for myself what most MC presidents do.”

  I let the silence prompt him to continue. I didn’t want to interrupt the thought process of someone whom I greatly admired and respected.

  “As far as leaving Green Hills… permanently? No. I want to know more about the outside world, sure. I’m not one of those numbnuts who screams that where I live is the best and anyone who disagrees should get the hell out. I want to learn about the world. I want to see it all.”

  He took a big sigh, stole a wing from me, winked, and continued.

  “But t
here’s not going to be anything better than the brotherhood that I have with the Saints. Your Pops taught me as much that nothing is greater than love, be it love between two brothers or love between a man and a woman.”

  “Aww, Tracy,” I said. “That’s sweet.”

  This was a side of Tracy that I definitely hadn’t seen before.

  And it was a side that was getting me deeper and deeper into trouble.

  “You know, I never knew you had this side to you,” I said. “I’ve always known you were smart and tough. I knew you’d make a great leader of the MC. But… I didn’t think you had the romantic side to you.”

  “Oh?” he said, cocking an eyebrow.

  Shit. I had to use the word romantic, didn’t I?

  Too late now, though.

  “I’ve known you were a charmer, oh, don’t give me that look, I’ve seen how you can be with the girls at the Saints parties. You all act like anything but saints then. I didn’t think most of you could be anything more than sexual beasts. But I am proved wrong.”

  “Are you glad to be proved wrong?”

  The heat in my stomach that I’d felt when I first walked in came roaring back, only now it was about ten times as strong as before. I felt my eyes magnetically drawn to his, returning to a journey toward his heart and his soul. My hands moved forward, almost involuntarily.

  “What if I am?” I said.

  Trace ran his hand slowly to mine, moving very deftly across it. It was very much in opposition to the usual rough, quick, forceful grab that most of the Saints had—a sort of “gimme, gimme, gimme” approach. This, though, was erotic. I’m pretty sure he saw the hairs on my arm standing up. I’m pretty sure he saw everything—not that I was in any position to stop it.

  Not that I wanted to be in any position to stop it.

  He moved forward just a hair, and I found myself matching his movements. Some small part of me cried out from the depths of my brain, the logical side of me trying to mount a final defense against me making this move. But it had lost the battle the second that his hand moved to mine, as utter a defeat as I had ever experienced. There would be no resisting the charm that Tracy was about to put on me.

  I felt my lips start to slowly part, making way for his to make contact with mine. It wasn’t even something that I purposefully did. My eyes began to shut in anticipation of this moment.

  At the last second, though, a voice popped up from the depths, logic making one last final stand.

  “Do you really want to go down this path? You know what awaits at the end. Heartbreak.”

  I paused, gave a short chuckle, and opened my eyes. Tracy did too, and ours locked. I had not, however, withdrawn my body by any measure.

  And damn, wouldn’t you know it, his eyes won out—this time, for real.

  When I pulled in, the voice just simply did not come back, as if it knew it had lost. I had no resistance to this moment. I closed my eyes, moved toward him, and parted my lips.

  Years and years of waiting had finally ended. We kissed.

  It went slow at first as if neither of us could believe that we had done this. For so long, he was like a big brother, but not actually that… now, though, he was a true man—a man of his word, with multiple facets to his personality; a protector, a lover, a seeker, an intellect, a searcher.

  Then, as we became more comfortable about this happening, our lips pressed tighter against each other, and our tongues started to tango in. We never “stepped” on each other, our kiss feeling like we had practiced this for years despite this being our first time. Perhaps this had something to do with the fact that I had thought about this before, even if I rarely admitted to it.

  I felt a moan come as his free hand went to my thigh, moving up closer to the area of maximum pleasure. I tensed and felt an explosion of heat down in there.

  Like the explosions that he will face later.

  And just like that, a single thought had ended it. I pulled back, feeling flustered—was that my mind trying to protect me from myself? Or had I just gotten really fucking stupid?

  “I’m sorry,” I said, feeling I suddenly had to rationalize what had happened. “I guess, I guess the, uhh, alcohol got to me. Tracy, I, I…”

  “It’s OK,” he said, moving his hands away. “It was an intense moment. Let it settle in.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “I don’t want to give any wrong impressions, I mean, I’m not looking for anything serious, well, no, it’s not that, I just don’t think anything serious can happen since I’m only here a couple of years, and so, well… I’m sorry.”

  An awkward silence filled the air. Half of me wanted to lurch across the table and make out with him, letting whatever happened after happen, but a growing half of me that would soon become closer to two-thirds of me said that I had let the overwhelming realization that Tracy was both still the same guy and a more complex man than before get to me.

  In any case, at least I had stopped myself before things get too intense.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to get you like that,” I said. “I… you should come check in, though. Let me know how your elbow is.”

  “Yeah?” Tracy said, obviously trying to play it cool—but doing so with much more success than I was. I probably looked like the middle schooler who had just kissed her crush and now realized half the school saw it.

  “Um, yeah,” I said. “Yeah, that would be great. Listen, Tracy, I, uh, I gotta go.”

  The flushing in my face made me feel like I was standing outside during a heat wave, and I had no doubt I’d start sweating if I stayed in such a state much longer. I was feeling even more worried that I would kiss him again when I left—but if I didn’t kiss him…

  It wasn’t like what I had done was an accident. I had felt it, and I had done it out of desire, not out of coercion or anything else. But it wasn’t a matter of desire, it was a matter of long-term situation, and that just was not going to work out. Ever. I was absolutely going to leave this town after I’d paid off my debt—no matter what they called it—to the Savage Saints, and Tracy would absolutely remain as the president. I had no doubt that him running off would look the same as the president of the United States living mid-term to go live in the Bahamas.

  Yes, definitely. Those were absolutes.

  “OK,” he said. “Do you want me to give you a ride?”

  “I, uhh, I drove myself, but thanks.”

  “You should let me give you a ride sometime,” he said with a much more casual and less intense wink than before—but a wink that made me shiver all the same. “It’ll be a blast. When was the last time you rode?”

  I knew the answer easily.

  “When Pops was alive.”

  “Well then,” Tracy said. “Might as well, right?”

  I couldn’t help the smile that formed. In fact, I told myself not to smile, not to give Tracy any hope…

  But damnit, I wanted some of that hope for myself too.

  “Might as well,” I said.

  I stood up and moved just by Tracy. Hesitation came as I decided what to do. Kiss him? Hug him? Wave goodbye without physical contact?

  I quickly kissed him on the cheek before I could overthink it and allow him to take me for himself.

  “Bye, Tracy.”

  He said bye to me as I walked out of the bar, even more confused than when I had walked in.

  I knew the truth. I could blame it on the alcohol, I could blame it on the conditions I’d gotten myself into, I could blame it on whatever I wanted, but there was only one person who was at fault.

  Me.

  And, really, it wasn’t so much that I blamed myself as that I secretly welcomed it. Tracy had grown into a man since I’d last seen him.

  I just wondered if I’d have the same level of “self-control” for myself and Tracy as I had all the other previous boys.

  Chapter 7: Trace

  I watched that beautiful, sharp, interesting woman walk out the door with a smirk of knowledge on my face.


  I’d seen the act before. The “I’m not ready for this, and this isn’t right” act. It wasn’t from Jane in the past, but I’d seen it with enough women to know that I’d be seeing her again in a much more romantic setting than a bar.

  What I had not seen before and what I had not anticipated was that while I certainly thought about Jane in a sexual way, imagining her naked body in my bed and me pushing myself deeper inside of her, I also thought of her… long term?

  Long term was perhaps not the right phrase. Though Jane had given me credit for being smarter than the typical biker that was not a high bar to clear by any stretch. It was akin to telling someone living with wolves “you can walk better on two feet than they can.”

  Regardless, though, I certainly thought well beyond the moment when I would have her in bed by my side. Maybe it was her question about if I could ever see myself beyond the bike. Her question had, for perhaps the first time ever, made me seriously contemplate what that would look like.

  Every other time I’d gotten that question, the answer was more dismissive than it was welcoming. I would sooner give up my life than give up riding the bike, if only because my life was riding the bike and everything that came with it. But the presence of Jane had forced me to think outside the box, to think about what other possibilities existed, to consider what life might have looked like on two feet instead of two wheels.

  And yes, it was true that there was much of the world I wanted to see. There was much I wanted to learn, much I wanted to experience, some new languages I might want to learn if I had the intelligence to take them on. I really did want to do those things, and perhaps outside of Sensei, I was quite confident I was the only person who had such an interest.

  But not now.

  Not with tensions rising with the DMs.

  Not with the injury to my arm and the retaliation to follow.

  Not while the stove was hot and we were too smart to be frogs, boiled alive.

  Nor should your relationship with Jane grow right now.

  You better not let it interfere with club business. The rest of the gang will be on you in a heartbeat, as damn well they should be. You let anything get in the way of being the president, and you deserve whatever fate comes your way.