I HAD TO GET OUT OF THERE.
Jill, on a date. Jill, smiling and laughing with a guy who had grinned at her like he’d do anything for her, like he’d wanted to gobble her up whole.
I knew the feeling.
I had stood there, and they’d both looked up at me—his face riddled with concern, hers with a kind of astonishment. Jill’s initial expression was one of promise, shimmering with suggestion. I’d soaked it in, and then reality, my reality, had jerked me away.
I took the long way back to the clubhouse.
Every time I saw Jill, my insides would jolt and shove against each other, like some sort of seismic tectonic shift. That was me all right—pieces of cracked shell that rested on hot, molten rock. If I went back to work now, I’d be a moody mess and not get much done. I liked to keep my shit tight on the inside and easy on the outside.
I headed for the wide open spaces. The dried fields of brush and yellowed grasses sucked me in on both sides of the blacktop on the main road out of Meager. The sun poured its brassy heat over this stretch of farmland, over me, and I savored the warmth.
I hated small spaces, had for years. Living out here in South Dakota had changed that for me. I could open my lungs and breathe in this land’s seeming infinity, the massive sky stretching over me, daring me to touch it, willing me to soar. The endless sameness of the prairie or the farms or the grasslands was my relief.
Just beyond, the Black Hills rose before me, the thick evergreen forest making the mountains look inky on the horizon. The air became cool and crisp as I gained elevation. The sharp freshness of the towering pine and spruce trees and the quiet whispers of those ancient hunks of stone soothed me as I wound through them on that black twisting ribbon of road. Riding here all these years had breathed fresh life into my lungs. The tremors that used to grip my gut just after I’d left Denver had faded as me and my bike had become one force in the wind on these roads.
Something about Jill threatened that.
I pushed my chopper into high gear over the smooth asphalt, the wind battering my skin, my focus trained on the hum and rattle of my engine. Jill’s face wouldn’t fade from my mind, though.
The first time I had ever laid eyes on her was a long time ago. A horrible time. Seventeen years ago, when my best friend had been shot and killed. The night of his funeral.
She was a teenager then, a strawberry-blonde everygirl wiping at tears on her face.
“Get the fuck out of here, you hear me?”
“Please, I need to see his wife. I need to tell her!”
I gritted my teeth as I dragged her away from the front gate of the clubhouse. “You will never see her or talk to her. You stay away from her, bitch!”
“You don’t understand!”
We’d buried him only four hours ago, and brothers and old ladies from clubs all over were in the One-Eyed Jacks’ clubhouse, dealing with their shock, sharing their Dig stories, drinking and eating, hugging, grieving.
Not another party crasher, not now.
I towered over her, my long hair swinging. “Oh, I understand real well. You’re just some fucking groupie coming out of the woodwork like all the rest of ’em. There were plenty at the funeral, plenty more stragglers hovering the past few days, putting on their sympathy show.”
“I’m not a groupie! I knew him. Please!”
“You all know Dig, don’t you? Fuck off, little girl. Go find another club to blow.”
“Why won’t you listen to me?” Tears streamed down her crumpled face as she choked on her hiccupy breaths.
“Get out! Go!”
The viciousness of my yell pushed her, and she staggered backward under its force. I wiped off the wetness on my own face, my heart charged on adrenaline, on desolation.
My stomach clenched, my hands shook at my sides. I needed to eat, to sleep, yet both seemed unnecessary, unimportant. This burning, burning in my veins, in the pit of my soul—that was forever.
“Go!” I yelled.
She ran off down the gravel road.
Three months later, that girl was back.
There was a party. There had been plenty of parties to stem the tide of grief and despair. But it hadn’t worked for me. I couldn’t make sense of the way the currents had turned, sucking me under and then leaving me to float alone on the oily surface. Each party had blended into the next—a haze of faces, broken bottles, savage groping, bad jokes, forced laughs, burning lungs.
“Hey, hey, are you all right?” A small white hand firmly clasped my arm.
My head jerked at the touch, at the small hand’s presumption over my ink. There was something irrational about those delicate fingers throttling the neck of my fanged snake.