Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 61723 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 309(@200wpm)___ 247(@250wpm)___ 206(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 61723 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 309(@200wpm)___ 247(@250wpm)___ 206(@300wpm)
I pull out of the lot and onto the highway, taking the long way back toward the clubhouse. The road curves along the dark edge of marsh and pine, salt air mixing with the smell of hot engine. Freedom Falls at night is all hush between bursts of life—porch lights on isolated houses, bait shops gone dark, neon beer signs glowing in windows of places like the Black Rose.
I know every inch of these roads now.
Didn’t always.
I left Alabama young and stayed gone longer than anyone expected. Put miles between me and everybody who knew my name. Rode through cities too loud to sleep in and deserts empty enough to hear yourself think. Took jobs where I found them. Picked fights I should’ve walked away from. Collected scars and stories and enough bad habits to build a personality out of. Still wound up back here.
Freedom Falls gets in your blood even when you think you’ve bled out enough of it to leave.
The Kings helped with that when I was out in California. When I made my way back here, met up with Chux, I missed club life. Together we built the Freedom Falls Kings of Anarchy MC and it’s settled me at a soul deep level.
I wasn’t the best at following rules before the Kings but meeting Big Daddy years ago gave me a moral compass to live by. A code of my own. It made sense when laws didn’t. It comes with judgement, living this one percenter life style. Hell, in towns like this everybody does it, jumps to conclusions. Some people call us criminals. Some call us guardians. Truth of it lies somewhere in the middle. We protect what’s ours. Sometimes the law lines up with that. Sometimes it doesn’t.
Either way, folks know there are rules. And if word gets out that some drunken asshole put hands on a woman in Crystal’s place and walked away without a scratch, it sends the wrong message.
Maybe that’s all tonight was. Maybe that’s the story I’ll stick with.
The clubhouse comes into view twenty minutes later, sitting back from the road on a spread of land edged by pines and bad decisions. Floodlights throw pale circles across the gravel lot. Bikes everywhere. Music drifting from inside. Laughter. The low thump of bass.
Home. Well, the clubhouse version of home. I don’t actually want to be at my house tonight, then again, it’s not often I want to be there.
I kill the engine and head in.
The main room is alive the way it always is this time of night—brothers at the bar, a card game going in the corner, a couple club girls laughing too loudly near the jukebox. Smoke fogs up under the lights. Somebody’s grilling out back. The whole place smells like whiskey, leather, and trouble.
Chux is at the big table near the far wall with Riot and Shaft, going over paperwork that never seems to end running a port. He lifts his chin when he sees me.
“You done redecorating bars for the evening?” Chux asks with a cocky smirk.
I shrug my shoulders, “For now.”
Shaft, our sergeant-at-arms, grins without looking up from the ledger in front of him. “Heard it was a good hit.”
“Would’ve been better outside,” I share my real feelings.
Prez leans back in his chair. “Name?”
“Didn’t get it.”
“Local?”
“Didn’t ask.”
That gets all three of them looking at me now.
I know what they hear in that. The lack of clarity in the moment. Usually I gather details without thinking. Not because I’m sentimental. Because information matters. Because if trouble’s in our town, I want to know where it came from and where it’s headed next. It’s my instincts that override my brain.
Tonight, all I noticed was her. I don’t love that realization. In fact, it crawls under my skin.
Riot smirks. “Woman must’ve been pretty.”
I don’t answer.
His smirk widens. “Ah, so she was.”
“Drop it,” I state.
“Touchy.”
Chux studies me another second, then nods toward the kitchen. “Go eat something before you pick a fight with your own shadow.”
I almost tell him I’m not hungry. Then my stomach reminds me I skipped dinner. That is Chux and how he operates. The motherfucker can read any brother in the club with one gaze.
I head into the kitchen and find a tray of brisket, potato salad, and a stack of white bread. I make a plate and take it out to the back porch where it’s quieter. The night wraps around me, thick and humid, grasshoppers and frogs making their own music in the night.
I sit on the top step and eat in silence.
Halfway through, the screen door creaks and Chux steps out, a beer in hand. He doesn’t say anything at first. Just takes the post beside the stairs and leans his shoulder into it.
Finally, he speaks, “You all right?”
I snort. “Everybody keeps asking me that.”
“That usually means something’s off.”