Page 31 of Talon (Road Rebels MC 2)
“Can I have a soda?” she asked and flipped open the fridge door and bent down in front of it.
“I don’t have any soda, and even if I did, you couldn’t have it,” I snapped at her again and slammed the fridge door shut. She straightened up and plonked her hands on her bony hips. I rolled my eyes at her and grabbed a glass from the cabinet and filled it with water. Dealing with Gili’s attachment was the last thing I wanted to do right now.
“You’re in a bad mood. I can fix it, sweetheart,” she whined and followed me, trying to grab my arm so she could pull me to herself. I yanked my arm away from her and emptied the cold water down my throat.
“You need to leave my apartment right now, unless there’s something you have to tell me,” I growled at her. Gili was a groupie of a local gang, a small faction not big enough as The Bad Disciples. She hung around their bar, fucked most of the guys in the gang and she also fucked me.
Gili crossed her brows at me.
“Ask me nicely,” she hissed, and I stepped towards her, peering into her dark, glittering eyes.
“Is there something you know? About the Dark Knights?” I asked, gritting my teeth at her. I knew this wasn’t going to work. These girls needed to be fucked and treated nicely before they spilled the beans on anything; but tonight, I wasn’t in the mood to pretend. None of these women did anything for me, not in any real way at least.
“Ask me nicely, if you want to know,” she said again, and I stepped closer to her. I could feel my body writhing with rage. Did she actually know something or was she just winding me up? I could fuck her, I was always ready for it. I could fuck her, and when she was exhausted and satisfied, it would be way easier to get the information out of her.
Gili bit down on her bottom lip, and I watched her thrust her breasts out in invitation. She was in my apartment for a particular reason, she wanted to be fucked.
“Come here, baby, let’s relax a little and then we can talk,” she said and reached for my arm again.
“Get the fuck out!” I barked, and I had no idea where that was coming from. I might have been too drunk, or I had too much on my mind to bother with her.
Gili looked surprised. I was the jokester, the charmer, the smooth-talker. I had never raised my voice or been violent towards any of the groupies before. With her eyebrows raised and her mouth hanging open, Gili ran out of my apartment and banged the door shut behind her. I bet she was used to rage from most of the men she usually fucked, but she wasn’t used to it from me.
I rubbed my temples, hearing Axel’s voice in my head again. We had all failed. We hadn’t been doing our job right. Would my brothers and I survive another shootout against the Dark Knights?
I stumbled into my bedroom and crashed down on my bed, and once again I was thinking about the girl who might have made me feel better tonight. The girl that I always wished I was fucking instead of the groupies. That girl was a woman now, and I hadn’t seen her in ten years.
Chapter 2
Sage
The wind was in my hair as my arm hung from the open window of the old beat up truck I’d recently purchased. While I walked or biked a lot in San Francisco, I knew I needed something else to get me around. This old thing was the only ride I could afford, and it had seen me through the nine hours all the way here.
I was on the brink of starting a new life. These past five years had been a struggle, but nothing like when I first left home. I was a starry-eyed seventeen-year-old, a high school dropout with a desperate urge to get away from Long Beach. To get away from the gangs and the violence I had grown up in the middle of.
My mom had done the best she could have done for me, but I had always dreamt of a better life. I had dreamt of more money, of having an actual career, and of living in a neighborhood where guns didn’t go off every night. When I first moved to San Francisco, I was surprised by how it was not that very different from the neighborhood in Long Beach where I had grown up.
Small apartments, violence, people struggling to make a living…it was the same story, different city. However, the most significant difference here was that it was a land of opportunity. There were jobs, and there was potential.
Those first five years had been a struggle. I was a teenager, without a high school diploma, and I had no other choice but to pick up any and as many part-time jobs, I could get my hands on.
I did everything, from waitressing at a late-night diner to being a cleaning crew for office buildings. I had to get by. I had to make a living, and I did it…for long enough to attend night classes and finally get my high school diploma. Five years of living paycheck to paycheck, and sleeping a couple of winks on the bottom of a bunk bed in a studio apartment with four other people.
I’d saved every penny I could get my hands on, I’d shopped at thrift stores, but only when my clothes and shoes had been worn to rags. Five years later and I had a new plan. I was going to go to law school and eventually take the California bar exam.
I was working nights again, part-time jobs so that I could study during the day. I had enough money to move to a bigger studio apartment, this time with three people instead of four. I had enough to buy the books and the computer I needed, and I spent every day, when I wasn’t working, at the library.
It had taken me five years, but I’d finally done it. I had graduated law school and passed the bar exam. I was now one step closer to living my dream life. I was twenty-seven, with a law degree and the potential of getting an actual job. I knew what this entailed. I would have to spend the next decade working as an associate, which was nothing more than a glorified secretary; but at this new job I would get to my feet wet and be a part of trying cases. I’d be able to afford my own apartment, I’d be able to save for a deposit on my own house, I’d be able to wear new clothes!
And then, in ten years, when I was in the comfortable middle age of my late thirties, I’d be able to make partner at a firm or start out on my own. I could try my own cases, I could make a name for myself.
I smiled to myself as I drove through Long Beach, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel with happiness.
I hadn’t been back home in ten years. I didn’t have the time, I just couldn’t. I’d gotten addicted to my new life in San Francisco.
I called mom once every week, and I knew she waited for my phone call every Sunday afternoon. She was happy for me, she knew little about the details of my daily life, but I knew she was proud. I had promised her every year that I would visit soon, but in the past ten years, with work and school, I couldn’t find the time.
I was driving towards my old home now, that familiar neighborhood greeted me, and I could see how things had changed. The walls were still covered with graffiti, the roadside bins still overflowed with garbage but there was a scent of modernity in the air…or was I just looking at my old city through the eyes of an adult now?
Mom was sick. She’d been ill for the past two years, and now that I’d passed my bar exam and I was on the verge of starting a new life; I couldn’t make any more excuses to myself to stay away. It was going to be now or never. I had just passed the bar, and I hadn’t made any applications to law firms yet, so I figured this would be the best time to finally go visit home.
I hadn’t told mom I was coming. It was Sunday afternoon, and I knew she was going to be waiting in the kitchen for my phone call. But she was in for a surprise.
***
Mom took several minutes to open the door, but not before she had peeped outsid
e through the thin lace curtains on the front windows, which were looking a little yellow now.
She jerked the door open and then fell on me with a loud whistling cry. I barely had the chance to place my bags on the porch before she had me in her arms.
“You’re looking good, mom,” I said with a broad smile, even though she was looking frailer than the photographs she’d sent me a couple of months ago.
“And you are looking beautiful, my baby! This is such a wonderful surprise, I can’t believe it!” mom hugged me as she led me into the old house, and I’d noticed her watery eyes. She hadn’t seen me in person in ten years, I was seventeen when I’d walked out of that door and never returned. A familiar pang of guilt shot through my abdomen. Despite my long absence, mom hadn’t once complained.
“Nothing’s changed, this is crazy,” I said, as I looked around the small living room. Mom couldn’t stop staring at me. I felt like a celebrity with her, and I went over and hugged her again.
“I wanted everything to remain exactly the same when you finally came home, and now you have!” she exclaimed, her voice muffled slightly by my hair.
“So, you can start moving things around now,” I replied with a laugh, and I followed her as she rushed into the kitchen.
“Oh, I don’t know what I have to offer you, baby. Would you like some coffee? I only have the instant kind. And I might have some cookies leftover,” mom was flustering about in the kitchen, throwing open old cupboard doors and then slamming them shut.
“I’m fine, mom, thanks. Sit down with me, coffee will do for now. Maybe later we could go out and have a nice meal. Any new restaurants opened up?” I sat down at the small kitchen table, as a wave of nostalgia washed over me. Even the wallpaper was the same, peeling at the same spots. The house smelled the same too, of coffee and baking and mom’s faint perfume.
