Page 3 of Bitter’s Sweet

I like new.

New keeps a man from thinking about old.

She shifts under me. “Bitter.”

“Mm?”

“I gotta get out of here before my friends think I got murdered.”

“That’d be bad for business.”

“You joking?”

“I’m always joking unless I ain’t.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means hold still.”

I reach above my head, feel along the smooth seam, and push.

The lid opens with a long, quiet groan.

“Morticia,” I call.

“Huh,” our smart speaker returns.

“Turn on the light.”

Light spills in, yellow and dusty from the old hanging bulbs in the workshop. It lands on her face first, then her hair, then the deep purple satin tucked all around us like some dead man’s luxury. Her eyes go wide.

Real wide.

There is the moment.

The one I knew was coming and still enjoy every time life gives me a front-row seat to somebody realizing they done followed Bitter Adams somewhere they probably shouldn’t have.

She turns her head real slow, taking in the padded sides, the polished wood, the brass trim, the pillow under her head, and finally me above her, braced on my forearms inside a custom coffin built for some dead biker with more money than taste.

Her mouth falls open.

“No,” she says.

I grin. “Yes.”

“No.”

“Still yes.”

“You had sex with me in a coffin?”

“Technically, you had sex with me in a coffin.”

She shoves at me, and I climb out first because I’m a gentleman when the situation gets weird enough to require manners. I stand on the workshop floor, tug my jeans up, and let her have a second to gather herself and whatever dignity she thinks she left in there.

The coffin sits on a rolling stand in the middle of the room, glossy black with chrome handles and custom artwork on the lid. The Grave Prowlers know death the way other clubs know bikes. We build coffins the way some men build hot rods. Detailed. Loud. Personal. Fit for sinners who want to ride into the ground with style.

The workshop stretches long and low behind the clubhouse, all concrete floors, sawdust, lumber racks, tool benches, half-finished boxes, and the smell of stain and old smoke. A motorcycle hangs from the ceiling in pieces because Ghoul swears he is turning it into a coffin display and not just avoiding the fact he blew the engine. There are skull-shaped drawer pulls on one cabinet, a taxidermied raccoon wearing sunglasses near the time clock, and a hand-painted sign above the office door that says, WE PUT THE FUN IN FUNERAL, which Hyde hates and everybody else loves.