Page 2 of Havoc

Four pins. I took my time with every one, and I’d do it again.

“Okay. Now you can take it off.”

There was a moment where we looked at each other. “The cut, I mean. You can take the cut off.”

“Oh, yeah,” he replied.

He shrugged out of the leather and held it out. The club’s haloed skull stared up at me from the back of it. His fingers stayed on the collar a second after mine closed.

“It’ll take me twenty minutes,” I said. “You could wait at the bakery.”

“I’ll wait here.”

I’d expected that. A patched man would rather leave you a kidney than his cut. None of the Unholy Few ever let their cuts out of their sight.

I sat down at the Juki and started picking out his fishing line. Havoc leaned in the doorway with his arms folded. He looked at the steam press, the scissors, the prom dress hanging on my rack. I felt it every time his eyes passed over me and kept going.

Out front, the door banged open.

“Ava, why is my brother’s bike outside?” Brynn came through the curtain with a gas station burrito.

“Oh… hey,” she said to Havoc with a confused look. “Is that your cut?”

“Getting a patch sewn on,” Havoc said.

“You told me you’d use a staple gun before you paid somebody.”

“Ran out of staples.”

Brynn shook her head at him before hopping up on my cutting table and unwrapping her lunch.

“He borrowed my car on Saturday,” she said. “It came back with no gas in it.”

“Came back though, didn’t it?” Havoc said.

“That’s progress,” I said. “Old Mr. Hanley never did see his dirt bike again.”

Havoc looked straight at me for the first time since the pins. “You were a kid. How do you even know about that?”

“Brynn told me everything.”

Brynn laughed, tore the burrito in two and set the bigger half by my elbow for when my hands were free. She’d been doing that since we were seven.

I guided the leather under the needle. Havoc went back to looking at the wall and the ceiling. Once I glanced up and caught him watching my hands, and he turned his head so fast I heard his neck crick.

Brynn checked her phone and swore. “Shit, I’m late. Doc Ames is going to skin me. Ava, call me tonight.” She kissed my cheek, kicked her brother’s boot on the way past and was gone.

That left the two of us and the hum of the Juki once again.

I knotted off, snipped the thread and stood up.

“All done.”

I held the cut open by its shoulders. He turned his back, put his arms through and turned around again, and out of pure habit I reached up and smoothed the patch flat with my palm.

His heart was pounding under my hand and he stepped back so fast he hit my thread rack. Spools rattled.

“What do I owe you?”