I disconnect, knowing she won’t call. She’ll ignore me, playing her stupid and sick little mind games that I suffered under for the nine years we were married. And continue to suffer under as a way to punish me for having the audacity to divorce her ass.
Pushing my fingers through my hair, I blast out a frustrated huff of air. “Zoey’s not here. Bri took her to Disney.”
“What the fuck, dude?” Kyle growls. “The bitch knew we were driving cross country and would be here today.”
“Yeah, she knew,” I say tiredly as I make my way back to the staircase that leads out to the parking lot. With heavy feet, my steel-toed boots clomp loudly down the cement steps as Kyle follows along behind me. “Said she won’t be back until next week.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Guess I’ll just get a hotel. Check out the area since I’m considering a move here.”
Fucking bitch.
“Look man,” Kyle says as we reach the bikes and he grabs his helmet from the handle bar. “Ride with me to the Outer Banks. Hang out on the beach for a week and relax. No sense in staying here by yourself.”
I glance back up to Bri’s apartment, anger still gurgling like acid in my gut. I should have known it wouldn’t be easy. She’s so full of herself. I know she thinks I traveled all this way for her… like some dog sniffing after a bone. It would never even occur to her that I’m here for Zoey and nothing else.
I slide my gaze back over to Kyle. “Yeah… okay, sure. Got nothing better to do right now.”
“Fucking aye,” he says with a grin. “We’ll cruise the coastal highway, drink beers, and watch babes on the beach in bikinis. It will be epic.”
Chuckling, I grab my helmet and put it on my head, fastening the strap under my chin. “Babes in bikinis, huh?”
“Can you think of a better way to spend a week?” he asks rhetorically just before starting his bike.
I follow suit and our engines roar to life, causing me to yell to be heard. “Let’s ride, man.”
It’s only about a three-hour ride straight east from Raleigh over to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Kyle’s sister, Andrea, just opened up a law practice there a few months ago, and I’m actually curious to meet her. She was apparently an FBI agent working criminal cases in Pittsburgh but decided to give it up and use her law degree instead. I find it interesting that Kyle and his sister were, for a time, on opposite ends of the spectrum when it came to the law, and yet, they seem to be pretty tight.
My love of motorcycles and the freedom of the ride pretty much goes no further than the fact I own a Harley and I work on custom-built choppers. Kyle’s goes a little further in that long before I met him, he patched into a motorcycle club called Mayhem’s Mission that’s based out of Jackson, Wyoming. The owner of Teton Choppers, a grizzled, old military veteran that earned the nickname ZZ because of his long ZZ Top-like beard, employs quite a few members from the club. ZZ isn’t part of Mayhem’s Mission, but he also doesn’t seem to have a problem with them either, seeing as how they provide a lot of his recurring business.
I’m not exactly sure if there are any criminal workings inside of the club. I’ve never asked Kyle and he’s never volunteered, but I have to think there’s something going on there because Kyle carries a gun on him at all times as well as a burner cell phone in addition to his regular one. Doesn’t take an advanced degree to know something shady goes down, but it’s none of my business. He doesn’t bring that shit around our workplace and otherwise seems to be a solid dude.
Kyle rides ahead of me and by my calculations and the fact that I can smell salt on the air, I figure we’re getting close to the ocean. He’s a classic biker. Arms raised in the air as he holds onto his ape-hanger bars, long, blond hair flying behind him. The skull on the back of his leather vest leers at me… a creepy, hollow-eyed skeletal head with pointed teeth dripping blood and flames leaping from the eye sockets. I think it’s a patch that’s designed to inspire fear in the average viewer, but it doesn’t affect me in that way. I’ve come to know quite of few of the guys that ride with Mayhem and while some could be considered a little certifiable, they’re mostly dudes that share a love of Harleys and the lifestyle that comes with riding them.
Kyle only talked to me once about joining the club. I listened patiently while I was repairing a cracked cylinder head on a 1988 Sportster and tuning in to only about half of what he said. I heard things such as camaraderie, riding free, wild parties, and all the free pussy you could ever want. While my ears perked up slightly over the abundance of pussy within the club, it just wasn’t something I was interested in. I was only interested in doing my job and riding in my spare time, providing a good life for Zoey, and trying to figure out what the fuck I wanted to do with my life.
Yeah… had no clue what I wanted to do, but I certainly knew what I didn’t want to do, and that was to be a cattle rancher. While I loved certain aspects of the job, it just wasn’t what I wanted to devote my life to. It was expected of me to following in my dad’s footsteps. However, a part of me was holding out hope that my younger brother would step up to the plate, take an interest in the family business, and alleviate me of the responsibility.
Up ahead in the distance, I see a long bridge spanning over a wide body of water, which I know from the map I had looked at earlier was the Roanoke Sound. I knew just on the other side of that bridge we’d officially be on the barrier islands known as the Outer Banks and for the first time since we left Raleigh after lunch, I was starting to get a small feeling of excitement. It would be nice to take a break and fuck… I can’t remember the last time I took a vacation just for myself. Ever since Zoey was born fourteen years ago, I’m not sure I’ve done anything just for myself.