She put her hand on my chest, pushed me gently away, and turned, walking toward the door.
"No one is beyond helping, Meia." I spoke the words to her back as she gathered her things. She paused in the doorway, not turning to look at me before she left.
"I am," she said. "I can't be saved, Hammer."
I stood in the garage, looking at the bike. It had been sitting there, unridden, since April's death. It taunted me, a reminder of the the way things used to be. Meia was right. I was a man without a home. There was nowhere I belonged. I was estranged from everything and everyone I used to hold close. It was grasping at straws, trying to find something, anything, that would ease the pain of April's death. I had been trying to find some solace.
And all of this fighting bullshit, this attempt to quell my rage somehow, well, it wasn't working. Because it wasn't what I needed.
I had been angry for so long. I had wallowed in my shit, unable to see a life without April, unable to see MacKenzie in front of me, the child who needed me.
All of the rage, all of the bluster and bravado, was bullshit. It was grasping at straws. It was doing what I could to get by without her.
This was something I needed to do. I was ready. I needed to confront the past, before I could go any further. And I was resolved to go further. Meia thought I would just walk away, that I would forget about what she'd said. But I couldn't just leave her to that monster.
And that meant I'd have to put the past to rest.
I pulled the cover off the bike, and tossed it the cement floor. All of the memories I had tried so hard to erase, to just put out of my head and pretend they didn't exist, came rushing back the moment I threw my leg over the seat and straddled the bike. She felt simultaneously familiar and strange underneath me, like some kind of long-lost lover. And that's what she was, wasn't she? She was my first love, before anyone else, even April.
When I heard her motor turn over, felt the rumble between my legs, my heart beat harder, anticipation building inside me. I wrapped the throttle a few times, and the scream from the pipes was ear piercing.
I steadied the bike underneath me and kicked back the stand, then stepped on the shift and clutched into gear. I paused for a moment, keenly aware of everything around me in that moment- the sound, the smell, the vibration of the engine. My heart was still racing, but I felt myself slowly release the clutch lever and simultaneously roll on the throttle. I rolled out of the garage, down the driveway, and with a shift and more throttle, I was gone.
I stuffed the fear down deep inside me, and let the other part take over. I couldn't let the fear control me any more. No more running, no more hiding.
No more chicken shit self pity.
I rode through the old part of Vegas, and I could feel myself begin to settle into the bike before too long, my body responding to the familiarity of riding again. It was blazing hot in the late afternoon sun, and the wind on my face felt only slightly cooler as I rode out of town.
I didn't know where the hell I was going. I just knew I needed to ride. I felt myself rolling along the 167, with its winding roads and expansive scenery, and I opened the bike up a little. She seemed to possess the same kind of pent up rage I had, and she responded gratefully to the extra throttle.
I missed this. I missed the feeling of freedom that riding on the open road brought. I missed having the time to settle in with my thoughts, to work out how I felt about things in my head. When April and I would argue, back in the early days of our marriage, mostly the times when I was being a douchebag and I knew it, I'd head out for a ride and clear my head. I'd run through all the reasons why she was wrong - it would be a short list, usually - and then I'd start to admit to myself that she might be right. It seemed easier to do that on the bike, easier to clear my mind of my pride and stubborn will.
April knew I had to ride. She knew it was a part of who I was, even before I joined the club. It was a part of my soul.
Just like the club.
Tank had introduced me to the club. We’d met in prison. He had told me that the MC was the purest kind of family he'd ever had. That was true, at least it had been true before all the shit that had happened. It was the purest, most distilled sense of family I'd ever known. Hell, it was really the only family I'd known.
Of course, Tank was dead now, killed by that family.
I craved the sense of family that being part of the club meant. It was something I'd never had before the MC. My father sure as shit wasn't my family. He was a fucking sperm donor, some trucker - or at least that's what my mother thought. She wasn’t my family either - more concerned about getting lost in a bottle than anything else.
After I'd done that short stint for embezzlement, my options were limited. And I'd always ridden a bike, so when Tank vouched for me, it was a no brainer. By the time I was patched, that was it for me. April and I were lifers. We were married to each other, but also to the club. Back in the early days, before Mad Dog started to get greedy, life was good.
It was only later that things started going sour. And then MacKenzie was born, and everything fucking changed.
~ ~ ~
The background was a mixture of beeping and whirring and buzzing. April lay in the hospital bed, sweaty tendrils of hair around her forehead, holding MacKenzie. When April looked up at me, her expression a mixture of exhaustion and complete joy, I thought I would melt.