BROKEN WINGS: GODS OF CHAOS MC (BOOK THREE) (2 page)

Riot and Slade.  

Much better than Edgar and Jeremiah.

“Hey, Slade.  Your old man sounds like he’s on a tear tonight…” he said in greeting.

“Yeah, man.  Can I hang here for a while?”

“Sure, man,” he said, and I sat on the ground beside him.  He handed me his cigarette, and I took a long, deep draw off of it, the harsh smoke filling my lungs.

“Do you need to call the cops or something?”

I sighed.  Scenes like this were so commonplace, I had stopped calling the cops long ago.  I knew exactly how the rest of that shit would play out.  Mom would stay in the bedroom the rest of the night, Dad would pull the knife out of his back, finish the bottle, and pass out on the couch.  The next morning, they’d pretend nothing ever happened.

If I called the cops again, he’d kick my ass, and I knew it.  And Mom would give me the silent treatment, act like I didn’t exist for at least two weeks.  I’d learned a long time ago that the best thing to do was to just get out of their way.

“I fucking hate this place,” I said, looking around at the poverty around me.  “So much bullshit.”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” Riot said.  “I thought for sure my old man was dead when I came home this afternoon.  Took ten minutes in the shower before he came to.”

“Fucked up, man.”  I shook my head.  If this is what being an adult was about, I didn’t want any part of it.  And yet, that’s all I yearned for - freedom.

Riot sighed, took another drag from the cigarette, and passed it back to me again.  “Yeah, well…it is what it is, I guess.”

“I guess.”

We sat in silence for a few minutes before I spoke again.

“You ever think, man…that there’s another way?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Not everyone lives like this.  I want something better, something more…I just can’t wait to get the fuck out of here, that’s all.”

“Yeah.  Me, too.”

“It’s out there, you know.  Another life.  For both of us,” I said.

“I don’t know, man…I feel pretty fucking stuck right now.”

“Yeah, but that’s just because we’re still kids.  In just a few years, we won’t be tied to this shit hole.  We can just pick up and leave, go wherever the fuck we please.”

“Yeah, man…but look at us,” he said, “this shit is in our blood.  Wherever we go, we can’t shake that.”

“I don’t believe that.  Fuck, Riot, I can’t believe that.  If I did, I’d just kill myself right now.”

“Yeah,” he replied.  “You know, you’re right.  It’s good to dream, I guess…”  

It sounded good, but even as I said it, as far as I could see, all I had to look forward to was poverty and dysfunction.  

“It’s the only way to survive, Riot.  It’s all we’ve got right now, sure. But someday, man…we can have a different life.  We don’t have to be like them.  Don’t give up, dude.  There’s a better life out there, man.”

“Even for guys like us?” he asked.

“Yeah, brother, even for guys like us.”

I stared up at the sky, hoping to hell I was right.

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

Out of chaos God made a world,

and out of high passions comes a people.  

~George Gordon Noel Byron

The sounds of Sweet Home Alabama filled the Rodeo Roadhouse, and the place was packed, with couples dancing together in front of the band, every booth full of rowdy, drunk people eating burgers and every barstool was taken by the regulars.

John served bottles of beer as fast as he could open them, and Susie, his waitress, was running as fast as her short legs could carry her as she brought baskets filled with burgers and fries out to the drunken, hungry masses.

Before the end of the night, a few fights would break out and the floor would be littered with broken glass.  

Just another Saturday night in the sleepy Tillamook forest.

Situated about an hour outside Portland, Oregon and just a short trek to the Oregon Coast, the Tillamook forest was essentially nothing but that.  A lush pine forest, spidered with secluded, curvy logging roads that one could easily get lost in.  And sometimes, they did.

I’d heard horror stories about people getting lost.  GPS was no help, the maps were often wrong.  If you were lucky, you could  find your way out, but there were a lot of unlucky ones that didn’t.  If it was winter and you got lost out there?  Well, you were fucked.  There were roads that nobody came down for months.

But now, it was summer, and like most places in Oregon, the Rodeo Roadhouse didn’t have air conditioning.  The sun had gone down already, but the blistering heat had lingered, hovering in the air like a thick blanket of sweat and sin.  Add the body heat of a bunch of drunks, and you had yourself a molotov cocktail of trouble.

There was something about the heat that made me people go  crazy and tonight was no exception.  I was quickly growing tired of the crowd and I waved goodbye to John as I finished my beer, threw a couple of twenties on the bar, and walked out the swinging front doors.

I stopped to light a cigarette and stood next to my bike.  I looked up at the night sky while I took a few drags.  The amount of stars you could see on a clear night like this never ceased to amaze me.  The fact that there were thousands of other planets, other galaxies, out there, floating around in this big, black space with us always blew my mind.

The doors of the bar flew open and I turned to watch a couple emerge from the bar. Right away I knew something was wrong.  The woman had tears running down her cheeks and the guy was gripping her arm so hard that her flesh was turning white under the pressure of his fingers.

“Jimmy, let go of me!” she cried.

“I saw you, Tina!” he growled, digging his fingers even deeper into her flesh.  “You were flirting with that fucking cowboy!”

“I was not!” she cried, trying to wrench her arm away.  He held on tighter, twisting her arm painfully.  “Please let me go, Jimmy!”

“I’ll let you go, bitch!” Jimmy snarled as he pushed her roughly, flinging her violently away.  She stumbled and fell to her knees on the gravel parking lot.

Fuck.  I looked back at the bar door - John’s security guy was nowhere in sight.  I took a deep breath, threw my cigarette on the ground, and smashed it with the toe of my black leather boot.

Jimmy took two steps towards Tina and slapped her.  

That’s it, I thought.  

Tina collapsed on the ground - a crying, bloody mess that reminded me of a night a long, long time ago.

I walked over to them, and Jimmy turned to me, his face full of bravado and ego.  He puffed out his chest, looking like an idiot.

“You got a problem, man?” he asked, his voice slurring. He stumbled towards me and I shook my head.

“Nope,” I said, closing the distance between us, calmly, yet quickly.  He didn’t even see my fist coming.  It hit his nose, a deep, satisfying crack, and then the blood came, pouring down his face as he looked at me like a deer caught in headlights.  

“What the fu —,”

I hit him again, and he fell to the ground in a heap beside his girlfriend.

I stretched a hand out to her and she grabbed it, her face turned up to me, a look of awe in her eyes.  I pulled her up and we stared down at a groaning Jimmy together.

What a prick, I thought.  He reminded me a little bit of my dad and that made me hate him that much more.  He was writhing on the ground, clutching his broken nose and moaning in pain.  Swiftly, I kicked him in the ribs, taking great pleasure in the crack that I heard.

I seriously loved breaking bones. There was something so fucking satisfying about it.

I turned to the girl beside me.  She was still crying, her face red from Jimmy’s slap and streaked with tears.

“Listen, little lady…this guy? He’s a piece of shit.  He doesn’t deserve you.  He doesn’t deserve anybody.  You hear?  You can do better than this douchebag.”

She nodded in silent agreement.

“You okay?” I asked.  She nodded again, her green eyes open wide.

“You got a ride home with your friends?”

She nodded again.  I turned away and walked back to my bike.  I grabbed my helmet, put it on, and straddled my bike.  

With a kick, I started it up.  The loud, vibrating roar went straight to my bones.  Next to fighting, riding was my favorite thing.  Sex came in a close third.

Tina watched me as I began to back my bike out of the parking spot.  Jimmy was still wailing on the ground.  

“Hey!” Tina yelled before I took off.  “What’s your name?”

“Slade,” I yelled over the roar of my engine.

“Can I - um…can I come with you?” she asked, a broken smile spreading across her face.

Her long red hair cascaded over her shoulders and onto her black tank top that was barely holding in her big boobs.  Her blue jean shorts were way too short, and her long, bare legs looked strong and smooth.  My cock twitched in my jeans as I drank her in.

“Sure, sugar.  Hop on,” I said.  She yelped, jumped, and bounced  over to me, straddling my bike like she had done it a million times before.  Her arms snaked around my waist, and her thighs gripped me like she was about to ride a bucking bronco.

Perfect, I thought.  

A night with a sexy red-headed stranger would hit the spot just right.

We roared off into the night and I took the curves slowly since I had someone else on my bike.  If it was just me, I’d be hugging those curves like Tina’s legs were hugging my hips.  The ladies tended to get a little freaked out when you did that, and the last thing I needed was her wiggling her ass around in fear and causing me to lay down my bike. 

I turned off the highway and made my way down the five miles of curvy dirt roads that led to the Gods of Chaos MC clubhouse.  My home for the last - well hell, I didn’t even know how many years I had been here now.  It seemed like forever.  

The Gods of Chaos Motorcycle Club had saved my life.  After a few more years of watching my parents try to kill each other night after night and then wake up in the morning and pretend it didn’t happen, I finally decided to leave.  It wasn’t easy for a sixteen year old to make it on his own, but I took up with a group of street kids downtown and we became our own little family.

Until they started dying off one by one from fucking overdosing on heroin.  Somehow, I had managed to side-step that devil drug and I got out alive.  Barely.  

When I met Ryder, the president of the Gods, at a party, he took a liking to me and he invited me to the clubhouse.  After my first night there, when I woke up in bed with three women, ten bloody, busted knuckles and the biggest hangover I’d ever had, I knew I had found home.

Something about the place just felt right.

Maybe it was their ‘anything-goes’ attitude, or the way they just accepted me in all my fucked-up glory without asking too many questions about my past, or the way that they had each other’s backs no matter what - but I managed to feel like I belonged, like I finally had found a family that was just like me. 

I didn’t give a shit about the illegal stuff they asked me to do.  It was fun, actually.  And the more danger involved, the more I loved it.  

There weren’t too many things in life that made me feel alive these days - but fighting, riding and fucking topped the list, and I got as much of all of that as I wanted once I joined the Gods.

After running into Riot one day downtown, I convinced him to join too. We had lost touch when he joined the Army, but it sure did feel good having my best friend back.

Even if he was all wrapped up in his girl, Lacey, and Solid Ground, the underground railroad that we were all involved with now.  We had spent the last year saving all kinds of people.  From sex-trafficked teens to imprisoned prostitutes.   Ryder’s old lady, Grace, started Solid Ground after falling in love with Ryder and quitting the police force.  She insisted on continuing her work and she started Solid Ground.  That’s also how Riot had met Lacey, who had gone through hell herself.

That’s the thing we all had in common.

Each of us had gone through our own personal hell to get to where we were.  And now, here we were, the last of a dying breed, doing our own thing, making our own rules, and saving our own lives while we were at it.