All the Sky (11 page)

Thinking he should wind things up, he stopped slapping and grabbed her hips—wow, her skin was hot—and drove into her, hard and fast.

When he was through, he pulled out and dealt with the condom, tossing it in the trash after he tied it off. Debbie usually came, or at least faked it. This time, she hadn’t. Now, she was easing herself off the bed and standing slowly up.

He must have hurt her. He wasn’t into hurting women. He wasn’t sure where his head had gone that he’d been paying so little attention to what he’d been doing. Feeling like he should say something, but not sure what, he finally struck on, “There’s lotion in the john.”

She gingerly pulled her jeans up over her legs and ass. “Thanks, but I’m okay.”

He closed his jeans and watched her finish dressing. When she headed to the door, she turned and smiled. “You need anything?”

He shook his head, and she left. He felt weird. Guilty and pissed all at once.

~oOo~

After a quick shower, to clear his head more than anything else, Havoc went back out to the Hall. Well after midnight, the party had hit its usual state of down and dirty quiet, with most of the still-conscious people neck deep in somebody else’s personal space. Looked like Debbie had gone home.

Not everybody left was passed out or getting it on. The TV was going, with a
Resident Evil
game up and running, and as Havoc ambled to the bar for another bottle, he heard Omen and Dom trash talking.

As he pulled a fresh bottle of Jack from the shelf behind the bar, Havoc froze. He could have sworn he’d just heard…no way. He turned and looked over at the back of the couch facing the TV. Omen’s head. Dom’s head. And between them, a little shorter, a dark head topped with a shaggy mess of curls. Fucking fuck on a fuckstick.

He’d just heard Nolan laugh.

Around the bar and across the room in about five strides, Havoc faced the couch and saw a clearly soused fifteen-year-old slouching between Omen and Havoc, grinning spacily, a half-empty bottle of Jose Cuervo between his legs. Havoc looked around. No Cory. What the fuck? And how was he already drunk? Havoc had been back with Debbie for twenty minutes. Thirty, tops, with the shower.

Then Omen took a hit on a fat doob and passed it to Nolan.

Havoc lunged forward and snatched it out of Nolan’s fingers. “What the fuck, you morons? The kid is fifteen!” He handed the joint to Dom and grabbed a fistful of Nolan’s t-shirt, dragging him to his feet. Omen and Dom looked surprised but unbothered by Havoc’s outburst, and he knew why. It wasn’t all that unusual for fifteen-year-olds to hang around.

But this fifteen-year-old was different. And he was wasted out of his head. Havoc wrapped his hands over Nolan’s shoulders and gave him a little shake.

“Your ma know you’re here?”

He smiled up at Havoc, his eyes heavy and red. “Nah. But it’s cool.” His speech was running at about half speed. “I go out at night all the time. She won’t stress.”

Havoc didn’t believe that shit, but he wasn’t going to argue with the little wastoid, who looked green around the edges. “You okay, kid?”

“Yeah, I’m cool. Gonna hurl.”

“Not on me, you’re not. C’mon. John’s this way.” Turning him so that his hurling hole was pointed away, Havoc pushed him to the john and then pointed him at the toilet.

He waited for him outside the door. When he came out, looking pale and damp, Havoc said, “I’m gonna get the van keys and take you home, kid. Your ma’s gonna kick both our asses.”

Nolan, looking slightly less ill and very slightly less wasted, nodded.

“This your first time, kid?”

Again, he nodded.

“Great. Just great. Let’s go.” He dropped his hand around Nolan’s neck and led him back to the Hall.

He pulled up short as they rounded the bar. Cory was standing about six feet inside the front door. She was wearing a short, snug t-shirt, faded and ratty, a little pair of gym shorts, and some cheap plastic flip-flops. They looked like pajamas; Havoc realized that they probably were. He saw her before she saw them, and he watched her expression evolve from worry to fury when she took in the sight of her son, all but dangling from his fist.

She turned her eyes on Havoc. “Oh, no way. No fucking way. You son of a bitch. You got him
wasted
? Did you get him laid, too?”

She stormed up and grabbed Nolan’s arm, yanking him out of Havoc’s grip. The kid lost his footing and reeled hard to port, landing with his hands on a barstool. Wearing that stupid, vacant grin again, he shifted and managed to get himself up on the stool.

And then Cory flew at Havoc. It was a night of firsts, because he’d never had a chick go quite so thoroughly apeshit on him before. He’d pissed off plenty of women in his time, but usually they just yelled or flipped him off. He’d never even been slapped by any woman other than his mother. And this one was full-on gonzo, fists flying, pushing and hitting, screaming, “SON OF A BITCH! PIECE OF SHIT! ASSHOLE! MOTHERFUCKER!”

She seemed a little pissed off.

He had a lot of height and weight on her, but for a few seconds he was too shocked by the display of loco rage to do more than duck. Then she caught him on the chin, and his teeth knocked together. He missed his tongue, but the impact made his head ring, and he grabbed her wrists. Even in this completely wasted crowd, they were drawing an audience. From the corner of his eye, he saw Len unburying himself from his pile of pussy. Havoc did
not
want to have to deal with the endless shit that would come with being rescued from a crazy chick.

“Chill the fuck out, bitch!”

“Fuck you, motherfucker!”

Struggling against his hold, she kicked him in the shin. With her nearly-bare foot. He hardly felt it. She started jumping up and down on the other foot.

“Ow! Fuck! Let go!”

He held on, squeezing her wrists. He was bruising her, he knew, but she wouldn’t ease off. He yanked her hard to his chest—she wasn’t wearing a bra, and he could feel her tits—and got right in her face. “Not until you CHILL. This wasn’t me! So back DOWN.”

She stopped fighting, but she didn’t lose the twisted hate on her face.

He let her go. Trying to keep his voice calm, and trying to ignore his sudden, perplexingly huge hard-on, he said, “The kid just showed up. He was wasted before I knew he was here. I was about to bring him home. It’s not on me.”

Cory scoffed. “Right. Not on you. You’re not the reason Nolan would be here. Sure. You’re either an idiot or an asshole. No—you’re both. Fuck you. Just fuck you. Stay away.” She stopped, turned to Nolan, and her expression collapsed. When she looked back at Havoc, she was obviously on the verge of tears. “And shove your fucking job straight up your ass.” Her voice shook and then abandoned her, leaving the last word nothing but a gasp.

She helped Nolan, who was now far on his way to passing out, out to the lot. Havoc watched them go. Then he turned on his heel and stormed to the weight room and the heavy bag.

~oOo~

By the time he felt like he had his head under control, his hand was a bloody mess—he’d forgotten that he’d cut it on the horse trailer. It seemed like that had happened days ago, not hours. Cleaning up the bag and the mats and then re-bandaging his hand went some way toward finishing the job of getting him calm. But his head was still full of ragged edges. So he did what he did when he needed something he couldn’t have. He went out to the bays and uncovered Bart’s ’67 shovelhead.

It was a beauty, white under black, gleaming like it was straight off the showroom floor. Too pretty to ride regularly, it spent most of its time stored here in the bay. All of its time, since Bart had gone to California. The last time it had seen the road had been the last day he was in Signal Bend.

They’d built it together, starting with a box of old bones. Bart was—what? Sixteen, seventeen?—when they started. Fuck, that was fifteen years ago. Nolan was just a baby.

And Havoc was getting fucking old.

He pulled out his personal cell and called Bart’s personal. It rang several times, and Havoc was about to hang up rather than leave a voice mail, when Bart’s groggy voice answered. He’d obviously been deeply asleep.

“You okay, Hav?”

“Yeah. Just needed to talk.”

“What? You sure you’re okay?” Bart’s voice was clearer, but quiet, like he was lying in bed next to his sleeping wife—which he most likely was.

“Yeah, just…yeah. Is it wack to want to be friends with a kid?”

“What are you talking about, brother?”

“There’s this kid, he’s fifteen. No dad around. I like talking to him. It’s stupid, but he reminds me of you, I guess.”

“I don’t think it’s wack. There’s a whole, like, charity based on it—Big Brothers?”

“Yeah, I know that one. I guess I’m not role model material.”

With a quiet chuckle, Bart offered, “Depends on who’s judging.”

“His ma. She hates me.”

“Since when do you care what a chick thinks?”

Havoc thought about that. Since never. “I don’t know.”

“You sound weird, my brother. What’s going on? You got something for the kid’s mom?”

“No! Fuck!”

Bart laughed. “Okay, man. Okay.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

When Nolan got up, hung over and pale, and still very much not talking to her, Cory tried to offer him breakfast. He just grabbed a banana from the tiny counter, said “I’m going to do the cleanup,” and left. She let him. There was no point in talking to him until he’d gotten his own head clear, and she couldn’t imagine what trouble he could get into at ten o’clock in the morning.

And his clubhouse escapade last night wasn’t the only big thing she had to worry about this morning. She was, once again, out of work—the very day she’d finally put together enough money to rent a place to live. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,
fuck
.

But how could she still work there after last night? Even setting aside what Havoc had done—getting Nolan totally, out of his mind, wasted, despite knowing that she didn’t want him there—she’d gone completely mental. There was no coming back from that. There just wasn’t. Especially since she’d quit, and in spectacular fashion.

She’d heard Nolan leave the RV. She hadn’t been surprised. He was angry, and he walked when he was angry. But then he was gone for a long time, and a thought pushed in around the edges of her head. They were only a couple of miles from the clubhouse. Nolan wouldn’t…would he?

Once the thought was there, it wouldn’t leave her. All she could see was her little boy in that place, alone, because she’d refused to go with him. She imagine all sorts of wild stuff. She’d paced the tiny living space for a while, trying to trust her kid, but finally, she hadn’t been able to stand it anymore. She’d left a note, in case he really was just out walking and came home while she was gone, then she’d grabbed her keys and driven to the clubhouse.

It had been as bad as she imagined—the room was dark and reeked of weed and cigars. People were passed out or in writhing, naked snarls. A couple of guys were playing a video game right in the middle of it, but she could tell neither was Nolan. She’d stood there, unnoticed, scanning the room, seeing neither her kid nor Havoc.

Just as she’d been about to decide that he hadn’t come to the clubhouse and was out walking—which still worried her, but in a different way—Havoc had turned a corner and stood there, holding her clearly fucked-up kid by the scruff of his neck.

Her fifteen-year-old son wasted, in the middle of a biker orgy? Cory couldn’t say it was her worst parenting nightmare—that one had to do with the side of a milk carton—but it was high on the list. Jesus. If Lindsay ever got wind of it, who knew what she’d do.

She’d lost her mind. Thinking about it, she rubbed her wrist, bruised from Havoc’s restraining grip. And now she was out of work
again.
That was where she needed to focus this morning. Figuring out a new job. Bonnie was being great and seemed to like having them in her back yard, but she couldn’t lean so hard on a friend forever.

She had just gotten dressed, preparing to take her little netbook to the town library for the wifi, so she could do some job hunting, when she heard a motorcycle on the road. It got loud, and then it stopped. From behind Bonnie’s trailer, she couldn’t see who it was or tell where it stopped, but she had a bad feeling, and she looked out the window over the banquette.

In a couple of minutes, Havoc came around from Bonnie’s driveway, headed right for the RV.

Fuck! She backed away from the window, until she was almost in the bedroom. He knocked, three sharp raps. She stayed where she was. He knocked again, and then put his face up to the screen, peering in.

“I know you’re in there—I pulled up next to your truck.”

Again, fuck.

She went to the door. “What do you want?”

Without invitation, he opened the door and stepped up, forcing her to step back as he came into the RV. She really wished she’d locked that fucker.

“You’re not quitting. And you
are
listening.”

Part of her felt like she should be relieved, but she wasn’t. She felt threatened and angry. He was such a bully. “Fuck you. Get out.”

Standing at the top of the steps that led down to the door, he crossed his arms over his broad chest. He had a bandage over the knuckles of one hand. “You need the goddamn job, and I am fucking sick and tired of trying to find good people to work that goddamn place. You’re not quitting. You’re working tonight. So just get off that.”

“What do you care what I need? And who are you to say if I quit or not? I already did!”

“Well, I don’t accept your motherfucking resignation! You quit under false pretenses!”

He’d stepped closer, and she backed off. “What does that even mean?”

He growled and slammed his fist down on the little counter. “You’re pissed at me for no good reason! Nolan went there last night on his own. As soon as I saw him, I got him out of there.”

“No, you didn’t—he wasn’t ‘out of there’ when I got there. You were bringing him from way in the back!”