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King of Hearts

By: StangStar06



Hi Folks, this one is little bit different. This one was inspired by Chrissie Steele's song "King of Hearts." Those of you who checked my twitter page for the update kind of knew that and hopefully were able to listen to the song. I hope it put you in the mood so you can get a better feeling for the story. As with most of my stories, sex plays a very small part in it, so those of you who need an outlet might want to skip it. The first two thirds of the story were edited by the incredible Mikothebaby. Any mistakes in the last third are completely mine. This story is a bit longer than what I've been writing lately, so you might want to hold off and read this one when you have some time. Next week we'll be back to more action, adventure and revenge. SS06

* * * * * *

The smell of your body lingers on my sheets tonight. The sting of your kiss still burns in my heart. I go crazy just thinking about you. I can feel your shadow lay down on me. You're the king of hearts.

I rolled over in my sleep and reached for him. And as he had a thousand times or more over the past three or more years, he rolled away just as my fingers were about to make contact. I could see his smiling face only inches away from my outstretched fingers.

My eyes opened up and he melted away, the same as he did every other time when I woke up. The never ending ache in my heart seems far worse when I'm awake. Perhaps that's why I sleep so much nowadays.

The acrid smell of weed; and the scent of stale beer and sweaty bodies, pushes me into full consciousness. The lust filled laughter of a familiar female voice makes me far more aware of what's going on. I slide out of my bed angrily and head downstairs.

As I get closer to my living room, the TV gets louder and so does the laughter. The smell of the marijuana is almost over powering this close to it.

As I enter the living room, I notice four or five men and one woman. The woman is my so-called roommate Beth. Beth is giving one of the guys that I don't recognize a blow job while another fucks her from behind on my couch. There are two guys watching what has to be the last baseball game of the season. One of them, a black guy with long dreadlocks, Marcus, is an old friend. The other, a squirrelly looking younger guy that again, I don't recognize, is the one smoking the weed.

"Beth, you need to do that shit in your room," I scream. "Not my fucking living room." I turn towards the squirrelly guy. "Get out."

"Be cool," he says.

"It's cool as hell outside," I snap. "Just get the fuck out of my house. I don't need any assholes smoking dope in my fucking living room. Seeing as how my house has always been a known biker hangout, the police give me regular visits. I don't think going to jail for your stupid ass is on my agenda."

"Okay, I'm putting it out, mama," he says. 

"Good, then get out after you do." I reply.

"Well, I gotta go get my homies," he says. "They're upstairs."

I run back upstairs and look in Beth's room. Her room is empty. I open my door and find two people I've never seen before about to have sex in my bed.

I pull open a drawer and pull out my gun. "Get the fuck out of my room or I'll splatter your fucking brains all over the walls," I yell. The two on the bed look towards me and their eyes get huge. The man is clearly upset and the girl, she's probably in her mid-twenties, but she's too stupid to be called a woman, is smiling. She doesn't realize how close she is to dying.

"It's cool," says the guy. "We were going to use Beth's room, but it's pretty much a shit hole. We saw that this one was empty so we...uh."

He gave me one of those smiles that are supposed to display all of his boyish charm and just make every woman he sees weak in the knees and wet in her nether regions. It didn't work.

I guess on paper it should have. He was tall and muscular. He had long hair that was tied back out of his eyes. He had a nice beard and a menacing appearance. I checked off every box on my list and he should have done the trick. But he didn't.

Once he saw that his charm had failed, he tried to get tough.

"Listen bitch, I said it was cool," he said. "I don't know what kind of rules this club has but I don't take orders from no bitches. You need to stay in your place." I raised the gun and aimed it directly at him.

"I'm sorry about what I said before," I said. "I'd never be able to put your brains all over my walls. Your brain, hypothetically speaking, since there's no evidence that you have one, is too small a target."

"Bitch..." he said, trying to rise to his feet. "You ain't gonna shoot me."

"Why not?" I asked. "Let's see how this plays out. You're making threatening moves towards me. You're as big as a fucking train and you've invaded my bedroom in my house. So if I cap your dumb ass right here, all the police will say is, "Self-defense."

"Let's all back this down a peg," said Marcus from just outside the door.

"Trey, you're in the wrong. When we first came here this morning we all understood that the house here is not the club's property. We came here because there's no fucking heat at the clubhouse. Beth told us that we were not allowed upstairs. Once she started screwing your friends, she told you that you and your lady could use HER room. You shouldn't be anywhere else in the house. Secondly, this isn't Beth's house. I think it's time we all left."

Trey got up and started putting his clothes on, grumbling all the time. He said something about uppity women and something else about not having the stones to pull the trigger and Marcus corrected him.

"Yeah, she would have," he said. "You've ridden around this area long enough to know what's up, Trey. Have you ever heard of a guy they call the King of Hearts?"

"Yeah," said Trey. "He was the best rider, the best fighter, the president of the club and all of that shit. He just disappeared, right?"

"Not exactly," said Marcus. "Anyway, Christina here was his old lady. She's been through more shit than you can shake a stick at. And if it came down to it, she really would have shot you. And she'd probably have gotten away with it."

Trey and his girlfriend walked back down the stairs and sat down on the couch. Marcus and I followed them down. By the time we got into the living room, the two guys on the sofa were DP'ing Beth who was moaning loudly.

"Oh yeah Baby, fuck me. Fuck my slutty ass," she moaned. She was flat on her back on top of one of the guys, while the other was on top of her in what can best be described as a Beth sandwich.

"Time to go guys," said Marcus. "Now!"

The guy on top pulled out of Beth and climbed off of her. He didn't look happy but seeing the look on Marcus' face, he didn't say a word. He hadn't even bothered to take his clothes off. He'd just unzipped his pants. He zipped them up and was ready.

The second guy's dick made a popping sound as he pulled it free of Beth's asshole with no regard for her. From the way she yelped in pain, the abrupt uncoupling probably hurt.

Beth looked as if she was as high as a kite. She had no idea of what was going on or why. She just stared around her dumbly.

Marcus turned as they got to the door. "Chris, I'll call you later or tomorrow. It's going to be a really cold winter. We're probably going to go down south for a while," he said. "I have a friend who knows a guy who has a business down there who might hire us for the season and then we can ride back up here when the weather turns warmer," he said.

"But Marcus," I began.

"I know Honey," he said softly. "But when he was here, we had a lot more members. We had a much bigger clubhouse and we used to do those bike shows and swap meets all winter. We were also doing bike repairs and all of that. We don't have any of that sh...stuff anymore so we have to do things differently. Digger isn't King by a long shot. But he is in charge of the club now, so..." He shrugged his shoulders.

"For what it's worth, I agree with him on this. This is going to be a long cold winter. We're going to get a lot of snow. This is a survival move, honey. You're welcome to go or stay as you please. If you want to go, you can be my back-seater. No strings of course." Then he turned and left.

After I closed the door, I immediately ran back up the stairs to my room. I noticed something that I hadn't noticed just a few moments ago when I was threatening that asshole and his stupid girlfriend. They'd been on top of my blankets. I stripped back the blankets and sniffed my sheets. They still had his smell. The sheets still smelled like King. I also have a bunch of his old clothes and a lot of his personal things so I don't forget.

I lay back on the bed and thought about the good times. I'm thirty two years old, so I actually should be living the good times now, but I made one huge mistake and now I feel like a ship without a rudder.

I take a huge whiff of the musty odor coming from my unwashed sheets. That smell is like a drug to me. It fires all kinds of memories and inflames all of my senses. Just as I'm about to start remembering, Beth staggers drunkenly into my room. "Hey, where'd all the guys go?" she asks. "I'm sure there were guys here. I feel like getting fucked; but not in the ass. My ass is sore. Are there any guys in here?"

"Beth, just go lie down in your room and sleep it off," I command. She nods her head and staggers drunkenly into the wall next to the door.

"I could have sworn there was a door here," she says. "Your room is so complicated."

As she staggered out of my room, I shook my head. Beth was always the life of the party. She's like Peter Pan, the kid who never grew up. At thirty five, Beth is three years older than I am and she's starting to look her age. It's funny as I look back on it, Beth was the age that I am now, when I fucked it all up. It's also funny that I'm the one who's criticizing someone else for refusing to grow up.

Beth was also there when it all fell apart. Maybe that's how it's supposed to be. Maybe all of the true immortals have to come in pairs. Maybe Beth and I will be like Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, or Stephen Tyler and Joe Perry. Maybe when we're forty, we'll still be together, still throwing our legs over the backseat of any guy 

who'll let us ride behind them. I hope I'm not as desperate as Beth is. Beth is drunk most of the time. And she lets any guy who asks her fuck her. Beth exists in a haze of sex, drugs and alcohol. I'm not sure if she even knows what day it is most of the time.

Am I any different? I sleep sixteen hours a day now. I don't eat right and I'm drinking more than I have at any time in my life. And why do I sleep so much? That's an easy one. My dreams are so much better than the reality of my life. I think that if I could, I'd sleep forever like some kind of reality-averse sleeping beauty.

I laughed as I leaned back on my bed and thought for not the first time about the ruin I'd made of my life. At first, I didn't think I was ruining anything. I was so sure that my opinion was the right one and everyone else was fucking crazy. They, meaning the entire world outside of my small circle of friends, were all just losers. They didn't possess the special ability to separate what was real from the bullshit that society throws at us.

I guess it all started before that really. I always danced to the beat of a different drummer. I went from daddy's little angel to wild assed problem child seemingly overnight.

I resisted classification. I was one out of only one. There was not another person I knew who was like me. A lot of people don't know this but the United States Government allows a ritualistic coming of age/rite of passage process for young adults. This process is crueler by far than any tribal torture ever seen on any of the seven continents. The process scars many young adults for life and the mental scars often stay with a person for the rest of their life.

The process is called high-school. It's only function is to take away the very freedom and individuality that the founding fathers wanted us all to have. By the end of those four tortuous years, we've been changed and molded into something that in many cases bears no resemblance to the person we once were.

We are forced to assume roles that we, in many cases, play out throughout the rest of our lives. Before high school, we were all just kids. There were very few nerds or jocks or cheerleaders or losers. In high school, I refused to be categorized. I made up a category of one. But even then, they tried to force me to assume a role. I became the weird girl.

On all three areas of growth, Academic, Social, and Humanistic, I refused to follow the path. Academically, I kept my head down and sought anonymity. I earned straight C's without breaking a sweat. I was thought of as a solid student but actually, I simply never tried. They probably thought that I was too smart to be stupid, but not smart enough to excel academically. I'd probably get into a junior college or a less prestigious one and end up a secretary or a mom. I laughed at their plans.

Socially, I also refused to follow the path. I never took an interest in anyone or anything that the school offered. I didn't make any friends and I shunned the advances of my fellow students. I thought that I was above them. Couldn't they see how stupid it all was? Who really gave a rat's ass about which airhead was the head cheerleader at Millard Fillmore High in 1999? I sure didn't. And sports were even dumber. There were always two teams kicking a ball or something and one team lost and the other team won. I really couldn't understand why it was important.

Let's start with football. My brother, Joe, worked his ass off to get on the football team and simply never made it. He spent all of his time lifting weights and running just so he'd earn the right to wear some tiny little pants that were too tight and too short and get his ass run over by bigger and stronger guys. To me, he won by losing. He didn't have to associate with the assholes who were allowed to wear the tight pants. He also didn't have to get the hell beat out of him trying to play the stupid game. In my opinion, the guys on the team were the real losers. They had to perform like a bunch of fucking trained seals every week in front of a crowd of screaming morons.

And the game of football made absolutely no sense. One team did their best to get a ball from one side of the field to the other. And if they made it, they just had to try to do it all over again. What the hell was the point?

My dad was a big car racing fan. What was so special about a bunch of guys with names like Jim Bob driving around in a God damned circle for two hours?

On the humanistic side, I was the most thoroughly confused. I remember the argument I had with my mother when she sat me down to explain the birds and the bees to me. I think that both my mother and father thought that something was wrong with me. When we had the talk, I was nearly eighteen years old and had never had a boyfriend. Believe me, there had been guys who'd tried. Despite my piercings and weird hair colors, there were guys who'd tried to get with me. I think a big reason for that is hormones and low hanging fruit.

In high school, you have all of these young adults who are maturing and their bodies are full of hormones. The urge to merge and to mate is very strong. It's kind of like Luke Skywalker and the force. Most of these guys want Buffy the blonde cheerleader with the enormous pom-poms and the small IQ. The guys that know that they can't have Buffy often settle for less desirable partners. The ones who can't get even the average girl go after attractive but slightly damaged girls or low hanging fruit.

So even though I was a wack-a-doodle, I still had a nice ass and a nice rack, so every year, I got several guys who thought they'd scoop me up and make a woman out of me. I was also supposed to be really God damned grateful for the opportunity.

Anyway, when Mom started telling me about sex, I kind of got the idea that she knew that I knew all of that shit already. After all, she'd signed the permission slip and I got a solid C in Sex education. I think that she was just trying to figure out why I didn't have a boyfriend or any posters of boy band members on the walls in my room.

"Christina, you're at an age where your body..." she began.

"Mom, I reached that age at about thirteen when I had my first period," I said. She looked a little uncomfortable.

"Well, have you been...uhm?" she began.

"Mom, just ask me?" I said in frustration. "Jeezus, you're my mother. If we can't talk, who can I talk to?"

"Well, my mom was uncomfortable talking to me about sex and uhm..." she said.

"Don't worry about it mom," I said. "There's nothing to talk about."

"You mean you've never had sex?" she asked in a very surprised tone.

"Never have, never will," I said. Her eyes got huge.

"Christina, you're too pretty to be a lesbian," she said nervously. "Or you would be if you'd take all of those spikes out of your face and pick one or two somewhat natural hair colors."

"Mom, I'm not a lesbian," I said. She actually blew out a sigh of relief so loud that it was audible.

"I'm asexual," I said casually.

"You're a sexual what?" she asked smiling.

"A-sexual," I said. "I'm not having sex with anyone or anything. I just don't see the benefit of rubbing up against some sweaty man or woman. It's simply not something I'm interested in." Her face fell. 

I could see her visions of grand-brats disappearing before my eyes. "But what..." she started.

"Mom, I'm just not "Mother" material. Shit, I can't even take care of goldfish. And I don't want to be responsible for another human being's life. I have no interest in dragging some kid around on a leash or feeding them. How the hell am I supposed to tell them what they can't do when I still probably want to do it myself? Trust me; humanity will go on just fine without my participation in the propagation process."

Four wasted years and a few thousand dollars of my parent's money later, I hit one of life's defining moments. I was skipping one of my classes, I forget which one, but since I skipped most of them it really didn't matter.

Anyway, it was the same old story, a boy on one hand and a girl on the other. They meet under circumstances so random that it had to be fate. I was on my way to the cafeteria where I could get something to eat, while I skipped class and wasn't paying attention.

A guy came walking purposefully out of the door and we ran into each other. My book and papers flew, so did his. He apologized gruffly and began helping me to pick my stuff up. I recognized him immediately. He was one of the loser/asshole/morons that my brother had tried to become one of. 

Actually, we'd gone all the way through school together and had never said a fucking word to each other. I was surprised to see him in my armpit of a junior college though. I'd expected that by now he'd be the quarterback at one of those division one schools and be knee deep in all of the cheerleader pussy he could grab.

This was the closest I'd ever been to one of those guys, and up close, he wasn't bad. His hair was longer than it had ever been in high school. And he was kind of unshaven. It looked good on him.

"Hi, I'm..." I began.

"I know who you are, Christina," he said. "We've gone to the same set of schools since birth."

"Well, thanks for helping me pick my stuff up," I said. "Here, let me help you with yours."

"Don't bother," he said.

"I was trying to be..." I began again. My dander was rising. I totally misread him. I thought that he was looking down on the weird girl, like everyone else.

"I didn't mean it like that," he said, as if he knew what I was thinking. "What I meant was, there's no need to pick my stuff up, because I was on my way out of here. This is all just so fucking pointless. If we hadn't crashed into each other, I was going to go outside and just throw all of this shit as far up into the air as I could and just walk away. Fuck the books, fuck this place. I don't want any of this shit anymore. So picking that shit up is just a waste of time."


King of Hearts



For the first time in my life, I was in love. When I looked into his eyes, I saw all of the pain and all of the depression I'd always felt mirrored right back at me.

"Anyway," he said. "Sorry, I bumped into you. I'm outta here." He started walking towards the door. His long legs took huge steps and I stood there watching him. The next thing I knew I was running after him. When I got outside, I screamed at his back.

"Hey!" I yelled. He turned back to look at me. I smiled at him and threw three hundred dollars- worth of science textbooks into the air. My folders opened up in midair and papers flew all over everywhere. People in the area looked at me as if I was crazy.

"Can I come with?" I asked. He smiled and nodded. One of the campus police officers came running over to me. "Do you know that littering is a crime?" he asked. "Do you know that you can be suspended for it?"

"Do you know that I just quit?" I yelled. "Go home and listen to Alice Cooper's song, School's out. Make sure you study it thoroughly because there will be a test on it." He looked puzzled.

My new found ally and I quickly ran over to the parking lot. I looked around for his car and saw him sitting on a motorcycle. He held out the second helmet to me and I took it. He rocketed away from the school and we simply never looked back.

For the next few months, we bummed around town with some friends of his who rode bikes. I did call my mother to tell her that I'd met someone and I wouldn't be back for the foreseeable future. That summer saw changes in me that no amount of high school, college or life thus far had wrought.

I went from the living embodiment of individuality, the paragon of asexual virtue, to biker babe in the blink of an eye. I loved the freedom of the biker lifestyle. We just hung out all day long. We didn't have jobs. We didn't have a place to stay. We didn't have bullshit. But I had love. I had Raymond Heart.

I was willing to do anything I had to do to keep Ray. At first, we were just kind of buddies. We learned the whole biker lifestyle together. We kind of made it up as we went along. Ray was a handsome, charming, good old boy who was tough as nails when he had to be. But he didn't have to be. Everyone loves Raymond. But when there was a fight? One punch from a guy who bench presses three hundred and fifty pounds was usually enough to knock some sense into whoever was on the other side.

Over that summer, three small groups of individual bikers melded into one large club. And I had to change too. There were any number of girls who wanted Ray. To his credit, he never once asked me to change. But when I took all of the piercings out of my face and allowed the holes to seal up, he told me I was pretty. When I dyed my hair back to its natural chestnut brown, he told me he'd been wrong about me being pretty. My face fell until he lifted my chin up and told me I was beautiful.

He also started holding my hand when we went places. I was happier than I'd ever been in my entire life. There were two types of women who hung with us in those days. There were club women, who were the property of the club meaning that anyone in the club could have them. And there were "old ladies." If you were someone's old lady, it meant that no one could touch you without his permission. Once I'd done my makeover, a lot of the guys in the club took notice of me. And once, when I was drunk and too out of it to notice it, a guy tried to take advantage of me. Ray's hand in his chest put a stop to that. When he told the guy that I was his "old lady," even drunk as an English sailor on leave, I was so happy I could have died.

The women going after Ray were still trying to test me though. Ray was, after all, a man. So the shorts they wore got shorter and their tops got lower. And I had to compete with them, but Ray never laid a hand on me.

I had a couple of women in the club who were friends of mine, including Beth, who helped me keep tabs on things. Beth helped get me into a number of things that on further thought, would probably have been better left alone. Ray knew that I had feelings for him and he also knew that I was a virgin. At twenty-one years old, nothing had ever been inside of me. I wanted him badly but I had no idea of how to go about doing it. Beth got me drunk as a skunk and showed me how to take my own virginity with a big vibrator. After I got used to it, Ray was supposed to be my first. It didn't work out that way.

We had a big biker rally at the state fairgrounds and I got all ready. There were bikers and clubs from all over the state. We made a lot of money with that rally and the party afterwards is still legendary. Ray and I camped out and had our own tent. I'd been out smoking weed with Beth and I went back to our tent.

I pulled back the flap and saw Ray with an older woman with long red hair and huge tits on top of him. She was working her ass like a porn star. It bounced up and down on his dick like it was made of rubber. "Oh shit," moaned Ray. "Get up, I'm gonna cum."

"Fill me up baby," she said. Ray pushed her off of him. He obviously didn't want to risk her getting pregnant. She grabbed onto his dick and started licking it like an ice cream cone. Ray shot blast after blast of sperm on her face and she just let it sit there.

When he was done, Ray noticed me staring at him and went into shock. Before that moment, I think that I was too shocked myself to even react. But the tears just came from nowhere. I ran out of the tent and as far away from it as I could. I could hear Ray calling me while he tried to get his clothes on and I could hear the old redhead laughing. I eventually found Beth and we got so high that I didn't know which way was up. It was the only way I could deal with the pain of what I'd seen.

I guess the combination of alcohol and drugs was so powerful that I really don't remember much. My next waking thought, was of some guy literally being ripped out of me in mid-stroke. He was just some greasy young biker and I was flat on my back with him between my legs. As I gained consciousness, all I felt was a sore pussy, mostly from him being snatched out of me. He was thrown to the ground so hard that the impact of him hitting the dirt next to me had to have knocked him out. But then Ray was straddling him and pounding the shit out of him. Then he turned and started on the guy who'd been waiting to go next.

I blacked out again but Beth later told me that the look Ray had on his face when he looked around, cleared the tent. There had been eight guys there taking turns fucking Beth and me. And these weren't average guys. They were tough bikers, but Ray cleared that tent so fast that people still talk about it. The only one still in the tent when he turned back around was the guy he'd slammed and he was only there because he was out cold.

Even the guys who were fucking Beth left. No one wanted any part of Ray's rage. She later told me that he'd picked me up as if I was a baby and carried me out of there. He'd taken his share of the money we'd raised and checked us into a nice hotel. When I woke up the next morning, he and I were alone and he looked miserable. Beth had told him about how I'd made myself ready for him to take my virginity and how things ended up.

It was a very bittersweet moment in my life. We had our first real talk. Not just about hiding from the real world, but about ourselves and how we saw things. The moment was very sweet to me because Ray told me that we had a problem. He'd started out telling people that I was his old lady to protect me. He knew that I was a virgin and didn't want anyone to force me into something I wasn't ready for. But his feelings for me had grown. He'd pretty much gone the whole time that we'd been together without having sex because he didn't want to push me into anything either. The previous night had just found him tired drunk and horny and he'd succumbed to that redhead.

When he'd seen the look on my face, he'd known in that instance that he loved me and that he'd probably made the biggest mistake of his life. My heart nearly burst hearing him say that he loved me. I told him that I'd felt the same and that I'd been hurt so badly by seeing him giving that fat old redhead something that he was supposed to only give me that I'd gone out and gotten way too drunk.

We forgave each other and swore to never do it again. The bitter part of the memory is that something that should have been a special gift for Ray was taken by some guy whose name and face I can't even remember.

Things got better for us after that. They'd been great all along but that day despite its ups and downs, established us as a real couple. Over the next few weeks, Ray blossomed as much as I did. He used part of the money from the rally to rent a large clubhouse for the club. He had a head for business from the very start and could see far enough into the future to make long range plans for all of us.

There was never any kind of election or anything like that. Ray was just the natural leader of the club. We did all kinds of fun things. We even had a big weekly poker night. Ray was a hell of a poker player. I never saw him lose. The funniest thing about him was that although he won all the time, whenever he won big, it always involved a hand that contained one particular card. Whether it was a flush, a straight or four of a kind, Ray's biggest hands always included the King of Hearts. After a couple of those victories, people just started calling him, "King."

Something I need to point out here is that during this time, Ray and I were almost never apart. We ate together, we slept together, we were always together. If he was working on his bike or helping someone else with theirs, I was there beside him handing him tools. He sometimes had to move me over just so he had the space to do something but neither of us cared. It was literally the happiest time of my life.

I wanted my entire life to be that way. I was living among people who accepted me for who and what I was. When we pulled into places, no one gave us any shit. We didn't have jobs or any of that bullshit. We were a society to ourselves. We never caused any problems. We weren't outlaw bikers. We didn't run drugs or anything like that. Some of us may have used them, but we didn't sell or manufacture anything. That life fed my need for individuality. It was the perfect thing for me. It was the answer to my dreams. It was the way I always wanted things to be. Having Ray and that lifestyle completed my soul.

I guess I thought that it was the same for Ray, but it wasn't. Ray loved me and I loved him, but neither of us really knew the deep dark depths of each other's pain or the causes of that pain. We talked almost constantly but we somehow skirted the darker issues. We skirted mine because, as I said, I was living la vida loca. My life was crazy and wonderful.

What I didn't know, was that our life together, and by that I meant Ray and me as a couple, was healing Ray's issues as well. What I also didn't know, was that Ray, unlike me, had never had any social issues. Every one we ran into immediately fell in love with Ray. Women wanted to be with him and men wanted to be his friend. On that day that Ray and I met and just said, "Fuck it," there were things going on that I'd never imagined. Ray had missed most of our last year of high school. He'd had to quit the football team and missed most of his classes because his dad had suffered a nearly fatal heart attack. Both Ray and his mom had altered their lives significantly to care for him when he came home from the hospital.

Ray and his dad had always been close, so if there was a choice between football and his dad, football lost. After months that saw his grades plummet along with his chances for a football scholarship, Ray's dad started to improve. In fact, he got well enough that Ray was able to enroll at the last minute in the junior college that I attended.

After a few weeks there though, the improvements, turned out to be just the last dying gasp of Ray's father's heart. He'd passed away two weeks before I met Ray. His mom had insisted that Ray continue attending his classes.

Ray had come home one day, during the week before I met him, to find the police on his doorstep with a note from his mom. She'd taken her own life. She couldn't bear the thought of being without her husband. She'd left enough money for him to finish his classes, but it wasn't money he missed. Ray had been a part of a very small but very close family. It had always been just the three of them. Without his parents, Ray had tried to right the ship of his life, but there just seemed to be no point in it.

The biker lifestyle meant different things to us. For me, it was my dream. It was something I embraced with both arms. For Ray, on the other hand, it was just something to hold onto while he found what he needed to replace what was missing in his life. For me it was an end destination. For Ray, it was only a bus stop or a stop gap.

So, even by the end of the first year, Ray had started to come out of his pain. He put me back in contact with my parents. They really didn't like the life I was living or Ray for that matter, but they were glad that he'd made me call them.

The biker rallies that we'd had during the summers were so successful that we were able to house the club members who didn't have homes for the whole winter. At the same time, Ray and I had our own place. It wasn't huge or luxurious but it was cozy and warm and we had some degree of privacy.

During the winters, we held biker swap meets at the fairgrounds. We did bike repairs and customizations. We brought in experts from the factories to give classes in bike maintenance and we held our weekly poker games. Ray actually made a deal with the local authorities to give half of the profits from the poker games to local charities. He even arranged for a volunteer police officer to handle both the books and the till.

Ray gave serious consideration to returning to school then. What actually changed his mind was my father. My dad told Ray that he might want to consider being a plumber. He outlined all of the pluses and minuses, with Ray listening intently. He even told Ray about classes the plumber's union held. Ray politely listened to all of it, while I sat back and laughed.

When we left that evening, I was still smiling.

"You really had my dad going," I said. "He really thinks you're serious about going to school to become a plumber."

"I am," said Ray. And he wasn't smiling. But I was sure he'd never give up the biker lifestyle. Even when Ray enrolled and started going to the classes, I was sure that he was only doing it to impress my dad. Ray loved me and he wanted things to be okay between my parents and me. I was sure he was only doing it for that reason.

As time went on, he was still very active in everything we did with the club, but no one knew that while most of us lived an almost nocturnal existence, Ray was in school every day and doing really well. My dad was especially proud of him. Ray was soon invited to most of our family functions. He also started to tie his hair back and dress normally when we weren't doing things with the club.

I loved him so much that I didn't care if he wanted to put on what I considered a costume, for his daily life. Our sex life was great, he loved me and I loved him, so no matter what he wanted was fine. When we were with the club, I watched him like a hawk. Not because I didn't trust him, but because I didn't trust a lot of the women who hung out with the club. Ray was too tempting a prize for some of them.

Sex with Ray scared me. It wasn't that I was afraid that he'd hurt me or that things would get too wild, it was just the opposite. By then I'd sampled enough drugs to know that they weren't for me. But when Ray and I had sex it gave me the same kind of high. There were too many nights where we'd start out gently rubbing each other and end up slamming our bodies against each other with such ferocity that I was surprised we didn't hurt each other. Other times he was so gentle that we barely moved and all of the stimulation came from the fact that we were linked with the person we each loved most in the world.

There were times when it just felt like my insides just opened up to caress his dick because it was the missing part of my body. I just wanted it to go on and on and never end. Some of those nights it ended with the alarm sounding at six a.m. so Ray could go to school. I'd briefly open my eyes and realize that we had spent the entire night fucking but it seemed like only moments. Sometimes now, if I close my eyes I can still feel him thrusting against me while I suck on his tongue.

"Christina," he screams in the throes of passion. I can almost hear him calling my name now.

"Christina, what the fuck are you doing?"

My eyes snapped open and I saw Beth standing in front of me holding the phone. "It's for you," she said, staring at me. When a woman that is usually high stares at you, like you're doing something strange, it's an eye opener.

"Chis, we're leaving tomorrow," says Marcus. "The day after that it's going to snow here. We don't want to be riding bikes or even trying to, in slush and ice. I got something for you. I'll be by to pick you up at about eight in the morning. We need to get out of here as early as possible to make sure we're clear of the storm. Dress warm. I mounted a couple of side carriers to my bike for the trip. One of them is yours. You have about the same amount of storage space that you'd have in a suitcase. Motel accommodations are on me, but bring as much cash as you can spare."

After he hung up the phone, I saw Beth still staring at me. She had dried up sperm all over her but she was staring at me.

"That was Marcus," I told her.

"Uhm, I know that," she smiled.

"We're leaving tomorrow. Did you arrange a ride?" I asked.

"That was the point of me fucking those losers today," she smirked. "Give them a little pussy and they'll do whatever you want."

"Where'd you get a little pussy?" I smiled. "Yours is so stretched out that you could march a battalion in there."

"I'm not the one who was just lying in her bed, with her whole hand stuffed in her vagina and moaning her own name," she said. "Didn't that hurt? You were arched off of the bed with only your head and the soles of your feet touching it. Whatever the fuck you're on, you should stop being such a tightwad and give your best friend some of it."

As she started to turn away, I noticed the lines on her face. Beth was no longer the happy go fucky perennial party girl she'd been when we met. The years were beginning to have their way with her. The lifestyle is especially hard on women. Men can just buy a bike and join. No one cares how old they get or how fat. There are fat forty year old guys riding with twenty year olds behind them. I've seen and broken up fights between beautiful young girls who are trying to maim each other over beer bellied guys that they think will treat them better than the guy they're riding with.

Beth and I are the oldest women in the club now. Marcus protects me out of friendship and respect for the old days when King ran the club. Beth is pretty much the club pincushion. I'm still here because I love the life. Beth is only here for the drugs, the sex and because she doesn't know anything else.

I don't know why Beth and I are still friends. Maybe it's because both of us need to know that there is someone who will be sorry when we're gone. I don't know how it will end for us. Will we just walk away and go on welfare? Or will we end up road pizza after taking a ride from a guy who's too drunk to ride or just not good enough? Maybe we'll just be left on the road somewhere when the club rides away after we've lost a fight with some other stupid woman who wants to ride behind the guy we were with.




King of Hearts



It doesn't necessarily have to be that way. Maybe we'll just wake up in a motel after a night of partying and find out that the club has just left us. Or maybe we'll meet prince charming and he'll whisk us off to his villa in the south of France.

"Beth, what are you going to do when you can't ride anymore?" I asked her quietly.

"I'll always be able to," she says. "I've been doing this since I was eighteen and left high school. I'll do it until I drop dead. It's simple. There will always be bikers. Most of them will always be men and there are always going to be men who want to fuck a willing woman, even if she's fifty. Shit, some of them are even more turned on by the older mother types. And I have plenty of time before I'm fifty."

"But don't you want something else out of life?" I asked. "Don't you want to be more than just a..."

"Just a what?" she snaps suddenly. "Don't worry about what I want out of life, Christina. If you're thinking about doing something else, that's fine. Just go and fucking do it. I'm living the life I want to. Please remember that YOU had a chance to get out. You had an option. You could have had the life you're dreaming about with the man you dream about. I would have killed you to be in your shoes. So if you're regretting any of the decisions YOU made, you have only yourself to blame."

"Beth, just shut the fuck up," I screamed back at her. "You're the one who fucked it all up. I would have gone with him. I loved him. I'd have given all of this shit up for him in a heartbeat. Maybe I'd have dreamed about what I was leaving behind but I'd have gone. But I listened to your bullshit. I listened to all of that shit about how I was becoming a fucking house wife. I listened to all of that shit you spewed." I was pissed now and I let her have it.

"One last hurrah," you said. "One more ride. Remember that shit? You were the one who told me that one more road trip was what he needed to put the fire for the road back in his belly. You told me that it would change him back to the guy he used to be. But you were wrong, Beth. It just fucked everything up." 

"Maybe I was wrong," she said. "But at least, I wasn't selfish and stupid, Bitch." Her chest was heaving and there was fire in her eyes. She was on the verge of tears.

"I wanted him to want to stay with us just as badly as you did, Christina. We all did. You forget, I was here long before either of you showed up. He was fucking magic, Christina. But he wasn't just that way for you. He turned us from two or three groups of independent riders that nobody gave a fuck about, to one of the most respected clubs in the area. Do you remember the rallies? Do you remember the parties? We used to spend all winter together. We didn't fight. We never had to. We even got along with the cops. We went from more than a hundred strong to maybe twenty, now. We barely exist, Christina. I suggested that last road trip because I wanted him to remember the fun and what being part of the lifestyle meant. What happened with you was awful, but you're a grown ass woman. You do have the ability to say no. What you don't seem to be able to do is live with the consequences of your actions. You, at least, had a fucking choice."

Beth slammed my door and went back to her own room. I could hear her crying for a while after she left.

Back in my room, I thought about what Beth had said. And as drunk as she was, I had to admit that she was mostly right. I did have a choice. I just hadn't seen it at the time. He had loved me like there was no tomorrow. I hadn't had to end up here sleeping my life away and dreaming about...whatever my life would be like right now. This time Beth is the one with the choice, because sometime soon I'm going to have to give this up.

I don't know when it happened or how, but the doctor I visited explained to me that the pain I was feeling lately had come from damage to the disks in my back. He thought that it might have come from repeated exposure to the vibrations from the bikes traveling up and down my spine, or perhaps from the position I sat in when I rode.

Lately, I was taking so many painkillers before and after a ride that I knew I'd have to stop and probably soon. I didn't mind giving the life up any more. In fact, what we were doing was no longer fun. Maybe it simply wasn't fun doing it without Ray. I couldn't believe it, but I sometimes now dreamed of having with Ray what my parents had. And once again, Beth's words came back because I'd had a choice.

I fell asleep wondering if I really ever did have a choice. In my dream, Ray and I were talking again. He was telling me exactly what Beth had told me.

"The choice is up to you Christi," he said smiling.

"It's no consolation, I feel like I've been victimized," I told him. "I'm locked in my cell and you hold the key. Did you come here to steal my emotions, just to rob me like a thief in the night? Like the game that you play, the winner takes it all every time."

Like magic, he disappeared with the night once morning came and my doorbell rang. Marcus smiled at me and handed me something. "Go put em on now," he said. "I got you this too." He handed me another box.

I looked in the bag he'd given me. It was from one of the shops in the area that sold biker wear. I pulled out a pair of leather chaps. What was unusual about the chaps was that they actually covered my ass too.

"Marcus, I don't wear chaps," I said.

"They're for your back, Christina," he said. "Feel this." He squeezed the butt part and handed them back to me. The leather was two layers thick and there was something squishy yet firm inside of it.

"It's a gel pack," he said. "It'll dampen the vibrations so your back doesn't hurt as bad." I opened the box that he'd given me and there was a small seat cushion in it.

"I just want to make sure that you're as comfortable on the ride as possible," he said. "We're riding down to the Carolina coastline. It'll be warmer down there."

"Why not Florida?" I asked.

"Do you remember Gary Franklin?" he asked. "They used to call him Bog Dog because he loved to ride his Harley through the mud? He moved down there last year. He can ride all year long. But more importantly, he got a job with a contracting company. You remember Gonzo, right? Gonzo is one of their managers. They're always hiring day laborers or workers. He's pretty sure he can get jobs for most of us for the winter or as long as we need. When the weather warms up, we'll head back up here."

We headed out and Marcus had really done a great job. The chaps and the seat cushion were great. My back didn't hurt at all. Marcus was a good friend. He insisted that I wear a helmet, even though the state law that mandated them had been repealed.

As we rode down the road at just above the speed limit, I was glad to have the helmet on. It shielded my face from the fierce late fall winds. I tucked my hands inside my sleeves and held onto Marcus as the miles ticked away.

Lost in my thoughts, my mind drifted back to happier times. I remember when there were disputes between members and King would settle them. Guys fought or argued over the same things all the time. Women and money were the things they argued over the most. King usually let the women decide, when a dispute was over them. He'd always take me aside and tell me that some of the women in the club were screwing more than one guy. It was fine with him as long as all of the parties involved knew what they were getting into. He wasn't opposed to swingers or their lifestyle; he just didn't want to participate in it.

"You're mine," he always said. "If some of these guys want to share their women, it's fine. I don't though, understand?"

"I don't either, understand?" I always said right back.

That last winter, things were hectic. We were living two completely separate lives. We had the life with our club as we always had. We were holding swap meets and all of that to get them through the winter in comfort. But we were also socializing with Ray's friends from work. After finishing his two year apprenticeship from plumbing, Ray was working for the company my father worked for. He was also thinking about taking the test to become a licensed plumbing contractor.

I loved being with the club and wondered why the fuck we were associating with the people he worked with. They weren't like us. Ray even made me wear dresses and heels when we went out with them. I hated it. I felt like I was stage acting. I didn't even have a copy of the script so I'd know what to say.

Ray even slipped some times. Once or twice he even called me his wife. I hated the term wife. He finally started calling me his fiancé. I was able to stomach that just barely. I didn't understand why he couldn't just tell the truth. Why couldn't I just be his "old lady," or his "squeeze?"

Ray had also, in his desire for family, started inviting my parents over. At one of those get-togethers, my mom had brought out the baby pictures and she and Ray sat on the couch looking at them.

"When do I get to be a grandma?" she asked Ray.

"We're working on it," he smiled. I had no idea that we were even thinking about kids. Sure we fucked at least a couple of times a day, sometimes more, but in my mind, it was all about pleasure and sharing ourselves. I wasn't even considering getting pregnant. Once again, I thought it was just something Ray had said to placate my parents. He knew good and God damned well that there was no room for kids in the club.

A few nights later, while he was fucking the shit out of me, he told me to throw my pills away. "If it happens, it happens," he said. I knew from talking to some of the girls in the club that a man will say anything while he's fucking you. They all say they love you. They all say that if you get knocked up, they'll take care of you.

After he gave me a huge orgasm that I felt all the way to my toes, I begged him to do me one more time before he went off to work and left me alone for the day. "Can you get it up one more time baby?" I begged.

"Maybe," he said. "Throw those pills away and let's see what happens." I knew that Ray was just playing. He knew that it would take a while for the pills to clear my system and I wasn't going to get pregnant any time soon. But to call his bluff, I got up and threw my pills out the window. Ray fucked me slowly and romantically after that. I tingled all day long. We started right up again as soon as he got home. I didn't even notice that we didn't go to the club.

That became the norm. Instead of going to the club every night when he came home, it became more and more sporadic.

That spring, Ray did something that shocked the shit out of me. Usually during the winter we'd borrow one of the company's trucks to drive around in while we couldn't ride our bike. So when spring came and Ray told me he had a surprise for me, I was expecting a new bike to go with our Harley. We'd been talking about getting a second bike for a long time.

He put one hand over my eyes and led me outside. When he took his hand away, I looked around and didn't see a new bike anywhere. "Is it behind the car?" I asked.

"Christi," he laughed. "It is the car. It's a Mustang GT. It's got four hundred horsepower. It may not have the acceleration of our bike, but this thing will do a hundred and forty easily. When I get done with it, it'll be faster than that. I have to teach you how to drive so you can get a license."

"I'm not driving that thing," I snapped. "Why the fuck, do we need a car? We're bikers, Ray. We don't drive cars."

He kind of collapsed on our lawn then. As I continued to stare at the car as if it was poison, I realized that he'd been hurt by what I'd said. I sat down next to him and put my arm around him. I was sure that, as usual, he'd put a lot of thought into this and probably done it for more than one reason. But in my mind, it was spring and we needed to get the bike ready.

"My dad always wanted a Mustang," he said. That was the first time he'd ever mentioned his family to me, except for one drunken night when he'd told me about how his parents had passed and why it was important that I stayed connected to mine.

"Besides," he said. "We're going to be parents soon. And we're not going to be able to ride the bike with you pregnant. And I just don't see them making baby seats for Harleys."

The worse pain I'd ever felt gripped my body. Although it wasn't really physical pain, it hurt just as much. I'd realized that we had a problem. For all of that time, I'd truly believed that all of the talk about babies and getting married was tongue in cheek. I'd really thought that it was just something Ray talked about to please my parents. That day let me know that he was deadly serious. The man that I loved was trying to change me into some kind of Stepford wife. He wanted to rob me of my individuality and make me just like a million other stupid little women, who were basically just cows. They got up and made breakfast and fed their kids and made dinner. They did it over and over again until they died. Not me!

I had to come up with a way to tell him that what he was thinking about simply wasn't something I could do. I couldn't do it for him or any other man. Maybe he'd picked the wrong woman. But another part of me was saying that I loved him so much that I'd do anything for him. If he wanted me in June Cleaver dresses singing "Zippity do da," I was his girl. The two sides of my brain were at war.

Back in the present, I held onto Marcus tightly as we barreled down the highway. The long line of bikers changed positions often. I saw Beth several times and waved to her. I shook my head as I noticed that she had her hand between the legs of the guy she was riding behind. She smiled at me and waved her non-busy hand at me.

I saw a guy on a red Jap bike. He nodded at me as he moved past us. I nodded back to be polite because I had no idea who the fuck he was. His helmet and visor completely obscured his features. As he went past, I noticed that the girl riding behind him and giving me the finger was the same little bitch that I'd caught fucking in my bed. At least I knew who he was then.

When we stopped for lunch that day, Beth came over and sat at the table with Marcus and me. She looked at me shyly and then started talking. "Christina, I'm sorry about the other day," she said. "I should learn to just keep my big mouth shut. I was still high and sometimes...stuff just comes out of me that shouldn't."

"Beth, most of what you said was the truth," I said. "I guess in my case, it's a combination of things. Number one, I'm responsible for what happened. All of the choices I made were my own responsibility. But it's just that I miss him so badly, Beth. And it's a funny thing, but nowadays I find myself dreaming about all of the things that he wanted back then that I thought were stupid. I just don't understand it."

"Christi, there's no right or wrong, here," said Marcus. "Each and every single one of us is a different person. We're all at different stages of our lives with different priorities and different desires. We all learn and mature at different paces as well. If you listen to the oldies stations, there was a guy named Neil Sedaka who sang a song called, "Breaking up is hard to do." Well growing up is even harder. And from my perspective, you and King just grew up at different rates. I do know that he loved you something fierce, but at the end there, you and he just didn't want the same things anymore. And whether you're ready to hear this or not, you got the best end of the deal."

Marcus had been my friend for as long as I'd been with the club. He'd been my protector since Ray disappeared on me. But at that moment I was pissed at him. "What the hell do you know about it?" I asked. "I don't even know how you can say that. I still cry over that man every God damned night. I still reach for him every time I wake up and..."

"Yeah, but Christi, you caused it," he said calmly. "You broke his heart. You know that when it comes to love and sex and all of that shit, he just wasn't like the rest of us. Most of us hook up with someone and we know that when a large group of people is together for long periods of time there are going to be hook ups and what not. As long as it's done in a respectful way, no one really cares. If you look at Cherub and Tina, they've been together for a decade, but every once in a while, they both step out on each other. I guess it's just to try someone or something new. Neither one of them throws it in the other's face, so no one gets hurt by it. Tina and I have hooked up a couple of times and Cherub is my best friend." He seemed embarrassed by it and he looked at me carefully as he told me that.

"That's normal," I said. "It's only sex. Shit, sex is like eating. Everybody does it, but it's just better when you love the person. So who are you hooking up with now?"

"Well, there is someone I'm kind of interested in," he said. "But I haven't told her yet...Anyway, we're not here to discuss my sex life. King didn't see it that way, Christi. That's why he got that big assed building for the club to stay in, but he had a separate house for the two of you. He loved you. He wanted for the two of you to get married, quit the club and start a family together. He kind of grew up or at least grew out of the lifestyle, while you were still excited by it. The two of you just grew up at different rates. You were in different places in your lives." I nodded and he looked at his watch.

"If we get our asses back on the road we can be only fifty miles outside of South Carolina and at our last hotel by the time it's dark. How's your ba...?" I gently put my hand over his mouth. I didn't want anyone else at the table or close to it to know that I had back problems. They already called Beth and me the ancient ladies.

"It's fine," I said. "Soaking in the hot tub in our suite last night really helped."

"Suite...suite," said Beth in shock. Marcus got up then to hit the lavatory before we left. "I slept in a fucking sleeping bag on the ground and you were in a suite?" I grinned at her.

"Christina, you're supposed to be my best friend," she whined. "The least you could do is let me sleep on the floor next to the bed." She looked at me nervously.

"You probably didn't want me in the room while you guys were fucking, right?" she asked. I laughed.

"Beth, our suite has separate rooms," I said.

"Then I could have stayed in the other room until you guys got done," she said.

"We didn't get done," I said.

"You guys went all night?" she practically screamed. The look on her face told me that she'd be looking at Marcus differently.

"Beth, Marcus and I are not having sex," I said quietly. "He's just a friend."

"Are you stupid?" she asked. "You're riding on the back of his bike. He pays for the gas. He pays for the motels. He's feeding you. He bought you those padded pants and that seat cushion and you're not giving him any pussy? Why? Is it the color thing?"

Marcus came back then and I got up to leave. "Did you say you had a fucking hot tub?" she asked. Marcus shrugged his shoulders and she looked at him strangely. He looked at me. Beth slapped herself across the forehead then. "I'm such an idiot," she exclaimed. "I'll see you later. Let me know which hotel you're staying in this time huh?"

"What was all of that about?" asked Marcus.

"I think Beth is regretting her choice of back seats," I said.

As we drove down the road towards the next motel, I thought a lot about the things he'd said. He was probably right about people growing up at different rates. It made me think about all of the pain that King had gone through, losing his family. I realized after a while, that I'd become his family. Marcus had been right. Things I'd never considered began to make sense.




King of Hearts



Ray's insisting that we needed our own place. He'd been slowly transitioning us out of the club even then. His selecting some of the guys to run things while we were in our place was his way of grooming them to take over when we were gone. The rallies and other money making activities were his way of making sure that the club would survive when we were gone. He was trying to make sure that not only would the two of us survive, but the club would as well.

I think that back then he already knew that most people wouldn't want to live out of a shoe box forever. He also obviously didn't believe in the whole rotating bed syndrome. He never wanted to share me with anyone else. Even some of the things he did that bothered me the most, like when he called me his wife accidentally and I'd been offended by it; I'd love to be his wife now.

Back then I guess I was all about freedom. I didn't want anything legal tying me to anyone else. No one owned me, not even King. But thinking about it further, I've seen that in some ways we're all owned by someone else. Beth has never had a man of her own since she joined the club. She's probably the woman with the greatest amount of freedom of us all. What does it get her? She literally has to fuck any guy who asks her. Her legs are constantly in the air just to earn a ride or a place to sleep. All her freedom gets her is used by everyone. The men look down on her and the women hate her. She's free, though.

Then there's that fucking car. What I wouldn't give right now to be cruising down the road in one of those cushy leather seats, without the harmful vibrations and road noise. The worst part is that I can sometimes imagine what our kids would look like. I still don't think of myself as mother material, but my body is crying out for it. Even seeing little kids in the cars we pass, finds me staring at them and wondering what my babies might look like.

When we pull into our last night time stop, we separate as usual. Some of the bikes continue to the local camp grounds. At least the weather is warmer here in the south. I can't believe that the temperatures are in the sixties. We were barely cracking forty two days ago in Michigan. The newspaper I looked at, while we stopped at a gas station to pee, had a story about a huge storm that had dropped five or six inches of snow across the Midwest. If we'd left even a day later, we might not have made it.The rest of us separate, to find motels that match our budget. We'll all link up again in the morning before we ride the last fifty miles or so to meet up with Gonzo. I'll be glad to see him. He's a friend of mine as well. He's a big thick goofy looking guy. He always had trouble starting his bike. I think electric starters were made for guys like him.

I nod at Beth as she rides off behind her guy. The frown on her face tells me that she's not happy to be heading for the camp grounds. The guy she's with probably wants her as his bed warmer for the night again. And if she doesn't perform her duties, he'll probably leave her stranded and pick up someone else on the way, or simply choose one of the other unattached girls who might be riding with someone who's tired of her.

After we settle into the motel, I head for the hot tub as usual. This time the tub isn't in our suite, it's down the hall in the fitness area. "Sorry, best I could do," says Marcus.

I punch him gently on the shoulder. The warm water and the bubbles massaging my back are almost magical. "Christi," he says as he slips into the tub with me. "You're in charge. If you don't like the situation here, we'll just go someplace else. I have no idea what this will be like. It might be the most fun we've ever had, or it might be pure hell. Before I became a biker, I worked some factory jobs and they were just totally soul sucking experiences. You begin to feel like a machine after a while. So just let me know."

I nodded. I woke up several hours later and didn't know where I was. I was in a bed. My mind went into shock. The last time I'd awakened in a strange place had been the time I'd lost Ray. I reached down to see if there was anything leaking out of me, because I wasn't on the pill anymore. I felt stretchy material. And I was slightly wet, but not down there. I was slightly wet because I was lying on top of a couple of towels. I turned on the lights and laughed my ass off. I'd fallen asleep in the hot tub. Marcus had probably carried me into the room and put the towels on my bed so it didn't get soaked. He hadn't so much as tried to take my swimsuit off, let alone done anything to me. I knew Marcus. Not only would he not try to take advantage of me, he wouldn't let anyone else either. He'd covered me with a couple of those motel robes that everyone was always stealing. Nowadays they just charged your credit card for them if they weren't left in the room.

Bright and early the next morning we were up and out. This was going to be a big day. We had to drive into the town that was still sixty miles away, but we also had to find and meet up with Gonzo to find out about the jobs and still find a place or places for all of us to stay.

Marcus had arranged for us to all meet at our motel which gave us extra time to sleep and to have a nice breakfast. He tried to stuff me with both bacon and sausages and sweet rolls. He told me that we didn't know when or even if there'd be time for lunch. So we should eat while we could.

I had to admit it, being on the road again, even though Marcus made it tolerable, wasn't as much fun as it used to be. In fact, it was pretty boring and scary at the same time. We didn't know anyone. The drivers of cars and semis could be rude and even mean sometimes. They sometimes tried to crowd us off of the road either purposefully or just because they didn't give us a thought.

About an hour after we left the motel, we were cruising down the highway, cheerfully whooping it up. We were happy because after three days on the road the end of the trip was in sight. We were going about 80 just slightly above the speed limit when everyone pulled over into one lane. I wondered why.

"Car," said Marcus. I didn't understand. Very few cars could keep up with us. Before I knew it, I heard and felt the car as it rocketed past us. We were doing eighty and the car sailed past us like we were standing still. A couple of the younger crazier guys went after it to put the driver in his place. They didn't catch him.

As Trey slowed down and Marcus caught up to him I could hear them yelling over the sounds of their motors. I'd felt weird when the car passed us. The car had been a Mustang of some sort. The car was red with black trim. Even the wheels were red to match the body panels. The car was similar to Ray's Mustang but a different color. It also sounded beefier.

"We were doing better than a hundred and ten," yelled Trey. "And he just kept pulling away from us. Even on the curves that thing had only a trace of body roll."

"It was a Boss 302," yelled Marcus. "Those things are barely street legal. Some of them have roll cages and no back seats. They're designed for racing." Trey nodded his head.

About five miles further down the road my world came apart. We pulled into the parking lot of a seven eleven and the red car was there. As some of us headed for the rest room on the side of the building, others opted for coffee or snacks. Trey got off of his bike and his silly girlfriend stayed on it. Beth was nowhere in sight.

"Hey Grandma," said Trey's girl to me. "Is it hard on your old bones riding these days?"

I ignored her. She kept talking.

Beth wandered over to me. "My God that's beautiful," said the girl. "I want one."

"That cars starts at almost fifty grand," said Marcus.

"I wasn't talking about the car," said the girl. Trey looked up angrily to see what she was talking about. Beth's mouth dropped open and she grabbed my hand.

"I had no idea," said Marcus. "Christi, I swear I didn't know..."

"What?" I asked.

"I want that," said the girl, getting off of Trey's bike.

Trey erupted. "Sit your ass back on this fucking bike," he spat. He headed for the car. The driver of the car was placing a tray of coffee cups on the roof of the car while he fished for his keys. Trey walked up to him and started yelling. As the driver looked up he was eerily calm. I hadn't recognized him. His hair was cut so much shorter than I ever remembered, but once I saw his face, I almost blacked out. 

Trey took a swing at him out of pure rage. He caught Trey's fist, twisted his arm back on itself and Trey screamed in pain. He threw Trey almost casually on the ground and walked after him. A couple of the other guys got off of their bikes just as Marcus ran over and stood over Trey.

"King, don't hurt him," said Marcus. "He's young and stupid, but he's one of us."

"Hey Marcus," said King. "Hey, Digger, Phil, Steve. If I'd wanted to hurt him, I would have broken his arm instead of just twisting it."

Then he started laughing. Beth grabbed my arm excitedly. "Christina, it's..."

"Shut up idiot," I hissed. "I don't want him to see me like this. Get up there and find out what's going on. No, you'll just fuck it up. I'll let Marcus tell me."

"What the fuck are you two old biddies talking about?" asked the girl.

"The guy driving the Mustang is the old leader of our club," said Beth. "And he's kind of Christina's ex."

"You let that get away from you?" asked the girl, shaking her head.

"Well don't worry," she said. "I'll take good care of him."

She fluffed out her hair and licked her lips. "What do you think you're doing?" I asked.

"You know how this goes Grandma," she said. "Two guys fight over a girl. If the girl is willing, the winner gets her. Mr. Hotness just won me, by beating Trey's ass. He didn't even break a sweat doing it either. He must want me really bad."

"He hasn't even seen you yet, you psychotic whore," I said. I was so pissed that I'd already started clenching my fists.

"Well, once he does, he'll like what he sees," she said smiling. "He'll especially like it if I'm standing near you. I'm younger, I'm prettier, I'm built better and I'll do whatever it takes to keep him happy. Whatever it was, that broke you guys up, won't be an issue. I'll be..."

"Picking your fucking teeth up off the ground," I screamed as I threw my fist at her. My first punch landed squarely in that area between her nose and her left eye. She staggered back and I followed her. She looked shocked, but she quickly recovered. She started screaming and turned things into a girl-fight. She grabbed my hair and started trying to scratch me and drag me to the ground. I needed to get some distance between us so I kicked her in the stomach. As the wind went out of her I punched her in the side of her head and knocked her down. I got on top of her and straddled her. My legs had her arms pinned to the sides and I just punched her in the face as hard as I could. I reached back to punch her again even harder but before my fist landed, someone grabbed me around my waist and lifted me away from her.

"Let me go," I screamed angrily. "I'm going to kill her fucking ass."

"Christi, let it go. It's over," said Marcus. "Look at her. Whatever you were fighting over, you've already won. You and I aren't the kind of people, who need to hurt someone really badly to prove a point, are we?"

"I guess not," I said.

Trey was helping the girl, whose name I still didn't know, to her feet. Her face was a mask of bruises and her left eye was already starting to swell. Beth came over to us shaking her head.

"You did that all wrong," she smirked. "Your second good shot shouldn't have been to the side of her head. That was the one that really rang her bell but you should have punched her in the other eye so she'd have a matching set. And you didn't deliver on your promise at all. You told that bitch that she'd be picking her teeth up, but you never hit her in the mouth and..." She stopped talking when she saw the way that Marcus and I were looking at her.

I tried to be slick about it, but I looked around to see if King had noticed my fight. Not only did I not see him, I didn't even see his fancy Mustang anywhere.

"He was gone before your fight ever started," said Marcus. "But don't worry, I'm sure you'll see him around. It turns out that it isn't really a coincidence that a company is looking to hire bikers during the winter months. King owns the company we're going to work for. Gonzo works for him."

He looked in one of the bike's side carriers and got a small first aid kit. He had me sit down while he wiped the few small scratches I had with an alcohol wipe and then dabbed a first aid cream on them. I had one small scratch on my neck. The others were on my hands and wrists.

Digger, who was supposedly the club's leader, called everyone together. Marcus and I started to go to listen to what he had to say. Trey was going too. He told his girlfriend to just sit on the bike and shut up. She could barely stand up.

I knew Marcus would tell me whatever was going on, so I went over to the girl. As I walked up to her, she tried to look hard, but I could see that she was on the verge of tears.

I reached out my hand and she flinched. "I'm sorry," she said. "Please don't hit me anymore." I moved her hair away from her face and pinned it behind her ear. I reached into the first aid kit and got a chemical ice pack. I squeezed it to activate it and placed it against the side of her face. Beth started putting ointment on her scratches.

"I'm sorry too...uhm?" I paused because I still didn't know her name.

"Alicia," she said. "It really was my fault. Sometimes I don't know when to shut up and..." She just started crying then. She wasn't just sniffling as a release from the tension and stress of the fight, she was crying like a little girl. Beth and I looked at each other and shook our heads.

I wrapped my arms around the crying girl and rubbed her back as she sobbed uncontrollably. "I didn't mean any of that stuff, but they always tell you to act tough when you're scared so no one will know just how afraid you are. When I do that, usually people always back off, but you just started beating the shit out of me. I'm not tough..."

"Alicia, you don't have to be tough," I said. "You have friends now."

We talked for a little while longer until Marcus came back. "We have the rest of the day for most of us to find some place to stay at least temporarily," he said. "We're all meeting at a park near Gonzo's place for a picnic tonight. There are some interesting things going on."

Trey looked at Alicia. He saw the ice pack she was holding on her face. "Can I use that for a while?" he asked. She started to give it to him.

"What do you need it for?" I asked. His eyes went to the ground.

"My shoulder hurts really badly," he said. I shook my head. I got back off of the bike and got the first aid kit out again. I cleaned and applied ointment to several big scrapes he'd gotten on his arm when King threw him on the ground. It also appeared that he had a minor shoulder strain from the joint lock King had done. I gave him an ice pack of his own.

"Thank you ma'am," he said. For some reason he reminded me of a younger version of Ray before he started running the club and became King.

"Trey, you're not a bad guy," I said. "I think we just got off on the wrong foot. Can you do me a favor?"

He nodded. "Make Alicia wear the helmet. You're the guy, you're tough. If you guys get into an accident or a spill, you'll see it coming and be able to prepare yourself; she won't."

"But she says the helmet messes up her make-up and her hair," he said.

"Make her wear it. And just buy another helmet when you get the chance. Until then I'll scout around and see if someone has a spare so you're both safe," I said.

"Yes ma'am," he said. He handed the helmet to Alicia and she put it on.

"I'll see you guys at the picnic," I said.

I replaced the first aid kit as Marcus watched me, smiling the whole time. He shook his head and then put his own helmet over his long dreadlocks.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing ma'am," he said. "You just never cease to amaze me."

"Don't start with that ma'am shit," I said. "I already feel old enough as it is."

Surprisingly enough, Marcus drove away from the main roads. He had a hooded mounting place on his handlebars for his phone. He put the phone there and it served as a GPS unit. We pulled into a quiet neighborhood full of small well-kept houses.

Marcus drove into the driveway of one of those. As we got ready to get off of the bike, a head popped over the fence that shielded the backyard. The head had lots of frizzy reddish curls and an almost comically exaggerated nose.

"Hey Gonzo," I yelled. He looked at me and almost went into shock. He waved guardedly. He opened the gate and we walked into a small yard that was beautifully landscaped. Gonzo continued staring at me.

A short, chunky, cherubic looking woman came over and took my hand. "I'm Peggy, George's wife," she said. "He's not always this rude."

"I'm...I'm...I'm just surprised to see her," said Gonzo.

"Your name is George?" I asked.

"Christina, why are you here?" he asked.

"I told you that I was bringing someone," said Marcus defensively. "You said it would be fine."

"I didn't know it was her," said Gonzo.

"What's wrong with her?" asked Peggy. "She seems nice and..." Peggy had a soft southern accent that I loved as soon as I heard it.

"She is nice," said Marcus.

"Yeah, she's nice, I guess," said Gonzo.

"Is she like some old girlfriend of yours, Honey?" asked Peggy. "I don't mind as long as she realizes that you're ma..."

"Oh it's way worse than that," said Gonzo.

"Why, do you two have a kid together or something?" asked Peggy.

"Why would she want someone like me, Peg?" he asked. "Get serious."

"Well, I want someone like you," she smiled.

"Sweetie, remember when I told you the stories about my biker days. Remember the stories about me and RAY?" he asked. He emphasized Ray.

"Oh Shit," she said. "Is this THAT Christina?"

"Yep," he said.

The next few minutes were spent with the two of them staring at me like I had three heads. "Well, maybe it won't be that bad," said Peggy. "Let me show you where you'll be staying."

Peggy showed us to a really nice mother apartment over their garage. I was shocked. I'd been expecting much worse. The apartment had its own tiny kitchen and bathroom. While it didn't have a hot tub, I thought that we'd be fine.

She left us to look around the place while she went off to make lunch.

Marcus looked nervous.

"What were they talking about?" I asked.

"I'll take the couch," said Marcus.

"Okay, what are you talking about?" I asked.

"This place only has one bedroom," he said.

"Marcus, am I evil or something?" I asked.

"Not that I know about," he said.

"Then why did Gonzo treat me like I was the antichrist?" I asked, putting my hand on his brawny shoulder.

"We should probably get down there," he said. "It's kind of rude for us to stay here when we know they're making lunch for us."

I got the feeling that he was hiding something or at least trying to avoid answering me. I let it go but decided that he and I would talk soon.

Peggy made us a very tasty lunch. I found myself exchanging silent glances with Marcus that Peggy eventually caught wind of.

"Is there something wrong with the food?" she asked. Marcus and I burst out laughing.

"Just the opposite," he said. "Peggy, we haven't had a home cooked meal in so long we'd both forgotten how good food can taste. We pretty much live on fast food and snacks."

Peggy smiled and kicked Gonzo under the table.

"What was that for?" he yelped. "You already know I like your cooking. If I didn't, I wouldn't be this fat. Even Angela asks you for cooking tips and..." Peggy's eyes got big and Gonzo stopped talking so abruptly that it was like he tried to suck his words back in.




King of Hearts



"It's still nice to hear that people appreciate something you do," she said. Gonzo got the strangest smile on his face before he spoke.

"Peg, I really appreciate it when you..."

"Think very carefully George Zocara," she said, interrupting him. "Because, if you say something nasty, I'll never do whatever it is again."

That ended the conversation. Marcus and I tried our hardest not to laugh. We spent the rest of the afternoon getting ready for the picnic that evening.

Marcus had already filled me in on what was going on. There were a few details that hadn't been talked about yet. And I had some questions. The jist of it was though, that there were plenty of jobs available. Some of the guys would be warehouse help and others would be plumber's assistants. There were a smattering of other positions including truck drivers and gofers. One of the things that Gonzo hadn't mentioned was that some of the guys weren't going to be able to work here. The company's insurance and liability bonds wouldn't allow them to hire anyone with a felony.

Just as the sun started to go down, we all met at a nice park that was only a few blocks away from Gonzo's house. We grilled steaks, hamburgers, hotdogs, fish and some other things that I didn't recognize. We had a good time renewing old acquaintances. I did spend the majority of my evening looking out of the corner of my eye for that Mustang. But I talked to Beth and Alicia so we could figure out where we were. Alicia and I wanted to get jobs too. We got together and got Marcus to bring it up. Gonzo said that he'd look into it.

When we got back to his house that evening, he told me that Alicia and I should probably just come to the meeting at the office the next morning. Beth had decided that she didn't want to work.

"I'm already working," she said. "I take care of myself."

"But Beth, you take care of yourself by fucking a bunch of guys. They're really the ones who take care of you," I said.

"Well, I'm not as lucky as the two of you," she said. "So I have to fend for myself."

"What do you mean?" asked Alicia.

"Alicia, Trey is like your boyfriend. The two of you have a relationship. So he just does things for you," said Beth. "And Christina has Marcus. The two of them don't even have sex and he takes care of her like...well I don't know why he does all of that shit for her. But I'm on my own. Besides I don't have any kind of skills that they'd pay for. I don't know anything about tools or any of that other stuff. I dropped out of school and never finished high school. No one is going to hire me. I'll be okay."

Bright and early the next morning Marcus and I went to work with Gonzo. Most of the guys there were given applications to fill out and hired on the spot. About half of them were sent to the warehouse to start their orientation. The rest were sent elsewhere. By nine o'clock, some of the guys were sent home. They were the guys who had felonies and lied about it. By ten o clock only Marcus, Trey, Digger, Alicia and I were left in the large room next to the office.

The old lady who'd been giving out the assignments called Trey's name.

"Warehouse or Crew?" he asked.

"Neither," said the woman. "He wants to speak to you personally."

"I knew I wouldn't get hired," said Trey. He headed to the bank of elevators the woman pointed at.

"You," said the woman pointing at Digger. "You're to report to the offices above the warehouse after lunch. Until then I need you to fill out these papers. After you're done you can go and look around the warehouse. This should solve any problems you have with security."

Digger looked confused. "I'm going to miss the orientation," he said.

"You don't need the orientation," said the woman. "You're not going to actually work in the warehouse. You're going to be the warehouse manager's assistant. So your orientation will be different. Ray figured that since you're used to telling these guys what to do, you should continue to do it."

Digger looked really happy.

"Marcus Brown," she said. Marcus looked really nervous.

"Yes ma'am," he said.

"Oh boy," she said. "That won't last long." He looked at her strangely.

"Fill out these forms and then report to the third office on the second floor. You're going to be George's assistant," she said shaking her head.

Then she sat down and started working on something. "Uhm, what about us?" I asked.

She looked up at me strangely. It was as if she'd never seen me. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"Don't we get jobs?" I asked. I handed her our applications. "We're as strong and as capable as any of the men."

She looked at our applications and pointed at Alicia. "Warehouse," she said. Get over there now before you miss your orientation.

"Crew," she said pointing at me. "Your orientation is next door to hers, hurry up."

"Thank you ma'am," I said, and ran next door.

The orientation was just getting under way when I got there. Crew was comprised of a bunch of different titles and jobs but what we really did was to support the actual plumbers. My ex had built an impressive business over the past three years. It had been a lot of skill, with a little bit of luck thrown in.

I couldn't help but feel a bit responsible for his success. Ray, no one here called him King or Mr. Heart, had gotten involved in plumbing through my father. He'd completed his apprenticeship and started working on his contractor's license while he ran the club.

After he left me, he'd settled here and decided to become a plumber. He knew a guy here who owed him a favor. Johnny Hallo was the son of the owner of a large residential construction firm. Johnny got him hired to do the plumbing on one of the new homes they were building.

Ray put the same degree of planning and thought into plumbing that he'd done with running the club. He was soon being given entire houses to do the plumbing on and was saving the company money. Johnny convinced him to take the state test and get his contractor's license in South Carolina.

Less than a year after moving here, Ray signed a deal with Hallo Construction to design and contract the plumbing for all of their new homes. The Hallos built or renovated more than a thousand homes and small buildings a year. Ray had to hire a staff and lots of other plumbers. His business expanded quickly and now he had offices in two other nearby states. He also had a regular plumbing business that was on call 24/7 to handle emergencies.

My biker boy was a rich man now. Of course, he still occasionally went out and oversaw plumbing jobs. Our orientation was broken up into two sessions. During the morning session, we got our safety gear and had a long occupational safety workshop. The company took safety very seriously and fines were imposed for breaking safety rules.

The afternoon session was more intense. We were taught about all kinds of tools and devices that plumbers use. We were taught to identify and the purpose of different types of pipes and joints and what they were used for. That was in case a plumber sent us to get a certain tool or part; we'd have some idea of what we were looking for. Our purpose was to save time and wear and tear on the experienced, skilled plumbers.

At the end of the day we were given a test. Our group had ten people. The two lowest scores on the test would be gofers. Gofers made minimum wage. The next two lowest scores would be drivers. Drivers took the crews to their locations and also ferried people and parts back during the day. Drivers got two dollars above minimum wage. You also had to have a valid driver's license, to be a driver. The rest of us would be plumber's assistants. The PA's were paid 11 dollars an hour, with a raise every thirty days if you hadn't screwed up too badly.

I wanted to be a PA badly. Unfortunately, we had to wait until the next morning to find out our scores. After work, Alicia and I waited for Marcus, Trey and Digger to show up.

Digger showed up first grinning from ear to ear. Alicia looked evilly at him. "Digger what did you do to her?" I asked.

"He kept coming into the room and ordering me around," she spat. "And I thought we were friends."

"We are," he smiled. "...Just not during business hours. During business hours, I'm your boss."

"You're always my boss, dummy," she smiled. "You're the leader of the club."

Marcus showed up in time to hear that. He smiled too. "Alicia, if he gets on your nerves let me know. I'll send him a really huge order."

"But then she'll just have to fill it while I sit back on my ass," laughed Digger.

"Yeah, but I'll request all of the paperwork be done in triplicate and you can barely turn a computer on," smirked Marcus.

"Marcus, you wouldn't," whined Digger. "We're friends."

"Not during working hours," said Marcus. We all laughed until Trey came into the room.

"So what are you doing Trey?" asked Alicia. "Are you going to be a plumber's helper like Christina? I know you're not warehouse."

Trey just looked at us intently.

"He didn't hire you?" asked Marcus quietly. "That doesn't seem like him? He's usually pretty fair minded."

"And he recognizes skill too," said Trey, breaking into a smile. "I'm going to work as the assistant to the head of security. I was practicing my suspicious stare on you guys. I have to work on keeping all of you guys safe, but also making sure that you guys aren't stealing anything." He smiled again.

"I was really sure that he'd be carrying a grudge from our little fight," he said. "But he said that anyone who'd fight that hard for something he wanted was a person he wanted protecting his people and his equipment. Security is in charge of everything you know?" He turned and looked at Alicia.

"What's that miss?" he asked. "Copper pipes are very valuable."

"What are you talking about, idiot?" asked Alicia.

"Stand up and spread 'em," said Trey, pushing Alicia against a wall. He started grabbing all over her ass. "Okay, there aren't any pipes in here."

"No," said Alicia. "The part where the pipe goes is more towards the front. And the only pipe that goes in there is yours. And I'd better be the only woman you're practicing your inspection techniques on too."

"We aren't allowed to do that to women," said Trey. "We don't actually even do it to guys. We just escort them to the security room and call the police. I spent all frigging day learning all kinds of things that we can and can't do. I had to learn fire safety, evacuation stuff, what to do for severe weather, all of that crap. My head is about to explode. I just want to go out for a nice ride on my bike to clear my head."

"Oh, I am so there," said Marcus.

The guys went out for a ride, including Gonzo who pulled out his bike too. He hadn't ridden it in a couple of years so he was really rusty. The women stayed with Peg. We relaxed in their yard and talked about our days. Beth seemed really depressed.

"Are you okay, Beth?" I asked.

"Shit, it just seems like everyone has new exciting shit to talk about except for me," she said.

"We tried to get you to come with us," said Alicia.

The next morning, Gonzo, Marcus and I went to work early. It was mostly because of me. I was dying to find out my score. I wanted to be a PA badly.

I went into the office and started hinting around with Sally, the older woman who ran the office, but she wouldn't say a word.

"Sally, can you tell her whether or not she's a PA?" asked Marcus.

"She's not," said Sally sadly. "I wanted to break it to her gently, sir."

"I worked so hard," I said. It was hard for me to stop the tears.

"Can she take the test again?" asked Marcus. "Who grades the tests anyway?"

"I do," said Sally. "And it wouldn't matter. This isn't a bad thing. And she doesn't need to take the test again. She passed it. She had the third highest score. But the decision was made by someone above my pay grade."

"Who made the decision?" asked Marcus.

"I can't say," said Sally. "Your friend, Alicia, had the same thing happen to her. She had the sixth highest score in her group. But instead of being a warehouse runner, she's going to be the warehouse secretary. She'll still get the same pay and incentives, but it'll be less physical. Plus, since your friend Dennis has no computer skills, she'll do the bulk of the paperwork."

"So what will I be doing?" I asked.

"You'll be working with me," she said. "I'm sure in no time you'll probably have moved into another area and be ordering me around too."

In less than two hours, I'd grown to like working in the office. It was much less sweaty work and Sally was a fun person to work with. She knew the value of asking a person to do something instead of ordering them around. She knew almost everyone in the company and talked about them all as if they were her children.

The only person she wouldn't talk about with me was Ray. She protected every smidgeon of information about him as if it was the crown jewels. Even though he came and went through his own private entrance, everyone in the building knew when he came and left. His exhaust system sounded like a fucking race car. You could hear it all over the building.

After the first couple of days, I'd met most of the managers and a lot of the long-time employees. They all looked at me strangely at first. I heard a couple of them ask Sally, "Is that THE Christina?"

"Sally," I said to her once. "Why am I THE Christina?"

"This is a great place to work," she said. "We all love Ray. And you're THE Christina who broke his heart."

I didn't have much to say after that. The next day I asked her if Ray ever used the stairs and came through our office. "All the time," she said. I hadn't actually seen him once and I'd been working there for almost a week.

I figured that he was avoiding me. He'd cared enough about me to get me a better, easier job, but he was hiding from me. I couldn't believe that my Ray was so afraid of me that he was hiding in his own business. Wouldn't it have been easier to just fire me, or send me to work somewhere else?"

There was also the fact that I wanted to talk to him. I hadn't seen him in more than three years. He'd just disappeared on me without a word. The Ray I knew and loved was fearless. From the way that he'd easily dispatched Trey, he probably still was. So I couldn't imagine him being afraid of me.

Over the next few days, I made it my mission to find out as much as I could about Ray and his new life. The people I worked with were cordial and friendly. They talked about each other and they talked about themselves. But they wouldn't talk about Ray at all. I kept trying to come up with details about what happened to him after he disappeared or even why he disappeared, but I got bupkiss.

I started to think that since I'd been working for him for almost a month, that the two of us not running into each other was more than a coincidence. He was probably avoiding me. I wasn't going to put up with that. I started going in to work a little bit earlier, hoping to catch him coming in. I also tried staying a little bit later. Neither technique got me any closer.

I spoke to Marcus about it. He'd seen Ray lots of times since we started working there. Even Alicia who had never met him before we came down here had spoken to him on several occasions. She was clearly enamored of him. She actually gushed when she spoke about him.

I decided to take the bull by the horns. All of the personnel records were in the office and I had access to them. I found Ray's home address. One evening while the guys were out for a ride, I decided to drive by and see what his house looked like. I borrowed Peggy's car and drove there. It was in a gated community. So obviously Ray wasn't struggling financially. I parked a couple of houses down the street and looked over the place. It was a beautiful sprawling ranch house. I memorized every detail of it. The house had a wrought iron fence in front of it that was open. I crept closer to the house and looked into the backyard. It was beginning to get dark, but I could make out a very beautiful deck and a pool and what looked like a hot tub or spa. There were other shapes in the huge yard that I couldn't make out.

The house had a huge attached garage. The garage looked like there was room for at least four cars. As I walked around the property, I felt almost as if I was talking to him. Oh Ray, I thought. Your house is so beautiful. This probably could have been our house. This should have been our house, but I was just too stuck on what I thought I wanted. I guess you knew better than I did what was good for us. But then you always did. From the time we ran into each other in that hallway and we just said, "Fuck it," you always took care of me. And you did a far better job of it than I'd have done myself. 

Ray, I still don't know why you left me. Did you just grow up and leave me behind or did you think that I wouldn't have gone with you?

The light from your window, dances on the street outside.

Silhouettes on a blind tell me you're not alone.

And I know that you've got your reasons, but you're tearing me to pieces inside. 

It's...Before I could even finish my thought lights and a piercing siren robbed me of everything in my mind.

A huge guy in a security uniform grabbed me and threw me down on the grass. He rolled me over onto my stomach and cuffed my hands behind me. 

He threw me into what looked like a police car but had the markings from some private security firm on them. 

Twenty minutes later he dropped me off at the actual police station. "I caught her skulking around in the backyard of one of the houses in Chandler court," he told the officer in charge.

"Did you ask her why she was there?" the officer asked.

"Nope that's above my pay grade," said the security guard. "You guys always tell us to leave the interrogating to the trained professionals. All I know is that there have been several break-ins throughout the neighborhoods that border Chandler court, but none actually in our subdivision. The people there pay our security firm to keep it that way."

The guard turned and walked out of the police station. The officer in charge turned to me. "So what were you doing there?" he asked. "And why were you tress passing in the backyard?"

"I wasn't trespassing," I said. "A friend of mine lives there and I just wanted to see his house."

He looked at me suspiciously. So if I call him and have him come down here, he'll vouch for you and drop the charges, right?" he asked. I nodded.

"I hope so young lady," he said. "...Because if he doesn't, you're going to need your phone call, to get yourself a lawyer or get someone to bail you out."

I was taken to one of the interview rooms to wait, while he called. While I waited I considered all of the possibilities. I was sure that Ray would come down here and get me. He might be upset that I'd interrupted him from screwing whoever he had in his house. But at the same time, I'd been shocked because I suddenly had a clue as to why Ray had left me. The silhouette of Ray's partner had definitely been a female's, but she didn't look as if she was fully grown. Maybe Ray had a taste for the young stuff and I'd never known it. 

The thought of it, both shocked and sickened me. I wondered if Digger and Marcus knew.

A few moments later, the door opened and the same officer who'd put me in the room led me out of it.

As I sat down on a stool he and the other officers in the room all looked at the other end of the room where a woman was standing. Even from where I was sitting, I could tell two things. The first was that she was without a doubt the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen in real life. She looked like a fucking supermodel. But there was something off about her. As she came across the room the angelic look on her face vanished. Anger flashed across those blue eyes. She was dressed incredibly. She had a long duster type trench coat on. Under it she wore some type of light, spangled sweater. She had on a leather skirt that showed off incredible legs and her shoes had at least five inch tall heels. They were open toed shoes that showed off her pink toenail polish that matched her fingernails.