I grabbed him like that—said it made him feel like a kid being scolded. But he always let me do it anyway.
“Miss me?” he asked.
“Not at all. It was like a vacation.”
“Fuck you,” Jazz said warmly. Then, after a beat, “Thanks for coming.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You think I was gonna let you walk home? After all the work I did on this bike?”
Jazz finally wrenched his gaze away from me to focus on his bike. “Work? What’d she need?”
“No one rode her for three years,” I said. “Just a tune-up.”
Jazz glanced up. “You could’ve let someone ride her.”
“No, I couldn’t’ve.” That’d be… Sacrilegious. There was only one person who was supposed to slide onto that dark brown leather saddle, and that man was standing right in front of me. “Well, I rode it. But only to make sure everything was in working order.”
Jazz slid his hand over the navy chassis of the bike with a sigh like a soldier gazing at a photo of his wife back home. “I missed you, baby,” he purred to the bike.
I rolled my eyes. He was always so dramatic. But for some reason, I couldn’t stop watching him run his hands over the bike, watching the flexion of his hands and forearms.
I rolled my eyes to force myself to look away. “Don’t be weird.”
“How’d you get it here, then?” Jazz asked.
“Oh, the prospect,” I said. “Heath. New kid. He drove the truck with the bike in it, helped me unload it, and then I sent him off on his merry way.”
“That’s a lot of work.” Jazz ran his hand over the handlebars of his bike. “You didn’t have to do all that.”
“What was I supposed to do? Stick you on the back of my bike?”
Jazz laughed quietly; it was a low, warm sound that I wanted to hear endlessly. “Thanks, Tex. Really.”
I took off my hat just to scrub the palm of my hand over my head, an old nervous tic. “Come on. Let’s go for a ride.”
Jazz swung his leg over his bike. The afternoon sunlight caught his amber eyes, accentuating the flecks of yellow. He smiled, and suddenly we were eighteen again, fresh out of foster care with two beat-up old bikes and nothing but the open road ahead of us.
“Lead the way.” Jazz caught the keys I tossed in his direction. “You know I’ll follow.”
2
Jazz
The roar of my bike beneath me was sweeter than the birdsong I’d heard outside San Quentin’s gates.
There was no freedom like the freedom of the road—riding my bike felt like I’d just gotten a missing limb back. The wind was cool as it whipped against my face, smelling like asphalt and rubber and a hint of salt from the distant ocean. With my bike beneath me, I could go anywhere I wanted.
Even though the only place I wanted to be was at Tex’s side.
His bike was a few car lengths ahead of mine, roaring smoothly down the two-lane highway. His current bike suited him: big, burly, and loud, but still maneuverable and fast. Nothing like the rickety old bikes we’d purchased off a used lot at seventeen with the money we’d scraped together working odd jobs on Texas ranches. As soon as we’d aged out of the system we’d hit the road together on those piece-of-shit bikes, riding as far as we could before one inevitably broke down and we had to stop and put it back together.
We’d cruised our way west, spending two years getting into trouble and generally being minor delinquents to make each other laugh, until we’d ended up in Elkin Lake. We’d nearly been booted out of Ballast for trying to sweet-talk our way into an underage beer, but Ankh had taken pity on us and our shitty bikes. We got to talking, which turned into a place to crash, and then a place to work on our bikes at Ankhor Works, and then a job—and then a family.
Other than Tex, joining Hell’s Ankhor was the first time I ever felt like I had a family. Which is why I carried a little bit of dread about returning.
There wasn’t going to be a big welcome home party for me, that much was for sure. I’d be like a dog that’d made a break for it, returning home with my tail between my legs. I’d disappointed everyone, and the next few months would be spent re-earning their trust. I had to prove I’d changed.