2. Alto

2

ALTO

“ W hat the hell?” I try to read the message from Harlow, Prez’s daughter, but the more I try, the more confused I become. I notice Bane and Colt are in the message too. She added them to the chat, and I can’t be reading it right because there is no way Prez’s daughter would message us this.

I glance around the tattoo shop, making sure no one can see me look at my phone in question, especially Prez. If he found out Harlow messaged us this, he’d strip me of my title, burn my vest, and exile me from the club.

No one fucks with Harlow. Especially me, the Vice President. It’s one of the club rules. She’s off-limits and forbidden. Anyone who tries anything will probably end up dead. We all have one job when it comes to Harlow.

Protect her from a distance.

I set my phone down and stretch, trying to make the busy day leave my body. My client just left, and we had an eight-hour session for his back piece. It was intricate. A kitsune wrapped in a cherry blossom tree with lightning shooting across the sky. Something that took concentration and a steady hand. My back hurts. My eyes hurt. My fingers hurt.

But damn, I love my job.

“Hey,” Bane grunts from my doorway, leaning against it with his big body. He is massive and my tattoos cover his arms and neck, back, and legs. He’s covered. It’s one of the reasons why he is our Sergeant at Arms. No one dares to fuck him over. He has two nose rings and a tongue ring, a shaved head to show the tattoo I did on his scalp too and damn, the man reeks of trouble.

His outside matches his inside too. He is by far the grumpiest asshole I’ve ever come across.

“Did you get that text?” he asks, not specifying who it was from because I knew.

“I did. I found it odd.” It’s late. Nearly two in the morning. We’ve been closed since midnight, but I was so close to being done with the second session of my client’s back tattoo, I decided to keep going.

“Maybe she really does want us.”

I roll my eyes and sigh while Bane slaps the cocky, arrogant dumbass—Colt, our Road Captain. His outside matches his inside too. He is tall and lean, with green eyes that make girls fall over themselves to try and get a piece of pretty boy, as the club likes to call him when they’re in a teasing mood.

I crack my neck and groan. “Don’t even joke about something like that,” I say seriously. “Imagine what Grizzly would do to us? Don’t even put that out in the fucking universe, Colt.”

He lifts his hands in surrender, a stern look on his face as his lips pout. “I was only joking, Alto. I didn’t mean anything by it. I doubt she meant to send that to us. It isn’t like her.”

“She included all three of us. She knew exactly what she was doing. Little princess is trying to get us killed,” Bane practically growls. “I knew she’d be trouble.”

“You didn’t know shit.” I wipe down the seat my client was just in, disinfecting it from the sweat he poured while I dug into his skin with a needle.

“Prez can’t find out she messaged us,” Bane states. “I say we delete it and forget she ever messaged in the first place.”

“You’re a dick,” I tell him, tossing the paper towels in the trash.

Bane shrugs as if he doesn’t care, but his scarred mouth twitches, giving away that he does.

I think deep, deep, deep down, somewhere in the hard iron shell of Bane’s heart, he’s a teddy bear. I’ll never admit that out loud. I like my life. I don’t feel like dying.

“I don’t know. She sounds drunk. There are three x’s in sexxxy,” Colt points out, showing us his phone. “See? One. Two.” He taps the screen. “Three.”

I roll my eyes and Bane elbows Colt in the stomach. He doubles over, dropping his phone on the ground, and coughs.

“I’m fine,” he struggles to say.

“You shouldn’t be,” Bane says. “This isn’t a fucking joke.”

Colt gasps for air and nods. “Okay, I’m done. I swear.” He finally lies on the floor, staring up at the ceiling as he makes grunting noises from the pain. “Did you have to hit me so hard?”

Bane grunts, “Yes.”

“Ass,” Colt mumbles.

I take out my phone and stare at the message again, something wrong fluttering in my chest. I’d be a fool if I didn’t admit I find Harlow fucking beautiful. I never felt anything for her when she was underage. She never crossed my mind like that, even when she turned eighteen I had no feelings for her at all. I only noticed her as the Prez’s daughter.

But then she turned nineteen, and when she came home to the clubhouse for one of her college breaks, I won’t lie and say my heart didn’t skip a little fucking beat. She turned into a beautiful woman, and if my memory is correct she’ll be turning twenty in a week.

“I think she might be drunk.” I read the message to confirm. “She has to be. She never texts like this.”

“Oh? Have you been texting her?” Colt flips onto his stomach and props his chin in his hands. “Do tell.”

“Fuck you, gossip queen. No. You know what I mean. When we check in on her, she doesn’t text like this.”

“Yeah.” Bane rubs his chin with his hand. “She sounds wasted.”

I sigh, tilting my head back and feeling slightly annoyed because all I want to do is go home, take a hot shower, stretch, and go to bed. I won’t be able to sleep if we don’t check on her. I’m too worried.

“I’m worried,” Colt admits through his playful demeanor. “I say we hop on our bikes, go over there, and see what’s going on. If she’s okay, we leave. At least we’ll know.”

“And if she’s drunk, we’ll get our asses handed to us.”

“It isn’t our fault she’d be drunk, Bane,” I point out.

“Isn’t it? Doesn’t he like one of the members tailing her at all times? Where are they?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if she told Grizzly to back off so she can have some privacy. Grizzly always gives in when it comes to Harlow. She’s his everything,” I reply to Bane.

“Yeah, well, maybe he should keep a better eye on her then.”

“Don’t be a dick.” I stretch again, this time my back pops and I groan in relief.

“Save it for the bedroom,” Colt teases.

“You’re annoying.”

“Am not,” Colt mocks me.

“No, you are,” Bane says seriously, even though I was kidding. “Let’s go then. Talking about it isn’t going to make her any less fucking drunk.” He pushes off the doorframe, his heavy boots stomping on the floor as he heads to the front door. “Well, are you fucking coming, or do I need to hold your hand and help you on your bike?”

“Why is he such a grouch?” Colt asks, jumping to his feet.

I turn off the light to the studio, gathering the store’s keys from my pocket. “Only Bane understands Bane.”

No one knows what happened to Bane or how he has four scars down his mouth. It’s a fucked-up nickname now that I think about it. The club gave him that name after Bane in the Batman movies. He doesn’t seem to mind, but maybe it isn’t about the cage on Bane’s mouth, but about his attitude.

Colt strides out the door first and I lock up behind me.

“She better not be drunk. I’ll be furious. Middle of the damn night,” Bane grumbles under his breath as he mounts his bike.

All of our bikes are custom from the MC’s bike shop. Bane’s handlebars are long, and the body is painted a midnight black, but in the right light it shifts into a deep red.

“Man, I remember when I restored this beauty,” Colt says, again, just like he does every single time he gets on his bike. His is a classic. He found it when it was nothing but a tossed-away frame in a junkyard.

“Yeah, we know. Why don’t you tell us again for the thousandth time?” Bane hooks his helmet on, his sarcasm obvious.

Colt doesn’t catch on. “Well, I was seventeen years old?—”

“Oh my god. Shut the hell up. We know, Colt. We know. I’ll pay you thirty bucks if you don’t speak for the next three minutes.” Bane’s bike grumbles to life.

Colt pinches his lips together, bouncing on his heels, dying to speak.

He won’t be able to make it.

I remain calm, not letting Colt’s story bother me at all. Colt is proud of his bike. He loves it. I’ll gladly listen to whatever makes my friend happy, but Bane doesn’t have that kind of patience.

“But I got such a good deal on it,” Colt blurts after two minutes, and Bane rolls his eyes, driving away from us before Colt can blurt out his story.

I chuckle, following Bane on my bike, then Colt follows.

The night is dark, clear, and the stars are out by the thousands. It would be the perfect night for a long ride, but as we drive down the road, the desert on either side of us, I know I don’t have time to enjoy it.

If Harlow is drunk, a part of me will want to take her to her father, and the other part of me is going to want to spank her ass for putting herself in harm’s way.

And I have no right to think about that.

We’re riding for about five minutes before Bane is pulling off the road. Confused, we follow him and he parks, stands, and unzips his pants.

“What the fuck, Bane?”

“I gotta piss.” He shrugs without a care in the world.

Colt chuckles and I lean against my bike, waiting for Bane to be done. The man runs on his time, no one else’s.

“Do you think she’s okay?” Colt asks me. “Do we take her to Prez when we find her?”

“Nah,” I say, kicking the sand with the tip of my boot. “Come on, she’s only trying to have fun with her friends. She’s her own person. We shouldn’t have to tell Grizzly everything when the entire point of her living on campus was to have her own life. What if someone told on us when we were that young? We would be pissed. And she wouldn’t trust us anymore.”

The loud stream of Bane still pissing sounds in the background.

“Jesus Christ. You couldn’t do that at the shop?” I yell at him.

“Didn’t have to at the shop,” the grump explains.

“I call bullshit on that,” I retort.

“Why do we care about her trust?” Colt practically whispers.

“We shouldn’t. At all. I’d rather not have her pissed at us though. “

“She’s pretty.”

I jerk my head up and press my finger against my mouth to tell him to be quiet. “You can’t go saying shit like that. No. No.”

“I’m only saying what we’re all thinking.”

“I don’t give a fuck. We aren’t allowed to think that about the Prez’s daughter. You know, our best friend. We’ve been friends with him our entire lives. We can’t think that. So don’t. Get it out of your head right now.”

My phone vibrates again, then I hear Colt’s.

Bane’s must go off too because he’s tucking himself back in his pants, then digging his phone from his pocket.

“It’s Harlow,” I announce.

“I can read.” Bane’s attitude is starting to piss me off.

“Is anyone else nervous about the fact that it’s a picture? I’m afraid to click on it,” Colt says.

Yeah, I’m nervous. Drunk pictures are never good.

I click on it. My heart races when I see her smiling face holding up a peace sign. It’s an innocent photo, but I can tell she’s wasted by how glassy her eyes are.

My phone dings again and it’s of her and her friends. She outshines them—even drunk, her beauty is unreal. I rub a hand down my face, angry at myself for thinking that. It’s okay to think someone is beautiful, right? Doesn’t have to mean anything.

A video comes through next and since it’s on all three of our phones, the sound echoes.

“Go, go, go !” is chanted by Addison, one of Harlow’s roommates.

“Is she shotgunning a beer?” Colt questions.

I exhale with a shake of my head, watching Harlow chug the beer down then toss the can the opposite direction. “We have to go get her. This isn’t like her at all,” I say.

“She’s nineteen. This is her. This is what kids do when they’re that young,” Bane explains. “Just because she’s Grizzly’s daughter doesn’t make her special or exclude her from the basic activities all the other teens do.”

Our phones ding again, only this time it’s a picture of Harlow hovering over the toilet, sick, no doubt from the beer chugging.

Meredith and Addison send selfies to us, then another of Harlow passed out on the floor.

“Fuck.” I tuck my phone in my pocket again and hop on my bike. “We better get going before she wakes up and feels like she can down another beer.”

“Grizzly would be pissed. She knows better.”

I snort. “Bane, shut the hell up. Of course she doesn’t know better. She’s nineteen. You just contradicted everything you said.”

He gives me the middle finger as he hops onto his bike, but my phone begins to ring before I can take off.

Annoyed with how many times I’ve had to fish this thing out of my pocket, I stare at the screen.

Harlow.

Only this time, it’s a phone call.

“Harlow? What the hell is going on?”

She hiccups. “You sound so hot over the phone,” she slurs.

“You’re drunk. We’re coming to get you. Don’t move. Are you at the apartment still?”

She giggles. “I’m not telling. You’ll have to find me.”

“Harlow.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Just tell us where you are.”

“Nope. Is it you, Bane, and Colt? I’ve had a crush on you guys since forever,” she mumbles.

“You’re drunk. You aren’t thinking clearly. Tell us where you are,” I demand.

Bane’s jaw ticks with frustration and I can tell Colt is getting worried as he takes a step forward.

“I’m fine,” she says, just as something shatters and the line goes dead.

My heart drops and my stomach turns. “Harlow?” No answer. “Harlow!” I yell, but the call has ended. “Something’s wrong. Something broke in the background.”

“Let’s ride,” Colt says as if we’re going on a regular run.

This time, I place my phone in the front jacket pocket and hop on my bike. The rumbles of the engines sing throughout the night, the road disappearing into the thick of the darkness.

We ride it anyway.

Harlow better be okay.

Prez will kill us if she isn’t.

I have to keep that in the forefront of my mind. She’s my best friend’s daughter and it doesn’t matter how beautiful I find her. Loyalty to my friend means more than Harlow does.

That’s how it is and that’s how it has to be.