2. Ranger

[ 2 ]

RANGER

NOW

Text messages were the bane of my life. Whoever invented them could get in the fucking sea, along with whatever cunt decided guitar music and hogs were irreparably bonded.

I scowled at my phone, wondering what the hell had possessed me to turn it on for the first time in weeks.

Months.

Whatever.

Locke: the nanna is all good. but she misses u bro. prob time u paid her a visit

Folk: Even the wind comes full circle eventually

Finch: After Jean, I’d better be your first call when you turn this phone on

Cam: Call me

And those were just the messages I hadn’t had the balls to delete. Not that I was scared of Locke. Or Folk. But I knew from experience that ignoring my friends—erasing them—hurt worse than missing them always did.

Wasn’t that scared of Cam either, but blanking him wasn’t a sustainable plan. If he really wanted to talk to me, he’d find me. Or his mad lovers would, and as much love as I had for Saint, I was enjoying my holiday from Alexei.

I was definitely scared of Finch, though. Calling her was a no-brainer unless I wanted to boot this phone into a sewage drain and take a shuttle to the moon.

It was too late to call Jean—late enough that the sky was starting to grey, mist hanging in the air. I rolled off the picnic bench I’d been parked on most of the night, claiming a corner of a yard that belonged to the smallest Rebel Kings chapter, and jammed a cigarette between my lips.

I lit it as I placed another call, counting on it ringing out.

Knowing it wouldn’t.

“There you are.” The voice of the closest thing I had to an ex filtered down the line. “My brother was starting to wonder if you’d been kidnapped by bandits.”

I scoffed, exhaling a cloud of toxic smoke. “No, he wasn’t. Folk doesn’t give a fuck what I get up to.”

“Not judging and not caring aren’t the same thing—” Finch spoke to someone who wasn’t me, clueing me into the fact that I’d likely bothered her at work, and there was every chance our conversation would be cut short by her dashing away to bring new life into the world. “When are you going to see Jean?”

“I’m fine, thanks. How are you?”

“Very funny. Go and see your grandmother. Or at least call her. I know you two have a unique relationship, but it’s been months, and it’s her birthday tomorrow.”

“I know.” Pretty sure it was what had led me to turn my phone on in the first place, though the decision hadn’t been as conscious as that. “I don’t know if I can get there tomorrow, though. Or, like, today.”

“Why not? What are you doing that’s so important? And don’t say it’s biker stuff you can’t talk about. Folk already told me it’s not.”

Fucking Folk. He could lie when he had to. Would it kill him to lie for me?

“Been busy, Finchie.”

“Doing what?”

“Riding.”

Finch clicked her teeth, but I was spared her bullshit meter tripping out by whatever kept her busy on a hospital night shift.

She hung up without saying goodbye.

I deserved it, but the silence she left behind had fucking thorns. A cloud of responsibility I had no interest in. Obligation. Cam’s message needed a response— it was obvious now that I’d read it—but it wasn’t his surly face that filled my mind. It was the face of the soul who’d raised me when no other cunt had given a shiny fuck.

Nanna Jean. My thumbs hovered over the screen, but whatever words I typed for her to play through her old lady voice app wouldn’t be enough, and texts annoyed her as much as they annoyed me.

That left more silence and I hated that. The quiet I’d been cursed with lately made me jumpy. Restless. I was halfway to my hog before I made a conscious decision to roll out of this arse-fuck nowhere compound.

My bike was a killer V-Rod. An old one with a souped-up engine that ran like a dream thanks to a few weeks it had once spent as the pet project of River O’Brian.

I flew out of the messy yard and hit the road, open space not hard to find out here in the sticks. The ride was fun and I settled in, but as much as I loved my bike, I wasn’t that much of a piston head. Truth was, I’d have enjoyed a magic fucking carpet just as much, cos it wasn’t about the roar of the engine or the rumble between my thighs.

It was the wind in my face.

The journey with no direction.

Fuck, I just loved to be free.

I burned a few miles, chasing the dream. But it wasn’t long before my phone blew up again, and ignoring it put other shit on my mind. The kind of shit I’d ride to Siberia to escape if I wasn’t worried it would lead me to the exact thing I was trying to forget.

He’s not Siberian.

Damn. There it was. That fucking face. That tousled copper-streaked hair.

That kiss.

Fuck’s sake. I squeezed my fingers around the throttle, as if speed and adrenaline were any match for the frisson of heat and hurt that rocked me. As if there was anything that could block out the clusterfuck of the last year.

Maybe if it started and ended on that kiss, I’d have been able to bear it, but that fucking face. It didn’t take much for it to disintegrate before my eyes, broken and bleeding, that meadow-green gaze vacant and staring.

Vacant and dead.

He’s not dead.And to him, the distinction probably mattered. But to me it all felt the same. Like it did with Locke, and I already knew Priest had fucked Viktor up worse than he had my old friend.

Priest.

Viktor.

My grip on the throttle loosened, engine noise fading as something wicked squeezed my heart. Lips at my neck. Hot hands on my skin. A slow smile that was better than any drug on earth. It was all there, so fucking sweet I could taste it. Then the void came, brief and brutal, before HD memories of one of the worst days of my life kicked in.

“He was fucked up.” Nash lit a blunt and passed it across my face to Rubi. For whatever reason, they’d decided to flank me as they delivered the good news, not giving me a moment to contemplate how they knew it would fucking kill me. “They kicked the shit out of him for months. Jacked him with smack and fucking tortured him. Honestly, I don’t know if he’s ever going to be okay after that.”

My bike slowed to a stop in the middle of the deserted road, the tarmac scuffing my boots, my heart lurching through the slow, excruciating skip it always did when Viktor forced his way to the front of my mind. As if it hadn’t been a lifetime since I’d last seen him. As if a kiss so fucking perfect I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t a mandy-laced dream had happened yesterday, not a year ago.

I brought a shaky hand to my chest, cursing that Russian bastard. No fucker had ever got to me like this. Not even Finch, and I’d loved her—I still loved her.

Not like that.

Not like this.

Whatever this or that meant. I didn’t linger long to find out. Running from the wrench in my chest was the only remedy I knew, and I hit the road hard, paying even less attention to my route than before.

I was halfway to fucking Devon before I tuned back in to my surroundings, but even the irritation that swamped me was better than thinking about the last time I’d been here. When I’d fucked up and put my foot in my mouth so bad Locke had almost thumped Nash.

It was definitely better than agonising over the fact that I hadn’t been there to protect Viktor when Priest had snatched him. That he’d been hurt so bad only Locke’s stubborn hero genes had saved him.

That he’d left without saying goodbye—actually, the fucker hadn’t even hung around long enough to sayhello.

Don’t think about that.

I didn’t. I thought about nothing, a skill I’d had to perfect to keep myself sane. Moody meditation while my wrist flexed on the throttle, bringing me closer and closer to the last place on earth I wanted to be.

Lucky for me, I had options, and I zipped through King territory if not undetected, at least undisturbed as I burned past Cam O’Brian’s literal house.

The route took me south to the Jurassic Coast, to Elm Lodge, where I paid a gangster premium for extended visiting hours.

I rocked up at dawn. They let me in, and despite spending the past few months cursing my inescapable connection to the Rebel Kings MC, this morning I was grateful to them. For their influence and generosity. For the regular cash deposits that allowed me to treat Jean how she deserved.

For the fresh flowers I found in her room. Thanks to some hardcore glaucoma, my nanna was blind, but she loved the smell of the lilies and fucking chamomile stuffed in a vase by her bed.

My gratitude evaporated, but my inner bitch was drowned out by the sight of my favourite soul tottering out of the bathroom, her white hair hidden by a paisley headscarf, dried clay on the clothes she wore for her Monday morning activities.

I paused in the doorway. “Happy Birthday, Nanna.”

She didn’t startle—the staff had told her I was on my way up. But her smile was so bright and pure it shocked me, jumpstarting my brittle heart. “Is that my baby boy?”

“Don’t be fucking cute. You know it is.”

Jean laughed. “All right, duck. No need for that language.”

As if she wasn’t the one who’d taught me how to turn the air blue. I ventured forward, reaching her as she got to the chair at the side of her bed, her navigation skills on point.

I knelt at her feet and cupped her soft face in my rough hands, kissing both cheeks. “How are you doing, Madam Raver? Miss me?”

Cos that’s what my nanna was—a fucking raver. Bit of Motown or soul and a glass of sherry, and she was anyone’s. I was just lucky she was mine.

Jean ran a hand along my jaw, feeling me out the way she had to now she could no longer see me. “It’s been cold.” Her thick northern accent wrapped around the words. “I’ve missed you like I’ve missed the sun.”

“It’s spring now, nanna.”

“That’s what your friend said when he brought the flowers.”

“Locke?”

“No, the one with the bad leg.”

Nash, then. As off-grid as I’d been over the past few months, it had been impossible to escape word that the vice president of the Rebel Kings’ founding chapter had come off his hog so bad he’d nearly lost his leg beneath a runaway HGV. News that had almost yanked me back into the vortex of friendship and brotherhood that drove me so fucking crazy.

Stubborn twat I was, I’d stayed away. If I couldn’t stick around for Locke, I wasn’t going back for Nash, but I’d kept my ear to the ground enough to know they were both doing good now.

Good enough to charm my grandma, apparently. “The one with the bad leg is Nash,” I told her. “Pretty boy, plays the guitar. He come by a lot?”

“Every week with that girl who smells like a dream. They bring music and lardy cake.”

Jean gestured vaguely to the unit by the window. A record player I hadn’t noticed sat on the wooden top, a vintage seventies vinyl already locked and loaded. Fucking Billy Ocean. I knew that album back to front. It was the soundtrack to my childhood, and I couldn’t look at it without seeing coppers on the doorstep telling Jean that my dad was never coming home. Still, it made her happy, and I was here for that.

Finally.

Guilt reared its ugly head, but it was short-lived as Jean filled me in on what I’d missed. Her six new hobbies and the parade of visitors Locke had recruited to pick up my slack. Nash and Orla. Folk and Ivy. Even Rubi had dropped by with a tin of sweet and soft bread buns that were still going.

I ate two while Jean talked. Rubi was annoying cos that fucker never let anything go, but the buns were good and I couldn’t remember the last time I ate anything that didn’t come in a paper bag or a soggy cardboard box. I was a shameless junk food stan, but even McNuggets were starting to piss me off.

The morning ebbed by in a haze of taking my nanna to breakfast and slouching against the wall as she shaped clay with her deft hands. I took her to lunch too, and as time passed in a flash of her fluctuating between patting my cheek and taking the royal piss out of me, it was hard to accept that I’d been gone so long.

That I’d wanted to be.

Then teatime rolled around and Jean shooed me out. “Go on with you. I don’t need you sitting around watching me get old. I’m busy.”

“With Mr Gregory three rooms down?”

“Sod off, you little shit.”

Rolling my eyes, I kissed both her cheeks again.

Then she shut the door in my face.

I took the hint and made my escape, desperate to be gone the second I wasn’t with her. Spending time with my nanna was like that. She was my happy drug. The only other person who’d ever made me feel content to just be was . . .

Fuck no.

I wasn’t thinking about him. I fucking couldn’t, my tolerance for the day already used up.

Find something to do. Keep busy.

If I swung by the MC compound, some fucker would grant my wish, but I had zero intention of visiting my biker brethren. Maybe I’d head east and see Finch. She had a place down the road from her parents’ farm. We didn’t fuck anymore—that ship had sailed into the sunset and sunk to the earth’s core, but I still liked being around her. Who wouldn’t? She was a funner, hotter version of Folk.

Don’t think about Folk.

Too late. The idea of riding away without seeing him or Locke hooked its claws in me and I resented it. I wanted to go. But I missed my friends, and the back and forth got under my skin. Indecision wasn’t my normal MO. I made choices, good or bad—mostly bad—and I stuck to them. Stewing in my feelings in a care home car park was fucked up.

But then, I was fucked up. Life I’d led, how could I not be?

My phone buzzed. Out of habit, I’d left it with my hog while I’d been with Jean, my hiatus from the matrix still going strong. But like a dickhead, I’d forgotten to turn it off.

A text lit up the screen.

Unknown Number: Nomad, it is time to come in. Do not make me find you

Unknown number, my arse. I didn’t recognise it, but the tone went straight through me. Like Alexei Ivanov’s dead-eyed stare. Do not make me find you. He fucking would as well. I wasn’t daft enough to believe I hadn’t seen him all this time cos I was just that good.

It was a weird thing that something settled in me as I ditched the phone and turned my hog north, towards Whitness, where the founding chapter of the Rebel Kings made their home. That a vaguely threatening order from a literal hitman calmed my tits. But that was life—weird as fuck and never boring.

I miss him.

Not Alexei. The other Russian, and this time, I didn’t fight it. I gunned my engine and hit the road, hoping some time with my brothers would ease this fucking pain.