Undeterred, she shook her head and kept smiling. “That’s home.”
And then the most magical sound reached her ears: bikes.
Roaring up from behind, riding the dividing lines between the lanes, she spotted a Harley in each side mirror. The bikes moved up alongside the truck, their riders covered in denim and old cotton and leather. Through her window, she recognized the rider nearest her. He had long legs encased in bootcut jeans, dirty Timberlands, two sleeves of tattoos, their bright colors burnished by suntan. She recognized his dark stubble, the dark locks of hair that curled from beneath his helmet, the black sunglasses, that smirking half-smile he wore all the time. In his black leather Lean Dogs cut, he looked almost medieval, a warrior of a sacred order that recognized neither time nor progress. Militaristic, dangerous. There was a defiance there, a proud middle finger thrust skyward at anyone willing to glance his way.
Brat, Ava thought affectionately. Because that’s what he was, under the threatening façade. Her big brother Aidan was a brat-and-a-half.
He gave her a sunglasses-and-stubble smirk before he surged ahead, and slid into her lane in front of her. The other rider joined him in perfect unison; they rode in formation so much the bikes were a part of them; they dove and swooped like swallows, making the heavy-bodied Harleys look slick as imported crotch rockets. Beside Aidan rode his best friend, Tango. She recognized his slender, dancer-like build, the tats on the backs of his fingers. Tango – Kevin Estes, in reality – had come into the club during his sophomore year of high school. He’d dropped out, toughened up, and patched in. His past was a study in tragedy, so he’d ditched it, and thrown himself into the MC. He and Aidan had been inseparable friends since they were sixteen.
It took Ava a moment to realize that Ronnie was having a minor panic attack in the passenger seat. “What thehell? Are they trying to get themselves killed? They almost ran you off the road!”
“That’s our welcoming committee,” she explained.
“Yeah.” He tugged at his seatbelt, pulling it tight across his chest. “Some welcome.”
Ava felt guilty about the note of fear shivering in his voice – honest, she did – but she was flooded with that old exuberance she could never contain. The growling of the bike engines, the sight of the running black dog patch in the center of the boys’ cuts, the way the other drivers cast dark looks toward the tatted riders she knew and loved so well – all of it brought a sick satisfaction boiling up inside her, filling her like steam, leaving her warm and proud and excited like a little girl. It was a secret world, that of the one-percenter, the outlaw biker, the true legit MC. Ninety-nine percent of all bikers were law-abiding, most of them weekend road warriors, motorcycle enthusiasts, mechanics, midlife crisis victims looking for an outlet. All of it was very legal and above board. Bikers of all ilk earned sideways stares, but only one percent of them had earned the right to be feared. Only one percent had the right to wear three-piece patches on their backs. The Lean Dogs Motorcycle Club was one of the largest in the world – a counterculture giant of business, both legal and illegal. An international force to be reckoned with. The thing that made petty thieves and small-time street gangs shake in their sneakers. The feds couldn’t shut them down; sure, a guy got collared here and there, but the club itself survived. Thrived. Not the FBI, ATF, Interpol, CIA, or any domestic law enforcement agency had been able to crack the brotherhood.
Ava was insanely proud of that, because she had too much of her rebellious mother in her. And because she had too much of her vice president father in her, she reveled in the counterculture royalty of her roots.
Oh, this wasn’t supposed to be happening. She had a college degree! She was getting her master’s in creative writing! She wasn’t just a biker girl, not anymore.
She envisioned her mother’s face, framed in her thick waves of honey hair, her eyes hazel and bright and bracketed by lines from the sun and the hard years loving an outlaw. “You can add new parts, baby,” she imagined Maggie saying. “But you can’t lose the parts of you that were already there.”
That was most likely true. Maggie tended to be right about most things.
Ava lifted a finger and pointed through the windshield. “The one on the left’s my brother, Aidan,” she explained to Ronnie. “The one on the right is his friend, Tango.”
“Tango?” She saw his incredulous expression from the corner of her eye. “His name isTango?”
She’d been getting that reaction since the first grade, when she’d been assigned a family portrait, and she’d labeled her family members. “Ghost,” as the other kids had explained, was not a real name. She’d burst into tears then. Now, she felt only a press of heat beneath the skin of her face.
“That’s his club nickname,” she said. “Not his real name.”
“So ‘Aidan’ is your brother’s nickname?”
“No, that’s his real name.”
“So just some of them have nicknames?”
It shouldn’t have – his curiosity was valid – but the question grated against her nerves. Her fingers tightened on the wheel as she followed the boys through the next turn and down the long stretch of Industrial Road. “Well, obviously, when you meet Ratchet, it’s safe to assume that’s not the name his mother gave him.”
She felt his gaze against the side of her face. “Yeah…okay…”
Ava sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m just…” She gestured to the road in front of them, the bikers leading their way.
“Excited,” he said, some of the hurt leaving his voice. “I get it.”
She glanced over, searching his handsome features for some sign that he understood the tumult of emotions rolling through her. “You do?”
He offered her a quick smile, tight with nerves. “Yeah, I do. It’s been a while since you were home.”
“It has.” A shiver stole through her as she faced the road again. This familiar, well-traveled road.
She’d ridden her green Huffy bicycle down this road. She’d stood at the edge of this road, hand shading her eyes from the relentless summer sun, as the old cracked pavement leapt against the soles of her feet and rang with the thunder of the approaching phalanx of bikes. She’d thrown water balloons at passing windshields with Aidan and Tango on this road. She’d walked down the white line of this road, in the dark, her hand dwarfed inside the big tan hand of the man she’d loved. She’d learned to drive on this road. This road – maybe even more than the road where she lived – had raised and shaped her. It was threaded through her veins, stamped in her DNA.
They passed a clump of rangy pine trees, their bases tangled with honeysuckle, and then the entire right side of the road opened up, the sprawling complex of buildings along the river unfurling toward the water, toward the cross street, a city unto itself.
“There.” Ava reached across the cab of the truck and pointed.
