I stuffed the fear down deep inside me, and let the other part take over. I couldn't let the fear control me any more. No more running, no more hiding.
No more chicken shit self pity.
I rode through the old part of Vegas, and I could feel myself begin to settle into the bike before too long, my body responding to the familiarity of riding again. It was blazing hot in the late afternoon sun, and the wind on my face felt only slightly cooler as I rode out of town.
I didn't know where the hell I was going. I just knew I needed to ride. I felt myself rolling along the 167, with its winding roads and expansive scenery, and I opened the bike up a little. She seemed to possess the same kind of pent up rage I had, and she responded gratefully to the extra throttle.
I missed this. I missed the feeling of freedom that riding on the open road brought. I missed having the time to settle in with my thoughts, to work out how I felt about things in my head. When April and I would argue, back in the early days of our marriage, mostly the times when I was being a douchebag and I knew it, I'd head out for a ride and clear my head. I'd run through all the reasons why she was wrong - it would be a short list, usually - and then I'd start to admit to myself that she might be right. It seemed easier to do that on the bike, easier to clear my mind of my pride and stubborn will.
April knew I had to ride. She knew it was a part of who I was, even before I joined the club. It was a part of my soul.
Just like the club.
Tank had introduced me to the club. We’d met in prison. He had told me that the MC was the purest kind of family he'd ever had. That was true, at least it had been true before all the shit that had happened. It was the purest, most distilled sense of family I'd ever known. Hell, it was really the only family I'd known.
Of course, Tank was dead now, killed by that family.
I craved the sense of family that being part of the club meant. It was something I'd never had before the MC. My father sure as shit wasn't my family. He was a fucking sperm donor, some trucker - or at least that's what my mother thought. She wasn’t my family either - more concerned about getting lost in a bottle than anything else.
After I'd done that short stint for embezzlement, my options were limited. And I'd always ridden a bike, so when Tank vouched for me, it was a no brainer. By the time I was patched, that was it for me. April and I were lifers. We were married to each other, but also to the club. Back in the early days, before Mad Dog started to get greedy, life was good.
It was only later that things started going sour. And then MacKenzie was born, and everything fucking changed.
~
The background was a mixture of beeping and whirring and buzzing. April lay in the hospital bed, sweaty tendrils of hair around her forehead, holding MacKenzie. When April looked up at me, her expression a mixture of exhaustion and complete joy, I thought I would melt.
"Come on," she said. "Come hold your daughter."
I don't think I'd ever been scared so shitless in my entire life. There I was, this tatted-up biker, standing there in my fucking leather cut, the one that told the world I was a hardened criminal, and this thing that weighed 7 lbs 8 ounces was making me terrified. I hesitated, and stood there, my feet practically welded to the floor, just looking at April.
"I don't know," I said.
She grinned at me. "Get your fucking ass over here and hold your daughter," she said, her voice slurred from exhaustion. "Quit being such a goddamned *."
~
That moment, holding MacKenzie...it changed everything. We were different after that, April and I. Fuck, I was different after that. It sounds cliché - a changed man. But I was. I was loyal to April, always had been, back in those early days of our marriage - but not in the sense that I never got any strange. April knew I got some on the side, now and then, knew I partied hard at the club. She was okay with it, as long as I came back to her. But the day MacKenzie was born, all that shit stopped. There was just something about it that didn't seem right, that didn't fit with the man I wanted to be, the father I wanted to be to MacKenzie.