"Eew!" she yelled. "Horse poop is gross!"
"It is," I agreed. "Just imagine if you had to clean it out of the barn."
"Was your dad punishing you?" she asked. "My dad wouldn't make me clean up horse poop."
"Nope, it was just part of growing up with horses on a ranch. But you should go tell Mr. Austin he was punishing me, making me do all those chores," I said. "He'll laugh." As she scampered off to talk to my dad, I stood there and drank it all in. I was sweaty and covered in muck and grime. My shoulders ached after hours of digging holes in the hard ground, and my back kept reminding me I wasn't twenty years old anymore.
Despite all of that, I could feel this place beginning to permeate me, eating away at all the shit from Los Angeles, the shit from the club. It had been a long time since I felt alive. More days than not over the past year, I'd felt dead.
I watched MacKenzie tug at my dad's sleeve as he stood there, talking to April. I should feel happy, watching all of them relaxed, having fun. But I didn't. Instead, a feeling of fragility washed over me, this sense that everything could change in a moment. One extreme meant the pendulum would inevitably shift.
Crunch caught my eye from the other side of the field, and walked over to where I stood. "Man, you look as bad as I do."
He was right. He was covered head to toe in dirt. But he was standing there with a stupid, shit-eating grin on his face, and that made me smile.
"You look like you're having fun," I said.
"It ain't bad, you know? I could get used to this." He stopped and dropped the spool of barbed wire he was carrying for the fencing. "Look at Mac and April over there. I don't think Mac has been this happy in ages."
"The country is good for kids."
"Yeah," he said. "It's not just that, though." He kicked up a dirt clod with his boot. "It's just that-I'm grateful for what you did for us, for April and Mac."
"Not a thing," I said. That was exactly the opposite of what it was.
"No, I want you to know-" he stopped. "I don't know that I would have done the same as you, if the tables were turned. I probably would have shot first and then asked questions later."
I shrugged. “Maybe, but I doubt it. You’d have done the same, I think.”
"Sometimes I wonder if I have it in me anymore," he said. "I'm tired of all the shit, you know?"
Did I ever know. I was exhausted.
"Does your dad know what's going on?" he asked.
"I told him some of it."
"I feel bad," he said. "Putting him in danger by being here."
"We don't know that we're even in danger."
Crunch laughed, the sound harsh. "We're in danger. I'm sure of it."
“We’ll get in touch with Blaze. As soon as we can.”
“You think we can trust him? He’s the Veep,” Crunch said. “He and Mad Dog, they have to be tight, right?”
“I know Blaze,” I said. Or I used to know Blaze. “Blaze will be with us. I know he’s not okay with this play by Mad Dog. He doesn't want this kind of life, all the cartel trouble."
I thought about the conversation we’d had right before the cartel vote.
~
I walked up to Blaze, sitting back behind the clubhouse in his usual place, the garage. The mechanics bench was where Blaze was at his best. The guy could tool the nastiest knucklehead back into existence. When he was with his wrenches, we usually left him alone. He preferred it that way. He’d hang out by himself when he wanted to get away from all the club chaos. Nights like this, two in the morning on a party night, we should be shithoused or buried in *. But lately Blaze had been more and more detached from the club.
At first, I cut him some slack since he was all about Dani, this college student up at Stanford, and I could remember how it felt to be crazy that way about someone. Of course, my point of reference was high school, so it was hard to compare. I mean, high school hormones make you fucking batshit, right? I couldn’t imagine feeling that swept up in someone now. I was a goddamned adult. And Blaze was acting like a fucking adolescent.
So maybe I wasn’t cutting him that much slack, actually.
Blaze was sitting back, his head against the wall, eyes closed. I wasn't sure he was awake but when he saw me, he looked up.
I turned a bucket over, took a seat on top of it.
"Rough night?" Blaze asked.
"Not bad," I said. "You just get back from seeing Dani?" All that fucking riding up to Stanford wasn't good for him. Or the club.
He shook his head. "She's back here now, at my place. Not at Stanford. Graduated last week."
That's right. I was a shithead, forgetting that. Had he invited me to her graduation? Fuck. I couldn't remember. Everything had been a haze lately, drugs and * and booze. No, I'd remember if he'd invited me. I hadn't seen him here a hell of a lot lately. Not like I used to, back when we were tight.