“For you, brother,” Trev said. “You saved my ass that night. That fucking night, man. Everything went wrong. We all knew it was wrong, yet we jumped into it together. Fucking outlaws, right? Riding in the night, wearing leather cuts with scars where patches used to be. That was us, together. You never truly belonged with The Lost Men, Griffin. I’m glad you came back down to Frelen. Christ, any of the other charters would have benefited from you, but you came back to your home. I know there aren’t many who know about us and our history. I’ll keep that to myself the best I can. I can’t stop thinking about what happened though. If there was something else we could have done. Moved faster, smarter, I don’t know. But we let it get to that point where a bullet went through the air and got you.”
Trev gritted his teeth and took another drink. He put the flask away. He crossed his arms and pushed from the headstone and walked around to see the Ashburne stone. Who were they? Was he a lawyer? Was she a housewife? Maybe she was the lawyer and he was a mechanic or something. So many stories all around the cemetery but they were all silent. No matter how hard you tried to listen, nobody spoke.
That was the chilling part.
So many people with so many memories, stories, offerings, and they were silenced by the stopping of their hearts.
Trev looked up and looked at Griffin’s grave. Revenge had been dealt and there was nothing else to do about it. That didn’t make it right or fair. Feeling that put Trev in a troubled spot. Holding onto grudges, guilt, all that bullshit, that was a fast track to a grave.
Leaning forward, Trev put his hands to the Ashburne stone.
“Fuck, Griffin,” he said. “These talks are too one sided. At least the club is cleaning up nice. We have the strip club on our side. The PD stays put except for Ethan, like I said. Eight Under is nothing but a few guys trying to throttle some dirt bikes. I don’t like it this way, Griffin. At all. I don’t think about the north too much anymore. The Lost Men and what they’re doing. The hell they’re causing. Traveling charter to charter, making something happen. That’s what I want, brother. I want to make something happen. But I can’t give up the seat. They wanted me patched in and I couldn't let someone else take your spot, brother. I’m not sure how much longer I can have these talks. It’s been far too long, Griffin. I mean, for fuck’s sake, Blaine is in a committed relationship and has a kid. That’s how far we’ve come in all this.”
Trev walked around the Ashburne stone and took out his gun. He took out the clip and pulled a single bullet from the clip. He reattached the clip to his gun and tucked it away in its holster.
“I have to get going,” Trev said. “Duty calls.”
He walked to the headstone and put the single bullet on it.
He then walked away from the headstone, not looking back.
It was what he always did. A single bullet to Griffin. Maybe in some stupid way he thought that bullet would bring Griffin back. Maybe it was just a dumb gesture and a waste of a perfectly good bullet.
Each time Trev came back, the bullet was always gone.
That had to mean something, right?
Trev climbed onto his ride, fired it up, and sped away, the call of steel horse crying out to the silent cemetery.
Inside himself, Trev felt something… the Griffin thing… almost a year later… but there was something lingering…
__
three.
The whir of the needle was her only escape. Living through the stories of those who gave their clean skin to ink was the best part of the job. The most ironic thing about Eden was that while she was considered one of the best tattoo artists in the area, she didn’t have a single tattoo on her. Because of that, it made her even more special. Nothing against tattoos, Eden wasn’t sure if she’d ever find anything worth putting on her skin to be there forever.
She worked long hours, saved her cash, lived in a small apartment, and when she wasn’t tattooing, she was drawing pictures, dreaming of a life where she could find her mother, her father, and find out the truth of herself. All she knew was that right from birth she had been given up for adoption. Her adoptive parents - Bruce and Lena, so fucking middle class and perfect - were killed in a head-on collision when Eden was fifteen. Lena’s sister, Leslie, stepped in and raised Eden until she was eighteen. Leslie worked for a marketing company and that’s where Eden got her start with drawing. She literally just picked up a pen and started to draw.
Soon she was drawing eight, ten, twelve hours a day, recreating everything about her life she loved and lost. For an entire summer, she drew pictures, collecting enough that when Aunt Leslie found them, she passed them to her boss. Overnight, Eden became a star. So much so she was going to have her artwork on display. She was going to go attend a prestigious art school. Hell, she even had a job offer lined up with Leslie’s company. She’d work there part-time, attend school full-time, and become the epitome of surviving the tragedy of the death of her adoptive parents.