Up in Smoke (King #8)

Rage sets down her kick stand and removes her pink helmet revealing her trademark long blond hair pulled into a tight ponytail. She smooths it down with the palm of her hands.

Rage looks like a typical teenage girl. That’s how she gets away with being a stone-cold killer for hire. Most men can’t see past her tight body and pretty face.

Until it’s too fucking late.

Rage spots me and doesn’t smile, doesn’t react. She grabs her duffle bag from the storage compartment below the seat and drapes it over her shoulders. She walks up to me with her hands on the strap. Her shirt is tight and pink and says BITCH PLEASE across her tits.

“Nice shirt, princess,” I say.

She shrugs. “Well, they didn’t have one that said STEP BACK OR DIE so I went with this one.”

“Good call.” I stub out my cigarette.

“Surprised to see me?” Rage asks.

“Understatement,” I reply. “Why you here?”

“Where’s my ward?” Rage asks, peeking around my shoulder and ignoring my question.

“Changing,” I say. “I didn’t expect to see you.”

“Now or NEVER?” she asks with a smile I know to be fake because I’ve seen her practice it in the mirror a million times.

I shrug. “Can’t say.”

The guilt I’ve felt since the night we parted ways has never left and standing in front of her now the whole shit-show of that night hits me in the fucking gut, and I want to puke and shoot someone all at the same time. “Didn’t think Preppy would send you of all people. Thought I’d get a Lawless prospect.”

Rage narrows her eyes at me. “First off, you of all people know that no one SENDS me anywhere. Second, he didn’t send me. He was sending his brother, but I volunteered instead. And third…” she reaches into her duffle bag and pulls out what appears to be a small version of a biker’s cut and shrugs it on. “I am one of the Lawless.”

Rage spins around to show off the cut and sure enough, the back has the Lawless MC logo. The front has a patch that would normally hold a title like Sergeant at Arms but hers reads Don’t Label Me.

“Cute,” I say, amused as all hell. “Can’t say I’m surprised though. Only you can get a fucking MC to make you a member. What brought this on? Thought you didn’t like tying yourself to any one group.”

Rage follows me up to the house. “You mean besides the threats of violence against them if they didn’t let me in?”

“Yeah, besides that.”

She stops on the porch and circles around to face me. “You.”

“Me?” I take a drag of my smoke.

She exhales and shakes her head. “Smoke, you were my mentor. My dahli-fucking-lama. You were my only connection to humanity before you inserted Nolan into my life because you knew I needed him and others around me. I didn’t understand it until him.” She lowers her voice. “You and I were a team, and then you left. I wanted another team. I needed to belong again.”

“Thought you didn’t have feelings,” I say, the pain in my gut growing.

“You of all people know that’s not true. It’s me who didn’t know it, but you showed me. And then you LEFT me.”

She pokes her little index finger into my chest.

I look away and stub out my smoke on the railing, lighting another one. “We don’t gotta do this right now.”

“We do! You left me. I didn’t realize it then, but I realize it now. You were like my brother. You were family. Then, you left.”

“What a fucking brother I was. I left because…” I lower my voice, unable to say the fucking words. “You know why I left.”

“No, I don’t,” Rage says, shaking her head and setting her duffle bag down on the porch.

“I raped you, Rage,” I say, my chest burning with anger toward myself. Bile rising in my throat. “While your man was forced to watch. You didn’t deserve that. Nolan didn’t deserve to watch that.”

Rage’s small hands grab hold of my cut. She’s the only person in the world that can get away with this shit. Any other man would be missing that hand by now.

“Look at me!” She yells, yanking on my cut. I look down into her blue eyes. “Smoke! There was NO RAPE! That shit-bag forced us to have sex at gunpoint. That’s not rape, and if it is, then, I raped you, too. ‘Cause this isn’t all on you. You can’t take all the blame.”

“It’s different for you!” I shout, raising my voice above hers.

“Why? Why is it different for me?” she challenges, releasing my cut and jutting out a hip. Her head cocked to the side.

“Because you zoned out. I saw that look in your eyes you used to get when you would wash the world around you away and crawled inside your own head. You weren’t there. I…I got hard. I fucking came for Christ’s sake!”

Rage rolls her eyes and shrugs. “Eh, different strokes for different folks. I once read about a guy who can only come with a gun to his head. Nobody’s screaming rape at the lady holding it. That’s biology, asshole. What else you got? ‘Cause that excuse is as weak as nonalcoholic beer. I AIN’T BUYING IT.”

Rage smiles and this time it’s genuine.

“What the fuck do you know about biology?” I ask, feeling the mood lighten around us. She doesn’t blame me. Don’t mean I can’t blame myself, but maybe I don’t have to fucking hate myself so much.

Not about this anyway.

“Besides being a germ expert, as you know, I am also a college graduate now.”

“You went to college?” I look at her with disbelief. “In a year and a half?”

She wrinkles her nose. “More like a half an hour. Just for enough time to threaten the dean into giving me a degree. It’s real pretty, too. I framed it. It’s hanging in my room at the MC. Come by. I’ll show it to you sometime.”

I chuckle. “Same old Rage,” I say, then reconsider my words. “Yet not the same ole Rage.”

Rage stills. “Don’t move, okay? I’m gonna try something,” she whispers, taking a step toward me.

I shift my feet. Rage is unpredictable, but she’s still Rage, and I trust her even though I know I shouldn’t. “Okay, but what are…”

“I said don’t move!”

I’m stone still as her tiny arms wrap around my waist, and she leans her head against me. I’m so much bigger that her head only comes to the bottom of my ribs.

“Thank you for helping me all those years ago,” she says. “Thank you for being my friend when I didn’t know what a friend was supposed to be. Thank you for setting me up with Nolan although you did it in the weirdest way possible. Thank you for knowing I needed him before I knew I needed him. Just, thank you, Smoke.”

“I…” I sputter, not knowing what to say. I feel myself soften, and before I know it, I’m placing one of my hands over her tiny head. I kiss the top of her hair.

“It’s all done. It’s over!” Rage announces, pulling away and clapping her hands together. “Now, let’s kill something and string its intestines up like Christmas lights.” The crazed look in her eyes returns, the one I’ve known and loved since the first time I saw her when she was sixteen years old.