In the morning I wake up and notice that the other side of the bed is empty, and for a split-second I don"t remember where I am. Then the events of the night come rushing back and I stretch out feeling my aching muscles. I can smell coffee and I scrabble around on the floor looking for my clothes. I pull on my jeans, but can"t find my top, so I settle for one of Brian"s T-shirts that are thrown over the rocking chair. I follow the smell of cooking and the sound of pots and pans and I find Brian busying himself cracking eggs and looking perfectly at home in the kitchen.
"Well you"re just full of surprises aren"t you?" I ask, taking in the domesticity of the scene.
"I hope you like eggs," he replies, smiling at me as he stirs and adjusts the heat. "Coffee"s fresh." He nods over at the pot.
I pour myself a cup and lean against the kitchen counter, watching him work. He divides up the scrambled eggs he"s made and kisses me softly on the lips as he hands me a plate. "Morning gorgeous, I could definitely get used to waking up with you," he says.
We take a seat at the kitchen table and the reality of the situation hits me like a ton of bricks. "What are we going to do?" I ask him.
"I don"t know," Brian says quietly, looking at his plate rather than at me. "How much do you know about what"s happened between The Eagles and The Stones?" Brian asks, looking at me warily.
"I know that you guys are rival gangs and you don"t like each other very much. There"s a lot of d.i.c.k-measuring, but that"s about it," I tell him. "What else is there to know?" I ask, ducking my head so Brian has to meet my gaze.
"There"s a little more to it than that," Brian starts to say and then stops, getting up from the table like he"s heard something.
"Brian, what? What"s going on?" I ask before I hear it too. It"s the unmistakable noise of motorbikes-a lot of them-and it sounds like they"re heading towards us.
"G.o.d Dammit," he curses, looking between me and the door. I can only watch as he heads into the kitchen and pulls something out of a drawer. As he turns around I see that he"s holding a gun.
"Brian, what the-" I start, but his expression makes me stop.
"Jimmy, it"s me, we"ve got a problem," Brian says into his cell. "I don"t know, a lot of them," he adds in reply to whoever he"s talking to. "Get as many as you can and get here now," he barks into the phone and hangs up.
"Looks like we weren"t as careful as we thought," he tells me, his expression softening. "Whatever happens from here on out, I just want you to know that I"m not going to give up on us, not without a fight," he says, and the certainty in his eyes makes me feel a little less scared.
"It"s my brothers isn"t it? They"re the ones who you think are outside," I say, and I watch Brian nod slowly. "Before I go out there I want to know what all this is about-it"s more than just a fight over turf. What happened?"
Brian pauses for a moment and then clearly sees the determination in my face; he knows that I deserve the truth. "The Eagles and The Stones have never gotten along, but we used to do some business together." He looks at me uncertainly. "I"m guessing you don"t know much about the Stone business," he says, and I shake my head. "The Stones run protection for one of the big meth suppliers. They patrol the warehouses and drop points, and they provide protection for some of the top guys. Sometimes they would draft in The Eagles for overflow work," Brian says, and then takes a breath. I"m trying hard to process the information he"s just given me, but it"s not every day you find out that your family is comprised of serious criminals. "Anyway it turns out a member of The Eagles was on the take with the cops. He told them about one of the warehouses and there was a shoot-out. One of The Stones was killed and they demanded that the Eagle that had ratted them out be handed over to them for punishment, but the head of our MC wouldn"t agree to it. He insisted that we deal with the problem internally, that it was Eagle business, but The Stones said they couldn"t trust us anymore. Since then we"ve had an agreement not to bother each other. We stay out of each other"s way, and if we don"t..."
"If you don"t, then what?" I ask. I"ve come this far; I need to hear it all.
"Then bad things are going to happen," he tells me simply.
Right then my phone rings, and Aaron"s name flashes up on the screen. I answer without looking at Brian. "Come outside, Case, we know you"re with him and if you don"t come out now then we"re coming in to get you," he says, and then hangs up straight away. His voice doesn"t brook any argument. Since our parents died Aaron has taken the place of the head of the family and the head of the MC. He"s used to everyone falling into line when he says "jump".
"I"ve gotta go," I say to Brian dully, still shocked by everything he"s told me.
"Casey, wait." He grabs my hand but I shake him off.
"You knew what this would mean, how serious it would be if anyone were to find out. You knew that," I say angrily. "You should"ve told me!"
"Would it have changed anything if I had? Do you regret what happened?" he asks, and I can see the hurt in this eyes.
"No, you know I wouldn"t take last night back," I say looking straight into his baby blues, and he tenderly moves a strand of dark hair out of my eyes, brushing his fingers against my face. "But we have to fix this," I tell him. "Before things get any worse."
Brian nods slowly, cupping his hand around the back of my neck and pulling me close so that our foreheads are touching. "I"ll fix it, trust me," he says, and he seems so sure of himself that he makes me believe that everything will be alright.
"I should go," I say although I don"t want to move from where I am; I just want to stay here with him.
He nods slowly. "Talk to your brothers, see if you can get through to them. Tell them that this isn"t a one night stand, it"s the real thing." I feel as if my heart is about to leap out of my chest at his words.
"I will," I say quietly, brushing my lips against his. Then I turn around and walk out of the door, only to be confronted by what looks to be the entire Stones biker gang, with Aaron at the front. Behind him I see Jake and Max in their positions, watching me walk out of Brian"s house.
"Get on Max"s bike," Aaron says, barely looking at me.
"Aaron, let me explain," I start, but he holds his hand up silencing me.
"I don"t want to hear it. Whatever he did to you he"s going to get it back ten times over," he says, his voice low and harsher than I"ve ever heard it.
"But it"s not like that." I try to make my big brother understand.
"It doesn"t matter Case, he"s disrespected the Stones. The truce is off; he and rest of The Eagles are fair game," he says, his sights trained on something just past Brian"s house. "Now get on Max"s bike. We"ll talk later," he tells me, and I focus on the same plume of smoke that Aaron is looking at; it"s bikers approaching and I know it"s The Eagles.
"You guys can"t have a stand-off just because we slept together!" I tell Aaron, trying to make him see how ridiculous the situation is.
"He took advantage of you. You"re 21 years old, and he"s my age; he should know better. There"s no way my little sister is going to be another notch on his bed-post. He"s going to pay," Aaron says threateningly.
"It wasn"t like that. I care about Brian," I say, and I"m surprised at the strength of those feelings bearing in mind we"ve known each other for less than 24 hours.
"You don"t know what you"re saying. He"s got you eating out of his hand." Aaron dismisses me with a wave. "Now get on Max"s bike before I put you there," he says, not unkindly, and I know he"s just trying to protect me from whatever"s going to happen when The Eagles arrive.
I bow my head, knowing that I"m not going to win this fight. Not here, not now. I do as Aaron said; I walk past Jake, who doesn"t even look at me, and I hop onto the back of Max"s bike. He barely waits for me to get settled before gunning the engine and turning back in the direction they came from, heading home.
"Max, what"s going to happen?" I ask once we"re back at the house and the engine is off.
"Nothing good," he says grimly, looking at the ground instead of at me.
"What Aaron said, about Brian taking advantage of me, it isn"t true," I tell him.
"I know, I can tell," Max says, nodding at Brian"s T-shirt which I"m still wearing. "But Aaron"s been looking for a reason to get to The Eagles for a long time; you"re just the excuse they needed," he tells me. "I have to go. They"re going to need all the help they can get." I stop him before he turns the engine on again.
"Max, I know it was you that told them you saw me leave last night," I say, and I see the guilt plastered all over his face. "I"m not angry with you, I just want you to do something for me. Please don"t let anything happen to Brian. Please." I squeeze his shoulder, trying to convey my worry to him.
My twin brother looks at me for a beat and then nods slowly. "I can"t make any promises, but I"ll do what I can," he tells me before freeing himself from my vice-like grip and turning over the engine.
I spend the rest of the day more worried than I"ve ever been in my life. I"m pacing around the house, up and down the garden, checking my cell every five minutes, but it remains quiet. I"ve messaged Brian time and time again trying to find out what"s going on and if he"s okay. Max said he"d check in with me and he hasn"t. All I can do is try to stay calm and hope that everyone I love is alright.
Night starts to fall and I stare anxiously outside, waiting for a sign from someone, from anyone. Eventually I must have fallen asleep because I"m woken by the sound of a bike and I look out the window, but in the darkness I can"t tell who it is. I fling open the door and race outside and recognize Brian. I run towards him and virtually jump on him, only to be greeted by a grunt. When I pull away I see that his face is b.l.o.o.d.y, one of his eyes is definitely going to turn black in the next few hours, and he"s bent over, clutching his ribs.
"You"re hurt," I say, stating the obvious.
"It"s nothing, just a few b.u.mps and bruises," he says, but from the controlled way he"s speaking I can tell he"s in pain.
"What happened?" I ask, wanting and not wanting to know at the same time.
"There was a fight," Brian says simply. "The Stones and The Eagles have both been looking for a reason to resurrect their old feud," he tells me shaking his head.
"Are my brothers okay?" I ask, feeling guilty that this hadn"t been my first question.
"Last I saw they were all fine. That"s why I"m here-Max told me to come," he says. "We don"t have long, he gave me an opening-he told me that if I care about you as much as I say I do then we should get out of here. He told me either we leave tonight or all bets are off." Brian looks at me earnestly as the enormity of what he"s asking me to do dawns on me.
"You"re asking me to leave everything? My brothers, my life here, and to go with you?" I ask, making sure I understand.
"Yes, that"s exactly what I"m asking. This is the real thing, Case, and it doesn"t come along very often. I wouldn"t forgive myself if I gave up on us; we"re stronger than all of this," he says, gesturing to his b.l.o.o.d.y face and probably broken ribs.
"I know," I say softly. "I"ll be right back." Before he has the chance to say anything else, I rush into the house. I pull out a pad and a pen from the kitchen cupboard and scrawl a note down.
"I"ve gone with Brian. I"ll come back when the truce is back in place. Until then, Brian and I will have to be together somewhere else. I love you all. Cx"
I pin the note to the front door and race down the steps to Brian, jumping on the back of his bike and holding him around his waist, careful to avoid the tender areas of his body. "Where are we going?" I ask.
"It doesn"t matter," he replies, turning slightly to plant a kiss on my forehead, "anywhere is home if we"re together," he says as he turns the engine over and we speed away from my home and eventually from the town I grew up in.
It turns out Brian was right, where we went didn"t matter; all that mattered was that we were together. So that"s how I find myself here, in a much less poetic version of "Romeo and Juliet." Our story has more leather and motorcycles than the original. Brian and I know that we can"t run away from our problems for long; we know that they"re going to catch up with us eventually. I"m still waiting for Max"s message, to tell me that it"s safe to go home, that the truce is back on and that Brian and I can be together without setting off a cycle of violence and pain. But for now, it"s just us and the open road and, for now, that"s all we need.
The Hard Way.
Sophia Hampton.
Cole was unhappy all six feet, two inches, and 200 pounds of him. But it didn"t show. At first glance you wouldn"t have seen it, especially when he was wearing the Cheetah uniform: Alpinestars SMX6 boots, and GP Tech Air Jacket with the Cheetah patch, topped with the regulation imported Shoei Raid II boots-like all uniforms, designed to make him look like and even act like everybody else. In his uniform it was easy to hide it, which was a good thing, because he didn"t dare let it show.
He was sickened and fed up with what was going on with the Cheetahs, the motorcycle gang he"d joined 10 years before. For nine years, he"d been happy. The adrenaline rush as they cruised across the country looking for trouble and the easy comradeship they had when they returned to the club house to chill out.
He loved the s.e.xual buzz of a woman cuddling your back as you sped down the highway at 100 mph. He enjoyed sauntering into bars with his mates knowing that n.o.body was going to f.u.c.k with them. He relished the brotherly love that developed between them when they were on a maneuver, facing danger together, covering each other"s backs, rescuing the wounded and burying the dead.
It took him back to his service in the SADF in Angola, where he first knew for sure that he was a man to watch and defer to. That was why he"d joined the Cheetahs when he got out of the SADF and one of the members of his platoon had invited him. It had been enough for nine years; he done well and had risen up to the upper echelon of the club, and had even been considered for top dog. He"d learnt to fit in, to change the way he walked and talked. He became unrecognizable, on the outside, as the Afrikaner boy who"d left Potchefstroom to go to Angola. He"d even practically forgotten Afrikaans.
But when he hadn"t made it to top dog, and when Bud took over the leadership, the club changed its nature. They"d always been outlaw. They specialized in smuggling and the s.e.x trade. That was part of the attraction. But there were some things they considered beneath them-trafficking in drugs, for one thing. But with Bud in charge, nothing was taboo, particularly drugs.
Cole had seen the effect drugs had on people in Angola-seen enough to be sickened by it and to want nothing to do with it. His refusal set him aside from the rest of the Cheetahs and may have been why he hadn"t been made President, but he stuck to it.
Not only that, but from somewhere within him there had come a desire for a normal life. Maybe he was just getting older. At 40, the freewheeling life of the biker, the easy women and rootlessness, looked different to him than it had when he was 30, fresh back from the bush war. He began to envy the men with trim houses and pretty wives they saw as they whizzed by. He had developed a yen for children of his own, and even a 9-to-5 job. If someone had told him ten years before that he would want to have anything to do with all that, he wouldn"t have believed it, and when the beginning of such ideas first floated into his head, he"d dismissed them outright. But they hadn"t gone away. In fact, they"d grown.
And that yen and his disgust at what the Cheetahs had become had coalesced into a firm desire to get out-a desire that was growing all the time. And then the "pretty wife" of his imagination took on a definite face and shape-that of Brianne. He started imagining her elaborately braided black hair and trim figure; her dark brown eyes and ready grin. He even started imagining a little girl with corn rows who looked like her playing with her on a green lawn.
There were several things wrong with what he was imagining. In the first place, Brianne had no idea he was imagining it. She was the proprietor and only waitress at The Trolley, a cafe that had been fashioned from an old Johannesburg tram car near the Cheetah base. He"d dropped in alone one afternoon on a whim and liked the feel of the place.
It seemed, in fact, like a part of the life that he was beginning to realize he wanted. It was clean and airy. It even had ruffled curtains and wildflower photos on the walls. When he walked in, Brianne had given him a cheery grin without a trace of the fear that bikers often aroused in people-particularly blacks-and equally free of a hint of salaciousness that the women he normally a.s.sociated with-the bikers" women-habitually fed into every movement or expression.
What Brianne saw as she watched him get off his custom built Harley-Davidson and walk into the cafe made her check where her gun was under the counter, just as a cautionary matter, but didn"t really make her afraid. She knew bikers and knew that they came in all types, and knew that with many, the fierce expressions and swaggers were a mask that disguised a softer, often wounded interior.
This one was clean, and his beard, though full, was trimmed. When he took off his helmet on his way in, she caught a glimpse of piercing blue eyes and a bold chin. He was a big man, but not gross, and she figured that if she laid a hand on his body she would find it hard, the bulk all muscle, not flab. She quickly decided not to think about that.
"What can I do for you?"
"Coffee."
"How do you like your coffee?"
"Hot, black, and bitter, like my women," he said with a hint of a leer. Afterwards he wondered what had possessed him to say that; it was so obviously more appropriate to the Cheetah base than to The Trolley. Besides, it wasn"t his habit to make racially charged remarks. His best buddy in Angola had been a Xhosa and had saved his life, which expunged any trace of bigotry he had been taught as a child.
Brianne laughed, the friendliness not leaving her face. "Coming right up, honey!"
Cole had a moment to reflect about the exchange while she poured his coffee. He was a man who always did what he wanted, when he wanted. It had worked for him; he"d made it work, sometimes with his fists. But suddenly what he wanted was what he thought this woman might want. So he apologized. "Sorry, ma"am, that remark was out of line."
"No offense taken. If you"re Xhosa and want to run a cafe in South Jo"Burg, you have to have a thick skin."
That started off a conversation that lasted through three cups of coffee and ranged over a number of subjects that Cole had never discussed with a stranger before, including the incident when S"bu had saved his life. He had rapidly decided that he wanted to see more of this woman and had wanted to see how she might feel about him when she got to know him better.
"As you can see, I"m a Cheetah."
She just shrugged her shoulders and said, "You don"t seem the type."
And Cole replied that he was beginning to think the same thing.
That was the first of many conversations as Cole began to drop in regularly for coffee and breakfast and Brianne had learned that she liked this biker quite a lot. Cole became aware that whatever his new life would be after leaving the Cheetahs, he wanted her to be part of it. But he couldn"t bring himself to tell her, so the conversations remained friendly but, to that extent, superficial.
At first Cole had found it difficult to dredge up from his past the body language and vocabulary suited to these conversations. But after awhile it seemed natural, and it began to seem unnatural to talk like a Cheetah when he was with them.
It all would have been simple, except for one thing: when you joined the Cheetahs, it was for life. The only way you left it was in a body bag. There was a ceremony involving oaths of eternal loyalty and total obedience and it involved the exchange of blood. The penalties for disobedience were severe, ever more severe with Bud as President, and the penalty for desertion was death. Once you were a member, you knew too much to be allowed to leave. Cole knew that if Bud ever got to know what was in his mind, his new life would be still-born.
He tried to act the same as he always had. He consorted with the Cheetah women as he always had. He took part in the drug dealing activities as he always had, but the fact was, his heart wasn"t in any of it-and it showed. He could see Bud looking at him, head tilted, eyes narrowed, showing he was wondering what was going on. He also noticed, or thought he did, that he was being selected for the more dangerous operations-either to test his loyalty, or possibly to remove him as an irritant. He had never mentioned Brianne or the cafe to the Cheetahs, but the amount of time he was spending off alone couldn"t be disguised.
As a precaution, he almost stopped going to The Trolley, and was upset that Brianne noticed and wondered why. But he couldn"t tell her anything. He made plans and discarded them and made new ones. He knew he would have to run far if he was to survive, and didn"t underestimate the enormity of asking Brianne to throw over everything to go with him. It seemed so impossible that he was afraid to suggest it. In the conversations he had learned she had little family in Johannesburg, and few ties. She rented The Trolley and a flat, so could leave them behind, but still, it would be a huge break for her. So he dithered.
But then one day realizing that he was being followed and watched, he knew he would have to make his move without delay. So he broached the question with Brianne.
He tried to begin on a light note, and with a little laugh said, "What would you think of running off with me?"
She just stared and shook her head. "Some kind of joke, huh?"
"No, not really. I"d really like to know."
Brianne looked into his eyes and saw that there was no laughter in them, but fear instead. So she answered as gently as she could. "Cole, the thought has never entered my mind, and I won"t think of it. I hardly know you. "
"But you like me, don"t you?"
"Well, yes. I like you. But there"s a long road between liking someone and running off with them. Did you really think I"d say, "Yes?""