I thought my hot biker Bank was finally willing to go public with our relationship, but he just called me to come and see...a club hooker was on his lap. Her black skirt shoved high, his hand spread at the back of her thigh where the fishnet had torn. His shirt hung open. Her mouth was wet. There was lipstick on his chest, the deep red kind women wore when they wanted to leave evidence. The way the room smelled of intercourse and bourbon... Then Banks looked up, seeing me. Shock flared there. I saw the instant his body tried to move and the instant he understood he was still holding another woman. “Clare. I didn’t—” But he had. He had. The room was full of proof. I smirked. “Don’t.” I stripped off the vest. The leather stuck to the damp skin at the back of my neck. I laid the vest in his hands, and because the hallway light was weak and the leather was slick, it slid through his fingers and dropped. “Jerk. You don’t get to improve it.” On the workbench lay the silver ring he swore he'd fit into my ignition plate for luck. I left that too. Then I walked out into the rain and didn't look back. ———————— The red stitching on the Property Of patch scratched the back of Clare Sherman’s neck every time she turned the wheel. She kept reaching up to smooth it flat at the stoplights, fingertips catching on damp hair and the cheap satin edge she had sewn down twice because the original seam had rubbed her raw. The vest lay heavy over her shoulders, still cold from hanging by the window unit in her apartment, and the storm outside turned the inside of her truck humid enough to lift the scent of wet denim, leather, and the vanilla body oil she’d dabbed at her throat with a hand that had not stopped shaking since Luka Park showed up at the diner with Banks’s message. Come after church. Wear the vest. Luka had tried to say it like it was nothing, like he wasn’t sixteen and terrified of getting caught in grown people’s business. He’d stood by the pie case with rain dripping off his bangs and repeated the words exactly, careful as a boy carrying ammunition. Now Clare drove the last mile to the Black Veil Kings’ compound with her wipers fighting for their lives and her heart banging so hard against her ribs it made her shoulders ache. Church first. Celebration after. That was how the club worked. Adan Robinson held meetings in the long room behind the bar where the patched men sat in rank and sweat and cigarete smoke, hashing out runs and debts and who had crossed whom. If Banks had sent for her after church, told her to wear the vest, maybe he was done keeping her in the side doorway, the garage, the places that felt private until they felt hidden. Maybe he was tired of the half-life as much as she was. Maybe tonight he would finally let the room know what she was to him. The thought made her smile, quick and stupid and young. The compound gate stood open when she turned in. Gravel snapped under her tires. Bikes lined the front of the clubhouse in a shining row under the security lights, rain beading on tanks and handlebars. Banks’s bike was not out front. Her stomach dipped. He always parked by the garage. Prospects were hauling a keg under the awning when she killed the engine. One of them glanced at her vest and looked away so fast he nearly dropped his end. Another opened the clubhouse door before she reached it, eyes fixed somewhere over her shoulder. “Banks around?” she asked. The boy wiped rain from his upper lip. “Back.” Just that. Not ma’am. Not Clare. Not You look nice. Nothing that would have been ordinary enough to steady her. The clubhouse hit her all at once when she stepped inside: the hot smell of spilled beer baked into old wood, fryer oil gone stale in the kitchen, wet denim, cigarettes sucked down to filters, men who lived too hard and bathed when they remembered. Music shoved through the speakers from the corner, something with a hard drumbeat and a woman singing like her throat hurt. Laughter cracked from the pool tables, but it landed wrong, each burst of it clipped short as she crossed the room. Faces turned. A few women by the bar went still in the middle of talking. Gemma Burnett shifted her glass from one hand to the other and looked at the floor. Kiara Boyd opened her mouth, closed it, and pressed her lips together until the lipstick blanched at the edges. Clare slowed. The room around her did not. Adan stood near the end of the bar with a tumbler of bourbon in one hand and his cut hanging open over a charcoal henley that probably cost more than Clare’s monthly rent. The president had a way of taking up air without moving. Tonight he watched her come in with his face arranged into something too careful to be welcome. “You just miss church, sweetheart,” he said. He never called her sweetheart unless he wanted her to stay soft. “Banks asked me here.” Adan’s gaze touched the patch on her back, then slid off it. “Did he.” That was all. No grin. No clap on the shoulder. No Well, about time. Tobias stood two stools down, big arms folded, beard still dripping from the rain. He didn’t look at her at all. He looked at Adan. It was the kind of glance men traded before a bad decision. Clare’s pulse tripped. “Where is he?” she asked. “In back,” Tobias said. A woman at the bar made a small sound behind her hand. Clare turned too late to catch whether it had been a laugh or pity. The hallway to the back rooms was narrower than she remembered, walls yellowed with age and old smoke. The music from the front thudded through the floorboards while rain tapped the high windows. Somebody had left a crate of liquor by the office door. One bottle had cracked in transit; whiskey threaded down the wood in amber lines and pooled dark at the baseboard. Banks’s voice did not carry. Neither did anyone else’s. ...... At the end of the hall, the red EXIT sign over the back room washed the doorway in a cheap motel glow. The door sat half-open. Clare put one hand to the frame because the floor had gone strangely loose under her boots. She heard a woman laugh low in her throat. Not flirtatious. Not shy. The sound a person made when she already knew the answer. Clare pushed the door wider. Valentina Reilly was on Banks’s lap. Not standing close. Not leaning in. On him. Her black skirt shoved high, his hand spread at the back of her thigh where the fishnet had torn. His shirt hung open. Her mouth was wet. There was lipstick on his chest, the deep red kind women wore when they wanted to leave evidence. For one ruined second, Clare’s mind tried to sort it wrong. She noticed the details first because details were easier than truth. The way the room smelled of intercourse and bourbon and the peppermint gum Valentina chewed when she wanted to cover cigarete breath. The oil stain on Banks’s wrist from working in the garage. The silver snap missing from Valentina’s cuff. A beer can tipped on its side by the couch, foam drying in a line down the torn vinyl. Then Banks looked up. The change in his face would have meant something, maybe, if she had found him almost anywhere else. Shock flared there so sharp it stripped years off him. She saw the instant his body tried to move and the instant he understood he was still holding another woman. “Clare—” Her name broke in the middle. Valentina went rigid and slid off him so fast she banged her knee on the table. “I didn’t—” But she had. He had. The room was full of proof. Clare’s fingers slipped from the doorframe. She might have said something. She would never remember it clearly later. It was either nothing at all or Banks’s name leaving her mouth like it had cut her on the way out. He stood too quickly, knocking the table askew. “No. No, listen to me.” Listen to what. That was the part that arrived, cold and complete. Not the image. Not even the act. The humiliation had edges. The room outside had known. Gemma’s silence. Kiara’s white mouth. Adan’s careful voice. Tobias looking anywhere but at her. She had walked down that hallway wearing Banks’s patch while half the clubhouse waited to hear if she would scream. Valentina stepped back until she hit the wall, face stripped of whatever she'd worn in there before Clare opened the door. She looked young. Not cruel. Just caught. It should have made Clare hate her less. It did nothing at all. Banks came toward her with both palms out, like she was an injured horse he might still calm if he moved slowly enough. “It’s not—” She laughed. The sound startled all three of them. “It is,” she said. Her voice came out level, which felt like the one mercy left to her. “You don’t get to improve it.” He stopped close enough that she could smell soap under the whiskey. His chest rose once, hard. “Let me explain.” From the doorway behind her came the scrape of a boot. Tobias. Of course Tobias had followed. Clare didn’t turn around. She could feel the width of him there, could picture the set of his shoulders, the way he would plant himself as if bodies could hold together what words had failed to. “Don’t,” she said, and she meant all of them. Banks’s face changed when he understood the don’t was for him too. Some part of her had once loved how much force lived in that body. Tonight it only showed her the size of what he had chosen to throw away. She walked past Tobias, and he moved without touching her. Men in the front room tried not to stare with the kind of intensity that was worse than staring outright. Music still played. Someone had racked the balls on the pool table and forgotten to break. Rain hammered the roof in thick, steady blows. No one stopped her. That would matter later as much as anything else. In the room Banks kept over the garage, her duffel sat under the bed where she had pushed it after moving in piece by piece over the last year, never trusting any version of happiness enough to fully unpack. She yanked it free, shoved in jeans, two T-shirts, the sweater she wore on cold mornings, the envelope of cash she kept inside a boot. Her toothbrush hit the floor. She left it there. In the bathroom mirror over the sink, a woman with soaked hair and a blotch of red on one cheekbone stared back at her like she’d been slapped. Someone pounded on the door. “Clare.” Banks. No mistaking that voice, even muffled through old wood. She zipped the bag. “Clare, open the door.” The knob turned once, stopped. He wouldn’t force it with the whole clubhouse listening. Not yet. She stripped off the vest. The leather stuck to the damp skin at the back of her neck. When she opened the door, he was there in the hall, shirt dragged back on crooked, hair still mussed from another woman’s hands. The sight nearly buckled her knees, not because he looked good, but because he looked familiar. He reached for her. She laid the vest in his hands, and because the hallway light was weak and the leather was slick, it slid through his fingers and dropped.
