Page 40 of Riff

She pressed her lips together for a second. The cracks were getting a little bit better, but they still looked painfully dry. “Reid,” she said in that sweet voice of hers, the sound of my name on her lips doing something to my chest, making it, I dunno, kinda drop or something like that. “I like it,” she said.

I never really cared one way or the other. But, suddenly, I really hoped she kept calling me by that name from now on.

“If you want to know Raff’s name, you’re gonna have to ask him yourself.”

“I’ll do that,” she said. “So, wait, are those names of your brothers not their names?”

“Some are, some aren’t. Obviously, Slash isn’t his real name. And Coach is a nickname he got on the inside. His real name is Saul. Bikers often go by ‘road’ names. Just a part of the culture, I guess. I mean, there’s a guy at the mother chapter who goes by the name Pagan.”

“I guess the road names sound more… intimidating than most real names,” she said, nodding. “What’s a mother chapter?”

“The original MC,” I explained. “We are what is called a ‘sister’ chapter. And we have another sister chapter in Golden Glades. Florida,” I added at her blank look. “And there’s a new club opening in Texas,” I added.

I’d been looking forward to that, thinking that it might allow for Raff and I to slow down a bit, since they would almost be a halfway point between Shady Valley and Golden Glades. Which might allow for us to just travel back and forth to Texas rather than all the way to Florida ourselves all the time.

“Oh, wow. I didn’t realize there were so many, you know, chapters. Do you visit with them?”

“Raff and I spend a lot of time in Golden Glades, but no one else does really. And the only ones of us who have been to our mother chapter in Navesink Bank are Slash, Sway, and Crow.”

“Where’s Navesink Bank?”

“New Jersey,” I told her.

“So you have clubs on, like, each coast,” she concluded, and it was the first time I realized that was probably exactly why the president of the mother chapter had opened where they had. To kind of own the exports on each border.

Where was next after Texas? Somewhere up along Canada?

“Yeah,” I agreed. “We aren’t near the coast. But it’s not far if we need to be there. We could take a day trip there at some point if you’d like to see the ocean.”

There was a spark of interest there for a second before the guards went back up. And as much as I understood why they were there, I really hoped that, one day, she would feel safe enough to be excited about things in life again.

“Maybe,” she agreed, nodding, then getting up to feed Vernon before huddling back into her nest in the bed with her book.

We both went to bed early, knowing Raff would be at the door at the crack of dawn to get going again.

As we packed up the car for the final time, I couldn’t help but think it was kind of bittersweet. I’d enjoyed being ‘alone’ with Vienna for the past few days. And going back to Shady Valley meant sharing her with everyone else.

But, I reminded myself as I drove, that was what she needed. A support system. Friends. Not just a comfort person who made her feel safe.

“Well, my sweet girl, I know it doesn’t look like much,” Raff said as he pulled down the main drag of our sleepy little town, “but welcome to Shady Valley. Annnd… that’s it,” he said after we turned away from the main street with a few businesses flanking either side. “Blink and you might miss it, right?” he asked.

It kind of reminded me a bit of that town in Wyoming now. Small. Not a lot of ‘outsiders’ around.

I thought that maybe she would learn to find comfort in that. Lots of familiar faces. Small stores that wouldn’t be jam-packed full of people.

My only concern, as I glanced back to see her eyeing it, was the prison. The potential for newly released inmates, ones who had done crimes that would scare her, walking around too.

I mean, as a whole, not many stuck around in Shady Valley. They had homes and families elsewhere across the state.

But I understood if she was worried about it.

“Where are you going?” I asked when Raff didn’t immediately go toward the clubhouse.

“Just being a good tour guide and giving Vienna a full tour of the town,” he said. “This right here is the suburbs,” he said as we made our way toward that part of town. “Not much to say about that. Then the schools,” he said. “And the apartments, pretty self-explanatory too. Out that way, there’s some farmland. And, of course, the Death Valley mountains.”

“They’re… intimidating looking,” Vienna said.

We’d seen our fair share of mountains through Utah and Nevada which had me agreeing. There was something, I don’t know, looming about the mountains here.

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