Page 20 of Karma

“My mom was dead a year before that happened,” she says. “It never would’ve if she was still alive.”

“I guess that’s one thing we have in common,” I say. “Useless moms and mom wannabes.”

She takes my hand in both of hers, squeezing tight. “Will you come to LA with me? I don’t want to say goodbye to you.”

I take a huge bite of the jerky so I’m actually physically unable to answer her. Not just mentally.

She’s just sitting there, her eyes huge and very watery. Like the lake when there’s no moon and no stars. I really don’t like seeing her sad. I guess that means I probably already made up my mind. But saying it… that’s a whole different thing. Especially with the future I’m facing. Which is actually no future at all. Giving her false hope… that’s bound to make her even sadder in the end. Taking her with me where I’m headed… that’s unthinkable.

“Say something,” she whispers, still clutching my hand.

“Grim’s not gonna like me tagging along.”

She shakes her head. “He doesn’t factor into this the way he used to. He’s the one who broke up with me.”

“And now he’s trying to get you back,” I say, biting off some more jerky.

“Have you been reading my texts?” she asks, a faint red color rising in her cheeks and her eyes losing some of that watery blackness to anger.

I shake my head. “I’ve watched you reading them for the past two days. Told me all I needed to know. Despite everything, I’d say you two have a good thing going. You don’t wanna throw it all away for me.”

I stuff the rest of the jerky in my mouth, pull my hand from her grip and walk to the bed. I shouldn’t have stopped here, I should’ve just kept riding. This is exactly the conversation I didn’t want to have. Not at the cabin, not here, not ever. It was soeasy by the lake. So natural. Now we’re trying to make sense of something that makes no sense in the real world.

I sit on the edge of the bed and pull off my boots. It’s all I’m taking off tonight.

“You really just want it to be over?” she asks.

She doesn’t just look sad now, she looks confused, and angry and really fucking disappointed.

“Joker needs me in north Cali,” I say. “We’re joining a war. And it could very well be the last thing we do. So you really don’t wanna mess up a good thing with Grim for nothing.”

I lie down on top of the covers. It’s her sad eyes. They make me say more than I want to.

“What are you talking about? What war?”

My eyes are closed and I’m using my arms to cover them, but I can still see her rising from her chair. And still see her outraged, sad eyes.

“I can’t talk about it,” I say, not opening my eyes.

It’s the truth. Us taking revenge on the Devils is a closely held secret. Our hatred for them not so much. But Karma’s MC is out of the loop on that stuff.

“Are you talking about this war with Devil’s Nightmare MC?” she asks, proving me wrong. And showing me just how little I know about her. “Are you finally joining it?”

Funny she should say that. In a lot of ways, it was Joker who started the war in the first place. He’s still fuming that the other MCs now fighting the Devils pushed us to the sidelines after he gave them the idea to band together and go after them. But we’re about the have the last laugh. Or die trying. Probably both.

“It was always our war too,” I tell her.

“How so?” she asks.

“I’m too tired to talk about it.” I don’t have Joker’s gift for telling people only parts of the truth so I better shut up.

The bed rocks as she sits down beside me. “So I’ll fight it with you.”

Karma can take my breath away in a lot of ways. This is another.

“It’s a personal vendetta type of thing,” I say instead of telling her no straight out. I can barely watch her be sad. Getting her killed… I can’t even finish that thought in my head.

She grabs my arms and pulls them off my face. Not gently at all.

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