Page 128 of Gunner

As if he didn’t understand a word of English, Saint hopped up next to me in the back of the truck. He sipped from a can of beer, a joint in his other hand.

“Really? This is the best party I’ve been to in a while. Why aren’t you inside?”

“No reason.”

“Bullshit. Seriously, though, the club’s coming along nicely. Feels almost like old times.”

I scoffed. “You have no idea what it was like back in the day.” Back when Grimm’s father and mine ran the Bloodlets with an iron fist. They’d both been determined to make men out of us. Not just any men—hardened criminals who could take over the club one day the same way they did. Had they been alive, they would have killed both Grimm and me themselves for sleeping with men.

Those two homophobic pricks were the reason we’d lived closeted until I outed Grimm.

“Heard Smoky Vale feared the members of the club back then.”

“Fear’s not strong enough to describe the club in those days.”

“Do you want the club to go back in that direction?”

He held out the weed to me, but I shook my head. I might still go to the late-night AA meeting, and I’d rather not go filled with drugs.

“No,” I said, and I meant it. At first, I’d thought the club had to be run that way. But seeing how the Reapers operated, howclose they were without losing their edge to stand up to bullshit when it presented itself, had changed my mind. I could decide on boundaries not to cross and still be me.

I didn’t have to be what my pop wanted me to be.

“I want us to be better,” I said. “Bigger. Richer. I don’t want us to kill innocent people or make trouble for regular citizens.”

“Sounds like you have everything figured out.”

“I wish. We still have the rally to plan. I’ve been so busy interfering with police affairs that have nothing to do with me, I lost focus.”

“Even the best of us lose focus when we have a great piece of tail in bed. Look at Grimm and Crowe. Motherfuckers gone soft around the edges. So what if you’ve gone soft for the chief?”

I frowned. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” I hopped down from the truck. I wasn’t going to have this sort of conversation with another man.

“Where are you going? We were having a nice conversation.”

I glared at him. “This doesn’t feel weird to you? Talking about emotional shit?”

He shrugged. “Unlike you pricks, I came from a loving home. My mom is a psychiatrist, and my dad’s a surgeon. I don’t get touchy-feely often, but sometimes, yeah, their influence is still strong.”

“You’re fucking with me.”

“Nope.”

“What the hell happened?”

He grinned. “They made the mistake of telling me I could be whatever I wanted to be. I think they regret it, but by virtue of me following their advice, they have to support my decision.”

“You had a good life, and you chose this?”

“Hell yeah. You saying you wouldn’t have chosen to be a biker if you had much say in it?”

Shit, he might be right. I couldn’t see myself being anything else but a biker who lied, cheated the system, stole, and killed. That was all I knew. Did such a man deserve to be with someone like Ben? But Ben filled my deficit in a way no one ever did. He made me feel like I was a better man, even though we both knew I wasn’t.

“I don’t know.”

“Things might have been easier for you and the chief if you weren’t. How’s that going to work out? There’s no future in that sort of arrangement.”

“There is,” I said forcefully.

---