Page 8 of Smooth Sailing

“You do it?”

Rush jerked up his chin. “Everyone does it. Even a legacy, like you.”

That surprised him too.

It also cut him.

He took his own drag from his beer, looked away and said, “Nah, man. I’m not legacy.”

“I think Pete, Dad, Hop, High, Hound, Arlo and Boz would disagree.”

“They were good to her,” Harlan muttered.

“We’re good to a lot of people, man. You decide to let me sponsor you, find out for yourself.”

Harlan tipped his head toward the forecourt. “You gotta know, life I’ve lived, that seems too good to be true.”

“What you should know is that Big Petey shared the essentials, nothing else, so I don’t know,” Rush told him. “That’s yours to give or keep to yourself.”

Harlan found that interesting.

Rush kept on. “It isn’t like we don’t have rules, we just don’t have many of them. We also have structure. There’s a hierarchy. It isn’t about lording over anyone. It’s about keeping balance and order. This is a democracy. Every man with a patch has a vote that’s as equal as everything else. But prospects have a voice, and we all got ears, so they might not have a vote, but they’re heard.”

Harlan nodded that Rush was also heard, and Rush kept at it.

“Straight up, no drugs. Weed, okay. That’s legal. Other shit, that’s a problem. You do you, but if you get a woman and you do her dirty, you have kids and you fuck them up, or you mess with the brotherhood, that’ll be a problem, and the Club will deal with it. You’ll be given the chance to have your say, but you won’t have the choice but to abide by the decision of the brothers.”

None of this was an issue for Harlan.

Harlan turned back to him. “I like my job.”

“I get it. Action.”

That wasn’t it, but Rush didn’t get that.

Not now.

Maybe not ever.

“You join, you learn, we don’t just run a store and make kickass cars,” Rush informed him.

And again, he was surprised. His ma told him they got out of all that shit.

“Outlaw?” he asked.

Rush’s lips curved again.

“Not the bad kind,” he said and took another drag from his beer.

Harlan did too.

But this time when he did it, he found he was intrigued.

Beat-up chairs.

Potluck party.

The screeches and giggles of kids mingled with men’s and women’s laughter and metal.

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