Page 6 of Savage Protector

Chapter Three

Houston

Houston entered his parent’s house as uneventfully as he left it. It was exactly as he remembered. Except instead of the stale, dust covered time capsule he expected, the house was clean with a lemony fresh scent. He shook his head. Another club thing. Probably one of the old lady’s ideas. He’d bet if he went in the kitchen and opened the fridge there’d be cold beer and sandwich fixings too.

The club took care of their own and the fact that he’d worn a Wrath cut only briefly, didn’t matter. He was family. No, as his dad liked to remind him growing up, he was the Wrath prince and as such destined to run it all.

His answer to that? Fuck destiny.

Houston rubbed his sore leg as he walked toward the bedrooms. There wasn’t shit about him that was princely. He’d opted to leave all of this behind and never look back. He had a wild notion he wasn’t anything like his father and the best thing he could do for his life was leave and never return.

That worked for a cool decade. A decade in which he’d gone from smart mouthed teenager looking to prove a point to stone cold killer who liked to spend most of his time alone on the side of a mountain, in a jungle hole with a view, or anywhere he had a rifle in his hands and a job to do.

As far as he was concerned there was nothing worse than having nothing to do.

He pushed into his bedroom and looked around. Hard to believe this tiny ten-by-eleven room held so many memories. He dropped his bag on the bed and followed it down. Surprisingly, the little house didn’t make him nearly as sad as he expected. His mother’s violent death marred some of the memories, but there was a lot more good to remember than bad. He and his brother spent a lot of years trailing Pops and JD to the clubhouse and back again.

They all worked on motorcycles together many weekends and there were a shit load of parties hosted in their backyard or at the mill. Houston looked down at the keys still clutched in his hand and remembered Axel’s instructions to check the garage.

Might as well…

He passed through the house again, quickening his pace a fraction as he passed the living room. Maybe that one spot still freaked him out a little.

Resigned to take whatever came next with a grain of salt, he opened the garage door and flipped on the light.

Holy Shit.

His baby.

His bike.

He knew she’d be here waiting for him, but he wasn’t expecting her to be gleaming and ready the moment he arrived. He stepped forward and ran his hand across the chrome handlebars. Truth be told, she was the real reason he came back. The nineteen eighty-eight Harley Sportster his father bought him on the day he was born had become a piece of him over the years.

They’d spent hours and hours in this garage customizing her until she held little resemblance to the machine from the showroom floor. It was this bike that taught him everything he needed to know about motorcycles and it was on this bike he’d learned to ride.

“Son, you need to remember this if nothing else.” His father pressed his hand down on his shoulder. “It’s not the bike that makes the man. It’s the man who makes the bike. It doesn’t fucking matter if your bike is worth twenty large or a lousy hundred bucks. You make the bike yours and she’ll be there for you as long as you take care of her. Even bitches can come and go but you and the bike, you go on.”

Houston straightened, familiar bitterness rising inside him. That might be the only piece of wisdom he’d ever keep from his old man. When his father had been arrested for accidentally shooting his wife during the fight with JD and charged with manslaughter, Houston stopped talking to him and refused to visit him in jail.

As for his bike, he looked at her now as the life preserver he’d been looking for. Or maybe the anchor that would help life make sense to him again. Either way, he planned to figure out the right answers on the open road. He strode back into the house and dug his leather jacket out of his bag. He grabbed a smaller backpack and shoved a few necessities inside before returning to the garage.

From the moment he saw the bike he knew what he was going to do. There was still one place where the world didn’t matter and he was free. On the highway with the wind at his back.

Houston swung into the saddle of the bike, flipped the switch to start the engine and reveled in the rumbling steel underneath him. Oh yeah.

With only a vague destination in mind, he pointed the bike west and returned the way he arrived. He decided the obscurity of the big city’s waterfront was exactly what he needed.

He had a feeling not answering the Wrath summons would cost him dearly down the road. But it wouldn’t stop him tonight. If and when he returned to Sultan, he'd deal with the bitterness in Axel and the consequences with JD.

But tonight…tonight he would be free.

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