Page 29 of Saint's Sinner

You don’t need to see to know what I’m thinking

Sinn was the most subdued Night had ever seen him. The man didn’t flirt, joke, or even slide his hands up Night’s thighs as they drove, though he’d always tended to do just that when they went for a ride on Night’s beast of a lightning covered chopper. Instead, Sinn rode rigidly, barely touching Night as the long miles flew past, a fact that was making Night uneasy. He told himself that it had nothing to do with him and everything to do with Sinn getting kidnapped by his folks and having to flee beneath his childhood home when the Serpents tried to wipe them out. Now if only he actually believed that so he could stop freaking out about having fucked up somewhere and waiting to be called on the carpet for it.

Pops doesn’t want us stopping at a motel or parking anywhere that we’ll be easily spotted.Cody told them before they hit the road. He’d been riding at the front of the pack with Night directly behind him and to the right. Wreck was filling the sweep position at the rear, as the senior most member of the Jokers in their entourage. They all knew what that no stopping meant. Canned spam and beef-a-roni straight from the tin, gasstation sandwiches that had been sitting beneath the heat lights for too long, vending machine coffee, and a night spent camped beside their bikes behind a rest stop travel center.

At least this one was old school. Tiny and unmanned, not a lot of space and few trucks about. A couple picnic tables stood in the shadows beneath the moon, and the one naked bulb over the bathroom entrance kept flickering like it was about to go out. This was their kind of place. Easily overlooked and ignored. They’d barely been there an hour and they’d already seen three vehicles pull off the exit and drive right past the building without slowing down, no doubt heading off in search of a more modern and less sinister looking place. Thank the universe for budget cuts. They’d passed up four rest stops on the hunt for this one, each too crowded and illuminated to suit their needs.

“Alright, so we’ve got one bacon cheeseburger, a chicken patty sandwich, two cans of spam, a can of ravioli, mac and cheese in a can, one pulled pork sandwich, a barbequed rib sandwich, a squished fish patty sandwich with cheese which just, ugggg, cheese on fish, why!” Bellamy declared; his nose all scrunched up as he stared at the thing.

“We’ve got some trail mix too and a half bag of powdered donuts,” Wreck added.

“I’ll take the donuts,” Cody declared.

“You’ll take two donuts and a sandwich or a can of something to go along with it,” Wreck ordered.

That tone brokered no room for argument, leaving Night to wonder if he could get away with a hand full of trail mix without a similar response.

“You need a keeper,” Wreck declared when he caught sight of Night popping bits of trail mix in his mouth a few minutes later. “Seriously, I get that the food is shitty, but if you want to keep it between the lines then you gotta eat more than that.”

“I won’t be doing anything but crapping my insides out if I eat that stuff,” Night reluctantly admitted. “All that processed shit plays hell with my guts.”

“Fuck, seriously?”

“Unfortunately. I can eat the trail mix and a donut, maybe. That’s good enough until we get back. The rest of it you can keep, though I don’t know why you’d want to, just the stench of that pork patty is enough to make me wanna hurl.”

“Tell me about it,” Sinn groaned, shoving at the sandwich Bellamy offered him. “No way in hell am I touching that.”

“Want the fish?” Bellamy asked.

“Fuck that! What I want is to be back in Texas in my grandfather’s face getting the apology he owes me,” Sinn snapped.

Night saw Bellamy’s eyes narrow and wondered what he was thinking. He still hadn’t gotten a full read on the guy. Like Sinn and Night, he’d been raised in a club other than the Jokers, but unlike them he appeared to have close ties to his family as was evident by the riders who’d driven from Colorado to Texas just to help locate Sinn.

“Then why are you here?” Bellamy asked.

Sinn snorted; hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jacket. “You heard what Saint said.”

“And you are your own person,” Bellamy pointed out. “So if you wanted to be in Texas, why aren’t you there?”

Night watched Sinn deflate and rub the back of his neck. “Because I wouldn’t have gotten what I wanted and arguing about it would have just pissed Saint off in the process and made it seem like I didn’t respect him as my Dom.”

“Well, you’re right about that part, but what’s the deal with that grandfather of yours?” Bellamy asked. “Why’d he have you kidnapped in the first place and what’s he dragged my cousins into?”

“Sounded to me like they didn’t need the least bit of arm twisting to get them to stick around.”

“’cause they’re as bloodthirsty as rabid vampires and twice as mean,” Bellamy said. “Which is exactly why I was grateful when they volunteered to ride along.”

“I know the type.”

“Something tells me you were raised to be the type and your pissed off that it didn’t pan out that way for you. I get it. I’m not exactly the ideal myself, though I always made certain that anyone who saw the need to point out my deficiencies wound up crawling away…or being dragged.”

“Lucky you.”

“Luck has nothing to do with it. I took a lot of ass beatings before I figured out what worked for me, even when I was outmatched.”

“Good for you,” Sinn grumbled. “But in case you haven’t noticed, I can’t get a clear reading on how many I’m up against, let alone develop a strategy for how to beat them.”

“Well, you could keep looking at it that way, or you could consider it a blessing not to know what the odds are,” Bellamy said.

---