Page 46 of A Brother At My Back

“Not me,” he said and held up fingers in what he’d once told me was a boy scout’s salute. Meant he couldn’t lie.

Tiffany chuckled and moved her hair out of her eyes, hanging it behind her ears saying, “An outlaw biker who’s a boy scout. Isn’t that some kind of an oxymoron?”

“We didn’t all start as outlaws,” Reaver said with a reckless grin. Tiffany’s eyes dimmed and her expression lost its hard-won smile of the moment before.

“That’s a fair point,” she said.

“Oh, how the mighty have fallen,” Trigger said, and held out a handgun to show her. “Which is all right. A lot of us didn’t like it up there anyway.”

“Which is why we’re slumming it down here,” Reaver agreed.

“This here,” Trigger indicated a point on the gun, “pops the magazine.” He dropped it and caught it with his other hand, handing it to Tiff. She took it and he said, “Now that doesn’t mean it’s not loaded. You always gotta assume there’s one in the chamber.” He pulled back the slide to show her. “See there?”

When he said he was going to run her through the basics, he meant it. He educated her from the ground up, and she listened with rapt attention. I’d asked them to meet us out here rather than at the club because the club was always full of people anymore. Brothers, ol’ ladies, and a lot of the time their kids were around. I figured out here would be nice and quiet. Much more Tiffany’s speed.

She didn’t like being around people much, and I couldn’t say I blamed her. A lot of the people around here could be right cunts. Staring at her openly like some bug under glass. Some of them would just walk right up to her and ask. Others took one look at me and assumed the worst. I found those citizens to be the most amusing. And they called us the fuckin’ animals.

“It’s gonna be loud, you’re gonna jump, and that’s okay. The goal of coming out here on the regular is to get you to where you don’t jump so much, as much as it is to improve your shot. You ready?”

“No.”

“Shoot it anyways,” Trig said, and hand trembling, she held the gun out, sighted down the barrel, let out a breath, and fired. She jumped and nearly dropped the gun. Reaver laughed and I smacked him on the shoulder. She was a nervous thing, and this was way outside her comfort zone.

“Sorry!” she said immediately and Trig shook his head.

“Don’t be, just try to hit the target and this time, don’t stop until the gun is empty.”

She did as she was told and lowered it when it was empty. She let out a shuddering breath and asked, “Okay, how’d I do?”

Reaver squinted across the snow at the paper target tacked to a piece of plywood nailed to a board out there and said, “Ehhhh, we’ll get you a shotgun.”

Trig sighed and closed his eyes, shaking his head.

“I don’t know what that means,” she said blankly.

“Means you’re kind of a terrible shot and you’re gonna need practice,” Trig said gently and I could see her shoulders drop slightly. The look on her face was stone, but the flinching in her eyes spelled defeat.

“Rome wasn’t built in a day, eh,” I said gently.

She looked at me and nodded, standing up a little straighter.

“Again?” she asked. Trigger nodded.

“One more magazine for today. Let’s teach you how to properly load it.”

“Okay,” she agreed but I could tell she wasn’t thrilled at emptying another into the paper target across the snow.

Shooting was not my girl’s thing.

---