Page 31 of Apex of the Curve

“Need money?” he asked without looking up from where he was unloading the dishwasher.

“I got it,” I said.

“Good, then get you gone.”

“Love you, too, you old bastard.”

“Yeah, yeah, love you, Son, but fuck you.”

I laughed as I went out through the mud room and out the back door. We were always up each other’s ass. We didn’t even know why. It drove my mom nuts when she was around and had the occasion to see it.

I stuck the key in the ignition of the truck and pulled down on the gearshift to get it into drive.

Maybe I should call Mom and get her advice on this one… then again, maybe not. I didn’t know when it came to Mom what was going to be a good day versus a bad one. She missed Lacy the hardest of all of us and she absolutely fucking hated that I’d joined the club and had taken the road less traveled like I’d done.

I’d disappointed her, but I couldn’t say I shared her disappointment. Did I have regrets? Sure, sometimes, like now… I was a monster, and there were no regrets about that. Never really had been, until now. Now, I had only one regret. That I hadn’t let myself stay human enough to know exactly what to do to help Aspen through her situation that didn’t involve blood and violence.

I hadn’t had a lot of practice being human, being normal by citizen standards, but then again, I’d never had the occasion to be those things.

I took 18 to 167 and headed south, swinging around onto 410 when I got there to get on out to the honey farm.

I picked up three buckets and headed back to the goat farm, dropping them off with my pops who hauled them out to our homebrew shed on his own, telling me to fuck off when I asked if he needed a hand.

“You need your truck?” I called after him.

“No, now I said fuck off with you!”

I shook my head. “Crazy old bastard,” I muttered and decided fuck it. It was getting on toward noon and if I rode, I would only have to ride back and pick up the truck before heading to Aspen’s place and I didn’t feel much like taking the extra steps.

I headed for the club’s old Ironhorse Boneyard and to cross the whole lawyer thing off my list. Did I think hooking her up with a better lawyer was the way to go? Meh, only partially. What she needed was someone to whoop her ex’s ass, but she wasn’t there. I didn’t know if she was ever the type to get there, either, and that was honestly okay. She didn’t need to be there. She wasn’t one of us, and I honestly kind of liked that, I guess.

Not sure why it made a difference, it just did. Not that big of one, but it was there.

“What is your fuckin’ deal, bro?” I asked myself softly as I steered the truck back onto Highway 18.

I didn’t have the answer to that one.

I pulled into the end of the Eagle’s lot next to the boneyard and shut off the truck something like forty minutes later. I sat for a second, gathered my cut off the seat next to me and keyring looped around my index finger, gave them a casual spin and caught them in my palm, holding tight, the metal nubs of the key cuts digging into my palm. I got out, shut the door behind me, and shrugged into my cut as I stepped over the curb and walked through the patch of grass to the gravel of the drive.

Rat City was a bad place to be, but the locals knew it could get a whole lot worse if they fucked with our shit, so I didn’t have to lock the truck’s door.

“What’re you doin’ here?” Dump Truck grunted as I passed by the yard’s open gate and started past his open garage bay door.

“Seein’ if Mav was around,” I said, changing tract and stopping by the dude that honestly passed for my closest friend.

“He’s around, how’d things go last night?”

I let out a pent-up breath and a bit of a nervous laugh. “It’s kind of a shitshow.”

“Oh, yeah?” He looked up at me, squinting at the light coming in through the bay door. It wasn’t too bright out, overcast as it was, but it was a fuckton brighter than in here.

“She was still a hot mess when I got there, looked me right in the eyes and told me she didn’t want to be alive anymore.”

Dump Truck looked up sharply at that and scowled, rolling back on his stool and giving me a hard look.

“What’d you do?” he asked.

“Stayed with her, made sure she was solid this morning, made plans with her for tonight and let her go to work.”

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