Page 11 of Biker Boo
That’s the problem.
People mistake silence for absence.
But I’ve never been absent.
Not from her.
Not from anything.
They just never bothered tolook.
Later as the night fell, I stand in the shadows beneath the sycamores, face masked, hoodie pulled low, boots planted in the wet Kentucky dirt like a specter she summoned by mistake.
Becki’s out there barefoot in her nightie, flashlight trembling in one hand, a middle finger raised in the other.I smile behind the mask.
That’smygirl.
Even if she don’t know it.
Even if she never will.
I’ve watched her for years.
Since the Reverend dragged us out of Louisville and dumped us in this backwoods spiritual slaughterhouse.My sister Cider and I were thirteen, maybe twelve.Met Becki then, the Reverend’s real daughter, all busted lip and switchblade eyes, of two different colors.They fucking mesmerized me.Me in black jeans and bruises, pretending I didn’t bleed poetry when I slept.
Met Legend then too.The Reverend already saved him.It was like enlisting in the army for a holy war.But we survived.
In the end Legend got the glory.The power.The patch.
He got thegirl.
Or so it seemed.
ButIgot the fire.
And fire she stoked in me.Fire don’t forget.Rebecca Crowley don’t know what it did to me, watching her pine for him.
Watching her unravel herself for scraps.
Watching him let her.Watching her let his father, too, just to make Legend feel something.Anything.
But the man always there to put her back together…“I could never.You’re his oldest friend, Royal, you’re his brother,” she said once and too many times in my head.
It made me a villain before I even had the chance to be anything else.But I never stopped wanting her.Not once.
Tonight, I take what’s mine.
Becki wandered into the woods like a fucking dare.I stalk her from the trees like a curse she tried to outgrow.
When she lifts that flashlight and whispers, “What do you want?”I almost say it.
You.
Always you.
Only you.
But my voice would give me away.
