Page 5 of Harper's Song

I scoff and shake my head. “He won’t see me and I’m not sure I want to see him ever again.”

He smiles and I just know he’s thinking what a big fat liar I am. But he won’t call me out on it. That’s not who Hunter is. He knows how much I loved Jax and how much I hurt when he left.

Hunter’s the only one who truly understood that, probably because of all he’s been through with Trixie, and he’s the only one besides Jax that I can share my deepest feelings with. He knows I need to see Jax. I don’t even have to say it for him to know it. He also knows Jax was supposed to come on this tour with me. And since that’s not possible, he’ll make sure I get to at least see him. That’s Hunter. Always looking out for everyone around him. This time me.

That’s why no one hesitated to lay down their lives when it came time to avenge him. Not because he’s the MC president’s son, but because he’s someone who sees everything, never fails to do the right thing and always puts everyone else first.

“Life can be real short,” he says in a faraway-sounding voice that pierces my heart like a sharp blade. “Too short to hold grudges. Besides we don’t have to decide about visiting Jax right now. We can just ride for a while first.”

“Plus, he might refuse to see us if we try,” I add instead of telling him I pretty much already decided to do it.

He shrugs and puts his helmet back on. “Let’s hit the road.”

“Let’s,” I echo and smile wide because I want to make him smile too. And it works, the dark clouds shrouding his otherwise very calm blue eyes dissipating. “I only stopped to say one final goodbye. And now it’s Harper’s first tour all the way.”

I’m sure every problem will still be here when we get back, and that’s making it hard to keep smiling. But I could be wrong so I won’t say it.

I’ll just soldier on. At the end of the day that’s all you can do.

My heart’s still broken, I see that now. Crushed by almost losing Hunter and by actually losing Jax.

But I think I’m finally ready to start gluing the pieces back together.

2

Jax

Waking up in the morning is the worst part of being in prison. That split second when you’re awake enough to realize the mattress beneath you is sliver thin and smells of old sweat and who knows what else, that the drab, dark grey concrete walls around you have no windows and that you’re stuck. When the softness of the dream you were dreaming still lingers but can no longer overshadow the harsh, inescapable reality.

That terrible morning disconnect still hits me with all the force of a freight train going full speed at me every damn morning, even though I’ve been in here for more than half a year now. Still a year to go on my sentence. If I’m lucky. If that idiot who got in my face and I hit too hard ever wakes up. He might not. And if he doesn’t, I’m looking at decades of this shit.

I was maybe nine years old the first time someone told me I was heading straight to prison. I don’t even know who said it first. Maybe some busybody teacher. Or possibly my mother on one of the few and far between occasions she actually decided to be my mother. And those ominous warnings only got louder and more frequent the older I got. Turned out they were for the best, at least they prepared me for this.

My father is still snoring on the bottom bunk as I climb up and stretch, before taking a piss in the stainless steel toilet in the corner of our cell.

The one good thing to come out of my incarceration is getting the chance to reconnect with my long-lost father. The last time I got to spend any time with him I was five years old, when he was sent down for killing a man and my mother first decided she couldn’t take care of me on her own.

He’s broken by the system. Used to living in here. I guess twenty years behind bars will do that to you. I don’t know yet. But the way things are going, I’ll probably find out.

I wish there was at least a window for me to stare out of while I take my morning piss. I never did well indoors, especially not in small rooms. But it’s amazing what a person will get used to.

I probably dream mostly of Harper and her beautiful voice. And her beautiful face and body too. I don’t know for sure, because I hardly ever remember the good dreams, only the nightmares. But when it’s a good dream, like it must’ve been last night, the feeling lingers all day, growing stronger and more urgent with each passing hour, until it’s a pulsing, burning need to see her by late afternoon and a rancid mess by the time I finally lay down to sleep again.

Not much to do in prison but fight or think.

I do too much of both. Which is why I’m probably not getting out anytime soon. Or seeing Harper. She’s better off without me and that’s even more true now than it was when I left her.

But damn it, I loved her more than I ever loved anyone and anything combined. I love her even more now that I can’t be near her. It’s been ten months. When does it get easier?Neverseems to be the only answer, so I’ve managed to stop asking that question, for the most part. Except on bleak mornings like this when just waking up brings me to my knees.

“You about done over there?” my father asks in his gruff morning voice.

I didn’t hear him stop snoring and I quickly zip up and let him use the sorry excuse for a toilet in our cell. Standing behind him while my father takes his morning piss is so far removed from anything I’ve ever imagined the rest of my life entailing that it actually makes me slightly nauseous. Another thing only fighting can calm. And if I’m not careful, I’ll start a fight with my father.

“You need to keep your head down today,” he says, looking at me over his shoulder and spraying piss all over the bowl and the wall behind it.

“I’ll do what I can,” I answer as the stench of urine fills the room.

He shakes his head, zips up and flushes the toilet. “I mean it. The two remaining members of Horned Riders MC are being brought in today. They’ll buddy up with the Knights and you’ll have to answer for your affiliation with the Devils all over again.”

---