Fuck.

* * *

AS EASY AS it was to get lost in the thoughts of her, it wasn’t easy to forget about the immediate threat that could be looming beyond every turn. No cell was safe. No hallway. No bathroom. Not even the yard.

When Bethany told me they had enough evidence to arrest Ti, there was no way I was going to let them take her and spared no fucking second thought about taking her place. Which is all the more reason to make sure my guard is up and that each and every Bastard who thought they could come at me in County would end up mangled or dead. Didn’t really matter because either way, it wouldn’t be Ti.

Unable to sleep, I stood at the cell door and leaned against the bars. Across cell block, through the high window, the ONLY window, was the full moon obscured by thin passing clouds, offering the only glimpse of freedom I was sure to have for a long while.

If ever.

The D.A. announced shortly after I’d been arrested that they were pushing for the death penalty.

The clouds parted and the light of the moon lit up my cell like a spotlight. Oddly enough illuminating the graffiti on the cell block wall above the toilet.

BEACH BASTARDS, LOGAN’S BEACH was tagged in thick marker.

I sighed. Even in my fucking cell I couldn’t escape their reach, even if it was only in ink form.

For now.

The Beach Bastards used to be more than just a motorcycle club, more than my home even. They were a brotherhood, bound by loyalty. At the time nothing compared to the feeling of belonging to something bigger and more important than myself.

Something I believed in with everything I had and was.

When I left the MC, I never thought I’d have that again, but I was wrong. Although the packaging was a little different. Instead of leather and tattoos, it was a smart mouth and a body I wanted riding my face every fucking second of the day.

When I was a Bastard, I’d lived and breathed by a code. The very foundation the MC was built around.

Code dictated that although the Bastards might rip your eyeballs from the sockets in retaliation, they wouldn’t kill your wife and kids in the process.

Innocents were left untouched.

That was until Chop laid his hands on my girl.

MY Thia.

The Bastards were now more like a terrorist organization, bound not by loyalty, but by the orders spewed from the mouth of a power-hungry, soulless tyrant. My brothers used to be soldiers, but somewhere along the line they turned into nothing more than obedient dogs tethered by Chop’s very short leashes. The kind of thugs who do the dirty work, tag cells while they’re inside, and contribute little more to the overall good of the club.

There was no more “good-of-the-club.”

The brotherhood part of it was long gone, and in its place was a dictatorship dripping in motor oil, leather, and lies.

When I took off my cut, I didn’t know who I was anymore. The man in me was lost throughout years of thinking that my old man was somehow more than a mere mortal because he was the one who held the gavel and passed down the orders.

Until Ti.

She made me realize that I didn’t need the club to be a biker.

I can live and I can ride.

I can love and I can kill.

It was both the man and the biker in me who was going to put a bullet in Chop’s skull and end this shit because I knew he’d never stop until I was in the ground.

“You first old man,” I muttered to myself.

Code dictated that a brother couldn’t kill another brother.

It was a good fucking thing I wasn’t a Bastard anymore because if and when I got free of those cell bars, the hurt I planned to inflict upon my old man would make what Eli and his pussy ass men did to me look fucking tame by comparison.

Then there was the little matter of my mother suddenly coming back from the dead.

Sadie.

My mother’s name was Sadie Treme. For some reason I hadn’t remembered that until I found myself sitting across from her in the visiting room wondering how the fuck she was even alive.

The bitch could at least have given me the courtesy of staying dead.

I didn’t trust it.

I didn’t trust her.

I had enough shit going on without having to think about the woman who gave birth to me escaping the fucking reaper, only to crawl her way back to the land of the living.

Throughout the years I rarely allowed my thoughts to wander to the woman who gave birth to me. Chop said she was a traitor, so I believed she was a traitor. Rats didn’t have a place in the club or a place among the living. “We don’t give rats a second thought after they’ve been put down. Rats are pests and the only good rat is a dead rat.” He’d said that the very night he’d caught Sadie trying to escape Logan’s Beach with me in the passenger seat. Hours later, he dragged her into the woods and put her down like a fucking rabid dog.

What’s weird is that I don’t remember crying then. A son should cry for his mom when she dies, shouldn’t he? I racked my brain to try and remember any sort of tear shed, but the memories never came.

What did come back were other memories, like the way her long brown hair had almost touched her waist back then. The way her hazel eyes had lit up when my old man paid her any sort of attention. The way she never wore any makeup around her eyes, but her lips were always painted bright red. The way she never sung me lullabies, but was always humming tunes by Tanya Tucker and Waylon Jennings everywhere she’d go.

Those memories couldn’t have been of the same Sadie who sat in front of me in that visitation center. No, the woman who twisted her fingers and kept peering down at her lap was just a shell of the free spirit I remember dancing to the Willie Nelson song she kept playing on repeat on the club jukebox.

She was alive and breathing, but there was something about her. Maybe it was her sunken cheeks or sallow complexion. Or maybe it was the defeated vibe she was giving off that made me wonder if maybe my old man had succeeded in killing her after all.

Sadie and Chop had gotten together when Sadie was only sixteen years old. She was a runaway turned club whore. Five short years after I was born she was gone and that was that.

Then there she was. Almost twenty five years later, sitting across from me, looking me over with her mouth agape as if I were the fucking ghost at the table.

“Why are you here?” I’d asked, not sure of where else to start the conversation or even if I wanted to have one.

“Honestly, I thought I knew and now, actually being here, I’m not really sure why I came,” she’d said meekly, biting her lip and looking everywhere else but me.