HARD KNOX (2 page)

I looked damn cool in it.

I had the muscle, the balls, and
the will to make it work.

“You fucking like it, huh?” the old
man asked, standing in the doorway, arms folded.

I saw he had some fresh ink on his
forearm too.

“I like it,” I said. “I could make
this work, Pop.”

“Why don’t you get back to school
and finish first.”

“Fuck that. I’ll get booted in a
week. I don’t tolerate bullshit.”

“Yeah, well, I’m getting tired of
tolerating you living here for free. Give me that cut back.”

I gave it to him and he grabbed my
shirt. He pulled me close and stuffed the leather cut in my face. “Listen here,
son.  Everything in life we earn. You fucking quit, at anything, and you’re
dead to me. I earned this cut through shit I’ll never talk about. But this is
mine now. You want to be part of this? Earn it.”

The old man tossed me backwards and
put his leather cut on. In that moment, he looked twice my size.

So you know what I did that night?

I did pushups until I couldn’t
move. I did crunches until I couldn’t breathe. I lifted until I dropped the
weights. Then I topped it off with a long ass run. I was going to become
something greater than my life and family.

By the time I got back home, Ma was
back from work. She and the old man were fighting over his new career choice.
Typical.

I stole two more smokes from my
grandmother and was out back enjoying them when I heard the
clink
of the
gate. I turned my head and saw Abby crossing the lawn. I was hoping for Ana.

She had a plate in her hand.

“Knox?” she asked.

“That’s me,” I said.

I was taller than her and she
looked afraid to be near me.

“I brought you some leftovers,” she
said. “A couple slices of pizza.”

“Oh. Nice. Thanks.”

I took the plate.

“Mind if I have a drag?” she asked.

“Yeah, sure.”

How about that fuckery? A middle
aged adult woman asking me for a smoke. Usually I got the fifth degree that
smoking would stunt my growth and kill me or some shit. The rate I was growing,
I’d be over seven feet tall when I finished up. So a few smokes here and there
didn’t threaten me.

Abby took a drag and smiled. “I
quit two years ago. Jack insisted.”

“Well, it’s a hard habit to kick,” I
said.

Abby laughed. “Yeah. I better be
careful here.”

She took another drag. Goddamn, she
looked sexy doing it. I pictured her naked, us in her bed, she having a smoke
after I got done fucking her.

Then I thought about Ana and I
chased that shit out of my mind right away.

“Sorry about everything,” I said. “Your
husband and all.”

Abby shrugged her shoulders. “I’m
not going to have that conversation with a teenager. Sorry, Knox.”

“Then where is tonight going?” I
asked.

Yeah, a little douchey and flirty,
but fuck it. If Abby wanted to fool around, I was game.

Abby laughed again. “I’m going to
take the cigarette and enjoy it at home.”

“Sure. My homecoming gift to you.”

“Right. I didn’t just come over to
give you pizza, Knox.”

“Again, what do you want?”

Abby blew smoke from the corner of
her mouth like an old pro. She then looked me dead in the eyes. “Stay away from
Ana. This is not where I want to live. This is not what I want for her. The
last thing I need is some thug like you to get into her head.”

“Oh, trust me, I wasn’t hoping to
get into her head.”

Abby wound up and cracked me across
the face. “Stay the fuck away from my daughter.”

She turned and stormed away, getting
eaten up by the darkness.

I touched my cheek. It throbbed. I
looked up and saw Ana’s bedroom light was on.

I sat down right there and ate the
two pieces of pizza. I had the second cigarette.

And that was how the day went… the
day I met the woman of my dreams. The woman who would raise hell in my heart.
The woman who would end up carrying our first child.
The woman I would
forever die for
… just to make her fucking smile one more time.

chapter three

(ana)

*NOW*

I touched the corners of my eyes
and sucked in a deep breath.

Where the hell did time go so
fast?

I asked that question in my mind
because I learned a while ago that talking to the gravestone didn’t do a thing.
If I did, my mother would have been back with me by now. Our relationship after
my father left was nothing short of disastrous, but having her die this young
from stupid cancer felt cruel. My father even had the nerve to send flowers
with a card from him and his new wife. He couldn’t even show? Couldn’t even be
there for me?

And my mother’s dying words to me…

“Hey, are we almost done here?”

I turned and looked at Porter. His
nice shirt was neatly tucked into his nice pants. His black shoes shined like
they’d just come off the shelf at the shoe store where he paid more for them than
the cost of my first car. His hair was too perfect, along with his jaw, eyes,
ears, teeth, and everything else about him.

“Seriously?” I asked. I choked up. “Do
you know what today means to me?”

He sat on another gravestone, like
a rude prick.

He put his hands up and nodded.
Then he grabbed his phone and started to click away.

I faced the gravestone again.

It really was kind of dumb, right?
Nobody was here. My mother was gone. Maybe she was in heaven, but I didn’t buy
into all that religion stuff. I was staring at a rock. A piece of stone that
was cut with her name in it.

The tears flooded my eyes again and
I pinched the bridge of my nose.

Porter didn’t like when I cried.

I swallowed it all down and started
to walk away.

“Yo,” Porter yelled. “Are we done
now?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s get out of
here.”

We walked back to his fancy car and
I sat in the passenger seat. He climbed into the driver’s seat and dropped his
phone. “Hey, babe, come on. I know all that shit is sad and all. It’s not cool.
You look better when you don’t cry. That’s all. Hey, we need to talk about
Danny and shit. Okay?”

“What now?” I asked.

Each time I stared at Porter my
mind asked,
What the fuck are you doing?

The answer was simple.

I was surviving.

Porter made that capable. He said
he was part of a family owned car dealership but I knew that was a front for
something else. The entire town and city seemed to run on crooked businesses.
But Porter had some money, a car, and didn’t mind me. It wasn’t exactly love or
lust, but rather acceptance. At least for me.

What did he get out of it?

Someone to come home to, no matter
what.

I had stepped right into the
footprints of my mother.

“He needs someone to cover at the
club tonight,” Porter said. “It’s going to be packed. Some band is playing or
some shit. Two of his girls never showed last night and still haven’t shown.
Another two are sick or pregnant or something. I don’t know. He’s a mess down
there. Jackie and Acey claim that the bartender is cleaning them out little by
little.”

“So what do I do?” I asked. “I’m
not a detective.”

I should have known better than to
talk like that. But the emotion was raw inside me.

Porter grabbed my jaw and I felt
like it was going to snap off my face.

“Don’t fucking give me attitude,
woman,” he growled. “Do you need another lesson?”

“No,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

Porter took his hand away. “That’s
what I fucking thought. I’m not one of your dumb cunt friends. Now listen to me
carefully. I need you to work the club tonight. End of discussion. Look half
decent and sell some drinks and food. Keep an eye on Eddie, the bartender. You
see anything funny you tell me. Don’t tell Danny. This is an internal thing. Do
you understand me?”

“Yes,” I said.

I had plenty of waitress experience
since it was the only thing I was qualified for in life. My dreams of pursuing
a law degree or becoming a doctor were tossed out the window as soon as I moved
into town. I had been under orders from my mother to stay away from my neighbor
-
Knoxville
. Telling that to a teenager girl was stupid. It only made me
want him more. So I spent years finding ways to sneak around and meet him. Hold
his hand. Kiss him. Let him touch me in places…

“Are you hearing me?” Porter asked.

“Sorry.”

“I’ll be back in town tomorrow. I
have a thing tonight.”

“A thing,” I said.

“Car auction.”

I nodded.

That was always his excuse.

When Porter went to a car auction
he never came back with cars and he always had a change of clothes on. I couldn’t
figure out if he was murdering people or cheating on me. Maybe both.

Maybe I didn’t care.

No, that was a lie. I cared. I
cared a lot.

I hated what he did all the time.

“Just don’t fuck this thing on me,”
Porter said. “I’d hate for you to be sick again.”

Sick.

I swallowed hard.

I didn’t want to be
sick
.

Hiding in a room, trying to let
things heal up, scrambling for gallons of makeup to make things look normal if
someone knocked on my apartment door.

And to think, this all started
because I was dumb enough to buy into Porter’s nice eyes and smooth words. I
got him dinner and drinks, he tipped me huge, and then he waited for me
outside. He was the only thing that took my mind off what I couldn’t have. Now
he wouldn’t let me go. I couldn’t escape him unless it was through death.

“Shit, woman, you look on edge bad,”
he said. “You want a good pill or something?”

“No,” I said. “I have to be straight
for tonight.”

“Good thinking. See, you’re not
that dumb. Now come here.”

Porter grabbed me and pulled me to
him. He started to kiss me, slobbering his tongue in my mouth and to my neck.
He grabbed my right hand and stuck it between his legs.

“Not here,” I said.

“Why the fuck not? Nobody is
watching us.”

His hand flicked open the button of
my jeans. I felt his fingers slide into my panties and down and around. As soon
as he touched me, I flinched, jumping at him. I hated his touch but the feeling
was like a drug. It was all I had in life.

“Oh, babe,” he said, kissing my
neck. “Easy… just easy…”

I quickly grabbed at the zipper of
his pants. The only way I’d get off was if Porter got off too. God forbid he
touched me without something in return. Usually it was always at the same time,
just in case.

I forced my hand into his boxers
and pulled his dick out of his pants. I squeezed and stroked, knowing right
where his weak spot was.

Two of his fingers crammed into me,
making me groan,
not from pleasure.
He then did it again and again. I
put my head back and shut my eyes, slipping away. The second I shut my eyes, I
forgot about Porter and I became wet.

Then it felt good.

Really good.

But not explosive good.

There I was, on the gravel road in
a cemetery, Porter fingering me while I jerked him off. I always seemed to sink
to a new level of low.

He couldn’t find my clit if I
highlighted it in bright pink, so I learned to move my hips and work his
fingers to my needs.

Pleasure was my addiction, I couldn’t
save myself from it.

But as I sat there, my dying mother’s
last sentence popped into my mind. It hit me like a lightning bolt, from my
heart down to between my legs.

“Ana
… I was wrong
…
you need someone like him to save you
… you need a man
… you need
to find Knox
…”

chapter four

(knox)

*THEN*

I stood while everyone else sat. I
leaned against the garage wall and looked around at all the posters. From
motorcycles to naked chicks, the place looked and reeked of
man cave
.
Shit, that was before the idea of a
man cave
was cool. Me and the guys
invented the idea. No woman would dare to enter the garage. They all knew
better.

The thing that got me the most was
the silence.

It was never quiet in the garage.

Even if we were sitting and
thinking, you could always hear the whir and buzz of the power tools, keeping
the front of the place all legit. That was dead too. The fucking economy bombed
out and our little piece of shit town was left off the
give a damn
map.
Seemed those in charge were more interested in constructing a certain image to
make the rest of the country feel like things were getting better.

Fucking politicians.

The head of the table was empty and
that was wrong too.

We had all the guys there. Half of
them weren’t even wearing their leather cuts anymore. Yeah, the charter and the
MC had taken its hits throughout the years, but wearing the cut still mattered.
At least it did to me. It fucking mattered.

There was a lot of Federal noise
over the last couple years and a lot of guys were rattled. A lot hung up their
cut. A lot were killed in street wars that should have never gotten to the
point they did.

And now…

The garage door opened.

Uncle Jakey stepped in. He was one
of the original members of the MC. The idea born out of saying
fuck you
to the force fed idea of the
real world
. Finding guys who were
struggling, getting their ass kicked by the system, knowing there had to be a
better way to survive and lick the wind of freedom. They started out by riding
through town to be loud and annoying. To the point where crime started to go
down. I’m not sure who secured the first deal but at some point the MC started
protecting the town. Better than the police could ever imagine. They grew and
bled into the city to do the same. In fact, they ended up getting so close with
the police that if something needed to be done that would tarnish the
good
nature, fair justice
bullshit of the authorities they’d turn to the MC for
help.

It was a good thing.

Yeah, sometimes things got out of
hand, but it never got too far.

Now it was way too fucking far.

Uncle Jakey walked forward. He
paused at me, patting my shoulder. Then he went to the head of the table. The
sight wasn’t good at all. It should’ve been the VP sitting there. Or better
yet, a new vote. Call in all the charters and discuss what to do.

But Uncle Jakey took it all for
himself. It was his way of trying to kill what he had helped to create.

“I stand today with a heavy heart,”
Uncle Jakey said. “Our President, Hammer, is on the inside now. The rumors you
all heard are true.”

That caused a little bit of a stir.

Everyone looked at me.

Yeah, yeah, I was now the abandoned
guy. My mother split and was never heard from again. And now my old man was in
prison.

“We have funds for lawyers, right?”
one of the guys asked.

“We don’t have funds for
electricity,” Uncle Jakey snapped. “It doesn’t matter. He took our votes and
decided on his own path. There’s nothing we can do. If we insert ourselves, we
become part of it. I talked to Devin and he agrees. Distance saves the rest of
us. I know we don’t split on the cut, but look at us. Half of you don’t even
wear the cut anymore. You’re all a bunch of grease monkey motherfuckers,
running straight, paying your bills on time, fucking your wives twice a week,
jerking off in the shower for the rest of the days. What do you want to do
here? You want to stand up and fight this? He was caught up in a sting. It’s
done. It’s over. The only option Hammer has now is to turn on the rest of us.
That’s only if we’re active in the life. If he tries to turn now and the Feds
want to come here, they’ll find a rundown garage and nothing else.”

“What’s the verdict, Uncle Jakey?” I
finally asked.

“The verdict?” he said. “Hammer is
in prison and will stay there for the rest of his goddamn life. The more they
dig the more they find. On our own, we can survive. We can hold together the
rules that kept this club moving forward. That’s all I can offer.”

Uncle Jakey got to smack the gavel
one time in his life and it was right then.

The garage cleared out except for
me and Uncle Jakey.

I was at one end of the table, he
on the other.

We both stared at each other.

Here was a guy who bought me my
first bicycle. Here was a guy who slipped me my first porno mag where I saw two
chicks going down on each other and forever changed my life. Here was a guy who
was not my uncle by blood or family, but by brotherhood. The loyalty was only
as real as the patch on our leather cuts.

“I’m sorry about your old man, kid,”
Uncle Jakey said. “He was always crazy. He always took it too far. But, shit,
kid, that’s what got him the patch, you know? When we had that roll over and
shook up the MC, he led the charge.”

“And now he’s going to rot in prison,”
I said.

Uncle Jakey nodded. “Yeah, he is.”

I backed away from the table. “I
bet he’ll still keep the club in his heart. I won’t give this up. Ever. I don’t
give a shit what happens. This… this is all I have.”

I walked out of the garage, wearing
my leather cut.

I’d keep the cut but would stop
wearing it shortly after that.

We all still rode motorcycles but
the pack thinned out a lot. It ended up as a handful of us that would still
meet up, raise some hell, and earn when we had to do so.

That didn’t mean we stayed out of
trouble.

One of us ended up in prison for
murder. On death-fucking-row.

But that… that’s a whole other
story.

This story, right now, is about me
and Ana.

I thought she would be smart and
move the fuck on from this town. From this bullshit.

But I was wrong.

She was still in town.

And things between me and her
were about to get as wild as ever.