All Chapters of Love On Two Wheels : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Rafe drove like someone who had made peace with the fact that cars, fundamentally, were just controlled metal disasters moving at speed, and the best you could do was commit to it.I held the passenger door handle with more force than was probably necessary."You nervous?" he asked."Your turning radius suggests I should be."He laughed that full, uncomplicated laugh that seemed to come from somewhere south of self-consciousness. "Don't let the boys see you flinch. It loses you ground.""I'm not trying to gain ground.""Sure you are. Everybody in that garage is. That's just how it works."We were making a coffee run into town Marge had given us a list of supplies and an implicit mandate to get out of her hair for an hour, which I suspected was her version of engineering a situation she wanted to happen.I had been at Cliff's End for over a week now. Long enough to develop routines, short enough that I still felt the particular foreignness of being somewhere I hadn't chosen with inte

My father's bike was ready on a Tuesday.Jax told me this in his standard mode of communication minimum words, maximum clarity by dropping the key on the workbench in front of me while I was sorting hardware and saying: "She's set." Then walking away before I could respond.I stood there holding the key for a moment.It was a small thing. A piece of metal with a worn leather fob that I recognized a small red disc with a stamped 'R' on it, for Richards, that my father had clipped onto every set of keys he ever owned. He bought them in bulk from a hardware shop he liked because they were seventy-five cents each and he was an economical man.I closed my fingers around it.* * *The bike started with the authority of something that had been properly loved. I had half-expected hesitation it had been months since it ran consistently but Jax had done something to the ignition timing, or the fuel system, or whatever particular alchemy good mechanics applied to machines that had given up.

The engine was a '78 Shovelhead a name I had always found inadvertently poetic, though I recognized this said something about the kind of child I had been and it had been brought in by a regular named Cal who rode up from somewhere south twice a year to have Jax look at it and left without any of the social requirements other customers seemed to expect.Today, Jax and I were working on it together.This had not been arranged in advance. It had simply happened I had been nearby when he pulled the engine from the frame, and he had said, without looking up, "Hold that," and handed me something, and then we had both kept going, and at some point it became a two-person job without either of us discussing whether we wanted it to be.The bay was warm. The radio was playing something that Rafe had put on guitar-forward, mid-tempo, the kind of music that suggested someone was going to make a regrettable decision before the last chorus.We worked.There is a grammar to working alongside ano

They arrived at eleven in the morning on a Thursday.Two of them on identical black bikes heavily customized, the kind of builds that communicate money and menace in roughly equal measure. The chrome work was excessive in the particular way of people who wanted you to see them coming. They pulled into the lot at a speed that suggested entitlement to space, and they got off their bikes without removing their helmets until they were already standing in the middle of the gravel.Patches on the jackets: a stylized iron cross. Iron Saints.I had heard Jax mention the name, peripherally, in the overheard phone call that had started our first real argument. I had filed it and not asked.I was filing it more urgently now.The crew registered their arrival before I did I noticed Rafe's posture change from across the garage, the slight shift in the set of his shoulders that meant something was happening that required attention. Ghost appeared in the doorway of the bay without appearing to mov

She arrived on a Sunday morning like she had been invited.I was in the garage when I heard the car a rental, nondescript silver, pulling into the lot with the particular deliberateness of someone who had GPS-navigated here and was confirming they had the right address. I looked up from the bench.Claudine was exactly as I remembered: tall, well-dressed in the particular way that requires money and makes it look inevitable, hair arranged in a way that was casual enough to be charming and careful enough to be precise. She looked around the lot with the expression of someone taking inventory.Then she saw me and her whole face became warmth."Joan." She crossed the gravel quickly, arms opening. "I've been so worried about you."I let the hug happen. Brief. I kept my hands in the middle register of warmth present, not welcoming."Claudine," I said. "What are you doing here?""I told you I wanted to see you. I texted." She pulled back, holding my arms, looking at me with an expression o