Walk The Edge

Our teacher’s talking. Rambling how she’ll give a hundred extra credit points to anyone who can solve the puzzle by the end of class. She’s saying some other things, too. Like my name. After a push of Addison’s elbow to my desk, I absently say, “Here.” After another passage of time I’m pulled out of the zone when I hear, “I only respond to Razor.”

Then our teacher says other things. Things I should possibly pay attention to, but can’t.

The wheels are spinning. I write down each train of thought, watching the correct letters come up like dials of a combination lock. Each click audible in my head, and it sends me higher and higher, and when the last letter falls into place, my seat jerks beneath me.

Addison and Reagan turn at the sound, and so do others. I use my hand to cover my answer because I don’t want anyone to know I cracked it. I will not relive middle school again.

Our teacher assesses me, then continues to summarize our syllabus. Everyone else eventually faces forward and I allow myself to revel in the solution glory.

Forty minutes eventually pass. We hear about rules and projects. Books we’ll read and movies we’ll watch. As always, there’s a discussion of expectations. At the end, our teacher grants us ten minutes to tackle the problem and I spend that time doodling cloud-inspired sheep.

The bell rings. Addison and Reagan give me a quick ’bye and bolt, since their next class is on the opposite side of the building. My class is down the hall, so I’m slow packing my stuff.

The booted feet that were beside me are now drawn back, and there’s a squeak as the desk behind me tips forward. A quick scan confirms the classroom is empty. Our teacher stands in the doorway with her back toward us.

“Are you really heading to Shamrock’s tonight?” Thomas is so near his breath tickles my neck and I like it way more than I should.

“What if I am?” I inhale to calm the blood racing in my veins. He’s close, so close. Close enough I should be afraid. Close enough I wish he would edge nearer.

“I am your bodyguard.” There’s a tease in his voice and I laugh without thinking. Thomas chuckles along with me and a strange warmth curls below my belly.

I angle slightly. His head is next to mine and he’s wearing that heart-stopping smile. The breath catches in my throat. How can someone so beautiful be so lethal?

I hear you have to kill people to be a member of your club. It’s what I’m dying to say, but after my foot-in-mouth moment a few days ago, I choose safe. “I thought you weren’t allowed to wear your vest at school.”

Last year the school board freaked when Thomas showed to class with the vest on his back. They had a special emergency session and unanimously voted that his vest was the same as wearing gang colors and that anything gang-related was prohibited in school.

“I’m not.” His smile widens and that’s when I spot the lethal. While a part of me shivers, another part of me finds his mouth completely thrilling. Oh, God, I do have a death wish.

“Aren’t you concerned you’re going to get in trouble? I mean, if they write you up, it will be an automatic suspension, three weeks in detention, and it will go on your permanent record.”

“Do I look like I care?”

I bite my bottom lip with the surge of adrenaline. I’m actually having a conversation with Thomas Turner. This is insane. This is suicidal. This is the most fantastic moment of my life. “I think you’re looking for problems.”

“Read the student handbook we received on Wednesday a few times?”

“Maybe.” I read it once while eating a bowl of Frosted Flakes.

Thomas rises from his chair and I fully appreciate his massive height. “It’s called a cut, not a vest.”

Noted. Thomas hooks a thumb in his pocket and stands there as if he’s waiting for me, and after the longest seconds of my life, I comprehend that he is waiting for me. I fumble with my purse and folder and eventually coordinate myself enough to make it to my feet and stumble down the aisle.

Thomas follows. When we breeze past our teacher into the hallway, Thomas’s head swivels between me and our classroom. Then he gives it a slight shake like he’s having an internal conversation about me, and I don’t like that I’m not a part of it. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“No, that wasn’t nothing. That was something.”

Thomas doesn’t answer, and he leaves two feet between us as we walk down the hallway. There’s a large enough gap that people easily stroll through, so it’s then I discover we weren’t really connecting.

My second period class comes into view and I decide to end this weird thing the two of us have going so we can return to our normal lives. “Hey, Thomas, wait a sec. Let me give you the twenty bucks I owe you.”

He studies me as if he’s trying to figure out if he likes the knee-length skirt and sleeveless purple shirt, and then his gaze drops just low enough he may be admiring a part of me no boy has explored before. The thought causes a rush of heat to crash onto my cheeks and it takes everything I have not to pull my hair off the nape of my neck in an attempt to cool down.

Thomas slips closer and I step back, colliding with the locker behind me. My heel throbs from the impact, but I’m so caught by the way his muscles rippled when he moved in my direction that I don’t utter a sound.

“Call me Razor.” This boy is immaculately pretty and he makes it terribly difficult to be coherent.

He told me to call him Razor. Razor sounds mean and menacing and he’s sexy and brooding with his cut on, but I recall the tease in his voice earlier and the way he fixed my phone. “What if I’d rather call you Thomas?”

Those light blue eyes freeze over. “I’d tell you you’re shit out of luck.”

A chill paralyzes me as he flips to dangerous. “Razor it is.”

Razor looks over my hair with intense interest and follows a strand to where it lies on my bare shoulder. “Do you know what I was going to do?”

I inch my head left, then right. My mouth has completely dried out and I couldn’t speak if my life depended on it. Thomas freaking Turner—Razor of the Reign of Terror Motorcycle Club—is so close I can feel the heat of his body. He’s close enough that with every inhale I can smell his delicious dark scent. He’s close enough I’m not thinking of guns or abductions or of any warnings I’ve ever heard, but of how my body is begging to take one step forward and touch that gorgeous face.

“I was never going to take your twenty dollars. I was going to get you on the back of my bike and take you for a ride.”

Dizziness sets in as I’m not sure if he means a ride home or a very consensual ride. And here’s the thing: I’m not the girl guys consider offering rides to—either the way home type or the type that’s making my toes pleasantly curl.

“And now?” I hate how my voice quakes with anticipation.

Razor picks up a lock of my hair and the skin he barely touched while lifting the strands tingles. He allows my hair to slide between his fingers and then he eases entirely too far from me, his warmth retreating with him. “And now I want something else for protecting you.”

The bell rings and I’m thirty seconds from being late to class. Panic rips through me as being late is so not what I do. Razor pivots on the balls of his feet and leaves. It’s like my world is being torn in two as I’m desperate to understand him while I fight this desire to remain the girl who obeys the rules. “Razor!”

He rotates and walks backward for his class. I’m guessing his “what?” expression is the most encouragement I’ll get.

“I don’t need you to protect me anymore.”

He releases that soul-squeezing smile. The one that screams dark nights and perilous bike rides at breakneck speeds. The one that reminds me he’s not a model, but a biker. “Yeah, you do. We’ll discuss payment later.”

I slip into the safety of my class and watch as Thomas Turner, Razor the motorcycle boy, strides into the classroom across from me. My hands tremble as I sit. My senior year just entered the realm of interesting.

RAZOR

WELCOME BACK, SENIORS.

It’s the message our English teacher would have given us a hundred extra credit points for if we deciphered it. I didn’t decode it, Breanna Miller did. Watching her do it in class was one of the most fascinating things I’ve seen and what kicks me in the nuts is that she didn’t turn it in. Didn’t take credit. Didn’t receive her reward for a job well done. She sat there, slightly angled in her chair, with that sexy little smirk on her face as she admired her answer.

“Are you smiling?” Chevy sits on the top of the picnic table, the second beer of the night in his hands.

A longneck’s also in my hands as I lean against the entrance of the clubhouse. One foot outside, the other one in. I’m waiting for my sentence for disobeying a direct order and Chevy’s trying to forget Violet. I rub a hand over my face to wipe away any type of grin—especially the type I didn’t know I was sporting.

The clubhouse is packed tonight. Row after row of motorcycles fill the yard and the crowd near the bar cheering on the Reds’ game is three men deep. The night’s warm and, with the number of members around, the bay doors of the clubhouse are wide-open. A combination of the scent of burning embers from the bonfire and spilt beer enters my nose.

The Reign of Terror clubhouse is an old two-story four-car garage that’s on property owned by Cyrus. I’ve spent a good majority of my life on this land. Some of it in the clubhouse, some of it in Cyrus’s log cabin house, but most of it in the thick surrounding woods playing with Oz, Chevy and Violet as kids.

I swirl the beer in the bottle. Breanna keeps me from drinking too much. She said she’s headed to Shamrock’s tonight. I shouldn’t care where she’s going or with who, but the thought of her there irritates me. Dad says the worst indigestion to have is from a girl.

The other night, I was fucking with Breanna—messing around—but I did promise to protect her. She’s not safe there. No girl is safe at Shamrock’s tonight.

“What do you know about Breanna Miller?” I focus on the beer label, acting as if that question doesn’t mean anything to me.

“She’s sexy,” Chevy answers. “Has legs that go on forever. Which I didn’t notice until orientation. I don’t remember her being like that last year.”

Me neither. Those wide hazel eyes, nice curves, and that silky-to-touch long midnight hair. I like tunneling my fingers into hair like that when I kiss a girl. Yeah, Breanna Miller transformed over the summer. That’s what I call blossoming.

Originally the plan was to convince her to hang with me for a night. A ride on my bike. Some kissing until she decided to stop, but after witnessing how her brain ticks, I need her for more. I plan on using her mind in exchange for my “protection.”

“She’s quiet. I’d only know her voice because it’s the one I haven’t heard over and over again like everyone else’s since middle school. I also know she’s smart.” Chevy puts down his beer and begins to flip a coin over his fingers. He’s been doing sleight of hand since we were kids and, to me, it never gets old. “She’s going to be one of those who leaves Snowflake and never looks back and then in thirty years she’ll be ruling the world.”

He preaches the truth. She’s straight A, award-winning, and has never said much in class for the past four years. Breanna’s one of those too-smart-for-her-environment types who’s biding her time until she’s eighteen and can get the hell out.

The coin disappears between his fingers, he claps his hands and when he shows me his palms the coin’s gone.

“Are you going to pull a rabbit out of your ass next?” I ask.

“No, but I’ll shove a rabbit up yours if you pull any of that shit again like you did with the Riot last night.”

“I was playing.”

He snorts. “Playing is dangling meat in front of hungry bears with anger issues. What you did last night was skipping through nuclear fallout. I’m not kicking you in the stones, man. I’m a friend trying to watch your back.”

I nod because that’s the best I got for him. The coin reappears as if from thin air and he’s flipping it through his fingers again at a rapid rate.

“Remember middle school with Breanna?” he asks. “She did that science project that re-created the telegraph or some shit like that. I remember my head hurting because I couldn’t understand half the crap she said.”

I chuckle because I do remember. I also recall hating her because I was proud of my exploding volcano. The moment she opened her mouth, there was no way I was going to win.

“Remember how Marc Dasher treated her after that?” Chevy says with a hint of pity.

“Yeah.” After her presentation, the bastard tortured Breanna. “We need to mess that guy up.”

“Patience” is all he says.

My eyebrows lift. Neither Chevy nor Oz are the type to walk from a fight, but they never search for one like me. As I’m about to ask what I’m missing, my father’s voice booms into the night. “Razor!”

The boisterous conversations cease and the droning baseball announcer is the lone sound.

“Find Oz,” I say. “I need you two to ride with me to Shamrock’s later.”

“Shamrock’s?” There’s a question in his tone and I understand why. “There’s going to be Army boys there causing problems tonight.”

“I know.” Breanna and her friends have no idea what they could be dancing into.

“Then I’m on it.” He slips off the table as it’s time for him to leave. Chevy’s seventeen and can’t enter his prospect period, the initiation time span when the club decides if someone should become a full-fledged member, until he’s eighteen. No one underage is allowed at the clubhouse after eight oh one. “Good luck in there.”

We smack hands, I take a fast swig from the longneck, then dump the nearly full beer into the trash. Everyone watches and half of me expects a muttered comment of “dead man walking,” but they keep their mouths shut. The shit I’m in is too deep for a smart-ass comment.

Dad’s already gone by the time I reach the door, so I head up the stairs. As the sergeant at arms, it’s Dad’s job to call people into the boardroom. It’s also his job to kick people out. Wonder how this evening will end.

I walk in and the chairs at the long mahogany table are filled. As president, Cyrus owns the head. He’s got a long beard and ponytail to match. He’s a bear of a man. I love him like a grandfather but have enough healthy fear to keep my distance when he’s pissed.

Cyrus’s son Eli sits on his right. The way Eli examines me gives the impression he’s about to yank his gun out of his holster, unload a clip into me, and will happily spend a few more years in prison over it. He tugs at the plugs in his ears and his gaze falls over to my father.

Dad drops into his seat next to Oz’s dad. There’s no seat for me, which is fine. I prefer to stand while being fired at. “I didn’t engage.”

But I would have and they know it.

“You messed up,” Eli states. “But the good news is you didn’t actually come face-to-face with them, so we’re going to call that one straight.”

Interesting. Last time I disobeyed a decree from the club’s bylaws, I was fined a hundred bucks and I had to clean bathrooms with the prospects for a month.

Eli stands and motions to his empty chair. “Take a seat.”

My eyes find Dad’s and he nods to confirm it’s cool. I move slowly to the table, waiting for a trapdoor to fly open beneath my feet. As I sit, Eli draws a folding chair up to the other side of Cyrus and straddles it directly across from me.

Cyrus may have been voted in by the members as president, but everyone knows that Eli is the chief of this tribe. Not because that’s how he wants it, it’s because every man who wears a Terror cut respects the hell out of him. But because of Eli’s stint in prison, he can’t hold an official office. “What went down with you and the detective?”

I could do a play-by-play, but talking that much to anyone isn’t my style. Instead, I pull out my phone, bring up the picture of Mom’s car, then slide my cell to Eli. “He gave me a file to look at and said that Mom’s death wasn’t an accident.”

There’s silence. It’s a silence so loud I can hear my pulse beneath my skin, the squeak of Cyrus’s chair as he readjusts, the inhale and exhale of breaths. What I loathe in this silence is how it doesn’t feel like shock or surprise. It’s more like guilt.

Dad balls his hands on the table and turns red—the same pissed-off reaction whenever we discuss Mom.

Eli scratches at the stubble on his jaw. “Did you take any more pictures?”

I remain mute and I don’t know why. The answer’s there with a swipe of his finger, it’s on the tip of my tongue, but then my sight lands on Dad again. He’s not lifted his head yet. He hasn’t said a word.

“What do you think of his claim?” asks Eli as he must take my lack of response as a no.

Honestly, didn’t think much of it until I noticed this reaction. “The detective believes the Terror was involved in her death.”

Eli’s dark eyes snap to mine and there’s a chorus of swears from around the room. It’s hard to rip my eyes away from Eli’s. His are as black as death, but with effort, I do, and I discover Dad’s empty seat. He presses his hands against the wall with his shoulders rolled forward. Even from here I can spot the cords of muscles in his neck as they stretch.

“Do you believe him?” Eli’s voice is pitched low. So low it’s almost hard to hear.

I want to answer immediately. To prove I’m a man and that nothing affects me, but he’s asking about my mother—the one person I loved more than my own life. “He said there weren’t skid marks. That there were no signs she tried to stop.”

“What are you saying?” It’s a grumble from my father.

The detective was correct on some things. Mom and Dad did fight in those last months. The memories of listening to her weep between the thin walls as Dad tore off on his bike still haunt me. And he brought a parade of women home a few short weeks after Mom died and then one stayed the night this week. But the idea my father worshipped me? That’s bullshit.

I suck in air and toss myself over the cliff. “Did she kill herself?”

“Razor,” starts Cyrus, but my father turns toward us and raises his hand in the air.

“Do you think the Terror had anything to do with her death?” Dad asks.

I should keep my mouth shut. I’ve tried to discuss Mom’s death with Dad. Each time, he shut me down, but I’ve never done it before in front of the board. Doing this could be a sign of disrespect, but it could also put pressure on him to grant me answers.

“I didn’t ask about the Terror,” I say. “I asked if she killed herself. I’m asking if she was so miserable with you and—” the words catch in my throat “—with me that she pressed on the gas and not on the brake and drove her car over the bridge.”

“Are those the options?” Dad challenges. “That she either killed herself or that one of us, one of your brothers, one of your family, killed her?”

“Did she hate us so much that death was her only option?”

“It was an accident,” says Eli, and I round on him too quick for it to be respectful.

“We all know that wasn’t an accident!”

“So you’re calling us liars?” Dad roars.

“Yes!” I jump to my feet because there’s too much adrenaline coursing through my body. They stare at me like I’ve lost my mind. Maybe I have. Maybe I never had sanity to begin with. “I want the truth!”

“Say it, Razor!” Dad points at me. “Look me in the face and tell me you think one of us, one of your brothers, killed your mother.”

There’s pounding. The wooden gavel hitting the table. It shuts Dad up and that’s when I notice it—Dad and I are angled toward each other, primed and ready to attack, chests pumping hard in hurried breaths. The solid table the barrier that’s preventing us from going to blows.

“Sit down!” Cyrus demands.

Dad does, but I remain on my feet. “I want the truth!”

“We told you it was an accident!” Dad yells.

“And you’re full of shit!”

Cyrus beats the gavel against the table again and one by one the men of the board give me the same damn look of sympathy everyone in town does and it’s like someone has stoned me with sharp-edged rocks. Even now no one will tell me the full story.

“The cop said you and Mom fought,” I continue, not giving a fuck I’m in violation of a direct order.

“Razor,” warns Cyrus, but I ignore him.

“He said she was going to leave you. He said you notified the police of a problem with her way before you should have known there was one.”

“Thomas,” Cyrus tries again in a stronger voice, but even the use of my given name doesn’t stop the flood.

“He said you were the first to find her. If what you’ve given me is the truth, then why the hell didn’t I know any of that? All of it sounds like lies to me!”

“That’s enough!” Cyrus shouts.

But it’s not enough. It will never be enough until I get the truth. I’m dying and I’m begging. I’m mentally on my hands and knees willing anyone to tell me what I already know—that my mother committed suicide.

Because if someone tells the truth, maybe I can find a way to not be so screwed up.

But I don’t get an answer. Dad edges back his chair, stalks across the room and then throws open the door with so much force that it bangs off the wall. My insides hollow out as I realize no matter what I do, no matter what I say, I’m doomed to live in this gray, haunted realm of the unknown for the rest of my life.

Before the door closes, Oz’s dad is up and then the rest of the board abandon their seats and follow my father. It’s a show of support, a show of solidarity, and it’s not a show meant to praise me. I disrespected a brother, so therefore I disrespected them.

There’s a chain of command in the club. A way of how things are done. A respect that must be given to the pecking order that’s been created. I’ve had a hard time with it for the same reason I never cared to become the leader of my group of friends. I find it challenging to follow as much as I find it challenging to lead. That’s why, as the board told me over and over again, I had the longest prospect period of anyone else in the club. I’m too unpredictable.

The door shuts and there’s two of us left in the room—me and Eli.

Eli’s eyes flicker from me to my seat. This time, I listen to his nonverbal request and sit. If only because the weight of what just happened is crashing down around me. “I want an answer.”

I need an answer.

Eli threads his fingers together and rests them on the table as he leans forward. “Four months ago, you agreed to join this club. Yeah, we had to vote you in, but you had to accept. You chose to be a part of this brotherhood. You chose to believe in this family. Are you saying those vows you made to us mean nothing?”

He’s questioning my loyalty, and maybe he should. “This is my family.”

“I know, and, Razor, you’re mine. This entire building is full of men who would die for you, but this back-and-forth—this rogue bullshit you pull when the wind blows east instead of west, it’s got to stop. You’re either with us or not. You either believe us or don’t. If you can’t trust us, we can’t trust you. There is nothing more this board wants than to trust you, but to be honest, we don’t. We voted you in because we know you love us, but we watch you with wary eyes. We don’t know what shit you’re going to pull next.”

When I was ten years old, it was Eli who came to me at Cyrus and Olivia’s before the sun had risen. Oz, Chevy and Violet had crammed themselves into the tiny twin bed I used whenever I stayed the night and each of them had curled up around me, providing a human shield from the emotional storm that had been brewing.

The three of them fell asleep, but I never slept a wink. When Eli walked into the room, he saw the four of us and lowered his head. Eli looked like the living dead himself, and when he met my eyes, he knelt and said the words that changed every thought, every emotion, every moment of my life. “I’m sorry.”