Total pages in book: 114
Estimated words: 112736 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 451(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112736 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 451(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
There’s even some of our club vans here for the guys who were too drunk to ride.
Fuck.
None of this is a good sign.
I slow my ride to a crawl as I meet up with most of the guys sitting outside on their bikes. Each one of these motherfuckers is a brother to me, and the grim looks on their faces stops me from asking the questions I need to find answers for.
I need to find the old man.
Shutting my bike down next to the guys, I climb off, and for some reason my legs feel like leaden rods.
“Where’s Hound?” I ask Whitey, the VP.
He’s one of the blackest men I’ve ever met, but his real name is Whitey and that’s what he wants us to call him so we roll with it.
His deep rumble comes out from behind his thick, long beard, “Coy…”
“What happened?” I ask. “Hound okay?”
“Head into the ER, he should be waitin’ for you right inside the doors,” Whitey says.
“What the fuck is going on?” I snarl more to myself than anyone else.
Jogging toward the entrance, I hear even more bikes pulling into the parking lot behind me. I want to look back to see if I can figure anything else out before I walk into whatever hell I’m about to enter, but I don’t.
The doors don’t open fast enough for me and I have to come to a stop in front of them. When I get past them, I look all around me and I can tell something’s gone down and it ain’t good.
My old man is standing at the reception desk, bent over, talking to a woman. His kutte showing the skull, wings, and bikes of the Royal Bastards.
When he turns at the sound of the doors sliding shut behind me, we stare at each other for a long time. His eyes showing emotions I can barely register.
He calls me over to the receptionist desk, his normal straight and rigid back almost bent. “Coy.”
I’ve never seen the old man look as tired as he does right now.
“What’s going on?” I ask when I finally cross the short distance.
It may have only been a few feet, but it feels like miles.
“Son…” he begins, but his voice trails off.
He hasn’t called me that in years, it’s always Coy or prospect now.
Repeating the same three words, I feel like I’ve been asking them all night, “What’s going on?”
He straightens to his full height.
Looking me in the eyes, he says, “Coy, ain’t no easy way to say this.”
“Then fucking spit it out,” I growl at him, and he doesn’t even flinch at my insolent tone.
“Allison and Horse were in a bad wreck,” he says, watching my face.
His eyes hold nothing but sympathy for me, and I’ve never seen the look he’s giving me right now.
Accident.
Accident with any other vehicle wouldn’t carry the same gravity as this type does. Bike accidents are never a happily ever after type of story.
Never.
My voice comes out in a croak as it tries to get past the massive lump that’s forming in my throat. “How bad?”
“Real bad, Coy. Horse didn’t make it.” He puts an arm around my shoulders and leads me over to a small alcove that’s out of the way of all the people coming in and out of the ER.
“Allie?” I ask.
“She’s in a bad way. Thank any god you can thank, she was wearing your old leathers and a brain bucket,” he says, but with the way he’s talking, even more bad news is coming my way.
“Where is she?” I ask, wanting to pull away from his touch, wanting his words to disappear like this whole night.
“Coy, she’s back in surgery right now. She broke both her ankles, her rotator cuff is…” he trails off.
“Can I see her?” I ask.
At least, I think I ask. My lungs feel like they’re never going to breathe again.
“Coy, she’s in surgery… She… She…” He stumbles over his words for a few seconds. “She wasn’t responsive when the paramedics got to the scene.”
“Where is she?”
My heart and everything I’ve ever felt good in this world is tied to her existence, and right now I can feel it dying.
Slowly, with each breath I take, I can feel it crumbling to ashy pieces.
“Let’s go see what we can find out,” he says then lets out a huge sigh. “One thing you need to know… Coy, it happened near her parent’s house. They were there when they put her in the ambulance.”
Time around me seems to move differently than anything I’ve ever known. It’s like each moment I breathe, I can feel the world moving past my pain. People and faces move and say words to me. Some in anger, some in sorrow, some in rage. Most in emotions I don’t really understand.
When I was in high school, I remember a physics teacher I had describing time as a fixed point. That it neither moves nor stays still. He was trying to explain something to us, but I can’t really remember much beyond him saying we could feel stuck in a moment of time for what seems like an eternity, or we could be flung through the hours and days as if it happens in the blink of an eye.