With the door slammed shut, Lift wasted no time in pulling from the clubhouse carpark and heading toward the highway. The first half an hour or so was quiet, the only sounds were the soft music of the stereo and the rumble of the Harleys that surrounded us.
“I thought about studying once,” Lift said as he stared straight ahead, watching the road carefully.
“Oh yeah? What did you want to study?” I asked. Lift intrigued me. He was young, maybe nineteen or twenty. But his mind seemed much older than his age. He was smart, so smart.
“You have to promise not to laugh,” he said, eyeing me cautiously.
I smiled. “Not sure I can make that promise, Lift.”
He grinned. “I wanted to be a pilot.”
“Why would I laugh at that?”
He shrugged. “I dunno, it’s just really different than being a part of an MC.”
“It is, but it’s still an excellent job. What happened to stop you from going after that?”
He sighed. “My parents were killed a few years back. Drunk driver. I was in the backseat. To be a pilot you have to have perfect vision. When the drunk guy hit us, I got glass in my eye. It doesn’t affect my sight much, but just enough that I couldn’t pass the tests I needed to in order to get into flight school.”
My eyes softened. “Wow, I’m really sorry about your parents.”
“Yeah, they were pretty cool, you know? I didn’t have any other family apart from them and I wasn’t eighteen yet, so they threw me into foster care. It was hell.” He gripped the steering wheel tightly for a minute before his body relaxed again and I caught a smile. “Doesn’t matter now though, if I hadn’t gone through all that crap I wouldn’t have joined the Brothers by Blood. Now I feel like I have a place again.”
“You do,” I reassured him. “You have more family than you’ll ever know. I’m sorry about what happened to you, but I’m glad you found the club.”
His face beamed, his broad smile lighting his face up like a Christmas tree. “Me too.”
“Hey Optimus, I need to shoot into the College and pick up a couple lessons and tests that I missed.”
He turned from the bar and nodded. “Someone will have to go with you.”
“I’ll take her.”
My stomach instantly turned hearing the voice behind me. I’d managed to avoid Target since I’d been back. I wanted to keep it that way, but I knew I would have to be in his presence at some point.
Optimus frowned, knowing that I was uncomfortable being around him.
“The rest of the guys have gone out and Leo should be back from that run soon. You’ll want to catch up with him when he gets here,” Target explained, walking around the bar and lifting a pair of car keys from the hanger.
Fuck! Did I wish I’d taken Lift up on his offer to have him stay a few extra days. But I knew he was itching to get back to Kit and the club. Now that he was a full-patch member, he would have more responsibilities and he couldn’t wait to take them on and show them all what he was capable of.
I was proud of him.
“Harmony?” I shook myself out of my daze as Optimus looked at me questioningly.
“Is Chelsea around?”
He shook his head. “She picked up an extra class this morning.”
I sighed, I knew that. I’d just been hopeful she might have been able to tag along.Help it not be so awkward.“It’s fine. I just have to run in then come straight back.”
He looked apprehensive but nodded in agreement. I followed Target out to his car. Most of the boys opted for vehicles like trucks or SUV’s, but Target was different. He had a beautiful new 2014 model BMW with sparkling chrome and leather seats. A very unexpected ride for a biker.
I slid into Target’s car and buckled my belt, opting to stare out the window and make as little contact as humanly possible. At first when I’d joined the club, it was Target’s manner with women that had bothered me. Yes, the members could be crass to the club girls, but Target straight up treated any woman that he came into contact with like they were a piece of shit on the bottom of his boots. He reminded us all constantly that we were there for one thing and one thing only, to please a man. As club whores, we took it. It was expected in some ways because we knew exactly what we were there for. But then I’d watched him treat the strippers and the occasional Old Lady with the same demeaning attitude.
He was a chauvinistic pig. That was all there was to it.
As we drove toward the college, I watched him out of the corner of my eye. He was smiling. No, not just smiling but grinning like he was the cat that just got the milk, or however that saying goes. I tried to bite my tongue, but my curiosity got the best of me.