Pulling Her Trigger(18)

I climb on the back and she laughs a little in shock. I guess she didn’t think I’d do it. I pat the seat in front of me and raise an eyebrow.

“We going or not?”

She shakes her head and gets on and starts it up. I wrap my arms around her waist and lean into her.

“You gonna be able to concentrate if I hold you?”

“Just keep your hands where I can see them, and I won’t kill us,” she smirks as her bike roars to life.

I’ve never really been into motorcycles, though I know how to drive one, but being on it with Mackenzie makes me want to change that. Fuck, I’ll ride a goat if it means I get to be this close to her.

She takes the long way out of town, and we ride for a while before we hit the club. Having my hands on her and the sun on my back is the freest I’ve felt in my life. I knew the day I saw her picture I was forever changed, and being on the back of her bike just confirms this is it.

She opened up to me this morning, and told me things I know she’s never shared with anyone else, including her brothers. Her scars are mine now. I don’t want to come between what she has with them, but I want to be just as important. I want to be the other half of her if she’s going to make a place for me and the club. Today she showed me just how vulnerable she can be, and meeting her family is a huge step. This is my chance to show them what Mackenzie means to me, and what I want my position in her life to be. I know this is a big step for her, so I wrap my arms a little tighter as we pull in the gates.

The club isn’t what I expect at all. I was thinking grassless ground surrounding a warehouse. I expected a chain-link fence and death metal blaring from a busted speaker. I’d driven by a few times, but you can’t see much from the outside. They have a brick privacy fence that spans the entrance, making it look like something a mansion would have out front. Once Mackenzie pulls up, she inputs a code on a keypad and the double iron gates swing open.

We drive through a tree-lined driveway that’s about a half a mile long. I realize that this is an old farm that’s been converted into their clubhouse, and I’m impressed. As if reading my mind, Mackenzie explains the place as we drive in.

“Pres’s, sorry, Lucias’s family owned this farm for years. Once he got out of the marines he made it into what it is today. There’s a full garage on the eastern side of the property with a separate entrance for the public. You have to have a code to go beyond it, so we’re still protected behind the walls. The brick fence is just around the front of the property, the rest of it is ten-foot tall steel fencing with barbed wire. You can’t ever be too careful. On the west side is the gun range, but I’ll drive by and show you the clubhouse first. All in all there’s about two-hundred acres out here, but most of it’s wooded and undeveloped. A few of our guys like to get lost for a few weeks at a time, and there are a couple of small cabins on the property. There’s wildlife to hunt and a lake out with plenty of fish there if someone needs to stay gone longer than a few weeks.”

We pull up to the main house, and it’s huge. It looks like an old farmhouse, but you can tell right away it’s been modernized within the last few years. There are a few bikes parked out front, and some guys walking around. Mackenzie doesn't stop to say hello, just gives one big guy a chin lift, and he nods his head in the direction of the range.

“That was Lucias, right?” I ask as we make our way to the range. I saw a few shots of him when I was digging into things, but he looks to have gotten bigger since he left the marines.

“Yep. I’m sure he’ll be out here to join us in a second,” she says, but she doesn’t sound excited.

When we pull up to the gun range, I can see the side of the fence that looks to have been damaged. I don’t think someone would be able to tell unless they were looking for it, but about a hundred feet of new fencing has recently been erected and the ground is scorched where explosives must have gone off. The range is a big brick building, and I can see the side facing us is newer than the rest of it.

“That where they went in?”

“Yeah. Stupid fuckers,” she says, and I can hear the anger and hurt in her voice. She gets off the bike, and I climb off after her. We stand there for a second, and I hear the rumble of more bikes coming. I look around and see three bikes heading our way.

“Great, he brought friends,” she grumbles, and I can hear the sarcasm dripping from her voice.

Lucias pulls up and is followed by two more guys. They all get off their bikes and walk over to us. I know all of them from my research on Mackenzie, and I’m sure they know me.