Man of the House(196)

“Anyway, I was fucking in love. Me and Jolene, we went everywhere together, did everything together. I couldn’t picture my life without the girl.

“And then your old man met her. I don’t know how or when, but Jolene and Larkin, they started up with each other. You know what I mean, messing around behind my back.”

“I never heard about this person,” I said.

“Of course not,” Jetter said. “You think Larkin wants people to know that he stole a woman from one of his club members?”

“Anyway,” he said, continuing the story, “they got together and that was that. She left me one night, just up and packed her things and moved in with him. Needless to say, I was fucking devastated. Fucking destroyed.

“But I didn’t let it get between me and the club, because that’s how things are. You did what you did for your club and that was the most important thing. We kept fighting, cracking skulls, and we were winning. We were growing.

“We were growing too fast. One of the biggest clubs was called the Gentleman Bastards. For some reason, Larkin thought we were ready to take them on. He picked a fight, started pushing onto their territory, basically got the guys to be real aggressive.

“It worked at first. The Bastards weren’t ready for us to start picking them off, to start killing them. But soon enough that changed. They got wind of what we were doing and started to hit us back.

“Which was when it happened. Back then, we didn’t have all the rules we had now. Larkin went out on a deal—should’ve been a real simple drug deal—and he brought Jolene along. I guess he was trying to impress her or something. I never understood why he’d fucking bring her along.

“I was there that night. I met them in the field where the deal was going down. Jolene never even looked at me. We sat there for fifteen minutes waiting for the dealers to show up to buy our shit, but they never came. Instead, the Bastards came.

“When the bullets started flying, we got out of there as fast as we could. I took a slug in the leg, but that’s wasn’t so fucking bad. As we were getting away, though, I saw something that I have never forgotten to this day.

“It was Jolene’s back, covered in blood.

“We rode for a while to put distance between us and them, and by the time we thought it was safe to stop, Jolene was nearly dead. We got her off the bike and tried to patch her up, but it was too late. She died there on the dusty ground that night, looking up at Larkin like she couldn’t believe it was happening.”

Jetter stopped talking for a second. He went real quiet, and I just stared at him. He took a deep breath, let it out, and then continued.

“I went over to the Rebels after that. I couldn’t look at Larkin anymore. I know he made a mistake, and he knows it too. He made all the rules we have now right after Jolene died. No outsiders on deals, shit like that. But I could never forgive him.”

“What changed?” I asked.

“Time, mostly. Time and I now know that he was a fucking kid; we all were. We all fucked up. Larkin’s been paying for that mistake for a long time.”

I nodded slowly, surprised by the whole thing. “I didn’t know about that,” I said.

“Would you tell people if you were him?”

“No,” I said, “I wouldn’t.”

“Well, now you fucking know. Still think I’m a scumbag?”

I stared at him, wondering that exact same question.

He had a good reason for what he did all those years ago, but that didn’t excuse all the shit he did after that, all the lying and the death that followed. Jetter may have left for noble reasons, or at least he thought they were noble, but in the end Jetter was still just a selfish fuck.

Maybe a selfish fuck with a sad backstory, but still selfish.

“Yeah,” I said, “but maybe a little bit better.”

He laughed and stood up. “Fine. That’s fine,” he said. “Can’t hold that against you.”

“That’s all then?”

He smiled and nodded. “That’s all. You got to know me; you saw the trailer.”

“So I can go now?”

“I’m not holding you against your will, Janine.”

I pushed off the wall and headed back into the main room and toward the front door.

“Janine,” he called, following me. “One more thing.”

I paused and looked at him. “What?”

“This is happening,” he said with a serious look on his face, “whether we want it to or not. Things are moving fast. You’re going to have to come over to my side sooner or later.”

“Maybe,” I said. “We’ll see.”