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twenty and poured a
drink. Then he pretended to wipe his hand and slipped the money into his
pocket. That’s how he’s ripping you off. I saw it happen.”
    “Great,” Danny said. He stutter
stepped again. He reached for the door and then stopped. “Can I ask you
something?”
    “Yeah,” I said.
    “That guy, Knox, is he serious?”
    “Yeah,” I said.
    “He’ll wait? Then come back in?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Even if I call Porter?”
    “Especially if you call Porter.
Trust me, Danny, Knox is someone you don’t want to mess with.”
    “Fuck,” Danny growled. He reached
into his back pocket and took out a wad of cash. “Here.”
    “What is this?”
    “Don’t fucking worry about it,” Danny
snapped. He grabbed for this left side and groaned in pain. “Go give this to
him.”
    “To Knox?”
    “Yeah. I don’t want to see that guy
ever again.”
    My lips started to quiver.
    Go see Knox? Alone? With his
motorcycle? With the temptation to run off with him?
    I reached for the money and took
it. There was quite a bit there. “Danny… if you had the money for him…”
    Danny looked at me. He gave me the fuck
off eyes. Being close to Porter and his life, I understood more than I
cared to understand. Meaning, Danny took the cash to pay Knox’s band and was
going to keep it for himself. Like the bartender ripping off the club, so was
Danny. Everyone wanted to rip everyone off.
    I squeezed the cash tight and
watched as Danny opened the door.
    “Hey,” I called out. “Are you going
to tell Porter about Eddie?”
    “I’m going to call him right now,” Danny
said.
    That was all I needed to hear. I
knew Porter was out of town, but I didn’t know how far.
    In other words … I didn ’t
have much time alone with Knox.
     
     
     
    Any sane woman would have been
terrified to turn the corner of a dark alley and find some tall, wide
shouldered biker standing there, smoking a cigarette, his eyes damn near
glowing with evil against a buzzing streetlight that hung from an adjacent
building.
    For me, it was everything I could
have ever dreamt of.
    So many nights I had stood in my
bedroom window, staring across to Knox’s window, wondering if he was there and
what he was doing. Or who he was doing. I had gotten to the point where I felt
confident enough to talk to him but then my mother ended up in bed with his
father and all hell broke loose. In the blink of an eye, my entire world changed
again. My mother chain smoked more than ever. She cried at the kitchen table.
She missed my father. She wasn’t sure if she actually liked Knox’s father or
not.
    Across the yard, Knox’s mother took
off. His grandmother died. His father was never home. And before I knew it, Knox
started to wear a leather cut just like his father. He had been sucked into the
MC life.
    But the life worked for him. It made
Knox who he was odd enough, it matched who he was before the life. As though he
was born to become this outlaw kind of man. For me, that meant always having a
dream and fantasy but never living it out. It meant I’d never have the
wraparound porch and white fence out front, you know? I’d never stand at the
door and greet him from a long day of work. Maybe that was meant to be for the
better, but it didn’t end up that way.
    “Hey, darlin’,” Knox said as he
tossed his smoke across the alley. It bounced, sparked, and died out.
    “Knox,” I said. “That was bad what
you just did.”
    “Bad? When you fuck my boys…”
    “Porter is tied into this,” I said.
    “Fuck him,” Knox said. “My band
works hard.”
    “I know. I’m sorry.” I approached
him. “It’s been a while, huh?”
    He stood before me, towering over
me. “Far too long, darlin’.”
    I held my hand out. “Here. This is
from Danny. He was going to rip you off.”
    “Of course he was,” Knox said. “A
lot of these dickhead club owners do that. The band really does have a life
outside this. They’re honest guys. Good guys. Paying for their