Breaking Hammer Read online

  She picked at something on the arm of the chair, her eyes focused away from me.

  "I don't know," I said. "I don't know what I'm doing anymore. I'm lost lately."

  She looked at me, her gaze direct. "We're all lost."

  "I didn't used to think I was," I said. "I used to think I knew where I was going."

  "Death changes things," she said. "It alters our course." She looked up, tucked her hair behind her ear. The gesture was tentative, nervous, at odds with the in control version of her that I kept seeing glimpses of.

  "Is that what happened to you?" I asked. "Is that what altered your course?" I wanted to scream, why are you with Aston?

  It was cagey, the way she avoided saying anything about herself. She had this way of making me feel comfortable talking about myself and before I knew it, I was the one who had done all the talking. Each time I hung up the phone, I wondered where the time had gone. But I wondered if it was deliberate, if she deflected everything with me. It gnawed at me, that I couldn't find anything about her.

  She shrugged. "You can't control your destiny," she said. "For better or worse, sometimes it chooses you."

  "I felt that way once," I said. I sat across from her, my elbows on my knees, leaning forward, looking at the ground. Why the fuck did I feel compelled to talk to her like this, like she was a goddamned priest and I was a parishioner at confession? "After April was killed. The things I did, I thought they were my destiny. I thought killing the men who murdered her would give me peace."

  "And now?" she asked.

  How did I feel now? Like something was still missing. Like I no longer had a rudder. "Empty," I said. "It feels empty."

  "A man without a home," she said.

  Yes. That is what I had been missing since April died. It was the thing that Mackenzie must have sensed was missing as well, the reason that she felt so displaced. I just didn't know how to change it, how to feel that way again. Not with April gone.

  I felt naked under Meia’s gaze, suddenly vulnerable. She seemed to have the ability to see right through me. It was how I'd felt before when she looked at me, only a hundred times more so right now.

  "It is difficult," she said "To feel like you don't have a home -when you lose someone, and your family is taken away from you."

  "You know how it feels to have your family taken from you," I said. It wasn't a question. I somehow knew she understood that loss. There was a reason she had no history that I could find. There was something terribly wrong that she wouldn't tell me.

  She nodded. "You think I'm weak, being with Aston," she said. "You don't understand the story. I can't leave. I have to stay with him."

  "Men like that don't stop hurting you," I said.

  "No," she said. "I don't think he will. He may end up killing me." She said it casually. A statement of fact.

  I rose to my feet, my breath short in my chest, the same as it was when I was gearing up for a fight, blood pumping loudly in my ears. "Then let me help you," I said. "Let me get you away from him. Why stay?"

  She smiled, her expression sad. "He has taken something from me. Something very precious that I need to get back."

  "I can help you," I said. I stood inches away from her, this intense feeling of possessiveness taking over me. Since April died, I hadn't had that feeling about anyone else, the need to have someone be mine. April had always been it for me, my refuge from all of the bullshit that inevitably came as part of the club. And from the storms that raged in my soul. I had told myself that there would never be anyone else who could make me feel the same way again, and the fact that I was feeling this way about Meia, a girl full of secrets, terrified me.

  "No," she said quickly. "I said something I shouldn't have. I misspoke."

  "You didn't," I said. "What does he have over you?"

  "No," she said. "I'm beyond helping now."

  There was something in the way that she said it that gripped me. I grabbed her by the arm, pulled her to me, my hand on the small of her back so that she was tight against me. Bringing my mouth down on hers, I felt her lips part. I kissed her gently, holding back even as I felt my cock swell in response to her tiny body pressed up against me.

  And just like that, I felt an overpowering sense of guilt and shame at the thought of kissing someone other than April. At the thought of taking advantage of this girl who was in a bad situation. What the hell kind of man was I?

  I must have hesitated, pulled back for a moment, and she felt it. "Hammer," she said. "I can't do this. Even if I wanted to."

  She put her hand on my chest, pushed me gently away, and turned, walking toward the door.

  "No one is beyond helping, Meia." I spoke the words to her back as she gathered her things. She paused in the doorway, not turning to look at me before she left.

  "I am," she said. "I can't be saved, Hammer."

  I stood in the garage, looking at the bike. It had been sitting there, unridden, since April's death. It taunted me, a reminder of the the way things used to be. Meia was right. I was a man without a home. There was nowhere I belonged. I was estranged from everything and everyone I used to hold close. It was grasping at straws, trying to find something, anything, that would ease the pain of April's death. I had been trying to find some solace.

  And all of this fighting bullshit, this attempt to quell my rage somehow, well, it wasn't working. Because it wasn't what I needed.

  I had been angry for so long. I had wallowed in my shit, unable to see a life without April, unable to see MacKenzie in front of me, the child who needed me.

  All of the rage, all of the bluster and bravado, was bullshit. It was grasping at straws. It was doing what I could to get by without her.

  This was something I needed to do. I was ready. I needed to confront the past, before I could go any further. And I was resolved to go further. Meia thought I would just walk away, that I would forget about what she'd said. But I couldn't just leave her to that monster.

  And that meant I'd have to put the past to rest.

  I pulled the cover off the bike, and tossed it the cement floor. All of the memories I had tried so hard to erase, to just put out of my head and pretend they didn't exist, came rushing back the moment I threw my leg over the seat and straddled the bike. She felt simultaneously familiar and strange underneath me, like some kind of long-lost lover. And that's what she was, wasn't she? She was my first love, before anyone else, even April.

  When I heard her motor turn over, felt the rumble between my legs, my heart beat harder, anticipation building inside me. I wrapped the throttle a few times, and the scream from the pipes was ear piercing.

  I steadied the bike underneath me and kicked back the stand, then stepped on the shift and clutched into gear. I paused for a moment, keenly aware of everything around me in that moment- the sound, the smell, the vibration of the engine. My heart was still racing, but I felt myself slowly release the clutch lever and simultaneously roll on the throttle. I rolled out of the garage, down the driveway, and with a shift and more throttle, I was gone.

  I stuffed the fear down deep inside me, and let the other part take over. I couldn't let the fear control me any more. No more running, no more hiding.

  No more chicken shit self pity.

  I rode through the old part of Vegas, and I could feel myself begin to settle into the bike before too long, my body responding to the familiarity of riding again. It was blazing hot in the late afternoon sun, and the wind on my face felt only slightly cooler as I rode out of town.

  I didn't know where the hell I was going. I just knew I needed to ride. I felt myself rolling along the 167, with its winding roads and expansive scenery, and I opened the bike up a little. She seemed to possess the same kind of pent up rage I had, and she responded gratefully to the extra throttle.

  I missed this. I missed the feeling of freedom that riding on the open road brought. I missed having the time to settle in with my thoughts, to work out how I felt about things in my head. When April and I would