you’re giving me your word, and you know keeping your word is important around here. You wanna sleep on it?”
No, I didn’t want to fucking sleep on it, I knew exactly what I was doing. I also knew Torch would probably lose his shit when he found out. But Buddha was a grown man of sound mind who’d put in enough time on the planet to decide for himself when and how he wanted to leave it. Who was I to deny his last wish? I’d violently killed a man before, I could easily procure some kind of drug cocktail and help Buddha wash it down, right? It wasn’t like I had a choice, euthanizing their president wasn’t something any of the members would want to live with.
Besides, I wouldn’t actually have to go through with it. I would find a donor, even if I had to get on my bike and personally scour the fucking country looking for one. Any thoughts of the worst case scenario would just have to wait until it came to it. If it came to it.
“I don’t need to think on it,” I answered. “I’ll do it, but I need your word too.”
Buddha slowly stood up and gave me a hug. “You’ve got my word, sweetheart, and my fucking respect. We’ll do this shit your way for now.”
“My way’ll work.” I snatched the bottle of whiskey and tossed it in the trash can. “And no more booze for the next two weeks, I don’t wanna have to look for a liver too.”
He chuckled and took my face between his hands. “Love you, sweet girl.”
“I love you too, Buddha. You’re not going anywhere, don’t underestimate me.”
“I wouldn’t fucking dream of it.”
: 13 :
| TORCH |
After riding around aimlessly for an hour to clear his head, Torch was torn between going home to his old lady or just following the wind until dawn. He was pissed and confused and just plain miserable. And weak. Christ, he felt like everything was spinning out and there wasn’t shit he could do to control the damage. He’d been able to keep his mind off of it over the past week, but now Buddha’s “predicament”—as he preferred to call it—was starting to eat away at him.
Buddha wasn’t just a man he respected and took orders from, he wasn’t just another brother, he was like a father. Actually, no, not like a father, he was his real one. He was the man who’d found a scared and angry sixteen-year-old kid in a rain-soaked alley and taken him in as his own, no fucking questions asked.
Torch remembered the night well, the details had never faded from memory. He remembered shivering as he cowered under a piece of cardboard to shield himself from a downpour; the feeling of panic when three shady-looking bikers rolled up and made him stand so they could look him over; and his sheer fucking gratitude to the leader of the pack who respected his request not to call the cops.
That night, Buddha only asked him two things: whether he needed help and whether he had anyone who could do it. Torch nodded at the first question, he’d been sleeping under bridges for over a week and couldn’t even sell drugs to get by because he had no money to buy them. He figured maybe the big, burly dudes would spot him a twenty or something. But when he shook his head at the question of having friends or family, Buddha didn’t pull out his wallet, he told him to get his ass on the back of his Harley.
Yeah, he’d been old enough to know better than to put his life in the hands of a man who looked like he’d done time in Rikers. But despite the tatts and a hunting knife hanging from his belt, there was a real kindness in Buddha’s eyes even back then. Torch remembered staring at him for at least a full minute, trying to decide whether to hop on or run for his life, but in the end he went with his gut. Not once had he regretted it.
Buddha didn’t just help, he gave Torch a brand new life. Asking nothing in return, he gave a strange kid a place to sleep and took him under his wing. He fed him, clothed him, and brought him to the shop every day so the brothers could teach him how to fix up cars and bikes. Until he turned twenty-one, Torch carried around a