I wanted him to suffer.
Then I wanted to move on with my life.
Finally.
At least, you know, that was the plan.
CHAPTER THREE
Valen
Being back in Navesink Bank was both familiar and unfamiliar, somehow at the same time.
A part of me figured that once I was done with all my traveling around, my Kerouac days behind me, that my hometown would feel like it had always felt.
In ways, it did.
Most of the stores and restaurants were the same. But they’d been renovated, and most were run by the next generation of owners.
The people were, for the most part, the same. But their faces were different, less familiar.
I guess I thought I’d done a good job keeping in touch. I wrote letters. I made phone calls. I stayed up to date with most of the familial shit. Especially because Vi was entrenched in most of the shit, even if she was out of town as often as she was in it.
But something about not being there in person made it infinitely clear that a lot of things had fallen through the cracks, little details that, when you accumulated enough of them, made up a big picture that I didn’t get to see.
I felt a bit like an outsider, even in the club, surrounded by people I spent damn near every day of my life with for eighteen years.
The fact of the matter was, though, that time had gone on without me. My friends that had been something more like brothers and sisters had grown, had gotten their own adult lives, had forged close connections.
And I wasn’t a part of any of it anymore.
I understood, logically, that I would be. Eventually. Once I was around for a while. Once I settled in. Once everyone got comfortable with me again.
“What?” Voss rumbled at me in that familiar, gruff voice of his.
It seemed strange that Voss, who I had known for such a short period of time comparatively, seemed much more familiar, more comfortable to be around.
But, well, my family and friends, they knew me as the kid I’d been when I’d jumped town.
Voss knew me as the man I became along the way.
That knowledge made our situation different.
Closer, I guess.
Because he was the only person in the club who genuinely knew me anymore.
“What what?” I asked, looking away from the water at the pier we’d walked down to.
Voss had a fascination with the ocean. I guess because he lived most of his life in landlocked states, never having seen it. Whenever we went out to eat or even just for a ride, we tended to end up at the water.
I felt like a bit of a dick because I didn’t appreciate it the same way he did, having grown up with it, close enough that I even took it for granted at times, never visiting it for weeks or even a whole season at a time.
Even coming back after being landlocked for a while, I didn’t have the same awe that Voss did.
“Looking all introspective and shit,” he said, shrugging one of his big shoulders.
“Guess I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since getting back,” I admitted.
“‘Bout?”
“About how home doesn’t exactly feel like home,” I admitted, though I wasn’t sure he would truly understand. Voss really hadn’t ever had a home.
“‘Cause it isn’t,” Voss said, tone matter-of-fact.
“What? Yes, it is.”
“It was,” he clarified. “It will be again. But it isn’t right now.”
Voss wasn’t a talkative man, but when he did choose to speak, he tended to drop a lot of wisdom on your ass.
You wouldn’t expect it to come from him. From the outside, or even upon first acquaintances, he was a bit of a brute.
Once you got to know him, though, you started to realize just how much life he has lived, how much shit he’s gone through and overcome. Or, at the very least, made it out of alive from.
And on the nights following long drives to somewhere, or nowhere at all, he would let those little bits of wisdom, of philosophical shit, slip out.
“Yeah, I guess that makes sense,” I agreed, exhaling hard. “So, what do you think? You regretting following me here?” I asked.
“Nah. Figure maybe stability might be good for me,” he said, looking out on the water once again.
I wasn’t sure Voss even truly understood what stability was. He’d never known it. He moved around. He job hopped. He never had any family or friends.
Until he decided to save my life, I guess.
I was probably the first and only friend Voss had ever had.
Even so, I’d been surprised that he wanted to prospect. It didn’t surprise me when he’d originally floated the idea. We talked about shit we might do all the time. But when he stuck with it, then came back to Navesink Bank with me, I’d been shocked.
Because prospecting meant you had any intention of being a patched member. Which was a lifetime sort of thing.
Maybe he’d figured he’d been enough places, seen plenty of things, and that it would be nice to see the same shit for a change.
I got that.
As much as I liked the road, something about knowing who I would see and what places I might frequent felt good after so much uncertainty for so long.
“Don’t even have your own room yet,” Voss added when I thought he was done speaking.
That was true too.
We were holed up in the prospect room which was a large space with bunk beds and not much else. I figured it was a way to force prospects together, to make them form bonds through the process that was becoming a member of the club.
I wondered, but didn’t ask, if the others had been forced to do the same. Had Fallon and Finn and Seth slept in the prospect room? Or had they just been given rooms because they had never left?
I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to seem like I was complaining. It wasn’t bad. I mean, Voss and I had shared a room, or an open sky, for a long time.
I just couldn’t help but feel a little, I don’t know, second-class compared to the others.
Maybe I would feel better when Nave blew back into town to prospect alongside as well. He would, for all intents and purposes, be more of an outsider than the others as well.
It was about right then that Fallon waved us back out of the area by the pier.
“What’s up?” I asked, looking over at him, still finding it hard to accept at times that he was the boss. It wasn’t like there had been any question about it. He was always going to take over for his father. But it was strange to come back after the transition had taken place.
“Dunno. We are wanted back at the clubhouse,” he said, shrugging, then slipping his helmet on. “Meet you guys there.”
“Weird,” Voss said, but shrugged and got on his own bike.
“I’ll meet you there,” I said, having parked all the way at the end of the street because I’d gotten there later.
There was always something going on with the club, so I didn’t really think much of it as I drove back to the clubhouse.
Something about the Mustang in the driveway, though, had the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. Even though that made no sense. I had no idea what any of the moms, dads, or cousins were driving these days. It could belong to anyone.
But as I got closer and closer to the door, something inside me said shit was off.