It was annoying as fuck.
Like a fly buzzing around your face that you couldn’t quite catch, it buzzed into my mind while I slept, and just as I thought I remembered what song it was, it stopped.
I decided, if and when I woke up, I was going to smack the shit out of whoever was humming. They sounded happy, and happiness had no place in my room. Not in my clubhouse. Not in my world. Not in my heaven or hell.
Happiness was the epitome of lies.
Happiness only existed to show us what we should feel. How things could be. And exactly what you were never going to have.
Even other people’s happiness was fake.
All of us were wearing our smiles like crowns, trying to prove to the person in the mirror that everything was going to be okay. That the life we were living was in fact worth living. It was all lies, and nothing but trickery from the Devil.
Happiness didn’t exist.
*
Cold.
I was so cold.
I wondered briefly why someone had thought to take all my clothes away. It wasn’t like there was much to see beneath the heavy folds of material anymore. Just a busted-down, burnt-up, torn-to-shit body. Even my muscles had wasted away. I looked like a ninety-year-old man and I felt like one too.
So why take my clothes?
And my covers.
And all the heat from the room.
Why make me freeze? Was it just another form of torture? Was it just another punishment from the Devil? Another way of making me suffer…
Was I dead now?
Could I finally rest?
I blinked, watching as Belle slept. She was in a different position now and her hair was tied in a knot on the top of her head. She still looked sad though.
*
Hot.
So hot I wasn’t sure why my bones hadn’t turned to molten lava, liquefying and dripping onto the floor. I felt like maybe I already had. Like I was a volcano and I had finally erupted. All the months of anger and hate had finally spewed out of me until all I was was melted bones and ash clouds.
The humming was back, but this time I recognized the song because it was accompanied by it playing on the radio or something similar. It was a song by Michael Kiwanuka called “Love & Hate.” I recognized it right away, and through the ebb and flow of the blood running through my veins and the pounding in my head, I remembered where I had first heard it. The memory wasn’t a good one, and it was one I’d tried to keep buried. Not because I was ashamed, but because I didn’t want to remember that part of my life.
It was a long time ago, just after I’d patched in with the club and I was just a smartass looking for a place to fit in in the world. I’d finally found my people—my family. I’d never belonged before. I’d never had a place that was mine or that I could call home. A place that made me feel safe. Until I’d found the Devil’s Highwaymen it had just been me against the world.
After I’d patched in with them, everything made sense in my life, but I still felt empty inside. One day I’d walked into a bar and that song had been playing in the background. I’d drunk my beer in silence, letting the song wash over me and thinking about where I was going to ride to next.
I’d saved up and gotten my first bike a couple a months earlier, and I’d been traveling up and down the country for the past week or so doing jobs for my president, Rider. For the first time in a long time, maybe in forever, I was happy. Or something similar to it. I’d just wanted to ride and see where the road took me. I’d never felt so free and so blessed in all my life.
And then I’d seen her—my mom. She looked almost the same, barring she’d aged to look almost ninety.
She recognized me right away, despite the fact that I’d filled out and grown taller. Tattoos ran up and down my arms and across my neck, and my long hair was loose around my shoulders. I was a man now, not the little boy that had run away from home, but she still knew it was me. She was drunk, as usual, and she stumbled over, hazy eyes pinned on me, skinny arms reaching until she gripped the muscles on my forearm, her eyes widening in appreciation.
“Son,” she’d slurred, a drunken smile on her wretched face, “where’ve you been? I’ve been waiting for you.”
Waiting for me?
I almost laughed in her face.
That bitch hadn’t been waiting for me. Not once, not ever.
That bitch had left me.
Continuously.
She’d abandoned me every night. Locking me in our shitty apartment with no food and no heating, so she could go and get drunk. The last time I’d seen her I was twelve, and I’d managed to break a window and crawl down the fire escape after being locked inside for five days with nothing to eat. I was hungry, dizzy, cold as shit, and lonely as fuck.
I’d gone in search of her, out of my mind with worry that she might actually be dead that time. Instead of finding her dead, I’d found her drunk and on her knees, sucking off a guy behind his car for twenty bucks.
That was the day I left.
I’d lived on the streets until I was old enough to get a job and rent a place to call my own.
But it wasn’t a home.
It was a room with walls, a floor, and a ceiling.
But fuck no it wasn’t a home.
Now she draped an arm around me and placed her head on my shoulder, the stench of alcohol coming from her and making me nauseous. “I’ve missed you, little man,” she slurred, like fifteen years hadn’t passed and I was still her little boy, desperate for her to love me.
I shrugged her off me and she stumbled back, her sloppy smile slipping from her mouth.
“Not your little man,” I growled.
“Son,” she whimpered, sadness engulfing her features.
“Not your son,” I snarled. I threw some money on the counter, watching how her eyes hovered over the crumpled bills in eagerness. Leaving the rest of my beer, I turned and left the bar before I lost my shit and did something I regretted.
Outside I was about to climb back on my bike, anger, resentment, and hate burning through me and more than ready to leave that town and never come back, when she called my name. Hadn’t heard my name on her lips for so long I felt a stabbing in my heart.
I hated her.
I despised her.
I pitied her.
“Please, Jacob, don’t be like that. I’m your momma. I’ve missed you,” she slurred, stumbling toward me in her too-short skirt and high heels. She looked disgusting, like a crack whore with no soul, and my hate for her increased.
She missed me…
The words rattled around inside my empty heart.
I straddled my bike, watching how her eyes lit up at the sight of it, and I knew right away what she was thinking. She thought I had money. She thought I’d had it easy, that maybe I’d landed on my feet. She saw me as a way to fund her pathetic existence.
What she didn’t see was the devil I’d become.
She stood next to me, a hand on my shoulder. “I’ve missed you, Jacob, come back home and let me cook you something to eat.”
I turned to glare. “Get the fuck away from me.”
Her eyes narrowed, the soft look on her face turning to anger. I remembered that look too well, and I knew what came afterwards. But I wasn’t a little boy anymore. I wasn’t there to take her beatings. I wasn’t there to be punished for her shitty life and bad choices. I was a man now and I hadn’t had a mother for a long time. Maybe not ever.