Walk The Edge

“And now?” I hate how my voice quakes with anticipation.

Razor picks up a lock of my hair and the skin he barely touched while lifting the strands tingles. He allows my hair to slide between his fingers and then he eases entirely too far from me, his warmth retreating with him. “And now I want something else for protecting you.”

The bell rings and I’m thirty seconds from being late to class. Panic rips through me as being late is so not what I do. Razor pivots on the balls of his feet and leaves. It’s like my world is being torn in two as I’m desperate to understand him while I fight this desire to remain the girl who obeys the rules. “Razor!”

He rotates and walks backward for his class. I’m guessing his “what?” expression is the most encouragement I’ll get.

“I don’t need you to protect me anymore.”

He releases that soul-squeezing smile. The one that screams dark nights and perilous bike rides at breakneck speeds. The one that reminds me he’s not a model, but a biker. “Yeah, you do. We’ll discuss payment later.”

I slip into the safety of my class and watch as Thomas Turner, Razor the motorcycle boy, strides into the classroom across from me. My hands tremble as I sit. My senior year just entered the realm of interesting.

RAZOR (#ulink_6399bdd7-5f27-5376-a328-d10d73c5c4ec)

WELCOME BACK, SENIORS.

It’s the message our English teacher would have given us a hundred extra credit points for if we deciphered it. I didn’t decode it, Breanna Miller did. Watching her do it in class was one of the most fascinating things I’ve seen and what kicks me in the nuts is that she didn’t turn it in. Didn’t take credit. Didn’t receive her reward for a job well done. She sat there, slightly angled in her chair, with that sexy little smirk on her face as she admired her answer.

“Are you smiling?” Chevy sits on the top of the picnic table, the second beer of the night in his hands.

A longneck’s also in my hands as I lean against the entrance of the clubhouse. One foot outside, the other one in. I’m waiting for my sentence for disobeying a direct order and Chevy’s trying to forget Violet. I rub a hand over my face to wipe away any type of grin—especially the type I didn’t know I was sporting.

The clubhouse is packed tonight. Row after row of motorcycles fill the yard and the crowd near the bar cheering on the Reds’ game is three men deep. The night’s warm and, with the number of members around, the bay doors of the clubhouse are wide-open. A combination of the scent of burning embers from the bonfire and spilt beer enters my nose.

The Reign of Terror clubhouse is an old two-story four-car garage that’s on property owned by Cyrus. I’ve spent a good majority of my life on this land. Some of it in the clubhouse, some of it in Cyrus’s log cabin house, but most of it in the thick surrounding woods playing with Oz, Chevy and Violet as kids.

I swirl the beer in the bottle. Breanna keeps me from drinking too much. She said she’s headed to Shamrock’s tonight. I shouldn’t care where she’s going or with who, but the thought of her there irritates me. Dad says the worst indigestion to have is from a girl.

The other night, I was fucking with Breanna—messing around—but I did promise to protect her. She’s not safe there. No girl is safe at Shamrock’s tonight.

“What do you know about Breanna Miller?” I focus on the beer label, acting as if that question doesn’t mean anything to me.

“She’s sexy,” Chevy answers. “Has legs that go on forever. Which I didn’t notice until orientation. I don’t remember her being like that last year.”

Me neither. Those wide hazel eyes, nice curves, and that silky-to-touch long midnight hair. I like tunneling my fingers into hair like that when I kiss a girl. Yeah, Breanna Miller transformed over the summer. That’s what I call blossoming.

Originally the plan was to convince her to hang with me for a night. A ride on my bike. Some kissing until she decided to stop, but after witnessing how her brain ticks, I need her for more. I plan on using her mind in exchange for my “protection.”

“She’s quiet. I’d only know her voice because it’s the one I haven’t heard over and over again like everyone else’s since middle school. I also know she’s smart.” Chevy puts down his beer and begins to flip a coin over his fingers. He’s been doing sleight of hand since we were kids and, to me, it never gets old. “She’s going to be one of those who leaves Snowflake and never looks back and then in thirty years she’ll be ruling the world.”

He preaches the truth. She’s straight A, award-winning, and has never said much in class for the past four years. Breanna’s one of those too-smart-for-her-environment types who’s biding her time until she’s eighteen and can get the hell out.

The coin disappears between his fingers, he claps his hands and when he shows me his palms the coin’s gone.

“Are you going to pull a rabbit out of your ass next?” I ask.

“No, but I’ll shove a rabbit up yours if you pull any of that shit again like you did with the Riot last night.”

“I was playing.”

He snorts. “Playing is dangling meat in front of hungry bears with anger issues. What you did last night was skipping through nuclear fallout. I’m not kicking you in the stones, man. I’m a friend trying to watch your back.”

I nod because that’s the best I got for him. The coin reappears as if from thin air and he’s flipping it through his fingers again at a rapid rate.

“Remember middle school with Breanna?” he asks. “She did that science project that re-created the telegraph or some shit like that. I remember my head hurting because I couldn’t understand half the crap she said.”

I chuckle because I do remember. I also recall hating her because I was proud of my exploding volcano. The moment she opened her mouth, there was no way I was going to win.

“Remember how Marc Dasher treated her after that?” Chevy says with a hint of pity.

“Yeah.” After her presentation, the bastard tortured Breanna. “We need to mess that guy up.”

“Patience” is all he says.

My eyebrows lift. Neither Chevy nor Oz are the type to walk from a fight, but they never search for one like me. As I’m about to ask what I’m missing, my father’s voice booms into the night. “Razor!”

The boisterous conversations cease and the droning baseball announcer is the lone sound.

“Find Oz,” I say. “I need you two to ride with me to Shamrock’s later.”

“Shamrock’s?” There’s a question in his tone and I understand why. “There’s going to be Army boys there causing problems tonight.”

“I know.” Breanna and her friends have no idea what they could be dancing into.

“Then I’m on it.” He slips off the table as it’s time for him to leave. Chevy’s seventeen and can’t enter his prospect period, the initiation time span when the club decides if someone should become a full-fledged member, until he’s eighteen. No one underage is allowed at the clubhouse after eight oh one. “Good luck in there.”

We smack hands, I take a fast swig from the longneck, then dump the nearly full beer into the trash. Everyone watches and half of me expects a muttered comment of “dead man walking,” but they keep their mouths shut. The shit I’m in is too deep for a smart-ass comment.

Dad’s already gone by the time I reach the door, so I head up the stairs. As the sergeant at arms, it’s Dad’s job to call people into the boardroom. It’s also his job to kick people out. Wonder how this evening will end.

I walk in and the chairs at the long mahogany table are filled. As president, Cyrus owns the head. He’s got a long beard and ponytail to match. He’s a bear of a man. I love him like a grandfather but have enough healthy fear to keep my distance when he’s pissed.

Cyrus’s son Eli sits on his right. The way Eli examines me gives the impression he’s about to yank his gun out of his holster, unload a clip into me, and will happily spend a few more years in prison over it. He tugs at the plugs in his ears and his gaze falls over to my father.

Dad drops into his seat next to Oz’s dad. There’s no seat for me, which is fine. I prefer to stand while being fired at. “I didn’t engage.”

But I would have and they know it.

“You messed up,” Eli states. “But the good news is you didn’t actually come face-to-face with them, so we’re going to call that one straight.”

Interesting. Last time I disobeyed a decree from the club’s bylaws, I was fined a hundred bucks and I had to clean bathrooms with the prospects for a month.

Eli stands and motions to his empty chair. “Take a seat.”

My eyes find Dad’s and he nods to confirm it’s cool. I move slowly to the table, waiting for a trapdoor to fly open beneath my feet. As I sit, Eli draws a folding chair up to the other side of Cyrus and straddles it directly across from me.

Cyrus may have been voted in by the members as president, but everyone knows that Eli is the chief of this tribe. Not because that’s how he wants it, it’s because every man who wears a Terror cut respects the hell out of him. But because of Eli’s stint in prison, he can’t hold an official office. “What went down with you and the detective?”