The Rise of Ferryn Read online

  Before I could even understand what was happening, she was stalking over toward me with the determination I had once seen in her gait when she was cutting across a park to confront a group of kids picking on a small girl with glasses.

  Then she had grabbed me.

  And kissed me.

  There were several reasons Ferryn was off-limits.

  Like her scary-ass father.

  Like being the best friend to my little sister.

  But the biggest one, of course, was the fact that Ferryn was underage when I knew her.

  So, despite the clear crush she had held for me for a long time, and despite how interesting I had always found her, there had never been anything anyone—least of all her intimidating as fuck father and all his friends—could misconstrue as inappropriate between the two of us.

  Hell, I barely looked at the girl. Even when we were having long-ass conversations in my car after I drove her home from hanging out at my parents' house or back from one of my shows where she had always been our biggest fan right there in the front, singing her heart out.

  So, because of that—because there had just been some kind of block in my mind about her—nothing had fucking shocked me more than the zing that went through my body at the contact of her lips on mine.

  I would have stopped it, of course.

  I would have.

  But then it was over.

  And she was gone.

  And no one, fucking no one, ever saw her again.

  I had gone right on to tell Reign about seeing Ferryn, made Iggy tell him everything she knew about where she was going, what was going on in her head, but I had never told anyone the part about the kiss.

  I valued my life at least a little bit.

  Even if I hadn't initiated it, had been too shocked to even respond to it, I knew that was what it would cost me if anyone found out.

  That was the last time I saw Ferryn.

  Seconds before she ran away from her life.

  Not to be seen again.

  For nearly nine fucking years.

  Yet here she was.

  Alive.

  Seemingly... well enough.

  At West's words, as though she could hear the memories racing through my mind, I swear something sparked in her eyes then. Something familiar.

  A challenge.

  Like she was daring me to tell West when was the last time I saw her.

  Like she was daring me not to.

  I decided to avoid both options.

  "Ferryn, where the fuck have you been?"

  "That's a long story," she told me, putting her helmet on the seat of her bike. "What are you doing here? With a cut on?" she asked, eyes going to my chest.

  "That's a long story too," I told her.

  "I have a feeling there are going to be a lot of long stories in store for me," she said, and it was impossible to tell if she was dreading or excited about that prospect.

  "So, I am just going to cut through all this fun cryptic shit," West interjected. "And ask what you're doing back here all a sudden and unannounced."

  To that, her chest rose as she sucked in a deep breath.

  Looking for courage, maybe?

  Though there didn't seem to be a bit of this new woman standing before us that could possibly be uncertain or insecure.

  "It was time to come home."

  And just like that, after almost nine years, Ferryn was home.

  Four

  Ferryn - Present Day

  I don't know what I had been expecting heading home.

  Honestly, I wasn't sure I even really let myself mull it over too much. I knew that doing so would make it impossible to drive into Navesink Bank after all these years.

  Once I bested Holden, the decision was simply made. I didn't sit around, wondering what it might feel like to go back to the place that raised me, the people that raised me.

  I wasn't sure I was prepared to feel much of anything at all.

  There had been a drought in the softer, mushy sort of emotions for years for me. My life was too hard, too dark, to allow such weaknesses in.

  So when I turned my bike to head down the main street, I had been woefully unprepared for the unexpected surge of nostalgia.

  Maybe a part of me had expected so much to change. After all, so much about me had changed. And towns, well, they were a fluid thing, always growing, always evolving. Stores went in and out, faces changed, buildings were torn down and rebuilt.

  It should have been different.

  But it was almost a time capsule to my youth.

  There were the same places.

  She's Bean Around, the coffee shop where my friends and I had spent so much of our time. The Garage, a local, well, converted garage that served as a venue for all the local bands to practice and perform on weekends. There was the floral shop, the convenience store, the fancy lingerie store that my Aunt Elsie took me to when I turned fifteen to get me some cute sets my father would have had a conniption over if he knew I owned.

  Then, of course, there was my destination.

  The clubhouse.

  The place I had spent a huge chunk of my childhood. Hanging out with my father and uncles and my aunts and the women who I knew would eventually become aunts.

  There had been cookouts and birthday parties and Christmas extravaganzas.

  I'd snuck my first taste of alcohol inside those walls with my best friend Iggy. I'd broken my first bone jumping off an old car my uncle Repo kept in the back in an attempt to prove I was the ballsiest of the group. I'd spent time in the glass room on the roof used for guard duty just to watch the stars and talk with Iggy about how cool it would be if I married her brother, and we could become sisters for real.

  So much of my formative years was behind the gates, inside the walls. So much of who I was was created there.

  Was.

  Who I was.

  I was not the same girl that had last seen the Henchmen MC compound.

  My stomach, usually so steely, flip-flopped as I pulled my bike up to the gates, finding the Hailstorm guards situated there like they always were.

  They were a familiar sight with unfamiliar faces.

  Which meant that they had no idea who I was.

  How humbling it was to finally come back home after so long and not be recognized in a place that had been like a home away from home for me.

  Then just as I was trying to explain who I was there to see, why they should get out of my way, there were two new men there.

  Both were tall, fit, wearing cuts. Only one was familiar.

  A ghost from my past.

  The boy I had once fantasized about marrying.

  At the club.

  Wearing a cut.

  One of my father's men.

  It so far from made sense that I was having trouble actually stringing my thoughts together in a way that could suss out what, exactly, was going on.

  "So, where's my dad?" I asked into the awkward silence, my people skills definitely lacking thanks to no one but Holden to talk to. And, well, let's face it, Holden was not exactly an expert conversationalist. "What?" I asked when West shifted his feet, when Vance's arm rose, his hand rubbed across the back of his neck.

  I knew that motion.

  He did it when he needed to tell you something he knew you didn't want to hear.

  At least some things still made sense to me.

  "You've always had pretty shit timing, Ferryn," he told me, and memories suddenly flooded back. Missing school buses. Getting there ten minutes late for the movie. Mixing up dates.

  "Why? What's wrong?" I asked, feeling my stomach pitch at the idea that one of them was in the hospital or something.

  "Nothing, breathe," Vance demanded, voice soothing, like I was some prickly stray he was worried of frightening.

  And, well, it wasn't an altogether ridiculous thing to think, was it?

  Except that little, very fucking little, actually frightened me anymore.

  "Where are they?" I
demanded, voice sharp even to my own ears.

  "On a cruise," Vance told me, face apologetic.

  A cruise.

  If there was one place on this entire planet I couldn't picture my father, it was on a cruise.

  Then again, he was hopelessly in love with my mother. If she wanted to go on a cruise, he would take her. He might do it whilst brooding and openly mocking various cheesy elements of such a vacation, but he would go. He would do whatever it took to make her happy.

  "Their anniversary was last week," he added.

  I wanted to snap that I didn't need to be reminded when my own parents' anniversary was, but, well, I guess I did. While birthdays were still deeply burned in my brain, the other dates started to slip away without a calendar to remind me.

  "Where did they go?" I heard myself ask, heart sinking a bit.

  "To the Caribbean. Left from Florida two days ago. It's a seven-day cruise."

  And there would be next to no way for them to get back earlier.

  Which meant if the word spread, they would be trapped on a boat for five more days, anxious to get home, ruining their much-deserved vacation.

  "No one can tell them," I blurted out, hearing the urgency in my tone, knowing it was a weakness, but unable to bring myself to care, to rein it in.

  "Beautiful, your parents have been waiting for your ass for years. They'd want to know the minute you came back," West reasoned.

  "This is not your call," I reminded him, pinning him with a glare, finding myself a little annoyed when he didn't immediately look chastened.

  "Pretty sure it is more my call than yours, pretty biker princess," West went on.

  The thing was, he wasn't exactly wrong.

  I had grown up in the club.

  I knew how it went.

  Brotherhood over everything.

  Sure, those rules kinda bent a teensy bit when the men married and had kids because you would be a shit husband or father if you chose your friends over your blood, but almost as a rule for all the younger bloods, the single guys, they took that rule very seriously.

  Clearly, West felt the same way.

  A part of me respected that, was happy that my father still had such loyal men.

  The other part of me, though, bristled. Because I knew if this was one of the men I had grown up around, they would have considered my side of things before simply shooting me down.

  "Alright," Vance cut in when my mouth opened to snap at West. "Let's just think about this for a minute, alright?" he suggested, looking at West. "You know Reign can handle having to wait," he added. "But think of Summer," he said.

  "That's a fair point," West agreed. "But... what? We tell Cash and everyone else, and he comes home to find out all of us have been keeping this from him for a week? You want to deal with the backlash of that?"

  "That's fair," Vance agreed.

  My father was never quick to anger, to overreaction. He had been in charge of an outlaw biker gang for a long, long time, dealing with all the wars, all the external and internal conflicts, he had learned to let a lot of things roll off his back.

  That said, maybe I as only having a hard time picturing him making Vance and West's lives a living hell for keeping a secret because he had always been careful about not showing me those darker sides of his personality, his life.

  It was something that almost seemed funny to me now, knowing that his dark and ugly looked light and fluffy compared to mine.

  "Maybe it would be better to tell no one," I suggested, feeling a sort of balloon deflate inside me.

  Even if I hadn't known what I was going to be expecting, I guess I at least anticipated a reunion of some sort. With my parents, my brothers, my aunts and uncles.

  It was childish to crave it.

  I hadn't even been aware it was there.

  But there it was.

  "Yeah? And do what about them?" West asked, jerking his chin toward the Hailstorm guards.

  Biting into my lower lip, an old tell that had been long-buried, and I was sure dead, I reached for my phone.

  "I can handle that," I assured them, not a drop of doubt in my voice because I had none.

  In a place where I felt wholly off my footing, I did know that I could handle the guards, keep them quiet.

  And, for once, I wouldn't even need to use my fists to do so.

  "Where will you go?" Vance asked as my fingers moved across the keypad of my phone.

  "I'll find a place," I assured them. "I'm not a little kid anymore. I can make my own way."

  "I wasn't questioning that, Ferryn," Vance assured me. "I just want to make sure you aren't running off again."

  "I'm not."

  "We're just supposed to take you at your word?" West asked.

  "What other choice do you have? Tying me up and tossing me in the basement? I'd like to see you try."

  "Alright. That's enough of that," Vance cut in, a sigh in his voice. "How about you crash at my old place? It's there. Empty. I'm here all the time. It's not much. Got it back when I was done with the band but before I started here. I kept it just in case your father realized I had no place in the club and kicked me out."

  To that, I snorted. "No one gets kicked out of a club, Vance. They get taken out of one."

  "Never heard you talk about your father like that."

  "I've learned a lot of harsh realities over the years. Even about my own family. Where's this place you have?"

  "I will bring you."

  "I can bring myself."

  To that, he let out his breath, deflating his strong chest. "How about you humor me, Ferryn?" he suggested. "You can follow me on your bike."

  That was fair.

  I was being argumentative for no real reason.

  "I'll be damned," West said, making us both turn, finding the Hailstorm guards both lifting their phones, listening to the voice on the other end, looking back at me, nodding, then hanging up.

  In my hand, my phone buzzed.

  I got the confirmation I needed.

  My secret was mine until my parents got back.

  "Alright. Let's go," I declared, tucking my phone, putting my helmet back on.

  Without anything else, I turned over the bike, pulled out on the main street, waiting for Vance to do the same.

  A week.

  That was it.

  I just had to lay low for a week.

  I'd been laying low for almost nine years.

  A week was nothing.

  Yet it somehow felt like a lifetime.

  So close to everything I had left behind, but still so far.

  Vance pulled out ahead of me, and I couldn't help but wonder how the hell he had found himself on a motorcycle, in a club, running guns for my father.

  Last I had seen him, he and his band had been paying their dues. They weren't big time. They weren't even hinting at big time. But they had a large local following. They were making plans to start doing some touring. They would have made something of themselves if they kept on the same path. There had been nothing to suggest they wouldn't. No internal battling. No one letting their ego get the better of them.

  How did he go from promising rockstar to an outlaw biker?

  Those thoughts were pushed away as Vance turned off the main drag, leading me down toward, well, the bad area of town.

  Growing up, my father had always made it clear that none of us were ever to go near Third Street territory.

  A local and unpredictable street gang known for constant changeover in leadership, roughing up the girls they pimped, and selling whatever drugs they could get their hands on—my father always had worries about them one day rising up, getting a leader who would set their sights higher than the drug and pimp game, who would try to find a way to take over the much more profitable gun-running. I guess he figured one good way for them to so would be to take my brothers or me, use us as pawns to get what they wanted.

  We were banned from the area.

  Of course, that meant very little to me. I was alway
s looking for ways to bend or break rules. But after a trip of two, finding nothing but sadness, and people desperately trying to scrape by, well, I saw no reason to keep bending that particular rule.

  If Vance had needed to rent a place in Third Street territory, well, the transition between being a band member and a biker had to have been a rough one.

  We drove toward the very end of the road where there was a sad little house that looked as though a slight breeze might blow it down. In the backyard was a line of what looked to be shoebox apartments, all connected and sharing a slab porch.

  "I know it isn't much," he admitted when we both cut our engines, our bikes parked in front of the last one on the right, a light on inside like he had decided that a lamp on a timer would fool anyone into thinking someone was actually living there. Why he bothered, I wasn't sure. What could he have possibly stored there that he needed to protect from intruders?

  "I've stayed in worse," I admitted. Because it was true. And because, apparently, some small, deeply buried part of me still wanted to be on his good side.

  Those first crushes, they never fully die, do they?

  "Maybe you can tell me about it sometime," he offered, but kept moving, not letting it get awkward, reaching into his wallet to find a key.

  "How long were you crashing here?" I asked as he shouldered the stuck door.

  "Four, five months. Something like that. It wasn't as bad as it looks, really. I was used to sleeping in the back of a van a lot of the time. With five other guys. At least here I got some solitude. Alright, here we go. Welcome," he said, moving inside, leaving me to fall behind.

  I had maybe been too generous in calling it a shoebox. It looked just about big enough to house a family of squirrels.

  Predominantly one room with a closet of a space to the back that I figured to be the bathroom, there was a pretty badly worn brown material couch that, judging by the blanket draping it and the pillows butted against the arm, also served as the bed.

  Would it be lumpy and uncomfortable? Yes. But also likely more cozy than my old mattress on the floor.

  Behind the couch was what must have been considered the kitchen which consisted of a mini-fridge, a sink, and a microwave.

  That was just as well.

  I didn't have many cooking skills to speak of either.