Seasons of Change (2 page)

After Suzie’s revelation, I feel like I’m operating on auto-pilot. The lunch crowd slowly fills up the diner and I do my best to ignore the worried glances that my friend keeps flicking towards me as we go about waiting on the rapidly-filling tables.

“Catch you later Suze” is all I say to her as I leave at the end of my shift.

She nods quickly and we hug briefly before I walk out of the door. There are so many things I want to say to her; like she shouldn’t go on this date and that she knows she’s taking a huge risk.

The Bleeding Angels are known for getting what they want and if this biker has decided that he wants Suzie, then he’s going to get her one way or another. But at the same time I know that there isn’t much she can do.

If she doesn’t show up for the date with the man responsible for her black eye and for the look of fear about her, then he’ll find her anyway and things will be so much worse. I know this from personal experience that the Angels always get their man—or their woman as the case may be. They’d gotten my dad and they were going to get Jake, no matter how much I prayed that they wouldn’t.
And they’re going to get you
, the little voice in my head says, and I push it away, walking faster along the sidewalk.

I follow the same routine as I always do after a shift. I delay going home until the last possible moment. I find every reason that I can muster to avoid the dark silence of that house, the house that was once full of laughter and smiles and the smell of home-cooked meals. Now it’s nothing like that, not even close—you can’t even hear the echo of laughter if you listen really closely.

Instead I head for one of my homes away from home. The body shop is in the opposite direction to my house but, like I said, I’m in no rush. I pop my head around the door to the office and see that Jake’s Dad is on his own.

He barely even looks up from the sheets of paper that he’s squinting at and scratching his head over. He doesn’t have to look up—my visits are like clockwork; you could pretty much set your watch by them.

I have a special place in my heart for Bill. After my dad died he really stepped up out of a sense of duty or decency or whatever it was and he made sure that I was looked after. He did the dad stuff with me that I didn’t have anyone else to do it with. He vetted my high school boyfriends and taught me how to punch and even disable a guy if I had to.

He never tried to take the place of my father and we never really talked about the role that Bill had played, or even filled, in the years since I lost him, but I would be forever grateful to him for treating me like his family. 

“He’s on the floor,” Bill says, nodding towards the area where they work on the cars and bikes.

“Thanks Bill,” I say, approaching his table and dropping off his favorite chocolate muffin from the diner, careful not to put it on top of any of the piles of paper that always litter his desk.

“You keep bringing these and I’ll start looking like those truckers that pitch up here—all gut,” he says mock-angrily, patting his flat stomach, but there’s a twinkle in his brown eyes and I’m struck again by how similar his and Jake’s expressions are. The apple really didn’t fall far from the tree in that sense.

“Fine looking man like you?” I tease. “Never happen,” I assure him solemnly and I’m rewarded with the twitch of a smile on his weathered face.

Bill was probably only in his late forties but, like everyone else in this town, he looked older. Painted Rock ages you, or at least the things that go on here do. I already feel like I’ve lived a lifetime and I’m not going to be in my twenties for a few more months yet.

“How’s your mother?” he asks gruffly. Although he puts a blunt, rough front on, Bill has a heart of gold—another way that Jake takes after him.

“The same,” I say, with a shrug like there’s not much else to say, and that’s because there isn’t.

I’ve been answering questions about Mom in much the same way over the past few years; I don’t think anyone ever really expects a different response. She never recovered after Dad died—or, I guess I should say, when he was killed. “Died” sounds more like he slipped away painlessly in his sleep rather than the reality: that he was gunned down in the middle of the street, shot like a stray dog.

I shake my head, trying to dispel the image of him reaching his hand out towards me as he fell. “How’s business?” I ask, going through our standard conversation.

“Oh you know, could be worse,” Bill admits shrugging and pushing his glasses back down over his nose and burying his face in the sheaf of papers in front of him.

It’s the exchange we always have, but there’s something in the older man’s expression that makes me wonder how much worse business could be before there was no business left at all. Bill had built this body shop from nothing and I knew that he dreamed of passing it on to Jake one day, but the way this town was going— well, no one planned that far ahead anymore.

It’s not a given that any of us will have what we want or what we think we deserve. I don’t dwell on what my plans would have been if the cards that had been dealt had been different. There’s no point in looking back, it doesn’t change anything and, as my dad used to say, it just gives you a sore neck.

“I’ll go find Jake,” I tell Bill, not wanting to go any further down memory lane.

“Sally would love to have you over for dinner; it’s meatloaf night,” Bill says encouragingly as I turn to leave the room. To be fair, Sally’s cooking is legendary and it’s been a while since I’d had a home-cooked meal made by someone other than myself—and my culinary skills were dubious at best—but it’s not going to happen for me, not tonight.

“Thanks, Bill, but I’m doing a double at the diner today. Gotta cover the graveyard shift,” I tell him. “Give her my love though, I’ll see her soon,” I assure him.

If Jake’s dad had taken on the role of kindly uncle to me, then his mom was most definitely my favorite aunt. When it became clear that my mom wasn’t going to get better anytime soon, Sally and I had started spending more and more time together.

She’d taught me how to put my makeup on, talked me through what to do when I got my period for the first time, and dried my tears on the days when I just couldn’t take the unfairness of it all anymore. Jake’s parents really are one of the few things in Painted Rock that give me hope. Knowing that people like them exist here makes me think it’s possible for things to get better.

Bill nods at my excuse and doesn’t ask any questions. He has always been a man of few words, but he is also a man that realizes there are some things he simply doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t want to know that I’m working myself into the ground, saving everything I can spare to find a way out of this town that has taken everything from me.

Apart from Bill and Sally, the only person I have left is Jake—even Suzie’s trapped here now; once the Angels have their claws in you, they don’t let go, not without a fight. And they always seem to win fights. At least there still might be a chance for Jake; I need to believe that there is.

I find Jake in his customary position underneath the bonnet of a car. He knows his way around cars and bikes like he was born in the body shop, which I suppose he pretty much was. He had always been great with his hands—a talent that no-one can deny and he’s made Bill’s Body Shop famous. They get cars from all over the country, but even so, Bill can’t seem to make the numbers work.

The Bleeding Angels take a cut of every business in Painted Rock and Bill’s shop is no different. Not only do they make Jake fix up their bikes for free, but they also take so much of the Summers family’s profits from the shop that they barely have enough to live on.

But just like everyone else, they know better than to argue
—it doesn’t get you anywhere in this town apart from beaten up or dead.

The only person willing to stand up to the Angels died a long time ago, and no one had forgotten what happened to him. That had sort of been the point. The Angels had made an example out of him and it had worked. Since that night, everyone realized that changing things in this town was never an option. You either put up and shut up, or you were likely to find yourself face down in the nearest river.

“Are you going to stand there gawping or are you gonna pass me the wrench?” Jake’s voice comes from underneath the bonnet, bringing me out of my depressing train of thought.

I smile wryly to myself as I wonder again how he knew I was there.
The same way that you always know when he’s close by. It’s nothing special
, the little voice in my head says, but I ignore her. I don’t dwell on the fact that the little voice is getting louder and louder.

I pass the wrench to him as I take a seat on the stool next to the tool box and stretch my long legs out in front of me. “What’s up, Aimee? I can hear you thinking,” Jake says eventually as the silence stretches out between us.

He ducks out from under the bonnet and leans against the car, looking straight at me. I’m struck again by how the skinny little Jake Summers I knew as a kid has turned into the man in front of me. When we were kids, he’d been all arms and legs, driving everyone crazy because he would disassemble anything he could get his hands on: clocks, microwaves, car engines. And then he’d put it all back together so that it worked even better than before.

The dark brown eyes are the same, but the person in front of me is a man, not a child. He’s filled out and grown into his limbs, his muscular forearms a testament to his manual work. His oversized head with his terrible buck teeth that looked almost comical on his skinny body have become chiseled, and the persistent five o’clock shadow on his cheeks gives him an aura of manliness that has begun to do strange things to my stomach.

“Earth to Miss Winters,” Jake is saying, and I realize that I’ve been openly staring at him as I try not to flush right down to my toes.

“Sorry, I was miles away,” I say, shaking my head and reminding myself that Jake is my best friend, nothing more. Jake Summers, Aimee Winters—it had always been a joke that we were as conjoined as the seasons.

“Jake and Aimee sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G,” a small, shrill voice comes out as a kid does a little dance towards us.

“Hey Jonah,” I say as a smile spreads across my face when I see Jake’s little brother, while Jake looks like he’s about to explode.

“Jonah,” he growls warningly at his six-year-old brother, who, as usual, doesn’t pay him any attention.

“Jake and Aimee sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G,” he repeats, looking between Jake and me as he sings.

I’m pretty sure that Jonah doesn’t have any interest in whether or not Jake and I lock lips or not—it’s just something that he’s heard in the playground at school and it’s become his new favorite way to annoy his big brother.

“Jonah, quit it or I’ll tell Dad you’re distracting me and he won’t let you play down here,” Jake says forcefully, but I can see the way the corner of his lip quirks up as Jonah makes Bambi eyes at him. Part of the problem is that the little guy is so darn cute, it’s impossible to stay mad at him.

Looking at the two brothers standing side by side, you’d be hard pressed to find something that would make you realize they were even related. Jonah is blond and his skin is fair, whereas Jake is dark with an olive shade to his skin that, whenever he’s in the sun for more than five minutes, makes it look like he should be on the cover of some surfing magazine. There was nothing similar about them at all. But despite the fact that Jonah regularly drives Jake completely crazy, I know that he loves his little brother and he would do anything for him.

“Don’t be made at me, Jakey,” Jonah says in his baby voice that he uses when he wants something or when he’s trying to get out of trouble.

“I’m not mad Jo, but do me a favor. How about you take this—” He holds out a small nut. “—and you go take a look upstairs in the big tool box and see if you can find another one exactly like it, alright?” he asks, looking serious as if he’s trying to impress upon his little brother the importance of the task that he’s given him.

Jonah nods eagerly, so much so that I’m a little concerned he might give himself whiplash, and he’s about to run off to do his brother’s bidding when he remembers that I’m there. “Aimee,” he says in his sweet little voice, “Did you bring me anything?” A smile breaks out on his face because he knows the answer before he even asks the question.

“And what do I get if I have?” I ask him, going through the motions of the exchange that we have almost every day.

“You get to be the best Aimee in the whole entire world,” he says enthusiastically, and I wish I remember what it was like to be so excited about apple pie, or in fact to be so excited about anything.

“Well,” I tell him, putting my hand in my bag and making a big show of searching around for what I’m looking for, “Looks like I’m the best Aimee in the whole entire world then,” I say to him as I produce the little polystyrene box filled with his favorite dessert.

Jonah’s eyes light up as if all his Christmases have come at once and he gives me a quick kiss on the cheek before making off with his treat up the stairs.

“Jonah, what do you say?” Jake shouts after him, like the big brother he is.

“Thanks Aimee,” comes Jonah’s contrite voice from upstairs, and I laugh.

“Did you really need him to go find that nut for you?” I ask Jake as he goes back to working under the hood of the car.

“Well I needed him to stop singing that song before I was forced to do something to his face that my parents probably wouldn’t be very happy about. So yes, I needed him to go find that nut,” he says, and I can hear the smile that I know is playing on his lips.

“Your parents
probably
wouldn’t be very happy if you did something to your brother involving your fist and his face?” I ask, hands on hips despite the fact that Jake can’t actually see me.

“Well they
probably
wouldn’t be that pleased to begin with, but then they’d realize that I was the superior son anyway and much less annoying than Jo, so they’d get over it pretty quickly I think,” he muses as I shake my head and laugh at the matter-of-fact way Jake explains his theory.

“Poor little Jo,” I say. “I always wanted a brother, but seeing the way you treat yours I think I’ll pass,” I tell my friend.

“You want a brother?” Jake asks, his head coming out from under the bonnet like I’ve just said something that warrants some more attention. “Feel free to take mine,” he suggests, “It’s a win-win situation.” He smiles and winks at me.

“Yeah, your parents may not quite see it that way,” I point out to him.

“Like I said, they’d get over it, believe me,” Jake replies, laughing. “And at least then they wouldn’t have to deal with two sons going through the Bleeding Angels’ rite of passage,” he says nonchalantly, but I’m not in a place yet where I can joke about what’s going to happen to my best friend in a few short weeks.

As he says the name of the MC that’s ruined this town, the image of Suzie’s face and the ugly bruise spreading across her eye comes into my head and the levity and brightness that Jonah had brought with him is completely dissipated.

“So what’s going on? You’re even more depressing than usual,” Jake jokes as he brushes his dark hair out of his eyes with his hands, leaving a grease mark on his forehead.

“It’s Suzie,” I say, not knowing how else to start.

“What’s she gotten herself into this time?” Jake asks, twirling the wrench in his hand. He’s known Suzie for almost as long as I have.

The three of us went through school together—kindergarten, high school, the whole works, and whereas Suzie and I had drifted a little in recent years, Jake and I were still as close as we had ever been—maybe even closer. Jake knows all about the problems that she’s had since her mom split. He’d fished her out of more than one dive bar when she’d had too many drinks and had called him to pick her up and take her home.

I always thought that Suzie had a soft spot for Jake, but nothing had ever happened between them—at least not as far as I knew anyway—and the thought of it sparks an unfamiliar feeling of jealousy.

“She’s been claimed by an Angel,” I say, my voice low and I watch as the emotions play out over his face—shock, then denial, then horror, and then fear. The same feelings I went through when Suzie had told me in the diner.

“Holy shit,” Jake breathes out, leaning heavily against the car like he’s had all the wind knocked out of him. We both know what it means when an Angel claims you, and none of it is good. “And you don’t think it’s kind of a coincidence?” Jake asks suddenly, his voice angry.

“What do you mean?” I ask, not wanting to give voice to the thought in my head. I know exactly what he means, but I don’t want to say it.

“It’s only a couple of weeks until my birthday,” he says slowly, and he doesn’t need to say anything else—we both know the significance.

Jake turns twenty in exactly sixteen days, and when that happens he’ll be of age to be taken by the Angels, to do his time, just like every other able-bodied guy in Painted Rock. They all have to do their time, and after that, most choose to stay on and move up the ranks of the MC.

Once you’ve tasted the kind of power that the Angels wield over this town, it’s hard to let it go, I guess. The ones that do leave never talk about what went on inside the club because they’re sworn to secrecy, but it’s no secret what would happen to them if they talked.

There are reminders all over this town—families without fathers, men carrying a haunted look around with them, looking ten years older than they are. That’s how the Angels work. They take away the most important things to you, the things you need the most, so you don’t have any option other than to give them power over you. They’ve been doing it for so long they really have got it down to a fine art.

A fine, bloody art.

“It’s not going to happen,” I tell him sternly. “I have enough to get us as far as Vegas,” I tell him. “They won’t be able to find us there.”

“Until they do,” Jake says hopelessly. “We’re not the only ones that have thought about running, Aimee,” he reminds me. “And we both know how it always ends.”

“But it doesn’t have to be like that,” I tell him as we repeat the same conversation that we’ve been having over the past year.

“Okay, so maybe we get lucky, maybe they don’t find us. What happens to your mom? What happens to my parents? To Jonah? You think the Angels are just going to stand for us getting away? You know as well as I do what will happen to our families, and you know that I can’t be responsible for that. There’s no way I could live with that hanging over me,” Jake says, shaking his head, and the determination on his face is an expression that I know all too well.

“Why do you think Suzie has anything to do with you getting patched?” I ask, trying to steer the conversation away from the dead end that we always seem to reach.

“I don’t think it’s about me,” Jake says slowly. “I think it’s about you.” His voice is full of concern and I feel the fear in the pit of my stomach clench my insides into a ball as he says the words that I hadn’t wanted to admit to myself.