Ride Steady (Chaos #3)(12)

We’d been officially divorced for six months, the decree coming through two months after I pushed out our son (alone, since Dad was driving from Nebraska, and Travis came out quickly). In that time, I’d been to court twice and I knew Aaron was looking for any little thing that he could use to prove I wasn’t fit to look after Travis or that I’d broken our arrangement so he could get me into (more) trouble.

I had long since run out of money for a lawyer. Dad sent a bunch but I stopped asking after the second trip to court. He worried about me. He was all I had left (except Travis), but all I could think about was that Travis and I were all he had left too and he’d been through enough. I couldn’t drag him through this with me.

I could, however, get a new attorney.

The one I’d had was expensive and we’d gone over things before I had to let him go. It was clear he was concerned about his ability to defend me considering the firepower at Aaron’s back.

But when I begged (and okay, cried), my attorney had told me I could pay installments.

However, they just racked up (I was still paying them off). I couldn’t afford more. I needed a new car. Eventually, I’d need more than a one-bedroom apartment and preferably one that was in a much better neighborhood. I needed to find time and money to go to beauty school so I could learn how to do hair. I was good at hair. I had a natural talent. I’d spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I was good at, what I could do, and that was the only thing.

And stylists at nice salons made huge tips.

I needed huge tips.

I pretty much needed everything.

So I’d tried to find a less expensive attorney.

Not many were willing to take me on (this, I feared, was Aaron and his father’s doing too), but I’d found one. And he’d be really less expensive, if, in his words with that oily smile on his face, I got down on my knees (repeatedly) while he battled Aaron for me.

I didn’t need him to explain what getting down on my knees meant. I also didn’t need to explain verbally why I got up from my chair in his office and walked out.

So I could get a new attorney, I just didn’t like the way he wanted me to pay fees.

But right then, what I needed most was to change my tire, get back on the road, get my son to his father before it was too late and Aaron logged that on the list of things to use to make his ex-wife lose custody of her son and hopefully go away for good. After that, I needed to figure out how to get my tire fixed, or how to pay for a new one, and finally, get to my evening shift at the store.

I was just going to have to put my baby in the car and hope to God no one hit me or my vehicle.

I didn’t have good thoughts about this. I hadn’t had a lot of luck in my life.

Some of my bad luck was out of my control.

Aaron wasn’t.

That was on me.

That was my fail.

And it was a biggie.

I looked into Travis’s little baby face with his big pudgy cheeks and his dancing eyes that had turned brown, like mine, like his granddad’s, and he gurgled up at me, his little red lips wet and curved up, his little fist banging my shoulder.

Okay, so Aaron wasn’t a total fail. He gave me Travis.

“We’ll be fine,” I told my boy on a squeeze.

“Goo,” he replied.

I smiled. “Mommy can do this.”

“Goo, goo, gah.” Fist bump and twist on my necklace, pulling it hard against my neck.

I smiled bigger even though I still wanted to cry and started toward the car.

Then I heard a loud noise getting louder because it was getting closer.

I stopped and turned my head to the side.

That was when I froze.

I froze because I saw one of those bikers on his big, loud motorcycle riding down the shoulder my way.

And he wasn’t one of those recreational bikers. I knew this at a glance. His black hair was very long, too long, and wild. He had a full black beard on his face. It was trimmed but not trimmed enough (as in, the beard being nonexistent). He had black wraparound sunglasses covering his eyes, glasses that made him look sinister (as bikers, in my mind, were wont to be). He was also wearing a black leather jacket that looked both beat up and kind of new, faded jeans, and those clunky black motorcycle boots.

He stopped as I held my breath. He turned off the motorcycle and put down the stand before he swung a long leg with its heavy thigh and clunky boot off the bike.

Travis squealed.

Letting go of my necklace, he twisted in my arms and was pumping his fists excitedly.

I started breathing, feeling my heart beat fast, as the biker walked toward me, his sunglasses aimed my way, then he abruptly stopped with a strange jerk.

He studied me, his face impassive, standing like he was caught in suspended animation, and I studied him right back.

I didn’t know bikers. I’d never met a biker. Bikers scared me. They did this because they looked scary. They also did this because I’d heard they were scary. They had girlfriends who wore tube tops and they had knives on their belts and they drove too fast and too dangerously and got in bar brawls and held grudges against other bikers and did things to be put in jail and all sorts of stuff that was scary.

As these thoughts tumbled through my head, he came unstuck, started moving my way, and in a deep, biker voice, he called, “You got a problem?”

Travis squealed again, pumping his arms, then he giggled as the big biker guy continued coming our way.