Page 7 of Sunny Undone

“Gimme your phone,” I say, holding out my hand to her.

Little lines form on her forehead. “Why?”

“Just do it, Indy.”

“You’re not going steal it from me, are you?” She sobs, and it breaks my heart. “Because I don’t think I can handle one more thing going wrong tonight.”

“Not gonna steal it. I promise.” I do that little cross thing over my chest for emphasis.

She does as I ask, and I open the camera before throwing an arm over her shoulder, smiling, and taking a picture of the two of us. “Send that to whoever your safe person is. Tell them that I’m taking you home with me so you can get some sleep in safety.”

I hand the phone back to her and she looks at it. “That’s a terrible picture. I’m a blotchy crier, so it already looks like you kidnapped me and I’m here under duress.”

I shrug. “We can take a better one when we get to my place, if you like. Just think you should feel safe enough to come home with me. And a friend knowing your location and seeing who you’re with would help.” I point to my patch on the photograph. “That’s my road name, Sunny. A member of the Iron Outlaws from Gator Flats. There’s only one of me, and I’d be pretty damn traceable.”

She still looks uncertain, so I do the one thing Knox is always telling me to stop doing so easily. I trust her. If I were a woman and needed to trust a man, what better way to do it than with a weapon.

I take my gun out of the waistband of my jeans, sling it on my finger so the handle ends up facing Della, and offer it to her. “Would you feel better about coming with me if you kept a hold of this?”

The speed at which she clasps her hands to her chest and steps away from me is startling. “God. No, thanks. And please don’t do the whole spinning thing again. It could have accidentally gone off and⁠—”

“Relax, Indy,” I say, tucking the gun back into my jeans beneath my T-shirt. “I know what I’m doing. Just trying to make you feel better. So, are we going?”

She scours the room as if she’s trying to find any other option than saying yes. “Okay.”

I take her hand and squeeze it for reassurance. It’s all the reassurance we’ve got time for today, but I might try and do it again later because her fingers feel soft and fragile in mine. Makes me feel like a badass protector, and I wish I had time to comfort her some more.

“Good, because my guess is, if they lost you on the trail, the first thing they’ll do is come back here to see if you’re in your room. So, we should get out of here. Grab what you need for tonight.”

Della finally finds some composure. I see her hurry around the room, starting with a backpack, and she fills it meticulously with everything that’s left on her desk. Meanwhile, I make a decoy in the bed. I take the pillows and stuff them in a body shape beneath the blanket; I want to see if they’ve moved when we come back.

When I look up, Della is busy stuffing some clothes into a tote bag. “I can bring you back tomorrow,” I say. “We don’t need to take everything tonight.”

“Okay.” She hurries into the bathroom and I hear the clatter of bottles and things as they crash into the sink.

When she re-emerges, there is a grim decisiveness on her face. “I’m ready to go.”

I lead her quickly from the motel room. It takes less than a minute for me to store her things in the panniers on my bike and for us to be on our way.

This time, when we ride, her grip isn’t quite so taut, and it feels as though we find a better momentum as we lean into the turns together. There is no pithy commentary about the dynamics of my bike and the road. Just the two of us moving like we’ve been doing it forever.

I don’t know if I’m imagining some kind of weird telepathy between the two of us, but I can tell she’s thinking about what just happened and what it means. Which means, I need a plan for when we get back to my place. I think she’s gonna internalize it, but what I really need is to understand exactly how much trouble she’s in and who she’s in trouble with.

I can’t protect her properly if I don’t know. But we’ll be safe enough for tonight because no one will know where I’ve taken her. And it’s clear after the last stretch of road that no one is following us.

I wind past the turn to Knox’s place and wonder if he’s gone home for the evening too. He’s been doing that a lot more since he found out Maren is pregnant.

It takes me another ten minutes to reach home. My house is nice, but it isn’t as big or fancy as some of the other bikers I know. Making money with the club is sporadic, and it takes time to build up the kind of wealth that some of the brothers have. Paying for my mom to get into rehab every time she says she’s changed and wants to sober up has drained a lot of my money. So has setting her up in new places every time she gets out of rehab, promising me this is the last time. Rent contracts. New beds. New sofas. Dishes and bedding. All of which gets sold or ruined when she falls back into drinking again.

Her presence in my life is sporadic. She’s an alcoholic, always has been, and that means a bottle of anything takes priority in her life over me.

I’d like to think I’ve made my peace with it, but there are days when I realize I haven’t. Because each time she asks, I’m hopeful. Every time she falls off the wagon, I’m crushed.

But I don’t have it in me to say no. Each time I wonder if this is the one where I’m gonna get my mom back. Not that I ever really had her…but I wonder if some other version of my mom could exist if this version cleaned up her act. And each time I think about saying no, Mom simply reminds me how close she is to killing herself. She regales me with some story about a recent overdose, and I capitulate.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about moving into a nicer house, something with a water view, maybe, or a pool like Vandal. But my legal income, as a mechanic for one of the club’s garages, is low. And my club cash has gone a long way to some expensive rehab stays.

Still, I’m very fortunate that I don’t have any neighbors and that my house is off the worst of the floodplain. There isn’t any need for my house to be raised onto stilts because, to the best of my knowledge, this little plot of land has never flooded. It’s pretty, painted a pale blue, and it’s home.