Chapter Four-Patch

Patch slammed his fist against the kids jaw once again, watching blood fly out of his mouth and sling against the concert.  

It’d been easy to say that this would be an easy distraction from what he’d seen in his best-friend's kitchen the night before, but sadly, it wasn’t. 

Patch hadn’t stopped thinking about the way she looked in her swim suite, and the way it clung to her, and the curve of her breasts. She’d turned into one hell of a woman Patch had promised to stay away from. 

Go figure. 

That bright pink suite would be engrained into his head for the rest of his life. He knew she wasn’t the most experienced girl in the world, and it turned him on so badly it ate at him. He could show her how to feel good. He wanted to be the one to show her. 

That stupid promise he made buzzed into his view, every time he even thought about looking at her, like a gnat.

The guy picked his head up and slobber slung from his tongue, the bandana he wore was some kind of South Side stuff they came up with in the last few years. 

Punk kids that thought they could go around stealing and selling drugs. One of their brothers, mother called and said that a kid tried to sell his eleven year old nephew some drugs, and the little hoodlum Jake here had been the culprit. 

Jake … what a gangster name.

Selling weed or anything else to a child pissed Patch off. After seeing how his mother was effected over the years, trying new stuff to get a new high … he could imagine a child wanting to experiment further than that weed, and that was what the dealers hoped for.

Progress. 

“Okay, okay, stop. Please,” he whispered. “I offered him some weed.”

Gabriel rubbed his palms together and laughed. “Didn’t take too long did it?”

It hadn’t. This kid was probably eighteen or nineteen, and wasn’t the culprit of this, but someone else was, and that was Patch’s goal. That’s who they were after. 

“Yeah, we know you tried to sell it but who do you work for?”

The boy’s bottom lip trembled and he blinked a few times, pushing back his long black hair. “I can’t tell you that,” he whispered.

“Nah, man, you’re going to tell us,” Gabriel said.

The boy shook his head quickly. “My dad will murder me.” Just like Patch thought, a kid worried about what his parents thought.

He bent his knees a bit and looked him in the eye. “Who you selling those drugs for?”

A scared look crossed his face. “I can’t—,”

“You want to go another round?” Patch asked. “He’ll never find out it was you.”

The boy shook his head. “They will. And plus, I don’t know who is in charge, I only report to a person way underneath them. And he will find out.”

Gabriel gave Patch another look from underneath his bandana and shrugged his leather clad shoulders. “Up to you?”

He sighed, grabbed the guy’s shoulder and punched him again in the gut. 

He doubled over with pain, and rolled around on the ground. “Get away from this asshole who you’re working for. He didn’t even send anyone to help you.”

The kid sat up with his palms against the gravel of the alley. “He wouldn’t have known—,”

“He knows,” Patch said, nodding toward the car parked at the end of the alleyway. “That car has been following us. He knows, he doesn’t care. You’re gonna end up dead,” he said, turning to walk back over to his bike. 

“Letting him go, man?” Gabriel said, “Daz is gonna be made as hell.”

“Let’s see Daz come and rough up an eighteen year old, or kill ‘em.” Patch swung his leg over his motorcycle and leaned back to dig his phone from his jeans to call Daz.  

“It didn’t work,” Daz answered into the phone. 

They’d planned for the kid to get saved when someone showed up, or a phone call to Daz from whoever the kid worked for, but it didn’t. 

Whoever it was didn’t care if the kid was killed or hurt. 

“I think this kid comes from a good family and is mixed up with this. If they know we know, it may stir the pot.”

Daz cleared his throat. “We’ll cross that bridge when it comes to it. Whoever this is making these kids do their dirt work is ruthless. I’ve asked grown men to do some shit but not an eighteen year old. If someone doesn’t come forward with a name in the next few weeks—I’ll figure something out. We’ll try something different.”

Patch didn’t really want to know what he meant by that. 

“Okay,” Patch said, hanging up. 

Gabriel continued texting for a few moments until Patch cleared his throat. “What’s got you smiling like a girl over there?”

Gabriel shoved his cell phone into his pocket. “I need to make a stop before we head back to the clubhouse.”

“Where?” Patch asked. 

Gabriel started his motorcycle and ignored his question. They weren’t allowed to ride solo with The South Side’s irrational behavior lately. 

Patch followed Gabriel’s motorcycle to the small square and laughed when he stopped at that cupcake shop. “What are we doin’ here?” Patch asked after they parked. 

Gabriel fixed his hair in the side mirror and gave him a sly grin. “I’ve been seeing this Joey chick. The brunette with the nose ring?”

Patch didn’t know her, but got off his bike and followed Gabriel over toward the store. They hadn’t been opened but for a few minutes, because Patch and Gab liked to take care of their business early on their days off, so they actually felt like days off. 

Plus, Patch had to head over to his mother’s house to check on things. It’d been an entire twenty four hours since he’d been able to go check on her and that meant she had twenty four hours to sink herself lower than before. 

Delaney stood with her back to him when they first walked in but he instantly knew who Joey was because she perked up at the sight of Gabriel. 

Patch walked slowly behind him, looking around at the pink decoration and girlish charm. It smelled good that was for sure, but Patch’s mind drew to something he thought would taste sweeter. 

Delaney twirled around, still talking to Katie for a moment and then met his gaze. 

She froze and red tinted her cheeks. Why was she embarrassed? That wasn’t a hot and bothered red. “Well, doesn’t someone look pretty in pink,” Patch said, resting his elbows against the counter. 

Gabriel made it around the corner to meet Joey but Patch blocked out anything they whispered to one another. It was a moment when her brother wasn’t watching and he wanted to take advantage of it, even though he knew he couldn’t act on her reaction, he loved to see that he made her hot and bothered. 

He felt like a sixteen-year-old tease, but it was the only thing he could savor. 

Delaney crossed her arms, pushing her breast together; he didn’t even try to hide his gaze.

“What are you doin’ here?”

Patch stood back from the counter and tilted his head to the side. “I’m here with Gabriel, did you think I was here to see you?”

She gave him a blank stare and twisted to the side. “Wouldn’t have thought that, just didn’t take you as a sweets man, that’s all.”

Patch slide his tongue against his lip ring, and hid a chuckle in his throat. “Oh, I like sweet things, Delaney.”

They shared a stare off that proved harder not to laugh than he imagined. She looked annoyed in her face but her body was betraying her, those heavy breaths and a squirming posture. 

She loved him looking at her, and she’d proved it the night before. 

“How nice,” she said, turning her back to him. 

Patch caught Katie staring at him as he imagined what Delaney’s bottom looked like in that red suite. Lucas came in before he could see, and he didn’t dare look when she walked out with Lucas standing beside him. 

They’d been friends long enough to know each other, and Lucas would have known he’d look. 

Gabriel shoved his shoulder against his, and Patch waved a friendly goodbye to all of the girls, winking at Delaney when she turned to watch him go. 

 

***

 

Patch stopped in the living room of his mother’s house, immediately knowing she wasn’t there. The silence and ransacked furniture told him she’d been on the lookout for drugs, and bolted to go find some. 

It was an every other day thing for him to search the small streets looking for his mom. Sometimes he found her, and sometimes he didn’t. It was a toss of the dice he felt, because one day he knew that he would find her and she’d be dead. 

Patch walked back out and hopped on his bike, reeving the engine and taking off down the lone street. Unfortunately, The South Side sold the drugs his mother was after, but she didn’t have any money. The small check she got each month wasn’t enough to pay her bills, which is why Patch paid for her water and electricity. 

That meant she was probably in some motel room sleeping with some scumbag for money. 

It made Patch’s skin crawl, but it was what his mother had become, and he was the only person that was there to handle it. 

The two small motels in town were rundown and mostly druggies and an occasional out of towner would stay there. The young girl at the desk straightened up from her chair when Patch walked through the door. Her eyes widened when she noticed his vest, because everyone knew who they were in town. 

The mousey look on her face gave her an innocent appearance that Patch hadn’t seen on a woman in a long time. Her thin brown hair was partly fallen from the hair tie she wore, and she tossed her head to the side to move her bangs. 

She nervously looked at the computer, and over to him and with a shaky voice asked, “Do you need a room, sir?”

He cleared his voice, leaned his elbows against the desk and gave her a smile that he hopped was nice.  “Actually, I was hoping if you could tell me who is checked-in right now?”

Anxiously, she wrung her fingers together and started to shake her head. “I—,”

Patch stood up, and slid her a twenty-dollar bill. “I need to find my mother.”

Her gray eyes widened and she did a look around to make sure no one watched. “Okay … there is only two people checked in and none are women.”

“What are their names?”

The fear on her face made Patch feel bad, but he had to find his mother somehow and if intimidating a kid would do it, send him to hell. 

“Michael Summers is on business and the other guy comes in a lot—,”

“What room number?”

She swallowed and rubbed her head a bit. “Sir—,”

“Listen, Kid,” he said. “My mother is a drug addict and she’s sleeping with some guy for money right now. I need you to tell me now, before I come around and look for myself.”

“Room 25,” she whispered, dropping eye contact. 

“Thank you,” Patch said, and walked out of the door and toward the room. An old pickup truck was parked close by, and it struck a nerve. He was positive he’d caught his mother with the same man before. 

He’d be sorry he didn’t take his threat the first time. 

There wasn’t any prominent noise from what he could hear, but when he knocked he heard fumbling around. Patch took a step to the side so they wouldn’t see who it was and listened until the door swung opened. 

“What the hell do you—,”

The man that walked out compared closely to what a northerner would consider a hillbilly. A wife-beater stained with food, a hairy belly that hung loosely over a pair of dirty wranglers.

His balding head was covered with a small comb over, and his breath Patch could smell without getting too close. 

“Ah shit,” the man said, trying to close the door but Patch stopped it with his boot. 

Patch didn’t ask to come inside, but shoved the man aside, not caring that he stumbled back against the wall. 

He found his mother’s body hunched over the bed with a distant look hid in her eyes. She was already high, her mind gone wherever it went at a time like that. 

A pipe sat on the nightstand to the left, and Patch could smell the rancid stench of their leftover high. She moaned something incoherently, so Patch laid her back on the bed, and stood up to take care of the asshole trying to get up behind him. 

Patch kicked the man in his chest, knowing it hurt with his heavy motorcycle boots, and watched as he fumbled back out into the sidewalk of the motel. 

A shade of red covered Patch’s gaze, and an adrenaline he could only describe as rage coursed through him. One hit after another, he felt the stickiness of the man’s blood on his hand, and noticed the kid from the check-in counter step out to see what the commotion was in the distance. 

When the man’s body went lifeless, Patch loosened his grip and let him sink back to the concrete. 

The girl would surely call the cops soon so Patch dialed Gabriel’s number and told him to go get his truck; he needed a ride big enough for his mother. 

 

***

 

The clubhouse was in full swing when they made it back from his mother’s house. Daz sat in the main room, a beer in one hand and the other wrapped around the sectional. 

His light eyes were intense, and even though he had a pretty boy face, he’d committed some crazy sins over the years. Being a former Marine, he’d lost his self-control in the war, and most people thought he’d lost most of his sanity, but Daz was a decent guy, starting The Fallen Kings to take care of the small town that raised him. 

He just lost a screw or two along his journey. 

He stood up slowly, watching Patch as he walked inside. “Your mom high again?” he asked with a swig of beer. 

Patch nodded, and took a beer that Twello offered him from the chest. “Yeah, she’s passed out at home now. The storm won’t be here until tomorrow.”

Daz ran his fingers over his buzzed head and stroked his heavy jaw. “Well, it’s nothing a few beers can’t fix.”

Twello kicked a foldout chair from the corner and gestured for Patch to sit. Twello was the youngest of everyone, and Daz would never let him forget it. 

He’d grown up with a good family, but everything went south for him when his ole man got mugged and killed several years back. Twello dropped out of school and Daz caught him trying to kill himself off a small bridge down at Beech Creak. 

The kid was shivering when he brought him by, his sandy colored hair matted with leaves, and the saddest blue eyes Patch had ever seen. 

It wasn’t right the hand he’d been dealt, but stuff happens. 

Patch sat down in the chair, letting his legs fall wide as he looked up at the ceiling. “Did anybody see?” Daz asked. 

“The cops were on their way,” Gabriel said, lighting a cigarette. “I heard it on the walkie, but we made it. I’m pretty sure she knew Patch was part of The Kings’ though because I heard something about it.”

Daz nodded, and glanced at the door when it opened. 

Jimmy walked in with Snake laughing, which meant they’d already heard about it. 

Jimmy and Snake were twins that grew up close to Lucas and Delaney on the better side of town. They’d always been the class clowns in school. Their tattoos and long black hair had scared most of the school kids, but Patch always liked ‘em pretty good. 

They had a light air around them that would make anybody comfortable. 

Jimmy shoved a chair close to Patch, and swung his arm around his shoulders. “Looks like Patch’s has done it again. Whooped some old man’s ass that was banging his mom—,”

“Drop it,” Daz said cutting him off. 

He shrugged his shoulders and got up to get a beer from the cooler. 

Patch took his last swig of beer and gestured for Snake to grab him one. “Where’s Lonny?” Gabriel asked. 

“Taking care of his business for me, I had a last minute run and he was the only one picking up the phone.”

Patch opened another beer and rubbed his forehead. 

“Who was the man she was with this time?” Gabriel asked from behind him. 

“Same old man,” Patch mumbled. “Can we not talk about it? I just want to drink my sorrows away like a little bitch right now.”

Snake laughed, and took a seat beside him. “If my brother needs a drinking partner, I’ll be there.”

He was always down for a drink, and Patch didn’t mind because he needed a mind erase so he could walk a little lighter.