The Biker Wolf

Rae POV

I spent eleven months rebuilding my fiancé's dream motorcycle in secret, and I was standing beside it, red bow and all, when I heard my sister say she was carrying his baby.

The bike was a 1978 Shovelhead. Brett had shown me a photo of one on our second date, the way some men show you a picture of the car they'll buy someday. I found a rusted one in a farmer's barn outside Copper Fork, paid for it with my overtime, and rebuilt every bolt of it on Sunday nights while he thought I was doing inventory.

Today was his thirtieth birthday.

I'd wheeled it into the back bay of Dempsey Auto & Tow, my family's garage, an hour early. The plan was simple. Brett would come in for the birthday dinner, Dad would send him out to check a "noise" in the back bay, and I'd be standing there.

I was standing there.

The door to Dad's office was open a few inches. Mom's voice came through first, bright in a way it never was for me.

"A grandbaby. Oh, Kaylee. Oh, honey."

Then Brett. My Brett. "We didn't plan it. It started at Thanksgiving. Everybody was drinking, and Kaylee and I went upstairs to talk, and we ended up in..." He stopped.

"In Rae's room," Kaylee said. She sounded like she was smiling. "Her bed was closest."

My bed.

I had slept in that bed every night since Thanksgiving. I had lain in it making lists of wedding venues.

I'd moved back into that room at twenty, the winter Grandpa died, because rent in Copper Fork ate half a mechanic's paycheck and I was saving every cent for a shop of my own. Seven years later, the shop fund was almost there. Dad called letting me stay a favor.

"How far along?" Dad asked.

"Fourteen weeks," Kaylee said. "We've been together since."

I worked late a lot. I did Dempsey Auto's books on Thursday nights and its weekend tow shifts for free, because Dad said family didn't invoice family. That was my rent.

"Well," Dad said. "Then there's a wedding to move up."

"October's already booked," Mom said. "The venue, the cake. We'll just change the bride's name on the deposit."

The bride's name. Mine. On a deposit I had paid.

"What about Rae?" Brett asked. To be fair to him, he did ask.

"Rae will be fine," Mom said. "Rae is always fine. She'll need to move out, of course. Her room gets the morning sun, and a nursery needs light."

"She can't leave the garage," Dad said. "Not with the tow contract. She'll keep working weekends till we find somebody."

Somebody they'd have to pay.

Then Mom dropped her voice, the way she always did when she thought the walls were thin.

"Dale. If she moves out, who makes sure she takes the capsules?"

"I'll handle the capsules."

"You know what happens when she skips. And Gus told Brett the Kincaid boy is coming home next week." Something sharp crept into her voice, something that sounded almost like fear. "If one of those animals gets close enough to smell her..."

"Nobody's getting close to her." Dad's chair creaked. "Six more months, Lorraine. September fourteenth. After that, it doesn't matter what she is."

Kaylee snorted. "What she is? What is she, a disappointment?"

Brett laughed. He actually laughed.

I didn't understand half of it. Capsules. Animals. My birthday, said like a deadline. I filed it away to deal with later. Right then, the only thing I could hear was my fiancé laughing.

I looked at the bow on the gas tank. I had tied it four times to get the loops even.

Then I pushed the office door all the way open.

Four faces turned. Dad behind his desk with the good whiskey out. Mom with her hand on Kaylee's flat stomach. Kaylee in my gray cashmere sweater, the one I couldn't find in December. Brett on his feet, already pale, already looking past me at the shape in the bay.

"Is that," he said. "Rae, is that a Shovelhead?"

Of everything he could have said.

"Happy birthday," I said.

Kaylee laughed, one short breath through her nose, the laugh she'd been aiming at me since we were kids. "Oh my God. You built him a bike?"

"Rae." Mom stood, smoothing her skirt. "We didn't want you to find out like this."

"How did you want me to find out, Mom? After you changed the name on my deposit?"

She didn't even blink. "Don't make this about you. There's a baby."

"I'm not making the baby about me. I'm making my bed about me."

Dad set the whiskey down hard. "Watch your tone. Your sister is pregnant, and you're going to support her the way this family supports each other."

"The way this family supports each other," I repeated. "So I move out of my room so she can have a nursery. I give her my wedding. And I keep doing your tows on Saturdays for free."

"Until we find somebody," Dad said, as if that settled it.

I waited for one of them to say my name like it meant something.

Nobody did.

So I went upstairs. I packed my work boots, my good jacket, my laptop, three days of clothes, and the cigar box of Grandpa Walt's keys I'd kept since he died. I did not look at the bed.

When I came back down, they'd moved into the kitchen to cut Brett's birthday cake. I heard Kaylee ask whether the Shovelhead counted as a wedding present.

I rode to Tasha's.

Tasha Ruiz has been my best friend since kindergarten, when she bit a boy who pulled my hair. She opened her apartment door in scrubs, took one look at me, and said, "Who do I have to kill?"

"Everyone," I said, and then I cried for the first time in maybe months.

We did it properly. Two pints of rocky road, a bottle of cheap red, and a list of names for Brett that got more creative the drunker we got. Tasha had just come off a twelve-hour ER shift and still held my hair back at midnight. At one, she put a blanket over me on her couch and said, "You're better than all of them. You always were. They just didn't want to pay for it."

Around midnight she sat up on the arm of the couch, wineglass tilted, and asked the question I'd been avoiding.

"What are you going to do?"

"Work," I said. "I'm good at work."

"Rae. I mean about them."

I thought about it honestly. About twenty-seven years of being the reliable one, the one who didn't need much, the one who'd be fine. About Mom's voice saying Rae is always fine like it was a feature of mine, the way a truck has four-wheel drive.

"I'm going to stop being useful to them," I said.

Tasha clinked her glass against mine so hard the wine sloshed. "Finally."

I fell asleep with my boots on.

At 2:14 a.m., my phone lit up on my chest.

MOM: Your father thinks it's best if you don't come to the engagement party Saturday. People will talk.

MOM: Leave your house key in the mailbox by Friday.

A minute later, a third message. From Dad, who hadn't texted me since he asked me to cover a tow on Christmas Eve.

DAD: And take your vitamin in the morning. Don't skip it. Not this week.

I read them three times. Then I sat up and reached for the cigar box.

Grandpa Walt's ring was on top, heavy and greasy and his. Twelve keys, every one with a strip of masking tape and his handwriting. Shop. Shed. Truck. House.

And one tiny brass key with no label at all. Stamped into its bow, worn almost smooth by his thumb, was a wolf's head set inside a pine tree.

I was nine the last time I saw Grandpa use it, in Dad's office, crouched in front of the old green safe, putting something inside and looking over his shoulder at me with a finger to his lips. The safe had been his before it was Dad's, like the house. "That one's yours, Rae-bird," he'd whispered. "For the day they push you out."

Mom wanted my house key. Dad wanted me to swallow a pill.

My father hadn't remembered my birthday in three years. Tonight he'd stayed awake past two to make sure I took my vitamin.

I closed my fist around Grandpa's key until the teeth bit into my palm.

Then I made two decisions.

I wasn't taking another one of those pills.

And on Saturday, while my whole family toasted my sister and my fiancé, I was going to open that safe.