Page 2 of Sac-rifice (RBMC: Cleveland, Ohio Chapter #7)

CAPTAIN PINK

SAC

“L eo, it’s good to see you, brother.” Ghoul clapped the man on the back with his hand as he hugged him.

“It’s been too long.” He emphasized the last bit of his sentence, and I wasn’t the only one who noticed.

Ghoul took a second before he opened his mouth to stare at Sledge and me.

“Yeah. Sorry about not being here when you arrived. Getting all these bastards rounded up is like herding cats.” His eyes scanned the group of us standing around.

He glared at Sledge and me for a second time, and then his focus went back to Leo.

“Heh. How so?”

“One of them,” he nodded his head in the direction of Sledgehammer and me, “has a pissing problem, and the other needs to get his elephant balls clipped off. Maybe then, they’d learn how to behave like good boys.” He giggled, and Sleeper blew a puff of air out of his mouth as he joined him.

“Completely get it. I’ve come across a couple of difficult assholes in my life,” Leo admitted, running his fingers through his hair.

“Bet you have,” Ghoul absentmindedly answered him, looking past all of us as he watched his ole lady, Ginger.

She divvied out the ponchos to us one brother at a time, carefully clutching the stack of them against her chest. I guess she wanted to be helpful because she offered to hand them out shortly after we pulled into their driveway.

She was a person I was never able to predict.

From the stories Ghoul shared about her past, she’d gone from one terrible situation to another.

I didn’t know what I expected, though. She not only put up with our Prez’s stubborn ass, but she also matched his crazy.

She was one intense broad, but then again, I guess most of my brothers’ ole ladies were.

We all talked a big game about chasing ass, but in reality, most of my brothers were locked in.

Even Tin Man had his ex-wife. He was still hung up on her; there was no convincing me otherwise.

In my brothers’ eyes, I was the only truly single brother remaining.

What they didn’t know about me, I didn’t have any interest in women beyond getting off.

My idiot heart had fallen for someone long before I was their brother.

Hell, it was before I was a hang-around.

When I wandered my drunk ass straight into Ghoul’s back one night, I was on a bender that had lasted a couple of weeks at least, I reeked of alcohol, and I probably hadn’t showered for at least four days.

By that point, I hated the world and had settled into the mindset of “If I meant so little to her, then I wouldn’t be enough for anyone.

” It took a while, but by the time I figured out that wasn’t what I really thought, I had probably slept with half of the women in Ohio and Tennessee.

It wasn’t that I wasn’t worthy of anyone else; I just simply didn’t want anyone other than her. No one else compared.

Ghoul hadn’t changed a whole hell of a lot since we met, but I had.

I was still me to the core, always looking out for everyone else, and rarely myself.

The memories felt a lifetime away, instead of two decades.

Ghoul was still as meticulous as he ever was when it came to minute details like having our ponchos match so we didn’t draw unwanted attention.

I didn’t understand why ordering them online and waiting for them to be shipped to us was a bad idea.

I guess days like today were the reason.

Judging by the humungous storm rolling in, I was thankful our Prez had forced the club’s hand into being prepared.

It hadn’t started raining, but a hell of a storm was in the forecast and headed our way.

Ginger silently whispered to herself, touching the end of her finger to the remaining ponchos she held.

She pulled a deep breath into her body and blew it out slowly, closing her eyes briefly before opening them, and then her attention lifted to the sky.

A humongous boom of thunder cracked behind us, rumbling through the atmosphere.

The sky lit up blue as lightning darted down from the clouds and down to the dirt a little too close for comfort in the distance.

Another deafening bout of thunder rolled out of the heavens, this one louder than the first, and lightning fractured through the darkness—this one was closer than the last.

“Better hurry with those ponchos, Ginger. The storm is here early and doesn’t look like it’s leaving anytime soon,” Ghoul said around his cigar, lighting the end of it after he secured the opposite end between his teeth.

“Yeah, I smell the rain coming,” I agreed with him. “The rain is about to start.”

“For fucks sake and biscuits! What in the hell do you mean you can smell the rain coming, Sac?” Sleeper eyed me from where he stood between Wiley and Ghoul.

“What do you mean what do I mean? You can’t smell the rain?” I asked, my eyebrows pulling firmly down in confusion.

“Hell no, I can’t smell the rain. I’m not a bloodhound or anything like that,” he replied, tilting his head backward as he sniffed the air swirling around us.

“Anything?” I questioned him, watching as he turned in different directions. His nostrils twitched as he curiously sniffed random spots. Eventually, he stepped closer to where our motorcycles were parked, stopping beside mine, and inhaled far more deeply than necessary.

“What? No. I wasn’t expecting to smell the rain. Nobody can do that. I wanted to make sure your ride wasn’t leaking gas and you weren’t flying high on fumes the whole way here.”

“Sleep, I’m not high. Everyone can smell the rain coming. It’s a thing.”

“It’s not a thing, brother.” He straightened his back, and his eyes widened as he lifted his eyebrows.

“It is.”

“Wiley, can you smell it?” Sleep’s attention shifted to Wiley long enough for Wiley to shake his head.

“Nah,” Wiley answered him.

“Tin, what about you? Are you a rain-sniffing weirdo like Sac claims he is?”

Tin Man scrunched his face, and the corner of his upper lip lifted. “Yeah. Of course, I can. Why? Can’t you?”

“What? No. You’re fucking with me, right?”

“Nope. I have a farm, remember? It pays off to listen to Mother Nature when she speaks.”

“What kind of hippie dippy BS have y’all been smoking?

” Sleeper cocked his head to the side and continued to question the rest of the brothers who were outside.

As it turned out, not everyone was able to smell the rain coming, but I didn’t remember one time in my life that I hadn’t been able to do so when I slowed down enough to notice it.

“What does it smell like?” Sleeper caved and finally asked me for a description.

“I don’t know how to put it into words. It’s…” My lips pursed together as I thought. Sleep tapped his foot, and I held up my finger as I thought.

“Rain smells like rain.” I shrugged. I wasn’t being a smartass. On any given rainy day, I could usually smell the rain before I saw the first drop fall but guess I had never taken the time to think of what it smelled like.

“It’s kind of a combination of dirt and fresh air.

The lightning can amplify it, too,” I explained, taking a poncho from Ginger when she held one out to me.

Normally, we would keep them in our saddlebags, but Ghoul decided since he ripped a big-ass hole in his on our last ride, we all needed new ones.

It was obvious we all could have worn our rain gear, but the Prez liked uniformity, and didn’t want Leo to feel out of place.

I had no clue where Leo traveled from, but Ghoul figured Leo wouldn’t have his rain gear with him.

I didn’t know if Leo was a forgetful person or someone who tended to pack too much, but I questioned what kind of biker drove to Cleveland, Ohio, particularly in July, one of our state’s wettest months, without something to keep dry.

Perhaps consistency was a quirk of Ghoul’s, maybe a tic he’d picked up when he was in max.

I had asked him one time what his hang up was with everyone looking the same, and, of course, in usual Ghoul fashion, he only gave a vague answer about it being harder to identify a single person out of a group if they all looked the same—at least that was what I thought he meant when he said, “You couldn’t pick a fish out of a lineup because they all wore gills, every one of them.

Not a single one of them felt the need to pop a snorkel in its mouth to blow out air.

” But, honestly, with Ghoul, it was hard to say if that was what he meant exactly or not.

“So, dirt and an air freshener. Got it,” Sleeper mindlessly babbled, slipping his poncho over his head after Ginger handed it to him, and then his eyes zeroed in on her empty hands.

“Ginger, where’s Leo’s? There should be one more. Did you give all of them to her?” Ghoul looked at me for an answer.

“Yeah, Boss. I had the right amount.”

“Clearly fucking not,” Ghoul grumbled with a shake of his head and began removing his when he noticed his buddy Leo hadn’t gotten one.

“No, keep it. I’ll make do.” Leo held his long fingers up. “Wouldn’t be the first time I got a little wet.”

“Might not be, but you shouldn’t have to add another time to the count. Sac was supposed to take care of you.”

“I...” I stopped myself. “There was supposed to be enough.”

A wide smile spread across Ginger’s face, and dashing past us, her red hair whipping around her face, she ran against the wind to Ghoul’s bike and pulled something pink from the saddlebag.

“I got you covered, Leo,” she said, grinning even wider than before.

“You can have mine. I need a new one anyway.” She was happy to help and had traded places with Sledge.

Now she was sitting comfortable behind the wheel of the bus and practically doing donuts over my body. Ghoul would never forgive me for this.

“It’s pink,” Ghoul groused in an irritated voice. “Take mine, Leo.” He reached for his ol’ Lady’s poncho, but Leo snatched it before Ghoul’s fingertips had a chance to touch it.

“Keep your grabby hands to yourself and off my poncho, young man. I believe the lady gave it to me.” Leo swatted at the air between their fingers. “If anyone is going to have the privilege of being captain of the pink parade, it’s going to be me.” Leo chuckled and winked at Ghoul.

Ghoul’s head jerked back as he let out a howl of a laugh, “The fucking pink parade!” He gasped, laughing and wrapping his arm around his stomach.

His sides heaved while he sucked in breaths of air in between laughs.

“Okay. Have it your way.” He managed to say once he reigned some of his composure.

“Who am I to stand in the way of Captain Pink and his parade?”

Leo chuckled and smacked Ghoul on the back. “Captain Pink.” He nodded with approval. “That’s a new one. It kind of has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it, ole buddy?”

“Yeah, Captain Pink, it sure does,” Ghoul responded with a broad smile as he pretended to salute him.

Most of us brothers had more or less contained ourselves during their conversation.

I had no idea how the others had managed to do it, but the only reason I wasn’t straight pissing on myself from laughing so much was out of pure confusion.

I expected Ghoul’s friend to be ancient as in barely able to walk three feet without needing to stop for a breather.

In fact, I believe ancient was the exact word Ghoul had used to describe Leo.

Had I not heard Ghoul with my own ears, I would have thought it was a lie since Leo appeared to be a hell of a lot younger than I expected.

Hell, I still questioned if I hadn’t hallucinated the entire conversation regarding how old Leo was, but Ghoul mentioned Leo was his elder more than once.

Leo damned sure didn’t look older than Ghoul; he was barely around my age, if I had to guess.

Either the guy was one of God’s favorite’s and had been spoon fed the best genes while he drank from the fountain of youth, or Ghoul was full of shit.

There was a story as to why he always called Leo—who was now Captain Pink— old.

With Ghoul, there was always a story, and sometimes, that story had a backstory.

He was a hell of a brother and leader for our club, but there was no questioning that he was a complete lunatic.

Society tended to label some of the most brilliant and greatest people in history as crazy simply because they didn’t fit into the mold of what was considered normal.

One thing was certain, though, countless brothers across the U.S.

—including my younger brother, Tate—would have never gotten their road name if Ghoul was anything other than true to his crazy ass self.

He was unpredictable and usually there was no telling what would come out of his mouth.

To be honest, I bet some of the shit he said even surprised him.