Page 6 of Snarl (Primal Howlers MC #9)

Lennon

O UR CONVERSATION FLOWED easily throughout the meal as we got to know each other.

Snarl listened intently when I spoke and seemed genuinely interested when I talked about my research.

He appeared to be well-versed in a wide range of topics from home repair to the current geopolitical landscape.

I had to constantly remind myself that he was a member of a motorcycle club and not a college professor, even though he seemed to be smarter than most of the ones I’d studied with.

“Can I ask you a super personal question?” I asked, once I had the courage of two martinis in me.

“I think we’ve both been pretty open so far,” he replied.

“Why are you a nomad?”

“That’s a bigger question than you might think.”

“After everything you told me about your brother, Rocky, and the Howlers, I think I understand why you’re in a club. What I don’t understand is why you’d join a club but not want to be around its members.”

“Kind of makes me seem like a dick, huh?”

I shook my head. “That’s not it. You clearly care about people or Granny wouldn’t have taken such a shine to you. She sees something in you, and I think maybe I see it too, but there’s something going on with you that you keep hidden from everyone and I would like to know what that is.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re kind of direct ?”

“Only my entire family, every teacher, all of my close friends and a handful of total strangers.”

Snarl chuckled. “Hey, I don’t mind. It’s just that I find myself inclined to tell you things I don’t tend to share with others, and I’m afraid you might not like some of the things I might say.”

“I know we’ve just met, but you need to understand something about me.

The thing I care most about is the truth.

It’s what drives my research and also tends to drive some people away.

Of course, you’re under absolutely no obligation to tell me anything you don’t want to, but lying or omitting the truth is an instant deal breaker for me. ”

“I respect that, and I believe you.”

“Good,” I replied. “So, why are you a nomad?”

Snarl knocked back the remainder of his pint, pausing for a moment before speaking.

“When I was thirteen years old, our house burned down. It was a Saturday, and my parents had taken my brother and me to the movies. Galactic Ranger 2 had just come out and I’d been bugging them all week to take us to see it, so when the weekend came, my folks relented.

Of course, we didn’t know that Galactic Ranger 2 would go down in history as one of the worst sequels ever made, so me and my brother were stoked.

After the movie, we even stopped off at Dairy Barn for frozen custard.

But, when we got back home, we arrived to find a fire truck on our street and group of firefighters putting out the final flames that had taken our home. ”

“Oh, my god, I’m so sorry,” I said. “We don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to.”

Snarl shook his head. “No, it’s okay. It’s not a story I tell everyone, because it’s not a happy one, but I’m totally fine with sharing.

Since we were going to be out of the house for a few hours, my mother decided to run the self-cleaning cycle on our oven, and a build-up of creosote caused it to catch fire.

In the blink of an eye, my family was homeless and possessed nothing more than the clothes we were wearing and our minivan, which we ended up living in for almost a month.

To make matters worse, an investigation led by the insurance company concluded that the fire was ‘avoidable and caused by human hands,’ and therefore they were not on the hook to pay our claim. ”

“What?” I gasped. “That’s horrible.”

Snarl nodded. “My family never fully recovered from that fire. We moved into a studio apartment and my mom went back to work. My father took a second job as a plumber’s assistant so we could save up to buy another house, but when he lost his full-time job at Graymore Industrial due to drinking on the job, the strain was too much, and the old man hung himself. ”

My eyes filled with tears and I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from letting them spill.

“You okay?” He cocked his head. “I warned you it’s not a happy story. We can go back to regular old gettin’ to know you stuff if this is too much.”

“I’m alright if you are,” I assured him, forcing myself not to burst into sloppy sobs.

“I’m okay,” he said.

“Keep going,” I prompted .

“Well, a little less than a year after that, my mother started dating. I don’t think she wanted to, so much as she felt she needed to in order to better provide for me and my brother.

I wanted none of it. I started getting in trouble at school.

Starting fights, ditching class, all the usual teen angst rebellion bullshit.

But the more the school punished me, the worse I got.

After a while I couldn’t stand the idea of staying at any one place any longer than I had to, let alone allow myself to be tied to a desk all day long.

Eventually, I dropped out of school and have been taking care of myself ever since.

Rocky reacted a little differently. He was rip-shit pissed that mom had moved on so quickly after dad’s death, and as soon as he turned eighteen, he left home and started prospecting for the club.

I followed him a few years after mom remarried. ”

“I am so sorry that happened to you and your family. It must have been really difficult for you to handle at such a young age.”

He shrugged. “I joined the Howlers thinking I’d find a new family, which I did, but the uneasy feelings associated with putting down any type of roots only intensified over time. Getting so bad that eventually Rocky forced me to see a therapist.”

“There’s nothing wrong with therapy.”

“Try telling that to a seventeen-year-old prospecting biker. But Dr. Avalon saved my life. She diagnosed me as suffering from a form of agoraphobia brought on by the trauma of losing both my house and my father.”

I drew my eyebrows together. “I thought agoraphobics never want to leave where they live.”

“That’s true for certain types of the disorder, but my brain is convinced I should flee before trouble comes.”

“So, you live your life as a nomad? Running from place to place. Trying to outrun calamity?”

Snarl nodded. “Yes. Exactly.”

I let out a long breath. “Wow.”

“So, that’s why I roam. What about you?” Snarl asked. “What drives you to go to places like Nepal and Africa?”

“Because the only place I can observe rhinos in Denver is at the zoo and I’ve collected all the data I can on Rudy and Bandhu. And as much as I love those two, I need to observe these animals in the wild if I’m ever to fully understand their behavior.”

“Is that your goal? To fully understand an animal?”

“Not in a Dr. Doolittle kind of way, but yeah, I guess it is.”

“Why is that important to you?”

I shrugged. “I’m not sure, but for some reason I’ve always related more to animals than people.”

“Oh, shit.” His eyebrows drew together in concern. “You don’t have a menagerie of strays at your place, do you? Some sort of six cats, eleven dogs, and an iguana with social anxiety kind of situation?”

“No.” I chuckled. “The iguana’s fine. It’s the chinchilla who suffers from seasonal depression.”

Snarl’s face dropped and I burst out laughing.

“Jesus,” he said, placing his hand over his heart. “Alright, you got me. I thought you were serious for a second.”

“I haven’t had the time or energy to keep a goldfish alive, let alone anything with feet.”

The house lights flickered twice before dimming.

“What’s this? What’s happening?” I asked, but didn’t have to wait long for the answer.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the world-famous Saddle Rack,” a faceless voice boomed over the PA system. “Please welcome to the stage for your listening and dancing pleasure, Julie Harrison and the Smokers! ”

The stage lights came up to reveal the band taking their places as the piano player started the introduction to the first song.

“I was hoping these guys were playing tonight,” Snarl said, rising to his feet before extending his hand to me.

“What?” I asked, hoping if I played dumb, maybe he’d go away.

“What do you mean, what? I invited you out for an evening of dinner and dancing. The dinner part’s over, so now it’s time to hit the parquet floor. Come on, before the dance floor gets too crowded.”

“How y’all doin’ tonight?” Julie Harrison asked from the stage, her voice containing the perfect level of lead singer rasp.

“I have to confess that I was sort of hoping the dancing part was optional,” I admitted, sheepishly.

Snarl laughed. “Why’s that?”

“I can’t dance. I mean, I can, physically, but it’s just that I don’t know how.”

“Don’t know how? Shit, that ain’t no problem. That’s why line dancing was invented.”

“Line dancing?” I looked to the dance floor and sure enough, more than half of the patrons were lined up in rows, moving in what looked like relative synchronicity.

“See?” Snarl asked. “At least half of those people out there ‘can’t dance’ and look at ’em. Hell, I’d bet most of them couldn’t tell you where the two and four of the beat are, but line dancing is so easy even a big dumb oaf like me can do it. ”

He extended his hand to me again and this time I took it. Snarl pulled me to my feet and led us to an available spot on the dance floor.

“Just follow me,” Snarl said as he fell in, lockstep, with the other dancers.

“Okay,” I squeaked out.

“Take my hand and watch my feet,” Snarl instructed. “There’s only a certain number of steps to learn, and then they repeat. After a while, once the pattern of steps has been repeated, we all turn in the same direction.”

On cue, everyone on the dance floor turned forty-five degrees clockwise.

I stayed glued to Snarl, trying my best, but mostly failing, to copy him.

After a while something strange began to happen.

I started thinking less about what the next step was and began surrendering myself to the dance.

Thinking less about what my feet were doing meant I could pay more attention to the band, who were as good as Snarl said they were.

“There you go!” Snarl said, before tilting his head back and letting out a howl. “I told you that you’d be great at this.”

To this day, I’m not sure why Snarl’s encouragement hit me the way it did, but it hit me hard, right in the center of my chest. Even though we’d only just begun getting to know one another, I was hyper aware of the closeness and trust I felt for him.

When Snarl looked at me, I felt seen in a way that only Granny and my sister made me feel.

“This is fun!” I yelled over the music.

“That’s the idea,” Snarl replied .

The first song ended, and our newly formed dance troop showed our appreciation to the band as Julie introduced the next song.

Before I could chicken out, I grabbed Snarl’s cut and pulled him down to me. “Kiss me.”

I didn’t have to ask twice. Snarl’s lips covered mine as he pulled me into his huge arms. Our tongues engaging in their first dance together. It was amazing. The best kiss I’d ever had in my life.

For the next hour, we danced, kissed, and then danced some more until we could barely catch our breaths, eventually making our way back to our booth, where we had one more drink and talked for almost another two hours.