Chapter 12: Hitting the Highway
The gray light of dawn was just beginning to streak across the desolate horizon of Route 40 when Jax rolled his heavy custom chopper out of the garage and onto the cracked asphalt of the apron. The morning air was biting and sharp, smelling of pine smoke and distant rain. Behind him, the metal roll-up door was pulled halfway down, sealing off the empty workshop where twelve years of his life had quietly rotted away. The club insignia—the burned-leather patch he had worn on his vest for over a decade—lay discarded on the workbench inside, sliced neatly down the center with a hunting knife and left in a pool of dark motor oil.
I stood beside the rear tire of the motorcycle, my old jacket zipped up to my chin against the morning chill. In my right hand, I held the faded photograph of a younger Jax holding a newborn baby, tucked securely inside a clear plastic sleeve I’d begged a gas station attendant for the night before. Next to it, the small folded paper—my birth certificate—rested safely in my inner pocket. We had survived the night, but the war with the Road Kings was only just beginning. Vince and his enforcers had vanished into the pre-dawn shadows after the standoff in the garage, retreating like wolves into the tree line, leaving behind a silence that felt far more dangerous than open combat.
Jax knelt down on one knee beside me, his scarred fingers checking the straps of the makeshift canvas pack he had lashed to the sissy bar of the bike. His face was weathered and lined with exhaustion, dark circles bruising the skin beneath his pale eyes, but there was an unmistakable clarity in his expression that hadn't been there when I first walked into the diner yesterday afternoon. The heavy burden of his long evasion had finally been lifted, replaced by the grim, unyielding duty of a father who had wasted too much time and had none left to throw away.
“You ready for this, Leo?” Jax asked, his voice low and steady as he adjusted the collar of my jacket, making sure I was bundled up against the wind. “It’s a long ride north. No stops, no looking back, and no more hiding from what we left behind.”
“I’m ready,” I said, looking up into his hazel eyes—eyes that looked so much like my own in the cracked bathroom mirror. “Where are we going?”
“To the timber towns in the high country,” Jax said, a faint, rare ghost of a smile touching the corners of his bearded mouth. “Your mom always talked about living somewhere with real trees, somewhere high enough that you could see the weather coming across the valley before it hits. We’re going to find a place like that, build a fire, and start over.”
Jax stood up, swinging his long leg over the leather saddle of the chopper with practiced ease. He reached down, grabbing me by the waist and lifting me effortlessly off the gravel, swinging me up to sit securely on the padded passenger seat right behind him. I wrapped my arms tightly around his waist, pressing my face against the heavy leather of his vest, right over the spot where the old club patch used to be. The rough hide smelled of gasoline, motor oil, and cold road air—a scent that used to terrify me, but now felt like the only safe harbor in the world.
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He kicked the kickstand up with a sharp metallic clatter and thumbed the starter. The massive V-twin engine roared to life with a deep, concussive thrum that rattled straight through my chest, vibrating the cold frame of the bike and drowning out the quiet morning birds in the brush. Jax twisted the throttle gently, checking the mirrors one last time to make sure the empty highway behind us was clear of any trailing headlights or chrome trim.
With a slow, deliberate release of the clutch, the heavy chopper rolled off the concrete apron and onto the open ribbon of Route 40. The tires hummed against the asphalt, picking up speed as we accelerated past the rusted diner where our journey had begun just twenty-four hours ago. The cool morning wind whipped past my face, stinging my cheeks and blowing my messy light brown hair back into the rushing air, but I didn't care. I held on tighter to my father’s waist, the faded photograph pressed safely between us against his heart, as we left the past in the dust and chased the rising sun into the mountains.
