Iron by Amy Isan Page B

something weighing him down all these years. Who knows how long he had it? I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I have shit I gotta take care of. Cassie is still at home, wondering God knows what. I shouldn’t have left her before she woke up. I swallow spit and breathe deep.
    “Surge, I got bad news.”
    He frowns. “What? I hope it’s not about the drug drop.”
    I shake my head and lean forward, planting my elbows on my knees. “No, we did that, but it went to shit. Rifle brought the Skeletons along for the ride, and the dealer fucked us on the product.”
    Surge’s face turns red and he curses before slamming his fist on the bedside railing. The loud thwack sounds painful, but he doesn’t even flinch. He bites his lip and narrows his eyes, he’s looking through me now. “That fucking snake.” He fixes on me again. “Don’t you dare say, ‘I told you so.’”
    “No, I take the blame for this shit,” I say. I meet his eyes and don’t break contact. “I tried to do an initiation for the men, and ignored the warning signs that it was too easy. Rifle must’ve been planning on switching for a long time now.”
    “It doesn’t make any god damn sense. Rifle isn’t like that. Sure, he’s a rough and stupid kid most of the time, but he isn’t a fucking thief.”
    I’m silent, because my opinion is completely different. I have a feeling Rifle is more important to Surge than I want to explore. But he’s right too, just like Sword said, ‘we’re brother’s now, ain’t we?’
    I continue, “Yeah. But it’s what happened. They came rolling in and forced us to take the shit shipment and threatened to kill us if we tried to deal it in the city.”
    Surge looks out the window, curling and uncurling the fist he slammed on the railing. It looks bruised. He sighs. “That never stopped us in Cali.”
    “It never stopped you,” I shoot back, maybe too quickly. I bite my tongue and resist adding the detail about Cassie. He notices my hesitation though.
    “What is it? What are you hiding? It isn’t just the crew you’re worried about,” Surge says. “You’re not the kind of man I know to worry about his crew like this. You usually don’t give a fuck — headstrong, restless, reckless most of the time — The Logan I —,”
    “Things change. They get complicated.”
    “Well...” Surge says, “Un-complicate them.”
    “I can’t.” I sigh heavily and groan. “I killed one of the Skeletons.”
    “Fucking Christ, Logan,” Surge says, his voice rising. “Tell me you’re playing a sick joke on me. Why the fuck would you go and do that?”
    I want to say, I was protecting someone. I can’t. Giving away the seed of the lie won’t make things better. It won’t make Surge happier. It won’t fix a thing. I remain silent and let him gnash his teeth. He looks around the brightly lit and barely furnished room, avoiding my eyes the whole time. “We haven’t had to deal with this shit for a long time. It changes things.”
    “You think I don’t know that?”
    “I’m fucking disappointed,” he says. I feel a pang of anger shoot through me and I stand up immediately.
    “I don’t give a shit, I only came to let you know what the fuck was going on. If you don’t have any advice, then I might as well just fucking go and try to kill them all. Our crew can’t do shit with them hovering over us anyway.” I storm out of the room and down the hallway, barely taking a breather to hear him yell. I can’t understand him, my head is flooded with hot rage and fog. I need to get back to Cassie. I need to actually keep her safe. I can’t do that without being there.
    I race down the narrow fire-exit stairs and stumble out the door. No alarm goes off and I find my bike in its parking space, straddling a double yellow “NO PARKING ZONE” next to a handicapped space. I jump on and turn it over, before screeching out of the parking lot and back toward my home.
    ‘Un-complicate things.’ What a joke. I