The Rampage MC #3: Atlas and Joy

Chapter 8 (Atlas): I Won't Talk

Your entire life can be a series of bad decisions, one after the other. I've known people like that, people who continually make stupid decisions and poor choices and wonder why their life is always on the wrong path, why their life is so difficult, why they keep getting duped, why they keep ending up in the same vicious cycle. And the answer is so obvious to an outsider: it's because they keep making the wrong choices that lead to the same bad outcomes.

Or you can generally be on a good path in your life, where things have been rolling along smoothly and then you come to a fork in the road and choose the wrong path. And for the first time in your thirty years, your life can become totally fucked because of some bad decisions. 

I'd never before made decisions based on emotion, and I knew why now.

Emotions were unreliable. 

They led to poor decisions.

Logic, big-picture thinking and considering all of the possible outcomes of my decision -- it's how I'd always managed my life before. Emotions had no place in my decision-making process because they only obscured clear thinking. I'd observed the adults in my life growing up and watched where they went wrong continuously and determined that I would do better.

And I had...until the moment Joy walked into my life and all of my rules went out the fucking window. She caught me completely unaware because how do you prepare for something you never knew existed, someone you never imagined could be real?

Joy was perfection. 

I'd been outside the clubhouse doors and she'd walked up carrying some clothes on hangers in her arms. She'd been a little scattered looking, her hair was a mess...and everything in me sat up and said hell, yeah, she's the one. When Beard had introduced her to us in the clubhouse, her smile had been happy and bright, but up close? Even more powerful. When I'd helped her empty out her car and carry her belongings and clothes to her room at the end of our hallway, I'd been surprised that she had so little. 

I'd wanted to give her more.

When she'd actually made me cookies for helping her, I almost wanted to frame those motherfucking things instead of eat them because they meant that much to me. 

No one had ever made me cookies before. 

No one had ever made such a kind gesture. 

No one had ever been that thoughtful. 

No one had ever touched me like that.

And that was the first mistake of many that I made. I put Joy in my phone as No One, and when she discovered that, I'd hesitated because I didn't want to admit to being a huge sap where she was concerned, didn't want her to know just how much she got to me yet, didn't want her to know that I wanted her in my life long-term. Permanently. So I took the pussy way out and told her that it was to protect her if she called me and my brothers saw. I told her she was someone to me and that should have been the end of it, but it wasn't. 

The ball of bad decisions had already begun rolling down the hill and was picking up speed.

Choosing to keep certain things from her, choosing to ignore Beard's order, choosing not to fill her in on everything because I was sure she'd stop things between us immediately, being sure we could keep things quiet for six months before it was safe to let everyone know we were together, and then Trixie --

"You got me?" Beard was asking.

"I don't like this. I'm telling you, it's not a good idea." Although, on the range of consequences Beard could dish out for disobeying a direct order from him, this was mild. It could have been much, much worse.