“Then no. I understand what you’re doin’. Maybe not the specifics, but enough to know that it was the only choice you had. Runnin’ away from demons is a hard job. I’m not the one who’s gonna make you face them. Doesn’t work that way. You gotta face ’em yourself.”
I tilted my head. “And you’ve faced yours?”
He laughed. A throw back your head, hold your belly kind of laugh. “Why do you think I chased you? Chase the blood? I’m the best runner there is, darlin’.”
I gaped. The small glimpse I had into Gage’s past, not exactly with the words but the way he said them, the way they sat heavy in the air. His thousand-yard stare. It was like staring directly into a black hole. My demons were infants compared to his, and I shivered at the thought of just what was chasing him. Despite the bitterness of the air, I wanted to know more, but the gun raised to Gage’s temple kind of stopped our heart-to-heart.
Gage didn’t move, didn’t flinch. He continued smoking his cigarette, slowly, casually, as if he didn’t have a worry in the world. “You may want to lower that, friend, in case you’re attached to your head.”
I glanced at the four men training semiautomatic weapons on Gage. They’d obviously noted that I’d neutralized any and all other threats.
“It’s okay, guys, he’s… a friend,” I said calmly. A woman always had to stay calm when in a room full of men with guns. They were children who just needed their mom to firmly tell them what to do. “Guns down.”
It took a second for the words to puncture, but they did. Three of them lowered their guns.
The handgun at Gage’s temple remained. Lucian eyed him with a thick and distrusting glare. He wasn’t an idiot, knew a threat when he saw one. Though he was stupid to think that he was going to come out on top, or even that his connection to me might stop Gage from killing him. Gage was loyal to an extremely small group of people. Everyone else was disposable.
“Lucian,” I warned.
His emerald eyes flickered to me, keeping the gun raised for a beat longer, like a petulant child might to remind the mother that it could, then lowered it. He didn’t even get it to the holster at his hip before Gage moved in a blur. When they both came into focus again, Gage was holding Lucian’s gun to his temple.
The rest of the team scrambled for their weapons, eyes panicked. I rolled mine and sighed audibly. Gage wasn’t even breathing heavily, his almost-finished smoke still hanging out of the corner of his mouth.
“I don’t like guns waved at my head by people who don’t know how to use them,” he said.
Lucian glared. “I know how to use it.”
Gage smiled. “You knew how to use it, I’d be dead.”
Chapter Three
Rosie
Age Fifteen
A group of kids were hassling some girl in the halls. Calling her names, tossing her backpack to-and-fro so she couldn’t catch it.
It pissed me off. A lot.
Mean for the sake of mean. There was no excuse for being a shitty person when you had no reason. Sometimes life gave you a shitty deck, and to play that deck you had to be kind of shitty too. But never to innocent people.
I snatched the bag out of the air, scowling at the hair-sprayed teenager I didn’t know the name of. I didn’t care to.
“You’re such fucking clichés, aren’t you?” I glared at the group, giving a gentle look to Aimee, the small and quiet girl they’d been tormenting. I handed her back her bag. She took it gratefully with a shaky smile.
“This is none of your business, Rosie,” one of the jocks said. “What do you care?”
“Call me crazy, but I care when I see idiotic clones tormenting someone for daring to be individual because they’re so fucking insecure that they don’t know what else to do. How about you go shower with your buddies and pretend not to be checking out their asses while you plan your next date rape?” I asked sweetly. “And if I hear you’re hassling Aimee again, I’ll blow up your BMWs… with you inside them.”
A small smile danced at the corner of Aimee’s lips and she pushed her hair behind her ear self-consciously, not realizing how pretty she looked. I hoped one day she’d learn that for herself. That someone told her that.
I could tell the little Cruel Intentions club wanted to say something back. Wanted to snatch back the power they thought they had in this school. But they wouldn’t. Not when they knew my threat wasn’t empty. Not when they knew the motorcycle club that ran the town would burn their houses to the ground if they did anything to me.
Not that I needed them. I could take care of myself. Rather well, thank you very much.
“What are you waiting for? Shoo, clones.” I made a motion with my hands and one of the jocks actually flinched, like he thought I would hit him or something.
Cowards.
That’s what those who picked on others were. The weakest of us all, trying to hide it by preying on someone else.
They scuttled away rather quickly.
I winked at Aimee, who was watching their retreat in awe.
“You okay, babe?” I asked her, softening my voice.
She smiled. She really was beautiful. “Yeah, thanks, Rosie. That was, um… you’re not really going to blow up their cars with them inside them, are you?” she whispered nervously.
I laughed. “No, of course not.”
She visually sagged.
“I’ll make sure they’re not in them. Promise.” I did a Girl Scout salute.
She laughed nervously. “You don’t need to do that because of me. It’s not a big deal.”
I lost my smile. “It is a big deal. Because they made you feel small, didn’t they? For no reason other than they’re jealous and ugly creatures. No one should make another human being feel like that. Just… don’t let them, okay? You’re so much better than them.”
Aimee’s face changed at my words, seeming to not know what to do with them. That hurt me. She obviously hadn’t had much experience with compliments, which meant her parents were A-grade assholes. I just had a club of men who broke the law for a living and I still had experience with love and support.
This was a majorly fucked-up system.
The system being life.
“Thanks,” she said finally.
The bell tolled and I inwardly groaned at my upcoming Calculus final, then decided to ditch. What use was Calculus going to give me in the real world?
None.
“I’ve got to get to class,” Aimee said, her eyes darting around at the rapidly emptying halls.
I nodded. “Sure, yeah. Just let me know if they give you any trouble again, okay?”
She nodded and smiled again. “I don’t think they will, but thanks.”
I smiled and watched her walk away, hoping this world wouldn’t grind her down and hating that I already knew it probably would.
I had experience in that.
“You know, you should probably make sure you don’t have any witnesses when you threaten murder and arson,” an amused and deep voice said from behind me.
Every cell in my body froze. The only voice that could do that to me. Make my stomach roil so the PB&J I’d had for lunch churned unpleasantly in my stomach. I wasn’t like that with anyone. Which was saying a lot since I had a motley group of murderers and ex-cons as my constant company and babysitters.
Not that I needed to be babysat anymore.
Hadn’t since I was seven years old.
But a motley group of murderers and ex-cons was more protective of me than a minister and his wife were of their treasured daughter. I’d bet their treasured daughter wasn’t a virgin, like this biker princess. In fact, I had it on good authority that Lila, the preacher’s daughter, was pretty much as far from a virgin as a fifteen-year-old could be.
Like I said, fucked-up system.
I whirled around on my heel, trying for casual. My eyes met steel first—the shield pinned on top of his perfectly pressed uniform, which covered his perfectly defined pec. My gaze traveled upward, noting the cords in his t
hroat, the movement of his Adam’s apple when he swallowed, the square and smooth jaw, always perfectly shaved. Then I got to the eyes. The ones that were the perfect shade of turquoise. If you asked me what my favorite color was in public, I’d say black, like my coffee and my soul. If you really asked me, I’d say turquoise with flecks of green, like Luke’s eyes. Of course, I’d never say that out loud.
Usually on the occasions I’d met those eyes, they were as hard as actual turquoise. Now they were liquid stone, twinkling with amusement.
That told me that there was no one else around, the halls empty. I knew Luke would never look at me with anything resembling affection if he had witnesses. He had a reputation to uphold, after all. And so did I, for that matter.
Fraternizing with the enemy wouldn’t do well for either of us.
But that wasn’t what made my heart fracture the ribs containing it when our eyes locked. Maybe it was part of it, the fact that he was forbidden. Different. But it was more than that. He was everything I couldn’t have. Everything I wasn’t.
And a lot of other things I couldn’t explain. Couldn’t pinpoint.
I struggled to compose myself, structure a cheeky smile on my face. “Well, a girl’s gotta find fun where she can in this Podunk town,” I said with a lightness I hoped didn’t sound as forced as it was.
Luke returned my smile, crossing his arms across his chest. I tried not to focus on the way his biceps flexed when he did that. I failed. I was a teenager with a mess of hormones, after all. It wasn’t just boys who had sex on the brain. It was girls who had barely been kissed thanks to everyone in a sixty-mile radius being too scared of their brother’s wrath to even touch her.
Though I wasn’t interested in boys touching me.
“Hmmm,” he pondered, the vibration of that sound in the air creating goose bumps on my exposed arms. “So you didn’t do that in order to stop bullies from hurting a shy and fragile girl?” he asked playfully, his eyes hardening slightly.
“Who me?” I asked, pointing at my chest with faux dramatics.
I didn’t miss the way his eyes flickered, for less than a second, to my exposed cleavage.
I developed early, and dressed ‘provocatively,’ to quote the principal, so I was used to boy’s gazes flickering there. But not men’s.
I swallowed roughly. “Never,” I said, breathless. “I’m the bad girl, remember? I blow up things for fun. You won’t tell on me, will you? Rat me out to the cops?” I paused, focusing on his badge. “The other cops.”
He furrowed his brow, smile disappearing with my insinuation, my subtle reminder for him, and me, of our respective positions on either side of the law.
“I’m guessing if someone’s BMW does go down in flames, you’ll have no knowledge and an airtight alibi?” he said by way of answer.
I grinned, megawatt and completely fake. “Ding, ding, ding!”
He regarded me. “You’re different than them, Rosie. You always have been. I don’t want to see you get hurt. You’re a good person.”
The words, the seriousness of them, punctured me. Right in the stomach. For all the wrong reasons.
I cocked my hip, my own brow furrowing. “No, I’m not different than them. And I’m not ashamed of that. Because it means that I’m not the same as everyone else, all of these people.” I waved toward the empty halls. “The people you serve and protect. The people who torment innocents because it’s fun and most likely that’s what their parents do to them. Good is a construct, Officer. Just like bad. They don’t exist. Not in my world, at least. Like I said, I’m just trying to get out of this alive. Have some fun.”
He stared at me a long time after that. Really looking. Really seeing. Or maybe it was a trick of the light. A hallucination brought on by the fantastical hope that life might actually be like all those books and movies. He even opened his mouth, preparing to say something… real. I could feel it, the way the air was charged with someone electric.
But then it fizzled as he shook himself back into the uniform that held him and his worldview together.
“Fun and trouble aren’t usually mutually exclusive for most people,” he said instead.
I hid my disappointment well. Oscar-worthy, I reckoned. “Well, I’m not most people.”
His eyes twinkled again. “I’ve noticed.”
“Have you really?” I asked, my façade breaking to whisper those three words.
They did something, those words. Hit him somewhere.
His response was silenced by the buzzing of the radio at his hip. I didn’t hear the words coming out of it, but they killed the moment.
He lifted it to his mouth, eyes still on me. “I’ll be right there.” He put it back on his hip. “I gotta go.”
I nodded. “Going to enforce the law.” The words did what they were meant to do, opened the chasm that separated us, that always would.
He eyed me. “Try to stay out of trouble.”
I smiled. It hurt. Near crippled. “Not sure that’s possible. You do that so much better than me.”
His eyes hardened, and he gave me the brisk professional nod that was customary when were in public.
I hid my swift intake of breath when that nod hit me physically.
He turned, leaving, then glanced back at me, eyes liquid once more. “Yeah, Rosie. I have to,” he said so lightly that I was afraid I’d imagined it.
That would’ve been it.
You know, the movie moment when it all clicks for the couple that was meant to be, destiny or whatever lined up for them and they started the romance that Hollywood and Disney were built on.
Except I was a Fletcher. By extension and definition, an outlaw.
Not Hollywood.
Definitely not Disney.
I blinked after him, the air still tasting sweet and clean from his presence. My heart thundered from my ribs so hard that I put my hand on my chest just to make sure it hadn’t broken the skin.
“You like him.”
The voice was so unexpected from the hallway I thought was empty, I jumped. And I didn’t jump. Ever. Nothing could scare me at that point.
My scowl went toward a flushed and beautiful—despite being makeup-free—face, blonde hair wild and tumbling down Laurie’s back. She was grinning, her eyes light with her perpetual happiness.
“You like testing to make sure I have a heart condition?” I snapped.
Her grin didn’t waver. “No, I think someone already did that.” She nodded toward the closing door.
I bit my lip and started to walk in the opposite direction. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She wasn’t perturbed as she walked with me, pushing her arm through the crook of mine. “Oh I do. You like Luke.”
I snapped my head toward her. “I don’t like Luke.”
“Babe, I know you. I’ve known you since you ate glue and beat up boys you liked. You didn’t punch him, but I still know you’re smitten.”
“I don’t like Luke,” I repeated. “Because I can’t like Luke.” My tone was defeated, sad, bordering on pathetic. I didn’t like that. I wasn’t pathetic.
Laurie’s smile disappeared and she stopped walking, causing me to as well. “What are you talking about, Roe?” she asked. “Of course you can like him. In fact, you don’t get much choice in who you like. That’s the fun in it.” Her eyes went dreamy and I knew she was thinking about Bull. She’d been obsessed with him since she’d bumped into him at the club. She fell into him and he caught her. Literally.
If I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it. It was like one of the movie meet-cute moments that made you so sick you threw popcorn at the screen knowing it could never happen in real life.
But it did happen.
The world stopped for the two of them right then. I almost felt it stop spinning as they locked themselves in a little world that existed here and yet someplace altogether different.
Bull felt it too. I knew it.
I also knew h
e wouldn’t act on it. Not until Laurie was old enough. Much to her frustration.
But he’d protect her. Be there for her. Ensure that beautiful smile stayed on her face. And I loved that. That I could pass the torch to him and know he’d never let it go out. That’s what we all had an unspoken agreement about. Laurie was a rare person who was untouched by the world’s evil, naïve and so genuinely good you knew that something in this ugly world so rare had to be preserved. Maybe it was because I’d seen so much ugly that I didn’t want to think of Laurie having to experience that.
So yeah, I got why she was confused.
“I can’t like him, Lo,” I said gently. “And you can never mention this. We weren’t meant to be. We can’t be. He’s the enemy.”
Laurie screwed her face up. “He’s not the enemy. He’s Luke.”
“He’s the law,” I said simply. “The club do not mix with the law.”
“You’re not the club,” she said, confused.
I sighed. “Yes I am. That’s all I am.”
She reached out and squeezed my hand. “Oh, Roe, you’re so much more than one thing. You’re everything, all squeezed into one. And you deserve to like who you want. You deserve to be happy. It shouldn’t make a difference just because he wears a badge.”
“It shouldn’t,” I agreed. “But it does.”
Laurie may not have believed in the barriers that were between me and my feelings, but they became clear and unsurpassable later. When I was back at the clubhouse that night, when I was hanging out, focusing on not doing my homework while Lucky talked me through the installation of a small but effective car bomb.
I didn’t do empty threats.
“What the fuck, Rosie?” Cade twirled the barstool I was swinging on so I came face-to-face with his steely glare. The angry bark was scary enough—he’d perfected it as soon as he’d gone through puberty, at ten—but he only really liked it when he could pair it with his signature death glare. Perfected also around the age of ten.
They stopped working on me around a week after that when I figured my brother could be scary to everyone but me. His one and only soft spot, even if soft for him was marble.