PART ONE - THE WILD
“Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.”
― Aristotle
CHAPTER ONE - NICK
CHRISTMAS #21
2 ½ YEARS AGO
Majestic, lovely, delightful, glorious, powerful, heavenly…
Wendy Gale isn’t the kind of girl you marry. She’s not even the kind of girl you date.
She’s not a friend with benefits, she’s not a one-night stand, and regardless of what she thinks, she has never been a rebound.
Wendy Gale is the kind of girl you kidnap and lock in your basement so she can’t ever escape. She’s the kind of girl you tie up. You put a collar on her. A leash. Handcuffs. You chain her to things and gag her mouth. A blindfold isn’t a bad idea, either.
Because Wendy Gale is the kind of girl you grab on to—any way you can—and you never let go.
She is that special.
Wendy… you only need to know one thing about me, babe. Just one.
No matter what happens, I will never let go.
Today she is pouting in her truck as I watch her through the cabin’s living room window. Her lower lip even sticks out a little bit. Her sky-blue eyes aren’t angry or anything. There are no thunderclouds in there. But they are tired. Even from here, I can see that weariness she carries inside her.
It’s Christmas Eve. We have a thing for Christmas. Birthdays, too. Hers, not mine.
This cabin is home-—hers, for sure. But even though I only started coming here on any kind of regular basis four years ago it’s starting to feel like home for me as well. Before that the open road was my home. My truck rambling along just to the right of that endless dotted-white line in the middle of the pavement was the only constant I could count on. I needed it back then. I needed that lie I was selling pretty bad. The lie that I was free. That I was running from something that could be outrun. That I was protecting them, even though I always knew I wasn’t.
This is my major problem with Wendy these days. Somewhere along the line I failed miserably and she has gotten old enough now—hard to believe she’ll be twenty-two this year—but she has gotten old enough now that ways have been set and everything I’ve been ignoring all these years is starting to become glaringly obvious.
She is who she is and the thing that bugs me most about that is that I missed it. I mean, I was there, ya know? I have been there since she was five years old and if I really want to emphasize my involvement, I could even say that I helped raise her. In the same way that I might claim I raised Lauren.
I was there when they were little, but we all went our separate ways. Wendy first, of course, because I wasn’t her father, or her brother, or anyone, really. And Chek needed her for jobs, so her time with us was always temporary. But if you add it all up over time, Wendy spent about thirty percent of her life with me until she was fifteen.
Then Lauren was gone, I was officially dead, and Wendy was a seasoned professional.
I needed them the same way I needed the road back then. Wendy and Lauren were the only two people I had left to love. But it’s been just Wendy for so long now. This is why she thinks she’s the consolation prize.
Fuckin’ saddens me.
Wendy is at home on the road as well. That’s also my fault. I’m the one who taught her how to ramble through life. I’m the one who was running and I’m the one who took her along for the ride. She settled into the wanderlust way too young to ever have a chance of escaping it later. It’s in her bones now. But… this cabin has always been here. It has been her true home since she was five. This is where Chek brought her for downtime. This place in the woods surrounded by birdsong, rivers that burble, and the kind of stillness at night one only finds in tucked-away places is her one true place of peace.
Even though my time here started with anything but peace.
The first time I came out to this cabin was seventeen days after Chek’s death. That was four years ago.
Of course, that’s not our beginning, Wendy and me. Because I have known her since she was a five-year-old child and I was a filthy drug lord’s eighteen-year-old prisoner. But that first time I showed up for her seventeenth birthday, seventeen days after Chek died, that’s when she stopped being on my side and I started being on her side.
But back to that very first meeting that night of the massacre, after I was taken to the Fenici superyacht just off the coast of Santa Barbara to meet the man who would dictate everything that would happen next. That was just a casual glance at a little blonde girl in the corner with a dirty face and a long scowl.
It would be another four years before she came to stay with me and my new baby girl, Lauren. Wendy was… well… Wendy was supposed to be my babysitter when that happened. My little helper. Someone to keep me sane, on loan from Chek to help me get through those rough early days when all Lauren wanted to do was wail in protest about her early bad luck.
But Wendy was way more than that.
And look, I’m not saying it was the ideal situation or anything—I mean, relying on a nine-year-old to be your best friend is the epitome of selfishness—but it was what it was and I have no regrets.
Wendy Gale has been my best friend for almost thirteen years now.
She has been more than my best friend for two years.
We are a team. We work well together. We get shit done.
And I get that part too. This isn’t your typical love story because Wendy and me, we’re not your typical people.
But make no mistake, this is a love story.
We were just born into something beyond our control and we’ve spent our entire lives trying our best to break it apart.
But here’s the problem with breaking things… in the end, they’re broken.
And yeah, I know. I know what you’re thinking. I’m stating the obvious. This is how shit works, Nick. We all know that when you drop a piece of glass it shatters. And we all intuitively understand that things are very, very messy when it’s over.
Fine. Agreed. I get it.
This is a fucking mess.
And there is no real way to put broken shit back together without lots of cracks.
But I don’t mind the cracks. Wendy doesn’t mind the cracks, either.
That’s why we’re so good together. We kinda love the cracks.
Wendy still hasn’t gotten out of the truck and I haven’t moved from the living room window. There’s a chance she just backs up and drives away, but she’s here now. And it’s been a while, so I think she’s staying. She’s just having the same pointless internal monologue as me.
Wondering if this is… what? Normal? Satisfying? Enough? As good as it gets?
That’s not what I’m wondering, obviously. Every time we see each other after a long absence like this I replay how terrible I am. How she needs anyone else but me. How I don’t deserve her, how I’m going to ruin her, and how it’ll probably be me who gets her killed in the end.
And yet here I am. Every single time.
But that’s not what she’s thinking about. She has no baggage when it comes to these visits. It’s all very in the moment. Temporary. You know, like… a salve. I’m something soothing to her. Tea, or comfort food, or a warm blanket.