My hurt from his words mingled with anger. “And what was I supposed to do, Luke?” I yelled. “Stay chaste and innocent on the slim fucking chance the high and mighty cop might choose to slum it with the criminal? I was pretending too, Luke. And I fucking sucked at it. You, on the other hand, no doubt had calls from the Academy for your fucking stellar performance.”
He stared at me while he pulled on his tee.
“I’m not stayin’ here while we spew this shit at each other. One of us will say somethin’ we regret.” He paused. “I’m done doing shit I regret in regard to you. You’ll always be Rosie to me. Just fucking Rosie. My fucking Rosie. And it’s that simple for me. But it’s not that simple for you, is it?”
“No!” I yelled. “Of course it’s not that fucking simple. Us, we were never fucking simple. Stop expecting me to be someone who’s going to relax into this and forget the world around us exists. Forget the past exists. I’m torn in fucking two, Luke, and I don’t know what to do, who to be.”
“You, Rosie. Just be you.” He said it softly, but it impacted as if he’d yelled it.
And then he walked out.
“Yes!” I yelled back to Gwen, the events of the hour before still echoing in my mind. I reached for another glass so I could pour her some wine. I’d already had two. And now that she wasn’t breastfeeding, she had a lot of making up to do.
I had a lot of making up to do with my sister. It had been a year. A year of her being a mom, being a wife, being a crazy fucking bitch. I’d missed out on a lot. I missed her.
I should’ve hated her.
Gwen.
Not at first. At first, she was the beautiful, exotic woman with pain behind her eyes but a kind smile that swept my brother away from himself. Who yanked him into something that wasn’t the quest for revenge he’d started the day our father died.
To set him on some sort of track for living instead of just fighting.
The day of my barbeque, when he only had eyes for her, when he dragged her off like a caveman in a show of his version of affection that was almost unheard of, I didn’t hate her. No, I loved her. Because even though he didn’t smile—in fact, he scowled more than usual—I knew my brother was venturing toward happy.
Because of her.
And he deserved whatever version of happy that our version of life could provide him.
And by the looks of the ghosts and demons behind Gwen’s pretty face, she deserved it too.
But life, or love, was rarely that simple.
Or casualty free.
It just so happened that I was the casualty of my brother’s bloody and drama-filled road to an unexpected fairy-tale ending.
The one where he knocked up Gwen, lost her when she left after her brother died and she found him in bed with another woman, and then he went halfway across the world to get her back. And he brought her back here, where she belonged. At the club. With him.
She ended up shooting and killing the man who shot Steg—while nine months pregnant. And then she gave birth to my niece in the clubhouse with my brother delivering the baby. Oh, and her kidnapping came before that.
So not the traditional happy ever after.
Though, considering every man’s road to love, marriage, and the babies in the baby carriage, it kind of was the Sons of Templar version. It wasn’t a courtship without at least one kidnapping, an explosion or a drive-by shooting.
You’d think I’d be kidding, but I wasn’t.
Though, those weren’t my stories, despite the fact that I managed to get tied into every single one.
Me and Luke.
But because of the drama-filled romances that demanded every inch of the club’s attention, our relatively uneventful dramas went unnoticed.
Which was the way it needed to be.
The way it had to be if I wanted to keep my family.
So back to my point, where it all began. For Gwen and Cade, at least.
They wouldn’t say it, or at least Gwen wouldn’t—my stoic brother turned to a marshmallow around his wife and children and would shout from the rooftops that it was love at first sight. That didn’t mean that it was a relationship at first sight.
Gwen’s demons were dark, even for Cade. Or maybe they resembled Cade’s so much and that was why she fought it. Why she gave Luke the prime opportunity to distract himself with a woman who didn’t represent everything he despised.
A clean woman.
And that’s why I should’ve hated her.
My mind went back to that moment, before she and Cade were concrete. When I realized how brittle Luke and I were, despite everything that had already happened between us.
It was a week or so after Gwen came into town, four years ago now. At the store where I would end up spending some of the best times of my life. It just so happened one of the worst occurred at the opening party. At the opening when Luke only had eyes for her. Or no, it was worse than that. His eyes had touched mine the moment he set foot in the store. But they didn’t stay on me. The pointed movement of his gaze, of his attention to Gwen, hurt more than if he didn’t see me at all. But because I was Rosie, carefree on top of all of those monsters I was so good at hiding, I did the only thing I could think of.
Drank myself into oblivion.
But I didn’t shift the blame of that hurt to Gwen. It would’ve been easier. That’s why so many women threw around words like “skank,” “slut,” “bitch.” Because it was easier to blame a skank for taking away your man than it was to realize that man wasn’t really yours in the first place.
So I didn’t do that, didn’t poke my head in the sand and blame an innocent woman who I hoped would become my sister one day.
Instead, I accepted a job in her store, swallowing all my pain and banishing it from sight.
And I did what I shouldn’t have done.
I hoped.
Firstly, my hope wasn’t for me. It was for my troubled brother, who didn’t look it but was extremely vulnerable. I hoped that he would finally find some kind of happiness that made him live, not just survive. That he’d have someone to fight for instead of someone to fight against.
And then there was my own selfish hope. That I’d somehow imagined the dismissal, the intensity of Luke’s gaze toward Gwen.
But hope was for idiots.
That day in her store when Luke came in, eyes and coffee only for her, invitation of an uncomplicated and drama-less life open.
I didn’t hate her.
I couldn’t.
I did hate myself a little in the moment they walked out the door, Luke’s hand on the small of her back. I hated that I wasn’t clean and uncomplicated and that I represented everything Luke despised.
There weren’t very many times in my life when I wanted to be something other than who I was.
That was one of them.
I hated Luke a little in that moment too. For making me crave another skin, another identity, for showing me what a fucking farce I was. What a fucking fraud.
But that was it. Love and hate were entwined; one could not exist without the other. And sometimes they existed at the same time. Within the same person.
Gwen burst in, almost weighed down with various Chanel bags. Her eyes went to the couch first, grinning wickedly.
“I half expected you to still be going at it,” she said, waltzing into the room, eyeing it as if she was expecting a naked Luke to be hanging off a sex swing. “You have a lot of making up to do, after all.”