“This badge.” He fingered the shiny silver item that weighed so much more than the sum of its parts. “It used to be everything to me. There was nothing more important than this. What it represented. Who it represented. Me. The man I wanted to be. The man I thought I needed to be. This badge used to be my reason for getting up in the morning. For being. My purpose.” He paused, not really looking at me but at the same time staring into whatever was left of my soul. He was choosing his words carefully. “I was doing something. Something good, maybe,” he continued. He didn’t sound sure at the last part, like it was more of a question. Not to me, to himself.
I wanted to look away. I wanted to escape the stare of an intimate object, the blame that came with it, the guilt. The incredible guilt that followed me around the country and then out of it, which I knew I couldn’t run from yet I itched to try once more. To escape. To do what I always did when the emotional going got a little too real.
I wanted to escape him too.
Even though every cell in my body rebelled against it, even though he held everything I ever wanted in his hands. Not the badge. Just him. I wanted to run. Not from him. For him. To give him back the life I’d stolen from him.
I wanted to trick myself that it wasn’t too late for him to get it back, that I hadn’t put it through the wood chipper like I had my own heart.
He seemed to sense my struggle, or at least my eagerness to escape. The lawman in him, I guessed. He knew when an outlaw was going to make a run for it. Instinct.
The silver clattered to the floor in a resounding echo and he was on me before I knew what happened. Before I could register just how pivotal that abandonment of that small piece of metal was.
His hands framed my face and his eyes searched mine. I couldn’t bring myself to hide it. My utter love for him. The love that had started out as innocent and pure and had been warped, tangled into something ugly and brutal and nothing like the movies, yet I was loath to let it go. Even if it had already begun to destroy us.
Even if we had been goners the second I’d seen him on that curb at five years old.
His grip on me, both with his hands and his eyes, made it seem like he didn’t want to let go either, even though it was bad for him. Even though I was bad for him.
“That badge used to be everything, Rosie,” he rasped. “Who I wanted to be, my reason for being.” His hands tightened at my face. “But fuck, baby, I didn’t know shit about living for somethin’. Breathin’ for something. Dying for something. Willing to kill for that something and still sleep at night as long as that something, you, is gathered naked in my arms.” He yanked us closer together so no air separated us.
“But I’m not good,” I whispered, my voice so small and vulnerable I didn’t even recognize it.
He flinched. Full body. Like I’d struck him. Like the words actually hurt him to hear. “No, baby,” he said, voice thick. “You’re not.”
“I’m not good,” I repeated in a tone that belonged to someone rocking back in forward in a padded room wearing a straitjacket. That’s who I was on the inside.
He nodded, not hearing the crazy in my tone, or ignoring it. “No. You’re not.” There was a beat, a palpable heaviness in the air at his pause. “Such a word doesn’t even fucking scratch the surface of what you are. Labeling you as one singular thing would be a gross disservice to the magnificent creature that you are. You’re so much fucking more than one side of two binaries, baby. You’re strong. Stronger than most who wear badges, stronger than most who fight those who do. You’re loyal. So fucking loyal I know you’d take a dagger for anyone you let into your life, and that list is fucking long and full of people who seem to brush with death too often for comfort. Know you’d do it for people you haven’t even met yet. You’d take the blow for anyone who didn’t deserve it just because you could. Because you would willingly and without fear be a shield for anyone. That scares the shit out me.”
Fear, true fear, danced in his eyes at his words. It shook me to the core. Because it was that life-or-death kind of fear, when something happened to make you realize how fragile life really was.
“Every day, I have this bitter taste on the back of my tongue because I know you’ll jump in front of a bullet without hesitation. Because of that thing you have inside you. That loyalty. Yet I love you for it. Your spark. Your fight. Your beauty. Not just on the outside, but the shit you got inside you. It’s worth it.” He glanced to the reflection of silver on the ground. “It was worth it. Giving it up. Whatever fucked-up me I was trying to be without you. I’d walk through fire for you, baby. I don’t give a shit about the other stuff that kept us apart. That kept me from being a stupid bastard and burying my feelings so deep I hid them even from myself. That means nothing with you in my arms. In my bed.”
His eyes searched mine, yet the vision wasn’t crisp since mine were murky with tears.
“Which is where you’re going to be for the rest of your fuckin’ days, Rosie. And despite your penchant for taking bullets for those you love, there’ll be a lot of them. Because you want to be the shield for people? Fine. But the thing is I’m your shield. And whatever shit you face, it’s gotta go through me first.”
“But I want to be your shield,” I whispered, tears running down my face.
He wiped them away. “Okay, we’ll be each other’s,” he murmured back. And then he took away any more words I could use as excuses or escapes and he kissed me. Reminded me of the one thing that mattered. The one thing I could control.
Not the bullet with my name on it. Or his.
But us.
And maybe it was going to be a big Rosie Fuck-Up. But it was going to be for life.
Two Days Later
“You’ve got to be fuckin’ shittin’ me,” Cade spat, his shades directed to the parking lot.
Luke’s own shades focused on Cade’s glare, visible even beneath the dark glasses he wore, because he wore that glare in his entire body. Luke instinctively yanked me closer to him, obviously expecting a threat.
And he wasn’t wrong.
My mother climbed out of a beat-up Camaro, her leopard-print heels hitting the pavement unsteadily at first. Then she righted herself, yanking off her knock-off sunglasses so we could see the streaks of makeup running down her face.
“My babies!” she screamed.
Yes, screamed. In the parking lot of a memorial.
Today marked a year to the day since Scott’s death. I wasn’t there for the funeral, which I was kind of glad of. I hated burying people. It was something we did for all the fallen brothers, but it meant a lot more to me, because I didn’t get a proper chance to say goodbye.
Not just to Scott but to the person I was. To the demons I’d entertained after that day.
But there was my mother.
Screaming.
At a memorial.
Granted, it was a Sons of Templar memorial, so there would likely have been screaming at some point in the night once the bottles were empty and hearts were a little lighter. Or heavier.
But not now.
And not from her.
She went for me first, because I was always the easier one. I was always the one who forgot for a moment, that I was meant to be angry at the mother who abandoned me because I’d slowed down her party. Because I would always react as a little girl, even as a woman, I’d instinctively want my mother’s embrace.