Wretched Love

KATE

I had no idea how I ended up in a biker compound.

Okay, I kind of did.

I had taken my Gone Girl thing a smidge too far.

It had gotten off to a bit of a rocky start. Freedom, as it happened, was complicated. Very freaking complicated. I had not made a decision for myself in years. Almost two decades.

Preston chose my clothes, my hairstyle. His mother was the one who helped me when it was time to redecorate. Preston approved weekly menus at the house. He chose where we vacationed. He made detailed lists for the grocery store down to the brand of milk he liked.

I didn’t make any choices for myself.

So that first day, when I started to get tired and it came time for me to stop at a motel, I had a panic attack. Which one did I choose? What exit did I get off at? Did I go for a mainstream chain or a bed and breakfast situation?

I’d pulled up to a Hilton on instinct.

Whenever we traveled, it was the best hotels. The luxury of it all had impressed and delighted me at first, but I was immune to it. Disgusted by it, almost. If we were traveling, Preston would turn his nose up at a Hilton, but given the options in the middle of nowhere, it would be his only acceptable choice.

It hit me that I was deferring to him even now. I was making a decision based on what he would want.

That realization, and the realization that I couldn’t do something as simple as chose a hotel for the night, had me crying for five minutes in the parking lot.

Then I got my shit together.

A bed and breakfast, I decided, would be nice. But people who owned bed and breakfasts liked to talk. To get to know their guests. Ask what they were doing, where they were going.

No, I did not need any of those kinds of questions.

I needed somewhere that would take cash, that was clean and reasonably safe. I found it in a mid-range, roadside motel off the interstate. The clerk was a bored teenager scrolling through her phone. She’d barely glanced at me.

I’d been so wrapped up in my world, thinking I was the center of everything, that I forgot that people existed outside of my little universe. That there were people living their own lives who didn’t give a shit about me. Who didn’t notice me. Who would forget me in a moment.

It was liberating.

I’d lain in bed the entire next day, watching movies that I’d never got to watch, eating food that Preston never would’ve let into the house, and feeling relaxed in a way I never had before.

The sheets were scratchy. The walls were thin. The shower water was either scalding hot or ice cold. But it was paradise to me.

I stayed for two nights, reveling in my newfound freedom, not thinking of the future, of a plan. I worried that if I did, it might ruin everything. I’d made a promise to myself on the first night there, giving myself a deadline. Three months. I could have three months of exploring the country, eating what I wanted, sleeping when and where I wanted, without pressure. Without acknowledging the realities that lay ahead.

After that three months was done, that’s when I’d make the scary decisions. That’s when I’d research divorce lawyers, figure out what exactly I’d tell my daughter when she got home, and make a plan for my future.

But if I lived smart, I had more than enough money for three months in mid-range hotels, eating food from chain restaurants. I might even find somewhere I wanted to settle. Somewhere small, somewhere far away from Carver Springs. Somewhere without McMansions and manicured lawns and yoga studios. Somewhere with a soul. But I had no destination, no itinerary, nothing.

Which was how I found myself in Garnett, New Mexico. Even though it was spelled with an extra ‘T’, I couldn’t help but feel like it being named after my birthstone meant something.

I loved it the second I set foot in it. The sweltering heat, thick and unyielding. The vast desert, mountains in the distance. The town itself was small, houses varying in size, but almost all of them were well maintained, had personality to them. The main street was littered with homey mom-and-pop stores. Of course, there were still big-box stores—there was nowhere you could escape a Walmart or a Target—but it felt like it had a personality I was looking for. Appealing to the eye without being pretentious. Small but not so small that I’d stick out as a stranger in town.

Safe.

I was only beginning to understand what that word meant, what that feeling was. Although I’d felt freer than I had in years, there was an edge to there too. An undercurrent of panic, unease, inevitability. That there was a time limit on this, that eventually he’d find me, drag me back, and I’d once again be trapped in that life.

It was that edge that had me turning up to a biker compound for a party.

It was pure chance that even had me knowing about it. I’d been at the gas station picking up some snacks and a six pack of beer—I’d acquired quite a taste for it—when a man in a leather vest had approached me.

He was quite possibly the most attractive man I’d seen in my life. He was younger than me, maybe. It was hard to tell. There was a… man-ness about him that seemed utterly timeless. A dark, heavy brow, a slightly crooked nose and riveting gray eyes. His beard was chocolate brown, just like the shoulder length hair on his head, and it only accentuated his ruggedness.