Wretched Love

I didn’t know how to feel about that. About the men I’d come to admire and respect contributing to a gun violence problem that was very real in our country. But then again, I couldn’t sit too high on any morality horse, considering the men on Wall Street and in office were committing terrible crimes on a daily basis were celebrated by society for doing so.

Life was very rarely black and white.

“Yeah, like the Amber charter,” I agreed.

Macy sucked her teeth. “Sure, maybe I think about it from time to time. Only because I worry about my Old Man, because I don’t ever, ever want to live through what happened on Christmas.”

She shuddered as shadows passed her eyes.

Christmas. When the club had lost almost all of its members aside from Jagger and Hansen. A massacre.

Just thinking about these people I considered family being brutally killed had my throat closing up. Just thinking about something happening to Swiss had my vision blurring and my limbs going numb.

“But I don’t dwell on it,” Macy continued. “I can’t. This is who they are.” She nodded outside. “The club is part of them. Of who they are at their cores. It has saved their lives.” Her gaze roamed over to Caroline.

I knew Jagger had come back from the Army all kinds of screwed up, and instead of going home to Caroline, his high school sweetheart, he’d let her—and his entire family—think he was dead because he couldn’t face who he’d become. Caroline, in turn, had gone to warzones all over the globe, reporting on foreign bloodshed, looking for a connection to the man she’d thought she lost.

Through an act of dizzying fate, Caroline had decided to do an investigative piece on the Sons of Templar, intending to expose the reality of club life, and instead, she had found Jagger.

Macy’s gaze zeroed in on me. “Without this club, working the exact way it’s working, these men wouldn’t be here. We wouldn’t have found them. And though I worry about my husband every day, it’s not the specifics of club life that keep me up at night. It’s a car crash on the way to the grocery store. It’s some fucking illness or brain aneurysm.”

Caroline tilted her head. “Do you wish that the club were different?” she asked without judgment.

I didn’t answer straight away, didn’t offer a response that I thought would make them like me more, accept me, or keep me safe. I didn’t lapse into old routines, which was important. Thinking for myself was important.

My eyes strayed back over to Swiss who had already been staring at me intently. For however long.

“No,” I answered honestly. “No, I don’t.”

For better or for worse, the outlaw life was what I chose. And I wouldn’t change a thing about it.

Because the outlaw life was what saved Swiss. That was all that mattered.

Everyone left relatively early, considering everyone in attendance had small children at home, and Freya had a husband who was making it his life’s mission to make sure she survived her pregnancy.

They all said their goodbyes, proper goodbyes since I wouldn’t be seeing them for a while. I’d hugged each of the women tightly, realizing just how much I’d miss each and every one of them.

Swiss had cleaned up. He’d ordered me to stay on the sofa and finish my wine. It felt foreign, slightly uncomfortable and nice. Or it would’ve been nice had I not had something to do. Something I’d been putting off for far too long.

Swiss’s body rounded the sofa and stood in front of me.

“It’s time,” I told him, staring at the phone sitting in the middle of the coffee table.

Swiss didn’t ask what it was time for, nor did he say anything at all. He just sat down beside me and caught hold of my hand. It seemed he wasn’t going to offer me privacy to do this alone.

Which I was incredibly thankful for.

I did not want to do this alone.

In fact, I did not want to do this at all.

But Violet was arriving back in four days.

Four freaking days.

A large part of me was counting down the seconds until I saw my daughter again. I missed her so much it hurt.

But then came the reality. Somehow, through some kind of badass communication system, it had been ‘settled’ that I was picking Violet up from Manchester-Boston airport and staying in a suite with her in the city for three days. Violet didn’t know about the suite. Nor did she know it was me coming to pick her up.