I went in prepared for the worst, my blood both ice and fire. Ready to face both grief and revenge. Because someone committed the ultimate crime of spilling the blood of our family and doing it inside our gates.

We may have gone legit, but that didn’t mean that action didn’t have one consequence.

Death.

We’d had blood spilled in our family ever since we lost Laurie. And I’d had poison in my veins from that. From losing one of my best friends. And having to face it consistently throughout the past five years. I was used to fighting, to death. But I promised myself that I wouldn’t let it be any more of my family.

I let out a breath when I burst in to see both Lucky and Bex intact. My eyes went to the bullet wound at Lucky’s shoulder. Well, mostly intact. Just a flesh wound. He’d live.

He was circling a man who was bleeding from between his legs. A small grin tickled the corner of my lips, betting that the man had Bex to thank for that. She was bleeding from her head, focused on both Lucky and the man crumpled on the ground. He was familiar.

“You’re going to die. But not yet. Not even in the near future,” Lucky said.

Luke arrived behind me, breathing evenly. He didn’t declare his presence, obviously scanning for threats and seeing none, then pausing to collect evidence.

“But it’ll happen. I’ve got a brother who’s so very anxious to meet you,” Lucky continued.

And that was it, the moment I recognized the man. Devon. The son of the man who’d kidnapped Amy years before. Who had almost killed both Bex and me with a car bomb.

As those thoughts filtered through my mind while witnessing a man I considered a brother holding a gun to someone bleeding out from a dick wound, I thought about how fucking dramatic our life was.

And it could only go up from there. Or down, depending on your perspective.

“Step away from him and put down the gun, Lucky,” Luke said, his voice even and hard.

So he’d decided to make his move.

Lucky’s response to Luke’s command was to swing the gun from the prone man to the doorway where we stood. It stayed raised as his eyes went to Luke, though he immediately lowered it when he realized he was pointing it at me too.

I met Bex’s eyes, giving her a wonky sort of smile as if to say, ‘just another Tuesday in paradise.’

Lucky wasn’t perturbed at Luke’s presence. “Can’t do that, Luke,” he said, voice casual. “This swine”—he delivered a swift kick to Devon’s midsection, resulting in little more than a pained moan—“is the reason Skid is dead. The reason Becky almost fuckin’ died.”

I was putting all the pieces together. He was the reason Becky got kidnapped, why I walked in on her hacking at her hair in front of the mirror because she couldn’t even stand her reflection after she was raped. The reason why, for months, she was little more than a haunted shell of a person, forced to live inside the house of horrors that was her head.

I knew what I needed to do, the only thing that could be done with Luke there that would both save my family and deliver the revenge that needed to be dealt. I reached into my purse, looking for the gun that was always there, along with my favorite lipstick—Mac, Ruby Woo, if you were wondering.

Lucky focused on me, still addressing Luke, whose gun was still raised. “Why Rosie was almost blown into a thousand pieces.” The way he said it, giving Luke a pointed reminder of how close this man came to killing me, told me Lucky saw a lot more than he let on. “So I suggest you leave, pretend you didn’t see a thing,” he instructed Luke.

Though I knew the situation was serious, I wanted to choke out a laugh. Asking Luke to forsake his badge and his morals by helping the club he despised to commit murder was like expecting Cade to cooperate with a police investigation.

Luke’s gaze and entire body hardened. “My father may do that shit, but not me. I can’t turn a blind eye to this.” I felt his pause, his struggle, when, for less than a second, his gaze flickered to me. He was putting the pieces together too. Hesitation. That hesitation gave me the hope I’d been waiting for all my life, that little piece to go with my collection of moments that told me maybe there was something inside him that felt what I felt.

I stopped believing in hope before I stopped believing in Santa Claus. That didn’t mean it didn’t puncture me when his shoulders stiffened and the gun continued to point in Lucky’s direction. “Don’t make me shoot you.”

Like me, Luke didn’t do empty threats. I knew he didn’t want to shoot Lucky. If pressed, like maybe if someone was removing some fingernails, he might admit he actually liked Lucky. It was impossible not to. Though he looked like a cold-blooded murderer, and certainly was one, he had an infectious smile and the sense of humor of a twelve-year-old.

He was soft, under all that hard. With the biggest heart you’d ever see.

Which was why he was able to break every barrier Bex put up after she was attacked. Why he went through his own personal Hell after rescuing her too late. Why he waited months for her to even speak to him. Did everything in his power to heal her, give her whatever tainted happiness was left for her.

And she got that. My broken friend was put back together mostly thanks to her own strength, but also thanks to the kind of man who killed every single person responsible for hurting her.

She was his world. And he was hers.

Which was why she glared at Luke, looking ready to scratch his eyes out, gun or no gun. “Dude, in case you hadn’t noticed, he’s already been fucking shot,” she snapped, not betraying any outward trauma of being in the middle of yet another abduction. She was a diamond, she didn’t break easily. Or at all.

I wasn’t about to let Luke chip at that. I reached up to tug his shoulder, in a gesture to get his attention rather than actually physically stop him. I braced against the reaction I got from touching him.

“Luke, don’t do this. You know what he did. You know he deserves this. Just leave. Let us handle this.” My voice was small, as close to begging as I’d ever get.

Luke didn’t pause, didn’t react outwardly, if not for a twitch in his blue eyes. Not enough, though. “I can’t do that, Rosie,” he said, his voice still flat, simmering with doubt and unease. “I don’t want to, but I’ll shoot him if I have to.”

His voice may have been simmering with unease, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t telling the truth. Whatever small changes were working within Luke weren’t going to destroy something that underpinned his entire character, his ultimate and unyielding view of the law.

My stomach was ash as I nodded, seeing that chasm between us once more, as if it had never been wider. “Yeah, I know,” I murmured, my hurt and heartbreak seeping into my voice.

I couldn’t let that moment be the one when I let this shit get me down. So I didn’t. I moved. Right in between Luke and Lucky, in front of the gun, shielding Lucky, shielding the club. I paused to give Luke a pointed look as his aim wavered. “But you won’t shoot me,” I said, that time with more strength and resolve.

I didn’t pause to regard what was in his eyes, the betrayal. I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. I had a job to do. One mustn’t think too much about the job of killing when it needed to be done. I learned that after, because I didn’t think hardly at all when I crossed the room, pulled my handgun out of my purse and discharged a single shot. One that found its home in Devon’s skull, ending it once and for all. Delivering the justice the club needed, while at the same time protecting them from the strong arm of the law.

A thick roar erupted in my ears after I did it. Killed a man. Despite my upbringing, I’d never done that before—well, at least not as intimately. I wasn’t sheltered. I’d seen a lot. Almost all there was to see.

But killing was, until recently, a man’s job. Feminism may have gotten us equal pay and the vote, but in the Sons of Templar, murder was still exclusively a male-dominated industry.

The girls and I were shaking that up a bit.

I didn’t want them to; in fact, I wanted anything but to see myself through Luke’s eyes. Regardless of want, my gaze locked with his. Bile crept up my throat, not at the act of killing itself but seeing my reflection on Luke’s face.

“Holy fuck,” Lucky muttered, pride in his voice as he broke the deafening silence.

“You got that right,” Bex agreed, in a ‘you go, girl’ kind of tone.

I fought hard to keep my composure, not to break down as I put the final nail not in Devon’s coffin but in the one of that secret Luke and Rosie fantasy that had been dying a very slow death.

“You going to arrest me?” I asked flatly, already knowing the answer, though it broke my heart.

Luke didn’t speak, or couldn’t, I didn’t know which. He shook his head. And then, as if a weight pushed it down, he lowered his gun in a gesture of defeat. His eyes stayed on mine, communicating everything and nothing at the same time.

Then he turned his back on me and walked out.

I saved the club.

And broke my own heart in the process.

Bravo, Rosie.

But wasn’t that what love was?

Destroying yourself for the sake of others?

* * *

My hands were shaking as I struggled to put the key in my lock.

The hands that pulled the trigger on a gun. Ending a man’s life.

Splattering his brains all over the floor.

I killed someone.

The sentence came from inside my head, spoken by a strange disembodied voice that didn’t seem at all familiar. Spoken by the person, the monster, I’d created in that split second.

I’d seen plenty of dead bodies. Kept company with plenty of murderers, otherwise known as my family. Death himself was like that horrible uncle who gave you the heebie-jeebies but turned up unexpectedly, never telling you how long he was staying before he left so you could relax, forgetting he existed until he returned again.

Now he was there, breathing down my neck as I fumbled with my keys, putting a shadow on the day that I was sure had been cloudless before.

Before I’d killed a man.

But the worst thing was that wasn’t why my hands were trembling, why my mouth was dry, stomach full of bile.

The killing itself was horrible, but not that horrible. Not something that would follow me around forever. Maybe it was because something was broken in me. Whether it was a product of my upbringing or just nature, it didn’t matter. The killing didn’t. Not really.

It was because Luke watched as I did it. Watched me transition, finally, into the embodiment of everything he so despised.

Before that, I was sure he thought of me as a participant of the life he loathed. An unwilling one who had nature and biology to thank for my place in the club, and was therefore somehow removed from it all. Somehow cleaner.

Ending that bastard’s life saved the club. It also killed, messily and violently, any small, miniscule chance Luke and I had.

Not that the chance was ever going to mature into reality.

I had never been clean. It just took Luke that long to realize it.

I sucked in a gulp of tainted air as I finally stumbled through my front door, slamming it behind me and sinking against it, worried my knees might not support my weight.

But I shouldn’t have worried about them supporting anything since the painful impact of a fist hitting my cheek set me off them so I tumbled to the floor.

I blinked up at the blurry ceiling, confused, and struggled against the blackness that threatened to turn into unconsciousness from the force of the blow.

Then I wasn’t looking at the ceiling anymore. Two figures towered over me, sneering down at me.

“You thought you’d scared me off, did you?”

A boot connected with my ribs, and I choked out a gasp at the ricocheting pain through my abdomen.

“You think I’d be scared off? By a woman?”

I blinked through the pain, swallowing the cry that ached to get out from my throat.

It wasn’t two men.

Just one asshole.

One I’d seriously misjudged.

“You need to leave if you want to live,” I croaked.

I eyed my purse, which had fallen directly in my entranceway, about three feet from where I was lying. I was in a lot of pain, reasonably sure I had a broken rib, but I could make it to there.

And more importantly to the gun, lying slightly out of my open purse.

The one I’d already used to shoot someone that day. What was another dirtbag?

Just as I was about to dart toward it, another brutal kick landed in my midsection.

That time, even though I didn’t want to, I did cry out. And now I wasn’t reasonably sure I had a broken rib. I was certain I had several.

Kevin had taken to wearing steel-capped boots.

I must’ve blacked out, though it wasn’t black I saw but blinding white-hot pain, because when my vision cleared, Kevin was standing above me, holding my gun and grinning.

“See?” He waved it before settling the barrel on me. “I’ve learned.”

I coughed, the jerking motion sending pokers of agony from my ribs to my toes. “Do you want a medal, asshole?” I croaked.

A storm settled over his face. He bent down, and I could see the madness and violence mingling in his eyes. “You don’t get to say shit,” he hissed, spittle flying from his mouth and settling on my cheek. “I’m the one in control here. Not you. I’m the one who’s got the gun. Who will fucking kill you if you don’t do everything I say.”

I stared into the abyss of his eyeballs, frozen. Because I saw the truth there. He did fully intend on killing me.

* * *

I was tied to the bed.

In my underwear.

I didn’t remember my clothes being taken off.

I couldn’t decide whether that was a good or bad thing.

The pain was the bad thing. It sucked. A lot. He’d decided that being in control meant he pretty much got to beat the shit out of me.

He’d pistol-whipped me finally, and I’d lost consciousness. Which he’d taken advantage of. My entire body ached. My ribs screamed. One of my eyes was swollen shut.

On a good note, I hadn’t been raped.

Yet.

I was thinking that being handcuffed to the bed in my underwear meant it wouldn’t stay that way for long.

I was not getting raped. I would die first.

I had to get out of there.

He wasn’t in my bedroom, but I wasn’t stupid enough to think he was gone.

The thump of a bass from my sound system in the living room told me he was still in the house. Somewhere. My instincts told me that too.

Men like that were unpredictable. Men who valued women little more than slaves and thought beating them was acceptable. Bullies. Just like the ones in high school. If you stood up to a bully, most of the time they moved onto weaker prey. They were cowards at the end of the day.

But there was a small percentage of those bullies who wouldn’t move on. Who refused to be bested, to become the weak one. So they bided their time, made it their mission to make you pay. So much so that it consumed their minds and they would do whatever it took to get their victory. With little thought to consequences.

Kevin obviously thought his victory was raping me, degrading me, showing me that he was in control, and then killing me. The consequences of that were a slow and painful death if my family ever found out.

So I guessed the killing me portion would go toward making sure I couldn’t point the finger at him, since none of my family knew about him. I had given him the ingredients to get away with murder. They wouldn’t be looking into my life if I turned up brutalized and dead.

They’d be looking into their own.

Into their history.

To a time when this had happened before. To my beautiful friend.

And that time it had been on the club. They’d assume that would be the case this time. And they’d be so blinded by hate that they’d most likely start a war. And there would be blood. On both sides.

Like before.

I would not let that happen.

I would not let any blood be spilled because of me. Not my family’s. Not my own.

Luckily, being a biker princess meant my bedroom may have been home to kick-ass furnishings, almost the entirety of Sephora’s makeup department, and some well-cared-for secondhand designer footwear, but it also held an arsenal that rivaled that of a small-town police station.

Though most of it wasn’t within reach since both of my hands were handcuffed above my head on my wrought-iron headboard. I craned my head upward, ignoring my battered body’s painful protest.

“Man, he used my own handcuffs? What a dick,” I whispered to myself.

I knew I only had a limited amount of time before Kevin came back from whatever he was doing, so I didn’t screw around. There was a gun taped underneath my bed on my left side, but I was handcuffed slightly to the right and I wouldn’t reach it.

The knife underneath my mattress on the right it was.

I shimmied awkwardly, my hands not giving much in the handcuffs. Mostly because I was an idiot and didn’t get the soft erotic kind. No, I had to go authentic.

Yes, I was aware that I needed a therapist to dissect that.

My body screamed at me as I moved, my ribs so painful I almost vomited.

I didn’t, of course. I was a Fletcher.

By birth, I was a Templar.

More importantly, I was Rosie.

I bit my lip as I tried to work my hands downward enough to reach my mattress. The swirl of my headboard that I’d thought so fucking artful was what hindered me, stopping at least six inches short of where I needed to be.

Frustrated tears streamed down my face.

“Fuck!” I hissed.

“Not trying to get away, are we, babe?” Kevin asked pleasantly.

My eyes snapped to him. He was in his underwear—boxer briefs. Scattered tattoos decorated his muscled body, the one I’d used to excuse all of his hideous behavior. Before he’d started hitting me, of course; no amount of muscles in the world could excuse that.

I focused on the gun dangling from his left hand as he walked toward me.

Sauntered.

Like he was trying to seduce me.

I had to get the gun from him if I had any hope of surviving.

“Get away?” I parroted as he approached the other side of the bed. “Of course I’m trying to get away, dipshit. The thought of you raping me would have me gnaw my own fucking hand off if I could reach it,” I hissed through my teeth.

I knew it wasn’t smart. Being docile, vulnerable, and weak would’ve been his preferred version of me. It definitely would’ve stopped him from backhanding me so hard that my head snapped back painfully against the iron of my headboard.

But I wasn’t docile. And I certainly wasn’t weak. And no way was I ever going to act like anyone’s preferred version of me. Especially not my would-be rapist and murderer.

As I recovered from the hit, he positioned himself on top of me, pressing against all my bruises so his face was inches from mine.

“You’re a fucking stupid bitch, you know that?” he rasped, his voice stinking of Jack.

My fucking Jack.

“You think because your brother is the president of some motorcycle club that you’re untouchable? You think you can act how you want? Talk to me like that without fucking consequences?”

The hand not holding the gun to my temple traveled down to squeeze my nipple roughly and painfully.

It wasn’t the pain that had me blinking back tears, it was the degradation of it all. The helplessness. He was victimizing me.

“You’re about to see consequences,” he whispered, his mouth at my neck. His hand continued downward, leaving trails of pain and disgust in its wake until he reached my panties.

He didn’t hesitate, ripping at them, his hands rough and painful as he groped me.

As they went inside.

Violated me.

It took every single ounce of my strength not to let my tears fall. Not to squeeze my eyes shut. Not to beg.

Instead, I met his stare, unblinking, unyielding, challenging.

“You’re going to die,” I croaked, my throat raw, my mind itching to escape the present, the horror of what he was doing. What he was going to do.

I’d witnessed it.

The women in my life going through stuff like this.

Laurie went through this.

Bex went through this.

Laurie died.

Bex survived.

I’d always been so angry at Laurie’s fate. Cursed every deity out there.

Now, as I was experiencing only the horrific appetizer of what she was exposed to, I was wondering who was luckier, Bex or Laurie.

Because as Kevin continued to violate me, my body was not my own anymore. The one sacred thing that was ours in this world was being trashed and tarnished. Not just my physical body but my mental one.

I wanted to be like those strong women survivors you read about, who talked about their body being taken but not their soul.

I’d always thought I’d be one of those women.

Always considered myself strong.

That was until the second his fingers went inside. Clutching at my soul and shredding it. Dirtying it. Showing me just how fucking vulnerable it was.

“You’re nothing,” he hissed in my ear, pressing down on me.

He moved and his hand wasn’t inside anymore. It was yanking at my panties, and I knew his intention.

“Fuck you,” I whispered.

Then I lifted my hips with a rush of adrenaline that gave me enough strength to buck him upward and backward, obviously not expecting the sudden fight.

I didn’t hesitate to kick at him, the heel of my bare foot hitting the bottom of his chin, the resulting crunch of bone sending waves of satisfaction shooting through my body.

Whether it was intentional or whether the shock and pain caused him to squeeze, Kevin fired the gun at the same time he grunted a wet, pained sound and tumbled off the side of the bed.

Luckily for me, the way his hand was positioned meant that the bullet went upward, into my ceiling, instead of horizontal, into my forehead.

I hoped that gunshot was enough to get the cavalry coming.

I was friendly with my neighbors, older couples and a young family. Not people who I’d want to endanger themselves by intervening. But they were also born and bred here, which meant they knew who to call.

No, not Ghostbusters.

Or the cops.

My heart clenched at that thought.

Luke.

In that little part of my brain that I pretended I couldn’t hear, I’d been thinking about him. Replaying all of our moments. Regretting being such a fucking coward. Thinking about choosing a man who would rape and kill me because I was trying to escape the man who would die for me.

That was not to be thought about.

Survival was top of the list at that juncture.

Kevin scrambled up, blood pouring from his mouth.

“Yu-ooh bitch,” he spluttered, blood and bits of his tongue he’d bitten off flying onto my white comforter.

He took a shaky step forward at the same time he lifted the gun. His eyes glinted with something that had me thinking my survival was not looking good right now.

“Yoo-u’re dead. You’re fucking—”

The gunshot cut him off.

Just not the one I was expecting. Not the one that splattered my own brains across my comforter.

Just his.

I blinked against the blood and brain matter covering me, against the ringing in my ears.

A figure rushed toward me, muffled shouts of concern addressed at me.

I expected the figure who’d just murdered a man to save me to be wearing a Sons of Templar cut.

I did not expect it to be wearing a uniform.

I did not expect it to be Luke.

But that little part of me, that part that I had no choice but to listen to, she was more relieved than anything else in the world.

He’d just killed someone for me.

He’d just ruined his fucking life for me.

He wasn’t clean anymore.

We’d be tainted together.

There might’ve been a small chance for us now that we were both sinners.

So why didn’t it feel better?

Luke

The gunshot had paused everything and also sped it all up. Not the one that came from his gun but the one before that. That had come from Rosie’s.

As she’d killed a man right in front of him.

As she’d killed a man for her family.

Put a mark on her soul for them because, in her mind, she had no other choice.

He hated her a little in that moment, for chipping off another piece of herself, amassing more demons for her to fight against, sacrificing part of her peace so her family could have justice.

Revenge.

He hated her a little, but he’d never loved her more.

And that made him hate himself.

Because he didn’t feel disgust watching her murder someone. At her doing it because she knew he wouldn’t arrest her.

That was Rosie.

She would never sit around and wait for someone to solve things for her. Save people for her.

She’d save everyone. Even if it killed her. Wouldn’t blink.

She was the strongest person in that club. She was that club.

He’d known it all along, of course. Just hadn’t admitted it to himself. Hadn’t let himself. Had some warped fucking idea that he’d save her from it.

His version of saving her was her version of him fucking destroying her.

He saw that now. In her eyes after she’d killed that man. He was a despicable human. Luke knew that. Rosie would never end someone’s life if they had even a shred of humanity lingering in their soul.

That didn’t make it right.

Not Luke’s version of right, at least.

But Rosie’s was different.

Didn’t mean it was wrong either.

He saw it all, all his fucking mistakes in that lingering moment that paused after that gunshot. Then it sped up. And he found himself in his cruiser, driving away.

Like his father had that day.

For different reasons, perhaps.

But he got it now. Why his father did it.

And fuck if he wasn’t furious at himself for punishing his father too.

He’d driven around. Not to the station, though he fucking itched to walk in there, hand in his gun and badge and be done with it all. Those hours were a blur of running through the years, inspecting how majorly he’d fucked up while believing he was doing the right thing.

Believing that trying to end the Sons of Templar was somehow a noble cause.

And maybe it had been. At the start, when they were running guns, when there were dead bodies littering the battle lines of their war. When Laurie was murdered.

When he’d had to sit in front of two innocent people and tell them they’re even more innocent only fucking child had been brutalized and then murdered. Because of no other crime but loving the wrong person.

But even then, his cause, his noble fucking cause, had poisoned into a vendetta.

And when the club started going legit, when they started learning from their mistakes, when they started to try and live their version of a normal life, that’s when he should’ve stopped.

Should’ve shrugged off his hate, buried his hypocritical self-righteousness and inspected his own mistakes. Tried to learn from them.

But he didn’t.

Somehow along the way, he’d become worse than the men he’d considered criminals.

“Fuck!” he roared, slamming his hands on his steering wheel.

He’d been driving around like a coward for all these hours because he didn’t know where to go.

He still hadn’t learned from his fucking mistakes.

It was like that day when he was a kid all over again, his dad driving the cruiser away, abandoning the girl.

But this time he had control. This time he didn’t have to abandon the girl.

He couldn’t save her, because she didn’t need saved. But he could fight for her. And fucking save himself.

* * *

He hurried across town to her house, though he didn’t exactly know why. He’d waited thirty years for this; what was a few more minutes?

But when you’d waited thirty years, a few minutes was everything.

Life and death, as it turned out.

He folded out of his cruiser, not quickly, but not casual either. His gait was purposeful, bordering on impatient. He knew then that it would likely be one of the last times he climbed out of that cruiser.

His only regret was that he hadn’t done this sooner.

All thoughts of firsts and lasts went out the proverbial window when he was halfway up Rosie’s path.

When a gunshot filled the air.

A muted gunshot.

Coming from inside Rosie’s house.

He didn’t think, didn’t hesitate, just reacted. His piece was off his hip in moments. He kicked Rosie’s door down, not thinking, not caring about the fact that he could get plugged with bullets crashing in.

He didn’t. Which meant it was coming from farther back in her house.

Her bedroom.

He hadn’t hesitated when he’d heard the shot, but he did freeze for a moment once he got into the doorway of Rosie’s bedroom.

When he glimpsed Rosie cuffed to the bed. Bruised. Battered. Almost naked.

Even his heart froze witnessing that.

Then it didn’t.

Then he found the justice that he’d been serving wrong his whole life.

He found justice in revenge. In murder.

It wasn’t as hard as he thought it’d be. It wasn’t hard at all. In fact, breathing was a trifle fucking harder as he stomped over the dead body to the bed.

The bed where a broken Rosie lay.

She blinked at him—one eye only, the other swollen shut.

It took everything Luke had not to turn around and empty his clip into the half-headless body behind him. Rage, white hot, burned through his body, at a rate he had never before experienced.

“Luke?” a small voice croaked.

It was that small, quiet voice coming from the loudest and bravest women he knew that had him check that fury running through his veins.

It had him mask his flinch at seeing her ripped panties halfway down her thighs.

He tasted ash.

“Shhh, baby, you’re safe now,” he murmured, putting everything he had into gentling his voice.

In an action that was the hardest thing to do in his whole fucking life, he gently pulled up Rosie’s ripped panties, his body vibrating as he did so. He didn’t let himself think of that right now. He had more important things to worry about.

The most important thing.

Rosie.

First he shrugged off his jacket and covered her, cataloguing every inch of her bruises, feeling the blows in his own body.

Then he used his universal key to unlock her.

He caught her arms as they collapsed, rubbing her red and raw wrists as if he were rubbing the wings of a dove.

“He’s dead,” Rosie said, her voice disembodied. Empty.

Luke broke at that point, pulling Rosie into his arms, gathering her up.

“He’s dead,” he whispered.

And then she clutched his shirt and sobbed.

And Luke vowed to make sure for the rest of his life that she would never have a reason to sob like that again. That nothing would break her again. That he’d shield her from everything and anything.

Rosie

Luke got rid of the body.

Cleaned up the blood.

Cleaned up my mess.

Cleaned me up.

That was after he lost the battle taking me to a hospital.

But he won another one.

A big one.

The fight that my broken and Fucked-Up soul tried to wage in the wake of the shooting. After he’d killed for me, came to my bedside, demanded I be taken to a hospital.

After that, he’d sighed, glared, swore, but respected my wishes.

He stroked my hair, so soft and tender that it somehow hurt more than any of the hate-filled blows.

“I’ll fix you up,” he lied, like such a thing was possible. “Your first aid kit in the bathroom?”

Most people weren’t prepared enough to have comprehensive first aid kits. That was only in the movies. But then again, most people weren’t me.

So that meant I had implements to treat everything up to a bullet wound in my bathroom.

I nodded.

He leaned forward and kissed my head. I closed my eyes to hide the tears that welled up at the gesture.

Then I watched him stand, eye me for the longest moment, turn, step over the dead body beside my bed and walk toward my bathroom.

The way he did that, stepped over that body without a glance, while wearing his uniform, something about that hit me. Sent me plummeting back to reality.

“You should go,” I blurted, awkwardly and painfully getting up.

Luke didn’t hesitate in turning and glaring at me. “No. You’re not doin’ this shit,” he growled.

I frowned. “What shit, Luke? I’m doing you a favor. I’m not going to make you do this, break more laws for me tonight. I can’t.” I choked out the last two words. “I’ve got people, family more accustomed to dumping dead bodies where people like the law can’t find them. That’s their life, for better or for worse. They’re used to bloodstains. I’m not letting you become used to them too. Not for me.”

He stepped forward purposefully, stopping at the edge of the pool of blood originating from Kevin’s head. “Clue in, Rosie. I’m plannin’ on doing everything for you. Anything,” he declared. “I’ve got a lot of time to make up for. A lot of mistakes to make up for.”

I fought against the impact those words had, almost pushing me off my feet. But I had to fight.

Not for me.

For him.

“See, I think you’ve got some image of me, some little fucking made-up version of Rosie in your mind. The sweet girl who lost the genetic lottery and was raised by wolves. The little princess who you’ve now noticed needs saving and have taken the job of doing so.” I pointed my gun to the body on the floor. “In case you haven’t noticed, princesses don’t murder men right in front of the police officer they just happen to….” I caught myself before I said “they just happen to love.” Then I continued, like the stutter in my speech and the hole in my shield hadn’t been revealed. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a wolf too. And I’m not ashamed of that. I’ve never been ashamed of who I am. Until you look at me like that. And despite how much I love my family, how I’ve learned to love myself, this little evil, fucked-up part of me hates all of that. Everything that makes me me, because that’s exactly what stops you wanting me. And that fills me with so much self-loathing I can’t even breathe around it. Around you.”

His face contorted in pain at my words. Real pain, like I’d taken the broken edges of myself, made them tangible and sliced through his chest with them.

“Rosie. I—”

I held up my hand, both to silence him and to physically stop his advance. I needed the distance between us right then, nothing else holding me together but the empty ear that pressed against me with our separation.

“No,” I snapped. “I’m not done.” And I wasn’t. I was on a roll. It happened now and then when I was really excited or really pissed off. Or, as I was quickly discovering, when I was really fucking heartbroken.

“This Rosie, you’ve made her by taking the real me, warts and all, and smashing me into little pieces. And you’ve scooped up the things you like about me, the things that are convenient about me, glued them all together and made a little mosaic of me. The broken pieces that are unused are the things that are inconvenient to you. Things that don’t work for you. My little transgressions, both by purpose of identity and accident of biology.” I sucked in a painful breath. “You see, those things that you’ve left out of your little mosaic, left to be swept up and discarded? Those are the integral things that make me me. And despite what I want from you, despite the fact that I want—” I stuttered on the word I almost said. Everything. I wanted everything. I straightened my shoulders. “Despite the fact that I want something different than the situation we find ourselves in, I won’t break myself in order to make that happen. I won’t let you break me to do that either.”

It was a lie, that last part. He’d already broken me. At five years old, I was split in two with the love for exactly who I was and that ugly and secret yearning to be anybody else as long as it was someone Luke could see.

Luke waited a long time after I’d spoken the last word. Presumably for me to decide I wanted to say something else. Not that I could; I’d yanked out every single word from its hiding place in those soft parts of me and flung them at him like bullets.

The chamber was empty.

I watched him and came to the conclusion that he wasn’t just waiting. He was inspecting my words like he might the statement of a criminal, testing them for inauthenticity, to see if he could find the lie.

“You think I want to break you?” he said finally, voice clear and even, eyes granite.

I fought to mimic the blank look on his face. “No, I don’t think you want to.”

He continued to stare, mulling over my harsh words with lack of elaboration. “You may be right, Rosie,” he murmured, the coolness gone from his voice as vulnerability snaked in. “Despite me wanting to rip off my own arm before I let hurt come to you, before I hurt you myself. You’re right and you’re wrong. It’s not the things that are… inconvenient”—he frowned using my word, as if it tasted bitter—“about you that I want to discard. It’s the things about myself. Those things I want to rip out but can’t, because they’re like fucking barnacles clinging to the inside of me. I can’t fucking get them off.”

He stared at me, his gaze juxtaposing the desperation in his voice. “But I’m not the only one who wants to leave broken pieces at my feet. You’re making your own mosaic too, babe, no matter which way you look at it. You’re focusing on all the things that are part of you keeping us apart. But you’ve made your own version of me, out of the broken pieces you’ve chipped off. The ones that are too shiny, too much of a mirror to show you a little piece of reality. The reality that you’ve been using excuses and your love of your family to forsake your happiness.”

I stared at him. For a long time. Under normal circumstances, it would’ve been a long time; when I was dirtied, inside and out, beaten, and smelling the pungent aroma of death that circled around the room, originating from the body on the floor, it was a lifetime.

Maybe more than one of them.

Maybe it was all the lifetimes I could’ve had, that we could’ve had if we’d made different decisions, if we were different people.

But no matter how many times I changed my hair color or my wardrobe, I was always going to be the same person.

So was Luke.

And our decisions, like his to pull that trigger minutes before, they were as lasting as a scar. They were there in the flesh of our past, were obscuring the growth of something new for the future. Obscuring it altogether.

“My happiness?” I repeated. “And what would you know about that?”

Luke watched me, his face struggling with different emotions. By the way he held his chin, I knew he was frustrated, even beyond that, at the fact that we were standing there having that conversation while I was hurt. We were having that conversation before he could help me.

He couldn’t.

His face also showed something else. Tenderness, but something intense as well, a full glimpse at what he’d only hinted at through the years.

His feelings for me.

Perhaps his love for me.

The thing I’d wanted him to show my entire life. To acknowledge. You always think you want your dreams and fantasies to come true, but then when they enter the realm of reality, they’re tainted, blackened, and tarred by that reality.

It didn’t matter. I realized that. We could both want each other, but we couldn’t have each other.

He stepped forward, though he couldn’t completely, considering there was a dead body between us and all.

He frowned down at it for a beat, then stepped over it, without even blinking, so he could frame my battered and bloodied face in his hands.

“I’ll admit that I don’t know much about your happiness,” he rasped. “About being the reason for it. For making it. But I’m gonna learn, babe. I want to learn. I’ve wanted to learn my whole fuckin’ life, Rosie. I was just too fucked up.”

“I’m fucked up too,” I whispered.

He eyed me. “So let’s be fucked up together.” It was an invitation, that look, those words, the fact that he’d stepped over the body he’d created to get to me instead of stepping away from it to call it in.

It was that pivotal moment.

And I knew what I needed to do.

But I wasn’t strong enough to do it then. I was going to treat my broken and battered self to a taste of the fantasy.

“Okay,” I whispered.

He patched up all of my outward bruises, his face hard, eyes soft. His hands moving over me so lightly it was like they almost didn’t touch me at all. At the same time, his touch felt heavy, grounding, like without it I’d float away.

And I’d let him.

Do all of that.

Take care of me.

I didn’t rattle on about how I could do it, about feminism, about how strong I was, about my lineage and ability to handle such situations.

Because if I said any of those things, I would’ve lied.

I was done lying to Luke.

So I let him take care of me.

He didn’t say a word while he did so, maybe sensing that I couldn’t speak, that all of my energy was going toward trying to patch up my insides as well as my outsides. He didn’t demand answers as to how it happened, why. Didn’t order me to call it in. In fact, he very purposefully ripped off his badge and set it on my nightstand.

It was a gesture.

A big one.

Huge.

One I couldn’t do anything with, couldn’t even process.

That didn’t mean I didn’t stare at that shiny piece of metal lying against the lipsticks and body creams on my nightstand.

That didn’t mean I didn’t feel it stare back at me.

“Rosie?”

I jerked my head up.

Luke stood at the edge of my bed, white shirt stained with blood, hands stained with blood.

Soul stained with blood, a voice I didn’t recognize told me. Because of you.

I looked behind him. To where the dead body used to lay. To where a puddle of blood had stained my rug, seeped onto my polished hardwood floors.

The body was gone.

Same with the rug.

And the blood.

I wondered where he put him. Why he didn’t call it in. How much time had passed.

I didn’t ask any of those questions.

I met his eyes. “Have you ever killed someone before?” I asked, my voice flat.

He flinched, though I wasn’t sure if it was at my question or at the unfamiliar tenor of my voice. There was a long silence as he stared at me. Very long.

“No,” he said finally.

I hid my flinch.

“Neither had I,” I whispered. “Well, technically I have, I guess. But today was the first time up close and personal.” I laughed without humor. It was ugly and empty and I hated it. “Guess I popped both our cherries today.”

Luke’s stiff body moved, as if he couldn’t hold himself away anymore. He knelt at the bed. Then, not taking his eyes off me, he slowly moved his hands, making a point of showing me his intention, giving me the chance to stop him.

I didn’t.

He gently cupped my face. “I’ve got a lot of regrets in my life, Rosie,” he said. “A lot. Fair few of them involve the beautiful woman I’m lookin’ at right now.”

I flinched. And I didn’t hide it that time.

His brow narrowed. “Don’t you come to your own wrong conclusions hearin’ that,” he ordered. “None of them are because of you,” he said firmly. “They’re ’cause of me. ’Cause of the wrong things I did, the right things I failed to do. ’Cause of my fuckin’ archaic views of what constituted right and wrong. Of all the things I regret in this life, pulling that trigger will never be one. Never.” He pulled my head slightly toward him. “You’re not gonna try and put it on you, tell yourself the fault lies with you for what I did. Because that’s bullshit. There are some good things I’ve done in my life, and I hate to say there’s not enough that involve you. I intend on changin’ that. But if there’s one truly good thing I did, it was murder that piece of shit. My conscience is clear on that count.”

I blinked at him. And then stared at him for a long time. There was a lot to process in that monologue. A lot of things I could’ve said. A lot of things I wanted to say.

“The blood,” I said instead, looking between us.

“What?” Luke followed my gaze, as if he’d forgotten we were both covered in it.

Him more so.

I tried not to dwell on that.

“Shit, yeah, okay.” He stared at me. “You gonna be able to get up, Rosie?”

I didn’t answer, ignoring the pain as I sat up, swinging my legs to touch the floor that stank of ammonia.

The room was crackling with the strength of his anger, his frustration. I glanced to his fist, which was eye level. It was clenched so hard the smooth tanned skin was whitening under the power with which he was restraining himself. From helping me up.

He wanted to. More than wanted to. I guessed every inch of him needed to. It was his job, after all, protecting those people who couldn’t help themselves.

But I could help myself. I had to.

He’d already lost enough protecting me.

“Rosie,” he choked out as I pushed to my feet, grimacing against the pain.

“I’m okay,” I whispered, focusing on the floor. Putting one foot in front of the other.

The second I stumbled, I was no longer on my feet. I was in his arms.

I didn’t even try and protest. I couldn’t. Shame washed over me. Not at needing help, but at the warmth that spread through me from Luke’s tenderness. That sick little person inside my head telling me that this was what was needed to happen to get us to happen.

I needed to blacken his soul so he had no choice but to come down to the gutter with me.

He brushed my sticky hair from my face as he walked us into my bathroom. “You don’t have to be,” he murmured.

I jerked my head up to meet his gaze. “Have to what?”

He set me down next to the tub, keeping one hand on my hip to steady me, reaching over to start the shower with the other. He straightened, cupping my face carefully, avoiding the worst of the bruises. “Be okay,” he said. “Pretend you’re okay. Be strong. I already know how strong you are, baby. Spent my life learnin’ just how strong, so you don’t need to convince me of anything. Don’t need to protect me from it either. Know you live in a world where strength is part of the job description, but there’s no need for that with me, Rosie. You don’t have to do anything, be anything.” His hard jaw clenched even more. “’Specially after today. You don’t need to be fuckin’ okay.” His grip tightened, as if he momentarily forgot he needed to be handling me with care. “I’m not fuckin’ okay. That shit”—he jerked his head to my bedroom—“is gonna be burned on my brain for the rest of my life. So I’m gonna have to spend it reminding myself that it didn’t take you from this world. From me.”

I blinked at him. My body hurt. Like a motherfucker. My soul was ripped, bleeding too. But those words ruined it.

Everything. Me.

They were everything I wanted to hear. Everything I hoped for.

But too late.

He didn’t wait for me to speak, seemed to realize I couldn’t.

Luke stepped back.

“I’ll let you clean up,” he rasped.

“No,” I pleaded.

His eyes jerked upward.

“I need… I want…. I want you to clean up too. To clean me. And I can clean you.”

I said it like it was possible. Like all I needed was soap and water to wash away the filth he’d attached to his soul. Because of me.

Luke’s eyes stayed on me, his body jerking as he understood my meaning.

I expected a protest. For him to be the good guy. Tell me I was too vulnerable, that such a thing would be taking advantage.

For him to point out that great fucking elephant in the room. The one that had always been in the room. The one that stopped him, every day, every moment, from ever doing anything that would’ve had us right here. Together.

“Okay,” he murmured.

I flinched.

I’d expected him to be the good guy. But he wasn’t anymore. I’d made him into something else.

I hated myself for being so happy about it.

“Rosie?”

He cupped my cheek that was both hard and soft at the same time.

I blinked up at him. “Yeah?” I whispered.

Again, I expected him to ask me if I was sure, if I was okay. Again, the good guy Luke remained elusive.

“Take off my clothes,” he commanded, eyes shimmering.

I didn’t hesitate to comply. Maybe because I was scared that I’d only knocked out the good guy and he’d wake up at any moment. The sick, ugly part of me hoped he’d never wake up again the moment my shaking fingers exposed the column of his neck.

The other part of me, the part that had loved Luke for who he was, was sickened at the thought of what I’d done. What I’d made him do.

But that Rosie had been in charge for twenty years. She was tired. Weak. Vulnerable.

So the evil part of me continued to undo the buttons of his shirt.

He hissed out a breath when my nails raked at his washboard abs, scoring the taut skin.

I stared at it, his exposed torso, as his shirt fluttered to the ground. Luke’s smell, his aura, engulfed me, both sweet and sour at the same time.

Both a dream and a nightmare being lived out in real time.

I was here, with Luke. Alone. He was half-naked. He wanted to be here.

“Now you,” he growled.

I didn’t even have time to properly listen, let alone answer, before his hands went to the shirt that swamped me.

The steam from the shower swirled around me, beads of moisture erupting on my exposed skin as the tee mingled with Luke’s shirt on the ground.

He let out a harsh sound from between his teeth as his eyes went to my half-naked body.

Despite the heat in the room, I felt a chill, my nipples hardening from that and the raw, carnal look on Luke’s face.

“You’re beautiful, Rosie,” he said. That time, his gaze wasn’t on my breasts—which I’d always considered my best feature—but my eyes.

The way he said it, declared it, somehow told me that statement had nothing to do with my great rack. That it somehow had to do with whatever tarnished and broken soul I had left.

He kept his eyes on me as he lightly grasped my hands and brought them to his belt, undoing it using my fingers as puppets.

Flush warmed my cheeks as an uncertainty I didn’t recognize blew through me when I started to unbutton his jeans.

I wasn’t modest.

Far from it.

Physical nakedness was something I was completely and utterly comfortable with, something I didn’t blink an eye at.

But peeling off his clothes wasn’t just exposing his magnificent physical body. It was peeling off the clothes we wore over top of our souls every day. Exposing both of ourselves emotionally.

Stripping myself bare.

That, I was about to blink an eye at.

I wasn’t physically modest, but I was sure as fuck emotionally modest.

And I was terrified.

Somehow the most terrified I’d been in this whole twenty-four hours.

Because maybe violence and death and pain were all familiar. Somehow comfortable. But showing myself, utterly and completely, to the man I’d been trying to hide my truth from, that was one of the scariest things I’d done in my life.

I itched to flinch away. To cover myself and my soul.

But I kept looking into Luke’s eyes. Saw what he was giving me.

And I kept going.

Until he was completely and utterly naked right in front of me.

I stared at every inch of his chiseled and lean physique. The one I dreamed about and envisaged every time I had another man inside me.

And it was even better than imagination.

Because it was real.

“You’re beautiful,” I rasped, looking into his ocean eyes, communicating the same thing as he had to me. I didn’t just mean the V pointing to his amazing erect penis. Or the powerful thighs. Or the sculpted biceps.

No, it was that thing inside him. The soul that wasn’t all good, like I’d thought it was. The flecks of black that rippled through it somehow made it more than pure innocence and goodness could.

He reached out to trail across my collarbone and then downward, tracing down the side of my body until he reached my panties on my hip.

“Been dreaming of doin’ that for as long as I care to remember,” he whispered.

I swallowed the sandpaper of desire at my throat from not just his touch but from his admission.

That I wasn’t the only one battling this, thinking about this for years.

The desire that threatened to overwhelm me was polluted the second his finger hooked into the edge of my panties, intending to bring them down.

My hand was a blur as it moved to circle his wrist in a violent grip.

Even though I was strong, that movement in itself wouldn’t have stopped Luke. But the gesture did.

His hand stopped moving and his eyes locked on mine.

Filth settled over me as I remembered the last man who forced his way in there. The knowledge that my most private place wasn’t my own. I wasn’t my own gatekeeper anymore. I didn’t have control over who went inside my body.

I nearly collapsed under the weight of the memory. Of that realization.

There had never been a wider chasm of how dirty I was and how clean Luke was. Because I was now. Because of the choices I’d made in a man, in a life, I’d dirtied myself, inside and out.

Luke went granite as I spiraled and started to shake.

I waited for anger, fury, as I could taste it in the air. And even though I was used to anger and fury, I was terrified of the onslaught. I’d never survive it. I’d shatter in a thousand pieces if I had to face that.

So I braced to be shattered, and then he pulled me gently into his arms. Like he knew how close I was to breaking. Like he would never let that happen.

And I let him. I burrowed into the safety of his embrace.

“He didn’t r-rape me,” I stuttered, my voice weak and foreign.

Luke’s body was marble beneath me.

“Just so you know. He didn’t rape me,” I repeated, either to Luke or to myself, I wasn’t quite sure. “He didn’t quite… get there.”

Then my body, like my voice, started to shake.

He kissed my hair. “You’re okay, Rosie. I promise. You’re okay.” He stroked my back, his touch light. Then, carefully, he pulled me back just enough so our eyes met. “I know what he did made you feel like you’re not clean. Gave way to some fucked-up reasoning that it’s somehow your fault. I’m here to tell you, to promise you, that none of that shit is true,” he said. “I’m here to remind you that you’re beautiful and clean on the inside. Always have been. Always will be.”

He let go of me with one hand to open the shower door.

“I’m gonna get you clean on the outside first,” he said, walking me into the shower with my panties on.

The hot spray burst onto my chilled skin, shocking it numb for a second until Luke stood under the bulk of it, pulling me into his arms.

We stood like that for a while. I didn’t know how long.

Then he cleaned me.

On the outside, at least.

And that was the only place he could.

Because no matter how certain he’d sounded before, I wasn’t clean on the inside. Not after what happened. Not before, either. And before the story of us was concluded, I’d be tarnished more than ever.