My downstairs area was pulsating as I sat in the car, my panties wet from just the pure sex in Luke’s tone. As he got in beside me, I wanted to jump him right there, forget the rest of the other shit, my anger, our fucking heartbreak.

I just wanted him.

I was close, very fucking close to doing just that when he spoke.

“This isn’t your job, Rosie.”

I started the car, screeching away from the curb, seething in the lost moment, being deprived of sexual release.

“Well, whose job is it?” I snapped, hands tight against the steering wheel. “It’s not yours anymore. And even when it was, who was it deciding what constitutes right and wrong and how wrong is punished? And more aptly, how to get off fucking easy? Huh? Fat guys in expensive suits with bad hair and worse tans are sitting in their comfortable seats in their big white houses, controlling things. Controlling the law. How it’s enforced. Controlling what we think about the fucking world. What’s good and bad. I’ve seen bad. Experienced it. Felt it. I feel like I know better than those fat guys what constitutes punishment, so I disagree with you there. It is my job, much more than it ever was yours.”

“That’s what you’ve been doing?” he asked, clenching his hands against his knees, obviously in male frustration since I hadn’t let him drive my car. “Skulking around some of the most dangerous streets in America, asking for fucking trouble?”

“Well not just that. I also had a Stranger Things marathon. That show is the shit,” I replied. “Plus, I don’t go looking for trouble. I am trouble.”

“Yeah, I fucking knew that. Just didn’t think you were stupid.”

I glared at him. “And why am I stupid, Luke? Because I don’t know my place in the kitchen, in the nursery, minding the babies? Because I don’t let myself be weak just because I’m a chick? I think that’s reasonably damn smart. But I see from a man’s perspective, one who thinks the man’s job is to shield, protect, it could be perceived as stupid. Never mind that whole perspective being fucking stupid, not to mention utterly dated,” I shot back.

“Fuck, Rosie, this isn’t about whether I doubt your strength, or because you’re a woman. It’s because you’re my woman. Anyone, me included, going out there alone is putting their life in the hands of something that isn’t them. Of people who consider life to be worth less than their next fix, the patch they wear, the crime boss they answer to,” he seethed. “So no, this has not a fucking thing to do with the fact that you’re a woman. This has everything to do with the fact that you’re you. You’re precious. You’re fucking irreplaceable. So yeah, no matter how dated you think my notion is, when a man finds something irreplaceable and he has it in his hands, he does anything and everything to protect it.” He paused, anger filtering away like a deflated balloon. “I thought you would’ve realized that by now. After everything.”

There was something in his voice that had a similar effect on my own anger. It was a kind of hurt, a manly and brisk one, but hurt just the same.

I thought. Backward. Through everything, through every interaction, every sacrifice, every stolen moment.

He did it.

Everything.

For me.

To protect me.

And he might’ve succeeded.

But even he couldn’t protect me from myself.

“Luke,” I whispered.

But we were pulling up to a familiar apartment building. I hadn’t even realized we were this close and I was driving. Driving under the influence. There wasn’t a breath test for that one, though.

I was under the influence of Luke.

Of love. Otherwise known as fucking insanity.

* * *

“Okay, so let’s talk about this job,” I said, right after I’d sat down and Lucy had handed me a cocktail. She settled next to her husband, who immediately yanked her to his side, as close as she could possibly go.

I glanced to the purposeful space between Luke and me, ignored the strange and intense pain that came with that tiny space, and focused on Lucy.

“Job?” she repeated.

I nodded. “Your dutiful husband has offered me a job. Though I’m guessing it’s to placate me and I’ll likely be expected to sit behind a desk, look pretty, and do the bidding of various alpha males.”

Keltan stroked Lucy’s arm. “I look like I came down in the last shower?”

I shrugged. “Looks can be deceiving.”

“I wouldn’t offer you a job doing that shit, firstly because I know you’d refuse, and second, I suspect you’d suck at it,” he said, grinning.

“You’re not wrong,” I agreed. My employment career was almost as sordid as my relationship one. I barely stayed anywhere long enough to get to know my manager’s last name. Helping run Gwen and Amy’s store was my longest-running venture.

Legal, at least.

The Sons of Templar men may have promised to stay above the law. I made no such promises.

So that meant I was rarely idle and rarely hurting for money. I also liked shoes, expensive ones, and I had nosy relatives, so I needed the appearance of a job. Not that Wire didn’t already know about my various ventures—fuck, he was involved in half of them. Which was the reason why Cade didn’t know. Wire knew if my brother found out that he’d helped not just run a site on the deep web that worked like an outlaw version of eBay and Facebook merged into one, but helped create it, Cade would likely skin him alive.

But we weren’t under much risk of getting caught.

There was always risk. That’s where the fun was.

“What the fuck is this job, then?” Luke demanded.

I rolled my eyes.

Lucy smiled into her cocktail glass.

“Same job as you have… almost,” Keltan said.

I smiled. I liked the ‘almost’ part. He made it sound like the ‘almost’ was the badass part.

“We’ve become popular since we opened.”

“Four guesses why,” I muttered. “Biceps, abs, ass, face, in that order,” I continued.

Keltan grinned. “Whose?”

“Take your pick. That’s the point.”

Luke let out a low growl at that.

We all ignored it.

“Well, I’d like to think it’s because we’re fucking good at our jobs,” Keltan said.

I shrugged. “That too.”

“The demand is going beyond regular security shit. Which makes sense, since my guys have experience way beyond security. We’ve been getting a few bail skips. Family members of victims whose attackers have been let off on a technicality, frustrated with the police. These are off the record, of course, though the bail skips are legit.”

“Yep, I was right. Almost meant awesome.” I smiled at Luke, resisting the urge to poke out my tongue.

“Depending on your view, yeah, awesome,” Keltan agreed. “It’s not quite the same as seeking out crime lords on the street and pistol-whipping them, stabbing them so they can’t reproduce, but it’s along the same lines,” he continued. “And you’ll get paid.” He looked to a seething Luke. “And she’ll be a fuck of a lot safer. Monitored. You can ride out with her.” He paused. “If she lets you.”

“That’s not happening,” I countered at the same time Luke said, “Of course I fucking would.”

I sipped my cocktail with a frown. Almost didn’t just mean awesome. It meant babysitting.

“You’ve been lucky so far,” Keltan said, “not to be caught by the authorities. Despite the fact that you’re doing society a favor, the laws don’t like favors done by civilians. Especially when they highlight what a fucking farce law enforcement is. Can’t hurt to have people making sure you’re not arrested. Or killed.”

He was talking to both me and Luke.

“Am I missing something?” Lucy cut in, her eyes narrowed on me. “What the ever-loving fuck have you been doing that could get you killed?”

I shrugged. “Existing.”

She scowled. “And you didn’t even invite me.”

Keltan lost his easy demeanor pretty fucking quickly. “And she never fuckin’ will,” he growled.

Lucy poked her tongue out at him, and he yanked her into his embrace, as if to make sure she was real, as if the mere thought of her in danger changed the past so she didn’t survive that day on the sidewalk.

I glanced at Luke, who was intent on me with a similar look Keltan had.

Fear.

Pain.

“Okay,” I said immediately, hating to be causing that.

Luke blinked in surprise.

Keltan pulled back. “Really?”

I nodded. “It’ll be a step in the right direction to you equalizing your workforce. Feminism happened, you know.”

He smirked. “I’m aware.”

“And I’ll have to demand equal pay. Oprah says so. You have to listen to her.”

“Of course,” he agreed.

“And I make my own hours,” I continued.

Keltan smirked. “Wouldn’t dream of telling a Fletcher where to be and when.”

I smiled back. “Smart man.”

Luke leaned forward, likely with something to say. Likely with a lot of things to say.

Keltan’s eyes went to him. “How about we take a cigar?” he asked, kissing his wife and standing.

Luke frowned at me. “I don’t smoke fuckin’ cigars.”

“Bro, it’s gentleman speak for ‘let’s let the woman talk and let’s let me talk you off the ledge.’”

I resisted the urge to giggle.

Luke was far from giggling.

“You’re not to leave this fuckin’ house without me,” he declared.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I replied sweetly. Despite my sarcasm, I wouldn’t, actually. I was tired of fighting. Against I didn’t even know what anymore.

I was plain tired.

I just wanted Luke.

So I would stop with this shit.

He stared at me long and hard before he got up and followed Keltan.

Lucy didn’t waste any time crossing the space between us to sit right next to me, much closer than Luke.

“Bitch, you’ve been holding out on me,” she snapped. “Spill. Now.”

“Well, I was bored, so I decided to call a few LA friends, ask them who the dirtbags were, teach them some lessons,” I began.

She waved her hand dismissively. “Not that,” she said. “That’s just another day in your life. I’m not surprised. What I need is the goss on you and Luke. Now. No more evading, no more lying. Something’s going on. Something has been going on. For years. I respected your silence, didn’t like it, but I got it. Guessed you’d tell me when you were ready. But I almost died without knowing. You’re obliged to tell me.”

I raised my brow to conceal the stab of ice that mention of her almost death dipped into my heart. “You know you’re only allowed to use that card once,” I said. “Sure this is the time? Don’t want to wait until we fall in love with the same pair of shoes?”

Lucy gave me a look. “I’m sure.”

I thought it’d be hard to talk about something I’d kept so close to my heart all these years. That I wouldn’t be able to explain it properly, that there wouldn’t be enough words.

Two cocktails and a lot of tears—all Lucy’s—later, there were enough words. Too many maybe.

It was a weird thing keeping secrets from the women who were meant to know all of your secrets. It was an uncomfortable feeling, like a pebble stuck in your shoe. Unnatural. Hard to walk normally on.

Telling her was releasing that pebble from my soul.

“So now we’re… I don’t even know what. We can never really be, because I don’t want my family to kill him. Because I’m too scared of having to choose between the two things I love most in this world.” I sucked down the last of my drink. “Wow, I didn’t mean to dump all that on you, I’m sorry.”

Lucy glared in the face of my apology. “How many times, in the decades since we’ve known each other, have you whined to me about a guy, asked for my advice, bathed in happiness and heartbreak at the same time?” she asked.

I screwed up my nose. “Is this a trick question?”

“Yeah, that’s right, none,” she said, nodding. “So don’t rob me of one of my most important friend duties of talking you through a relationship. Being a shoulder. I might not give the best advice, and you don’t even have to listen to my advice, but I need you to let it out, Rosie. You’ve had enough of the silence, of being stubbornly determined that you’re going to do this alone, feel this alone, when you don’t have to. It’s written in our rulebook. We don’t let our girlfriends go through this alone.” She squeezed my hand. “You’re not alone.”

A single tear escaped. “I know,” I whispered. “And maybe that’s harder than being alone. I don’t know. I’m so fucked up right now. Even more than usual.”

The men chose that moment to walk back in, but Keltan and Lucy’s living room was large and open plan, which meant they were out of earshot, loitering by the kitchen, as if they sensed the lady powwow wasn’t over.

That didn’t stop my eyes from locking with Luke’s, finding home there.

Lucy smiled. “Despite popular opinion, babe, love doesn’t make you feel good all the time. Fuck, it doesn’t make you feel good most of the time. You’re handing another person your heart, you soul, your sanity.” She paused and raised her brow at me. “Not that you’ve got much left to give, but you’re giving that all to one person to look after. To treasure. And there’s pain that comes with that. And fear, constant fear. It doesn’t feel good to hand yourself off to someone else. It makes you more vulnerable. You just need to find that right person who treasures you enough to forsake themselves to take care of what you gave them, even on your worst days. Even when they don’t particularly like you, they should treasure you.” She paused, glancing up to her husband. “They’re rare, those men. Not everyone gets them. Definitely not enough women who deserve them. So don’t do the ones who are never going to have that a disservice by throwing it away because of fear. Because that love isn’t recyclable. He isn’t going to use it on another woman, just like you would never go through all the pain and suffering you’ve gone through for anyone but Luke. You’re it for each other. I know it. And you sure as shit know it, so quit screwing around.”

I blinked at her. “Wow,” I said. “You’ve gotten really deep since I’ve been gone.” I looked her up and down. “And bossy.”

She grinned. “Staring death in the face will do that to you.” She looked back to her husband again, her gaze like a magnet, never wavering from the thing that tethered it for too long. Keltan was already looking at her. “Staring life in the face will do that to you too.” With great effort, she moved her eyes back to me. “And you’ve looked at both of those things. Don’t go looking for the former anymore. We’ve had enough.”

I looked back to Luke, then back on our history. To all the separations and hurt and drama that came with love for my family. I was making it so much fucking harder than I needed to. Of course, I couldn’t realize that myself. Luke couldn’t even make me realize that. There were some jobs in life that only girlfriends, true soul mates, could do just right.

I didn’t know what to say. Mostly because there was nothing to say. I was getting educated.

And I didn’t have time to say anything.

“Rosie,” Luke called.

I snapped my head up.

He was crossing the distance to us, and he’d called my name obviously because he knew we were talking girl stuff and he wanted to warn me that he was coming into earshot. It was an old Luke gesture, coming from this stoic-faced, black-clad, ripped impostor.

“We’re going,” he declared, standing beside me and holding out his hand in invitation.

I looked at the hand, then to Lucy. She gave me a ‘what the fuck are you looking at me for?’ kind of look.

My eyes crept upward to the new Luke.

His face was still etched in granite, jaw covered by stubble, but his eyes had turned liquid.

Lucy’s words bounced around in my head.

I took his hand.

* * *

The drive back to my place was quiet. But not silent, despite the fact that neither of us said a word.

We didn’t need to. The tension in the air fizzled around and snapped at our consciousness in a way words couldn’t.

Luke was driving.

I hadn’t said a thing as he’d taken the keys from me, gently running his thumb over the top of my hand as he did so. As soon as he’d gotten onto the street, his hand had found my thigh and stayed there the whole time.

I didn’t move it.

He parked in the lot of my apartment building and neither of us moved, even though he’d turned off the car.

Then we did move.

I wasn’t sure which of us did it first. Maybe it was me.

But our lips and tongues and teeth were clashing together moments after we sat silent across from one other.

He was everywhere with that kiss. His hands tore through my hair, roughly and painfully, a continuation of that day at the offices. But this time it was private, just him and me, nothing else.

And I dove in, let that drown me. Until I really thought of him and me. The bodies, the pain, the fucking demons.

That night at my place. Kevin. His hands on me rough, like Luke’s. It didn’t matter that Luke’s rough was different, that it wasn’t from hate but from love. The two were so close, inches apart, that my brain didn’t know the difference. My heart might have, but that wasn’t in control right then.

I ripped my head back, meeting Luke’s dark stare.

“I can’t,” I choked out, fumbling with the door and almost falling out of it.

Then I ran. Not figuratively like before but really ran, sprinting away from Luke, from my own demons, from everything.

I flattened my back against the door to my apartment, breathing heavily.

I was safe. Alone.

But that felt more dangerous than ever.

Luke

Luke sucked in a breath.

Then another one.

He tried to calm himself. Swallow his anger.

“Fuck!” he roared, slamming his hands down on the steering wheel so hard the impact and vague pain reverberated up his arms.

It wasn’t new.

Pain.

It was his default those days. Pain at watching Keltan and Lucy and their easy happiness. Knowing that it would never be them, him and Rosie.

But then again, it wasn’t easy for Keltan at the start either.

Maybe that was the truth.

It wasn’t easy for anybody.

But they had periods of ease.

Fuck, he and Rosie hadn’t even had a fucking second.

He wished it was, that when she came back they could’ve come together, the absence clearing out every single ounce of pain that came before.

Every night, every fucking night since she’d been back, he’d had to drink himself into a near stupor just so he didn’t drive over there and claim her, like every part of him itched to. But he couldn’t. It wouldn’t work that way for them. He knew that. They weren’t like that.

They’d never be like that.

And it might’ve been painful. Almost unbearable, but he wouldn’t have it any other way.

These months, they’d been worse than having her out of the country. Because then he got to pretend that’s why they weren’t working it out. Now he couldn’t pretend. They couldn’t pretend.

He wasn’t surprised when Keltan told him what Rosie had been up to, but that didn’t mean he was impressed.

Especially when he found out Keltan had had Duke tailing her before he even sat Luke down.

“Okay, mate, before I say this, I want your word that you won’t break any furniture,” Keltan said, sitting down across from him.

Luke braced. “Fuck, is it Rosie? Is she—”

“No, bro, she’s not been kidnapped, blown up or shot at,” Keltan said immediately.

Luke sagged.

Keltan grinned. “Well, at least not lately,” he added.

Luke glared. It was his default these days. Go to work, glare at whatever idiot he was working for. He’d walked out on his empty-headed client the second she came onto him. Messily and fucking pathetically.

Keltan hadn’t blamed him, and he’d done exactly what he said he couldn’t. He fired the client.

There was blowback, but it barely affected business; if anything, it made them busier. Which, for Luke, was good. When he was idle, that’s when it was worse. So he took as many jobs as he could.

“But still, I need your word.”

Luke eyed his friend. He’d never really had friends before. There were the guys from the force, but it wasn’t real friendship. They had beers, talked about sports, whatever woman they’d fucked—them, not Luke, because he never talked about shit—nothing real. Nothing deeper. Maybe that was because Luke had known that he wasn’t where he belonged, with fucks who thought enforcing the law made them the adult equivalent of high school football stars. Meant they could use it to get women into bed and wield their power over others. Not that many of them went across the line, but they danced close to it.

He was looking for something bigger than that. And like Rosie said that day, something spectacular. Beyond normal. Outside the law.

He’d belonged there all along, but he’d just convinced himself that enforcing it was where he should’ve been.

“Fine,” Luke said.

“I’ve had Duke tailing Rosie,” he began.

Luke clenched his fists. “What the fuck?” he hissed.

“Remember the promise,” Keltan said. “I really like that chair.” He nodded to the one Luke was sitting in. “I’ve been hearing shit about someone causing trouble for the scum of LA. A woman.”

“For fuck’s sake, Rosie,” Luke cursed.

Keltan nodded. “Yeah, I kind of immediately thought of your little spitfire. Hence Duke tailing her.”

“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m telling you now,” Keltan said. “Now that I’m certain. You’ve got to play this carefully, brother.”

Luke glared. “What the fuck is she doing?” he demanded instead.

“Nothing out of character. Causing trouble for people who deserve it.”

“Fuck,” Luke cursed again. “You know where she’s gonna be tonight?”

“Not likely, but I’m thinking we should relieve Duke from his duty,” Keltan said.

“I’ll go,” Luke volunteered. “You don’t need to worry about this shit.”

“Oh, I disagree. When you go lumbering in there with the same anger and protectiveness that I’d have if the situation were reversed, she might just shoot you. Women are testy like that. You’re a good worker, better friend, so I’ll come, make sure you don’t get shot. Deal?”

Luke wanted to tell Keltan he was wrong, that this was his woman and he’d handle it and he’d be level-headed and Rosie wouldn’t shoot him.

Thing was, he wasn’t sure about any of those things, apart from Rosie being his woman.

But it was a fuck of a lot more complicated than that.

“Deal,” he said.

Before, he knew it wasn’t the right time to walk up to her door and claim her.

But it wasn’t before anymore.

So he pushed out of Rosie’s car, slamming the door shut, and headed for her apartment.

To claim his woman.

Fucking finally.