Rosie

Age Twenty-Five

I learned a lot from the men I grew up around. How to throw a punch. How to hack into a computer. How to pick locks, hotwire a car, load and shoot a gun. The basic bread and butter of outlaw life.

I also knew how to blow things up.

Not so much the bread and butter, but a handy skill.

Handy when the same gang that raped, tortured, and murdered my best friend then kidnapped, beat and almost killed my brother’s girlfriend. The woman I was certain would become my sister and the mother of my nieces and nephew.

When she was taken, the club lapsed back into that dark and colorless version of hell that haunted us. The one we thought we’d left behind in the past but the one that had been waiting, biding its time to strike again, when we didn’t expect it. And we didn’t. Cade didn’t.

I didn’t recognize my brother in the hours that Gwen was missing. He wasn’t the man who’d taught me how to ride two different kinds of bikes, who let me crawl into his bed for two months after we lost our father. Who screamed at my mother when she came back into our life after that loss, telling me my father had failed making me into a ‘woman.’

He wasn’t that unseen kind, caring, and selfless version of my brother.

Nor was he the man who’d crushed a man’s jaw when he’d heard him talking shit about me at a club party. Or the man who’d ordered a hit on the guy who took my virginity. Or even the man who had told me my death, or at the very least my exile, would come from a romance with the enemy,

He wasn’t that cold, calculating murderer who the outlaw and inlaw world feared and respected.

He was something different entirely.

Something that scared me almost as much as what was happening to Gwen in those hours that he was like that.

It terrified me, the thought that he might permanently be like that if we didn’t find Gwen in the way she’d been hours before: laughing, beautiful, happy. He’d be Bull. And that man’s loss was felt in all of our souls. I didn’t know how the club would survive something like that again. It would crush them.

So when we found her, badly beaten but still herself, we dodged a bullet. A big fucking one.

Cade had called Luke in the second she was missing.

That meant a lot of things for me. A lot of things I couldn’t focus on. I focused on what it meant for the club. It meant that any retaliation couldn’t come from them.

The law would be watching them closely. The law, on the other hand, would not be watching me at all. And it hurt for other reasons, but it was great for my current ones.

I sat and watched the last of the bikes pull into the Spiders’ clubhouse. The one I’d snuck into earlier and planted my homemade bomb in. I’d shooed out some women, most of whom were beaten, and all of whom were defeated. I promised them that I’d take care of them, get them away from this life for the price of their silence.

They all agreed.

It was only the guilty who were in there when my bomb exploded, killing each and every one of them.

I drove back to the club numbly, without any particular emotional response to being responsible for mass murder. Did it still count as murder when the men were scum?

I guessed it did.

Still, my conscience was clear.

My first destination when I pulled in was the bar. I didn’t really feel like I needed to escape my decision, but Jose Cuervo was as good of company as any.

“Proud of you.”

I glanced up at the gravelly voice, its owner the man who was the closest thing to a father I had left.

I poured him a glass. “What? For drinking this straight instead of swirling it in ‘liquid sugar and bullshit’?”

He laughed. “Well, that too.” He drained his glass and poured himself another. “The explosion at the Spiders’ compound. No survivors.”

I drained my own drink. “Well, looks like Lucifer’s gonna have himself some houseguests,” I muttered.

“Wasn’t any of my boys,” Steg continued.

“I think not, with the police watching you like hawks,” I said, feigning disinterest.

Steg’s wrinkled and tattooed hand closed over mine. “Was my girl.” His other hand went to my chin, moving my gaze from the chipped wood of the bar to his steely gaze. “You don’t wear a patch, babe. Even if you did, as president, I’d have a shit show tryin’ to control you.”

I grinned. “Of course.”

“But today you were more of a Son than anyone wearing a patch. Know no one’s gonna know. No one can know. Place we need you is right here, keeping our family together, not behind bars. So no one will know what you put on your soul tonight, what you did for us. I will. And your daddy will too. He’ll be proud, baby. Prouder than me, and that’s a tough fuckin’ feat.” He paused, and I took that moment to inwardly smile at my adopted father telling me my dead father was looking down—or up, depending on your view—at me, proud of mass murder.

And Steg wasn’t wrong.

“Takin’ lives, it’s a funny thing. At the time, when the blood is hot and the temper is hotter, it don’t seem like much. Fuck, it don’t seem like enough. But we cool down. We’re not meant to run that hot. It’s when we cool down that it gets to us. Even if we were doing the right thing.” He paused again. “Our version of the right, at least. Even the worst of souls answers to themselves for taking another. And you, my girl, are not even close to being the worst. Better than most. As better as I think one can get. So you don’t think it’ll get to you, but it will. I’m here when it does. For now, let’s get fucked up.”

I smiled shakily. “Best offer I’ve had all night.”

* * *

I opened the door and debated closing it again for two reasons. One, the sunlight was extremely offensive to my soul and my pounding head. Two, Luke was standing at my door.

In uniform.

Looking too fucking hot for his own good.

And mine.

Because I reasoned that I looked like one of those witches who ate people’s hearts in order to preserve my youth. And I hadn’t had my protein in a while.

I didn’t close the door. Because I was a masochist like that.

“Do you take to knocking on doors at dawn for fun, or has there been some sort of zombie incident you’re telling everyone about?” I groaned, blocking the sun with the back of my hand.

“It’s noon,” Luke said.

“Like I said, dawn,” I countered.

Luke didn’t crack a smile. “Can I come in?”

I dropped my hand. Blinked.

Luke had never asked to come into my house. Come to think of it, I wasn’t even sure Luke had knocked on my door.

But there he was.

And a cop, in uniform, asking to come inside the house with a grim expression meant bad things. Especially if the cop was Luke.

“Oh my God, is someone… has someone… has there been an accident?” I spluttered, my heart thundering as much as my head.

Luke’s face changed, gentled some. “Shit, no, Rosie. Everyone is okay.”

I sagged. “Okay.”

I was so overcome with relief that I actually stepped aside and let him walk in, passing by so close I could smell his aftershave and feel the warmth of his body enrich the air.

I held my breath and closed the door behind him.

He was already sitting on my vintage sofa when I made it to the living room. I knew he wouldn’t exactly fit in my environment, but I didn’t think he’d stick out so much. Neatly pressed uniform, smoothed hair, clean-shaven. Fucking beautiful. Against my chaos.

If I ever needed a photo of just how ridiculous my feelings were, I just needed to remember this. I sat gingerly on the armchair across from him, expecting him to engage in some kind of small talk.

“Spiders’ compound blew up last night,” he said, without pleasantries.

I did my best not to let the lack of… anything in his voice get to me. Nor the sick feeling curling in my stomach about this being the topic of conversation and me being the fucking criminal, the murderer.

“I’d say I’m sorry, but I’m not,” I said. “They’ve deserved something along the lines of a fiery death since Laurie died.”

It hurt, every cell in my body, saying that out loud. It was a year ago but it felt like a minute. I tried not to remember the way Luke held me that night. The way he saved me. Because if I did, then it was all over.

Like it wasn’t already.

Luke didn’t betray anything, didn’t make me think that my words had any kind of effect. “Scene is pretty much burning bone and rubble,” he said, voice flat. “Not much evidence to be found.”

“Bummer for you, dude,” I snapped, trying to keep my voice casual and cold like his.

Luke didn’t react, didn’t even blink. “I said not much. Didn’t say none.”

His grim, detached face caught me then, chilling me when paired with those words. “Well, isn’t that great? You might just find justice for the rapists and murderers yet,” I said, sarcasm concealing the fear in my tone.

Luke didn’t reply, just reached into his pocket and dangled a piece of chain from his thumb and forefinger.

I stilled, and then, stupidly, my hands instinctively went to my bare neck.

The necklace, in sloping script, read Rosie.

I had literally left my motherfucking name at the crime scene.

The thought filled me with cold dread, the image of life in a cold and dank prison cell. A life trapped.

But then something else filled me.

Gloveless, Luke was presenting evidence. Evidence he’d not bagged and tagged, as was procedure. Evidence he’d pocketed. Luke had, quite literally, taken my motherfucking name from the crime scene.

A crime in itself.

A big fucking crime.

He was grim-faced and silent as he handed it to me. Woodenly, I took it.

I fingered the metal in my hands, cold and way too light for the weight it represented. The silence lasted long. Too long. Uncomfortable, the still air grated against my skin, drilling into my bone with the truth of not what I’d done, but of what Luke had done for me.

“Luke,” I managed to choke out, not sure what I was going to say afterward.

He held up his hand, face still blank, empty. “Don’t say anything, Rosie.” He stood. I immediately stood as well. He ran his hand through his hair. “Just don’t fucking say anything, Rosie.”

Then he turned and went to leave.

I watched his back.

“I had to,” I whispered, my voice barely audible.

But he heard me, because he stopped. “I know,” he replied, voice soft. “And that’s the fucking tragedy of it all.”

And then he was gone.

* * *

Present Day

“You cut your hair,” Cade observed.

I flinched at the noise. I’d been staring out the window at the streets whizzing past, my mind, for once, empty.

“Yeah,” I said.

Cade had taken me back to a hotel and let me shower. He even had clothes for me. Well, the me he’d known before.

He didn’t say anything as I gave him a nod of thanks before retreating into the bathroom to slip back into the persona I’d left behind.

Someone, most likely Gwen, had packed a bag of cosmetics —I didn’t think Cade would have the forethought or knowledge to pack primer, concealer, and bronzer, let alone my entire makeup collection. I presumed she put together the outfit too.

The tee was meant to be a shirt, and she’d packed leather shorts to go with it, but it tumbled down my thighs, long enough to be a dress. I went with it. I’d changed. I couldn’t slip back into my old skin like nothing happened. I had to somehow repurpose it. Work with it. Starting with the dress was easy; it was the other stuff that wasn’t.

I slathered on makeup to hide my lack of sleep, the sallowness to my skin. But makeup could only do so much. Plus, I didn’t give a shit about it all.

My girl was in the hospital. Unconscious or not, she needed me there.

Cade hadn’t said a thing when I emerged, just directed me out the door and back into the truck. The hair comment was the first thing he said. Which was surprising, since I thought I would’ve been met with demands of where I’d been and a lot of yelling.

His stare was physical, even though I kept looking out the window.

“Your hair isn’t the only thing you’ve changed,” he murmured, a lot more beneath the words.

“No,” I agreed again.

I waited for it. The wave of anger that Cade was so well-known for. That the wayward and unpredictable Rosie was so well-known to be receiving of.

Nothing came.

There was pressure at my hand. I looked down at the sloping script ‘Isabella’ at the top of my brother’s large hand, jumping out from all the other ink there. He gave me a firm squeeze, silent support, silent acknowledgment of the fact that I wouldn’t talk right then.

I couldn’t.

I squeezed back.

“Whatever version of you you’ve become, I’m just happy to have my sister back,” he said quietly, once his hand left mine.

I didn’t reply.

Did he really have his sister back?

* * *

The room smelled of death. They’d tried to cover it up with all sorts of cleaning products, so strong it stung my nostrils, but you couldn’t cover up death. Not to the people who were used to the fragrance.

It froze me. Right in the doorway.

I never froze. Not in the face of gunshots, blood or violence. Or even death. All of that was the backdrop of our childhood.

Well, not never. Even never had its exceptions.

Once, I had.

Frozen completely and utterly. In a moment not unlike this, me, standing in a hospital room, watching a desperate man bend over a small, prone form in a hospital bed. The air stale and rancid with despair.

Death wrapped around me like a coat. Too hot, uncomfortable and scratching every inch of my skin.

It wasn’t my death.

It wasn’t even Lucy’s.

It was Laurie’s.

Six Years Earlier

I watched the grim reaper twitch, moving rapidly up and down. It would have been comical really. But standing here in this doorway, watching that grim reaper on Bull’s cut move with the force of his sobs, I didn’t think anything would be funny again.

Every part of me was glued to the door, unable to move into the room, unable to run out. I knew if I walked in there, I’d have to face it. The loss. The grief. The wretched and ugly reality lying in that bed, the remains of my beautiful and remarkable friend.

If I went back into the crowded and somber waiting room, maybe I could trick myself for a little longer. Convince myself that this was all some sick dream, and I’d wake up hungover on the sofa at the clubhouse to see Laurie and Bull walk in, hand in hand, smiling, the soft glow of true love enveloping them. I’d watch them, certain that something so pure, so perfect, was bulletproof.

That fantasy was ripped away from me with brutal quickness as the room and the death inside it beckoned me.

Something that pure, that beautiful, it was the opposite of bulletproof. Like a flower growing out of a crack in the sidewalk, it was beautiful, remarkable even. But it wasn’t supposed to be there, and eventually someone stepped on it.

Crushed it.

I continued to watch the grim reaper’s journey.

Bull’s mammoth form hid most of her. Laurie. It always had. He was like a massive jigsaw piece, and she was the tiny one that slotted in just so.

The only one who would.

And now she didn’t fit.

Because she wasn’t there.

Her body was. Broken and battered and ruined.

But her beautiful spirit was nowhere to be found. I would know. A room wouldn’t feel this horrible and cold if Laurie’s light was still there. The only sound, beyond the deafening roar of death and the silent scream of Bull’s sorrow, was a mechanical beeping informing the room that Laurie’s heart was still beating.

Just because a heart was beating didn’t mean someone was still alive.

They’d had her for twenty-four hours.

I tasted bile.

Laurie—the real Laurie, not what was being measured by that machine—died twenty-three hours and fifty-nine minutes before.

She was never coming back.

Agony ripped through my body as the thought took root in my broken heart. I was only standing underneath the weight of the pain because I didn’t move. I was perfectly poised between life and death. In my spot, Laurie wasn’t quite alive, but she wasn’t quite gone either.

Gentle hands at my waist shocked me from my silent suffering. My eyes met the gray gaze of my brother.

I flinched when I looked into those eyes and saw nothing. Every inch of Cade was stone, like a walking robot. Despite what people might think, there was never a time when Cade was emotionless. He had made an art of making it look that way, but I’d known him my whole life and knew better.

There was always something working. And he was as kind as he was tough. That kindness shone through only on rare occasions with people he adored.

Me, for example.

Laurie, for another.

Cade, like everyone else in the club, treated her differently than even me. She was like a sheep that had wandered into the lion’s den. Instead of harming her, those lions made it their mission not just to protect her, but to ensure the sheep never knew the brutality of the jungle.

Cade had been different with her. Had a connection. He’d loved her like the softer, more innocent sister he never had.

And he’d lost her.

I glanced to the moving reaper.

Cade was losing his brother too.

“Rosie, you shouldn’t be in here,” he said flatly.

I sucked in a ragged breath. “Where else should I be?” I whispered.

I didn’t know why I whispered; neither of the other two people in the room could hear us, both of them gone in different ways.

The girl formally known as my best friend had to be in the place reserved for all the best souls. The man sitting beside her broken body had forfeited his soul to the worst of all places.

Cade merely looked at me, that same empty expression hollowing out his features. “I don’t know, kid,” he whispered back. “I don’t know.”

He just stood there, unable to offer me the support he’d given me over the entirety of my life, unable to protect me.

He couldn’t protect me from the death in this room any more than he could protect me from the smoke from a fire.

For the first time in his life, Cade was helpless.

And heartbroken.

I reached out to squeeze his hand.

It was stone underneath my fingers.

He stared at me for a long moment.

“You should go. You don’t need to see this.”

It wasn’t a command. It wasn’t anything. Just a last-ditch attempt to save me from something.

He didn’t even wait for me to comply, just leaned in and touched his icy lips to my head, then strode toward the bed like there wasn’t something yanking at him, holding him in place. He waded through it, all the death and turmoil, until he stood at the center of it, hand on Bull’s shoulder.

“Brother,” he said.

There was something in his voice then. I got it now. Whatever strength he had left in him, he was saving for Bull, trying to use it as a life raft to stop him from drowning.

Bull didn’t move. He just continued to drown.

“Don’t fuckin’ touch me right now, Cade.”

I flinched again.

Bull was never exactly expressive, but the voice that came out of him wasn’t just empty.

It was hardly human.

It was like death itself was forming the words, with no personality, no individuality behind them.

Cade’s form was stiff. He heard it too. But he didn’t shy away from it. “This isn’t your fault,” he tried.

“The fuck it isn’t,” Bull snarled.

At least it was Bull. At least he wasn’t really gone, that disembodied and terrifying voice not replacing the low boom of the man I considered blood. But then, hearing the raw and exposed pain in his tone was even worse than hearing nothing at all.

“This shit”—he jerked his head toward the bed in a violent movement—“is all on me.”

A tear rolled down my cheek. His tone was full of certainty. Of sentencing. He had already thrown himself into the pit, taking on a blame that wasn’t his, owning up to a crime that he didn’t commit.

I nearly moved then, nearly braved the death and broken image of my best friend to comfort him, chase away the devil that licked at his soul.

“Bull,” Cade said, full of the fight that I was desperately trying to rouse in myself. The fight to save one member of our family so we didn’t have to dig two graves.

Bull’s head moved in a blur. I could see his profile, witness half of the grief etched in his face. It wasn’t even him. I barely recognized the man glaring at my brother.

“They fuckin’ raped her!” he bellowed.

I clapped my hand over my mouth to stifle the guttural moan of pain that stabbed me with his words.

Horror echoed through my skull.

“Repeatedly,” Bull continued, not finished torturing himself, or me. “She’s scared of mice,” he said on a low whisper, the words cutting with their broken edges. “Laurie’s fuckin’ terrified of tiny things.”

A single tear trailed down my cheek. He was right. She couldn’t stand bees. But she’d never kill one. Never hurt a living thing. She cried once when she accidently hit a rabbit driving home, calling herself a murderer.

That beautiful girl considered that murder.

And this was her fate?

How could the world be so cruel?

“She’s afraid of mice,” Bull repeated. “How do you think she felt when they were doing that to her?”

I choked on his words. On the images. Of the broken and bruised and burned parts of my best friend that I glimpsed lying in that hospital bed. Every glance was a knife, tearing away at my soul, carving away at my interior flesh.

“Yeah, that’s on me,” Bull said. “Girl who lived her life in sunshine, losing it in the blackest, ugliest depths of hell.”

My grief swallowed me as the hurt, the utter defeat in Bull’s voice ricocheted through the room.

The silence that followed meant that we could hear it.

Or couldn’t hear it.

The mechanical beeping stopped, signaling that even Laurie’s heart couldn’t take it anymore.

And that was it. I was no longer standing between life and death anymore.

Death was all around me.

I wanted to cry.

Scream.

Break down.

But most of all, I wanted revenge.

* * *

Flashing lights in my rearview mirror illuminated the inky blackness I’d been driving through.

“Fuck,” I cursed.

I considered putting my foot down. It felt heavy, ready to press down on the gas and speed away from the law. From everything.

Grief and anger may have warped my thoughts, but it didn’t take them away completely.

I slowed, pulling off the road and onto the shoulder. I had been so close, just outside of Amber’s limits, which meant I was going to be out of the watchful eye of anyone patrolling the place.

I had been thinking of the club, not the law.

I didn’t even attempt to hide the gun laying heavily on the passenger seat. I had a permit. I was also a Fletcher. No cop would fuck with me.

Not any day.

Not today of all days.

I stared forward, winding down my window as dirt crunched beneath the feet of the approaching officer.

I didn’t let myself think it was him.

Didn’t let myself hope.

I prayed it wasn’t.

God had been looking the other way for the past twenty-five hours, so he didn’t hear my prayer. A light illuminated my car and I squinted, accustomed to the darkness surrounding me, in both my exterior and interior worlds.

“Jesus, Rosie,” Luke snapped.

I glared up at him and saw his furious eyes were focused on the gun in my passenger seat.

“Get out of the car,” he ordered.

I clenched my hands on the steering wheel. “I haven’t broken any laws, wasn’t speeding. I’m not sure why you need me to do that, Officer.” I was horrified to notice that my voice was disembodied, mimicking that empty and emotionless tone that Bull had employed before he tore half the hospital room to the ground.

I flinched.

Before Laurie died.

My hands tightened to the point of pain. Or what I imagined might’ve been pain if I wasn’t focusing on the hot agony pulsing from my heart, pumping poison to every inch of me.

“Rosie, get out of the fucking car!” Luke bellowed.

The sound echoed over the deserted road, seeming to travel up to the heavens with its ferocity.

But the heavens were currently closed for business.

Hell, on the other hand, was open and here on earth.

I’d never, not in my entire life, heard Luke yell like that. Heard him inject so much fury into a sentence. It scared me enough to get out of the car. As soon as I did, Luke slammed the door shut so I was backed right up against the vehicle.

He boxed me in, eyes glowing like a wild animal’s under the illumination of his patrol car’s headlights.

“Tell me you’re not going to get yourself killed too,” he whispered.

I didn’t flinch at the mention of it. The shadow following me around, like a stalker, lying in wait, watching me, waiting for me to acknowledge him.

“Where I’m going is none of your concern,” I said, my voice still not my own.

The flat of his palm slammed down on the roof of my car in a fury I’d never seen.

From anyone.

Maybe because fury, even uncontrolled fury, wasn’t surprising when it came from someone like Cade.

Like Bull.

But from Luke, who normally locked down such emotions, who was all about calm and order, it seemed to shake the very foundations of the earth beneath us.

“I beg to fucking differ. You going out to your death is a great fucking concern,” he yelled.

He did it again. Mentioned the D word.

I had to acknowledge it now. Its ears had perked up, it had leaned forward, rancid breath at the back of my neck.

“It’s not my death I’m going out to meet,” I whispered, like if I said it low enough, maybe it wouldn’t hear me.

Luke stared at me, eyes still glowing in the light like a lion’s, but the fury retreating to its cage. “Rosie, you know I can’t let you do that.”

“You have to,” I choked. “You have to let me do it because there’s nothing else I can do! I’m bleeding. My family is bleeding. Everything is Fucked Up. I have to fix it.”

The hand that brutally slammed down on the roof of my car gently caressed my cheek. I didn’t even have it in me to feel anything at the contact. All of my feelings about Luke before that day seemed so far away, locked in another room of my mind.

“Baby, you can’t fix it,” he whispered, hurt rippling through his words.

“But I have to!” I screamed, rebelling against the still, the quiet. It could get me there. Death. I tried to escape him, tried to get back into my car. Luke’s caress became a restraint, stopping me from moving. “I have to!” I screamed again, pounding at his chest. “You need to let me go. I need to fix it. I need to….”

Despite my frantic attempts, it caught me. And I collapsed under the weight of it. Right into Luke’s chest, my hot cheek resting against the cool metal of his badge.

He stroked the top of my head, clutching me to him, rubbing my back.

“I’ve got you,” he murmured.

And he did. For who knew how long, he held me, right there on the side of the road, let me sob into his chest, weathered the first wave of my grief with me.

Stopped me from seeking out the men who had killed my friend.

Saved me from the same fate.

Because I would’ve died that night. Some intuitive part of me knew it when I’d started driving. But I was blind. Maybe I didn’t care.

Maybe I wanted to. In that horrible time between immediate and unexpected horror and lucidity at accepting that you have to continue to live despite it, I was touched with almost suicidal insanity.

Whatever it was, Luke saved me.

No one ever knew.

That night, Luke stopped the club from digging a second grave.

Ensured my broken heart was his forever.

And no one would ever know.

Present Day

This time, the doorway was different.

I didn’t have the luxury of falling back on anyone. Especially not Luke. He was done saving me.

I made sure of that.

But this time I had seen more. Death was a begrudging friend rather than a terrifying monster, snatching away everything I loved.

I was stronger now.

Or maybe there was less of me to break.

So I sucked in a breath and moved my feet forward, into the room that stank of death and pain.

It was familiar.

Keltan was leaned over the bed, murmuring quietly. Everything in me exhaled. He was murmuring not to himself, not to the world for taking something away.

But to someone else.

Lucy.

Her husky tones murmured back.

So I wasn’t getting another part of me chipped off today.

Thank fuck.

“I don’t care what kind of sweet nothings you’re murmuring,” I near-yelled, puncturing their private moment. I stomped into the room with my usual bravado, wearing my previous persona like a costume that someone else had stretched out. “This is my best friend, who almost died.” My breath hitched on that part, a mental stutter of the reality of it all. Though I managed to recover before anyone noticed. “I’m getting my own sweet nothings.”

I reached the bed, eyes flickering to Keltan, who was smirking at me. But like me, he was wearing a mask of his own. Stretching it over his face so the woman in that hospital bed didn’t see the horrible scar that the grip of death had left on him.

I focused on Lucy and congratulated myself for not visibly flinching. The bed almost swallowed her, sucking her into its fatal embrace.

Almost.

She’d always been pale, my best friend. But now her skin wasn’t that milky white tone that even Snow White couldn’t mimic. No, it was a sickly gray, almost translucent. Somehow, her hair managed to look like it was fresh out of a shampoo ad, midnight locks tumbling down her head, doing even more to emphasize the pallor of her skin.

Her eyes were too big, sunken in, filled with something that I hated having to see in them. Something like what Keltan was trying to hide, but worse.

I swallowed.

“Bitch, I go away for a hot minute and you get stabbed,” I snapped, going for jaunty blasé but failing as a tremor hit my voice.

I was horrified to see my hand was shaking as I snatched Lucy’s free palm, lying weakly atop the polyester of the hospital sheets.

Something more than the shadow of Hades flickered in her beautiful face. Something welcome. “Hot minute?” she snapped. “Try almost a year.”

I flinched inwardly again, seeing beyond the anger in her voice to the hurt that lingered beneath it.

I had been doing it for her.

No, who was I kidding? I’d been doing it for myself. I was selfish, running from my problems, deserted everyone who cared about me without a word.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Lucy punched me.

Though she’d probably have to get Keltan to do it, since she was otherwise engaged with recovering from a stab wound.

I flinched inwardly again.

My best friend had been stabbed.

And I wasn’t there.

“I needed a hiatus,” I said truthfully. Nice euphemism for cowardice.

“From what?” she demanded.

I blinked at her in her hospital bed. Then it wasn’t her—it was Laurie. Her corpse all shriveled up, decaying, empty eyes staring at me in horrifying focus. Another blink and it was Skid, half his head gone, blood all over my white dress. Then it was me, pulling the trigger, ending a life. More blood.

Then it was him. Pulling another trigger. Ending not just one person’s life but two. His own included.

I yanked myself out of my waking nightmare, hoping my panic didn’t show on my face. “Death,” I said, unable to utter anything else.

She scoured my face, seeming to see through everything I was masking it with. Best friends, after all, knew when a dress, guy or expression didn’t fit you.

“Looks like death brought you back,” she said finally, her eyes flickering to the heart monitor. “Or almost death.”

I looked at the monitor too. And for a terrifying second, the sound stopped, the emptiness signaling the finality of death. Thankfully, it was just another hallucination—or flashback? A sign I was really going crazy? Properly One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest crazy?

I was sane enough to regard my friend, tears filling my eyes at the realization of just how much I’d missed an integral part of me, how I’d almost lost another one. “No way would you die and leave me in this world without you,” I choked. “I’d kill you if you did that.”

She gave me a wonky grin. “Renewed motivation to stay breathing.”

I glanced from Lucy to the stoic man at her side, who’d been silent during the whole exchange. He didn’t look pissed that I’d hijacked his moment, nor impatient for me to leave. He seemed content enough to sit there in silence, grasping Lucy’s hand and listening to her. Watching her. With an intensity that told me he was terrified that if he let go, if he stopped watching, she’d float away.

Something jerked in the vicinity of my heart.

Another one bites the dust.

It wasn’t jealousy. It filled me with joy, watching the people I loved grasp onto love that didn’t seem real unless you witnessed it in person. But I was becoming an outcast in an ever-growing club, I was happy to live in my desolate wasteland if it meant my family were happy. But I couldn’t help but wish for my own version of it.

I shook myself. “No, I think you’ve got enough right there.” I jerked my head to Keltan with a smile.

It was a real one.

Lucy had been dancing around this hunky Kiwi for years. Even when I was drowning in my own heartbreak, I saw that twinkle in his eyes the second they met. Watched them tumble in and out of their own heartbreak. Watched my beautiful friend mask her pain, doing it almost as well as I did.

Now she didn’t have to. She’d stopped running from it. She could be still and happy.

She squeezed my hand. “I’ve got more than enough,” she whispered.

My eyes threatened to leak once more, the force of my absence hitting me. I was only just realizing how little I’d been living, breathing in this past year without the people who made me somewhat whole. A single tear trailed down my cheek and I snatched my hand from Lucy’s grasp to angrily swipe it away.

I couldn’t believe this was when I lost it and cried. After this entire year of horror, this was the moment.

I couldn’t let it linger or else I’d never stop. I’d break completely.

“God, what I am, a girl or something?” I said. “Too sappy. Plus, there’s an entire motorcycle club, your mom and dad, your sister, and other hot guys I don’t recognize but approve of in a big way all waiting for you,” I continued. I’d breezed past most of my worried family, sneaking away before I could face their wrath, or worse, their love and concern. “I better go out and do the whole ‘she’s alive’ thing,” I finished, mimicking Dr. Frankenstein and trying to lighten the heaviness surrounding me.

I fastened my mask firmly back on, made sure my costume wasn’t going to fall off again.

It couldn’t.

Lucy narrowed her eyes, like she’d seen my slip, seen the fucking colossal mess underneath it all.

“Just to be clear, you’re only going to the waiting room. No going,” she demanded.

I mentally pinched myself at the fear in her voice, the expectation of me disappearing again.

I beamed falsely. “Of course. I’ve already taken up your old room. Polly is living in some loft that I’m almost certain is a front for a cult,” I told her cheerfully.

She didn’t blink. Polly was the ultimate wild child. Different than me, and dangerous too. I was a little worried about my adopted sister. But there wasn’t much you could do with the wild ones. I knew that better than anyone.

“You’re moving here?” Lucy focused on that little gem.

I’d made the decision on a whim, like I did most of my decisions. But LA was always supposed to be where Lucy and I would go to live out our dreams. Ultimate bachelorettes with a great apartment and fabulous jobs and few worries.

But like most dreams, it hadn’t quite turned out that way. Lucy got hers, the one she didn’t even know she wanted.

Mine weren’t important.

“Well, not here exactly, because hospitals creep me out, no matter how hot the nurses are. Grays’s Anatomy was serious false advertising. But yeah, watch out, City of Angels. The Devil has arrived.” I winked, speaking the truth but disguising it with humor.

If only my best friend knew what I’d turned into. Even the men in the club would blanche. So I had to bury it all. Dig a grave and put this new version of myself in it. Try to resurrect the girl from before.

“Okay, so you’re not leaving,” she repeated, like she almost didn’t believe me.

I hated that too. Trust between girlfriends was almost as sacred as those naked photos you only showed them. I broke that.

“Nope. Not too far, at least. I’ll be back, I promise. See you never,” I said, trying to stick to old Rosie’s script.

Lucy’s face warmed to a smile I didn’t deserve. “Love you always.”

I gave her a smile and Keltan a wink before turning and purposefully walking out the door, as if I didn’t have a care in the world.

As if I wasn’t close to collapsing.

I couldn’t.

I still had a part to play to the entire crowd of people in the waiting room.

I wanted to see them all, despite the bitter taste in my mouth at seeing the stranger I turned into when I dove back into my previous life.

Running was the easy part. It was coming back that was the bitch. Nothing went away while you were hiding; everything stayed exactly preserved, like a fossilized demon of all your mistakes.

I just had to stop being such a coward.

It was a family reunion, not a firing squad.

So why did it feel so much like the latter?

Just before I made it to the waiting room, a hulking form rounded the corner and I froze.

There he was. The fossil I had craved just as much as I’d dreaded uncovering.

Luke.