It would be nice if life was like the movies. Not only would I always look fabulous, regardless of whatever dirty situation I’d come out of, but everything would turn out for the guy and the girl in the end. After a long and painful separation, they’d finally reunite, run into each other’s arms and forget all the differences, the suffering that kept them apart.

But that shit only happened in the movies.

Reunions like that weren’t glamorous, or passionate, or romantic. They were stiff, awkward and hurt more than a bullet through the chest.

Which I would’ve taken my chances with, me being in a hospital and all that. They could work with physical wounds.

Emotional ones were a shit show.

His presence hit me. Physically. Took the air right out of my lungs. And not in a good way.

“Rosie.” He didn’t say the word as much as breathed it. But not delicate and quiet. It was like he’d yanked it up from some visceral part of him, the five letters of my name cutting at his throat as they passed through it.

I couldn’t even manage the four letters of his at that point. I couldn’t manage any four-letter words. I knew what I did would have consequences. With all the stupid shit I did, I knew.

Mostly I didn’t care about the consequences. Or thought they were worth it.

But these consequences, staring me in the face in the form of a broken man I used to know, almost brought me to my knees. Which was saying something since I’d just stood at the bedside of my best friend who nearly died and managed to keep my shit together.

This man always knew how to get me undone, without even knowing he was doing it.

“Luke,” I said, my voice scratchy and low.

One glance at him and I knew he’d changed, but what he did the seconds after I spoke showed me just how much.

He grabbed my shoulders roughly, so slim darts of pain shot up from where his hands pressed into my skin. I didn’t cry out, despite it hurting and being surprised. I had good practice at keeping quiet when in pain. Who knew that what I’d learned from Venezuelan human traffickers would come in handy with the gentle and kind cop I used to know?

He slammed me roughly against the wall, boxing me in with his body.

“Where. The. Fuck. Have. You. Been?” he clipped, each word as physical as his previous grip on my shoulders.

I stared into his blue eyes. The ones that used to be liquid and soft, inviting like a calm ocean in July. These weren’t those. I was looking at hard granite, the stuff that could crush you, that was colder than the wildest ocean in the middle of December.

There was a lot more different about him too. The way he got my attention physically, violently. Yeah, that was new. Even now, when he wasn’t even touching me, his hands resting on the wall beside my head, there was a pulse radiating around him. Similar to the one that hummed from Gage when I got close enough, which was rare.

It was rare because most people didn’t radiate on a level beyond normal. It was the level of murderers, men who walked through the valley of the shadow of death without anything anyone to protect them from evil. They faced it alone. And part of them still resided there.

I’d put Luke there. Me.

He used to wear his dirty-blond hair longer, mussed, boyish almost. It was clipped close to his face now, making the angles of his face harsher, sharper. Stubble darkened his jaw and ran down the cords of his neck that were pulsing with his obvious fury.

He wasn’t wearing a uniform, the absence of a shiny metal shield accusing me with its nonattendance. Instead, he was in all black, as if it was a poetic statement about his transition. Muscles that were subtly defined before now strained at his skin.

I swallowed roughly. “Around.” I was going for flippant, but it turned juvenile, pathetic.

“You’re fuckin’ shitting me,” he seethed. “You disappear, not a trace, not a fuckin’ word to anyone, no one knowing if you’re dead or fucking alive, and the best you can say is around?” He ended on a shout, his previous open palm turning into a fist before he slammed it against the wall above me.

I flinched, not at the violence but at who it was coming from.

“It’s not your business,” I said.

His eyes glittered with a danger I didn’t recognize. Or maybe I did, but I didn’t want to see it residing in him. “Oh, it’s my business. You’re my fuckin’ business. We both know that.”

He glanced around. He’d garnered a couple of concerned stares from nurses. A glimmer of something familiar flickered on his face, letting me exhale a little. Maybe he wasn’t truly gone.

He stepped back, sighing and running his hand through the hair that used to be there. Another shadow of before. “This isn’t the place. But we’re going to talk. You’re going to talk,” he rectified.

I stepped back from my spot in the corner. Nobody, not even the man I’d loved since I was five years old, put Rosie in the corner. I pasted on my most sarcastic ‘fuck you’ smile. “I can’t wait,” I shot back with all the courage I could muster.

I was going to turn on my heel and let him watch me walk away, but he beat me to it, giving me one hard glare before turning on his boot and leaving without a backward glance.

I gaped after him.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he was truly gone and only shadows remained.

I couldn’t chase shadows.

But I would.

Because I wouldn’t be Rosie if I wasn’t chasing the next big Fuck-Up.

Luke

He was sure that hospital, with its taunting smell of sterile death and unhurried pain, did something to her. He knew it. Because it did something to him, teased a memory from six years before upward, when he was watching Rosie from the shadows of the hallway of the hospital, standing half in Laurie’s doorway, halfway between two worlds.

One was her regular wild world that had horror and bloodshed peppered in, but somehow manageable, expected bloodshed. Something that came with the territory. Something that she never should’ve had to deal with, in a perfect world. But the world was far from perfect, and therefore she did deal. She did it fucking well. She decorated around the blood and death and violence and somehow made it glow, made it beautiful. To herself and surely as fuck to him.

Not that he could ever let that opinion show.

Especially not now.

Not when another world opened up like a hole in the ground, not only exposing Hell but sucking everyone in. Everyone who didn’t deserve to be there.

Laurie was the first. Rosie had been fighting the inevitable. She’d have to go in there, seeing Laurie, everything that had happened to that poor beautiful and innocent girl.

Luke had dealt with gore in his line of work. Even a small-town cop had to, at some point, but his small town more so thanks to the resident motorcycle gang. Regardless of the fact that they hid the majority of their bodies in shallow graves. He’d still peeled men off the road after motorcycle accidents, seen what remained of a human head after a bullet tore through the skull, turning the brains inside out.

He was as used to death and violence as a person could be.

But seeing what had happened to Laurie, the sheer cold and needless brutality inflicted on her, had threatened to empty his stomach. If there had been anything more but coffee in it, maybe it might’ve stained his shoes. But he’d been up for almost twenty-four hours looking for her, hoping for the best, but knowing the worst was inevitable.

He’d thought he’d been prepared. He’d thought he’d separated himself from the girl he’d grown up with, who’d taken in birds with broken wings and read to the people at the town hospice.

He’d been sorely fucking mistaken.

Cruelty was always hard to witness. To clean up after. It made it really fucking hard to keep faith in humanity when you could taste what humans did to each other.

His faith was hanging on by a fucking thread after that shit. And that thread was standing upright, dry-eyed in a doorway, watching the life seep out of one of her best friends.

So he’d had to leave, before she broke down. Because if she did, if he saw the strongest person he knew—including the men who considered themselves above everything—broke down, then he’d have no fucking faith left.

It was cowardice, pure and simple. Leaving her there when he'd known that she’d had to face the Devil himself. But he’d had no fucking choice when the Devil was family.

Six Years Earlier

Delivering news of the death of a loved one to the surviving family was hands down the worst part of the job. Death was fucking hard too, but the person, the corpse he observed after the fact, was no longer a person. No longer in pain or suffering. They were at whatever passed for peace. Whether it be some kind of afterlife or total fucking darkness—which was what Luke suspected was the case—they didn’t have to worry about the ills of the world, but the world sure as shit worried about them.

The people left behind had the death to cope with, to fight with. Not the one it happened to.

Luke couldn’t decide if watching strangers suffer was worse than those he knew. Not that he delivered news to many strangers, not in a town this small. Being strangers with someone was a luxury small-town cops were rarely afforded.

He found himself wishing he was telling strangers that their only child was brutally tortured, raped, and murdered instead of the two people who’d raised a beautiful, polite and kind daughter. They’d raised her that way because they were polite, kind, and all-around good people. Peter, her father, had come to Luke informally after Bull and Laurie had gotten together.

Not for Luke to arrest Bull for taking up with his barely legal daughter.

No, to tell Luke that it was okay.

“Now I know you have a certain opinion on those Templar boys,” Peter had said after Luke had invited him in for a beer. Peter had visited him at home because he was that kind of guy. He was good friends with Luke’s own father and would always rather greet both Luke and his father as the pals he considered them to be rather than the law enforcement officers they were.

“Men, sir,” he’d cut in quietly and respectfully. “They’re not teenagers playing rough and harmlessly with bikes. They’re men who get into trouble. Plenty of harmful trouble.” He didn’t want to sound like he was lecturing the man who’d ruffled his head at ten years old after he’d hit a home run at the baseball game his father hadn’t been at because of trouble with the Sons.

Peter took a swig of his beer, regarding the bottle thoughtfully as he did so. “This is a good brew. Light, sweet,” he said instead of answering Luke immediately.

Luke was impatient in the silence that followed but forced himself to wait until Peter said what he was going to say, to show him that respect.

His eyes met Luke’s. “I know your opinion of these boys.” He paused. “These men. And I’m not here to challenge that or say it isn’t founded. I have many concerns of my own, don’t you worry about that. A father’s natural state is concern, especially when they have a daughter. Especially when they have one like Laurie. We’ve always known since the start that she was different. Special in a way, like she got one less layer of skin than everyone else, the one that protected people from the world but that also obscures them from seeing the true beauty of that world. Now, instead of trying to force her to grow that cynical skin, educate her on the ugliness of this place, my Christine and I have tried to preserve that view. Make sure nothing happens to obscure it. And it just so happens that Laurie seems to attract people who want the same for her.”

Peter gave him a pointed look. “Know you’re one of those people, my friend. So I know it’ll be hard to hear this, and even harder to listen to what I ask, but I know you’ll respect me and Laurie enough to listen. Your first instinct is to go to that man, give him threats, ultimatums, anything to reconsider his gaze on my daughter. I will say that thought did cross my mind too. But then I focused on his gaze, the way he looked at her. Then I recognized it. He’s another one of those people. Maybe not like you—”

“Nothing like me,” Luke interrupted, unable to help himself.

Instead of looking angry at Luke’s words, Peter just nodded. “We don’t have to all be alike to see something that needs protecting and go about our job at protecting it. Way I see it, this is a different kind of protection than me or even you could offer. This is from the man who’s not only seen the true ugliness of the world but is willing to brave it to protect my daughter from it. You say and think what you will, but you know those men protect their kin, their women especially, with their lives. And as a father, knowing your daughter’s in the hands of someone who would do that, well it helps with the concern.” He drained his beer. “Never anything or anyone who’s gonna take it away, but it quells it some.”

He stood, and Luke stood too, placing his own beer on the coffee table in front of him.

Peter held out his hand. “I’m not asking you to agree here, just asking you to understand, let Laurie get another form of protection. Can’t hurt, can it?”

Looking back, Luke wished he’d done fucking anything other than take Peter’s hand in his and say, “No, guess not.”

But wishing didn’t do shit.

So there he was, across from the same man, years later, telling him the news that not only had Bull been unable to protect her from the world’s true ugliness, but that he was the reason for her having to not only see it but have it eat her alive. They’d been hopeful when he’d first told them she was missing, because they were hopeful people.

He’d never thought he’d be wishing to be peeling a wrecked corpse off the side of the road.

He did now.

Peter didn’t swear, yell, go for the gun that Luke knew he kept in a lockbox in his garage. Instead, he kissed his quietly sobbing wife on the head, pausing a moment to close his eyes and stay there, maybe dance with the notion that none of this was real. Then he let her go and focused his clear, dry gaze on Luke, who was having a hard time keeping his gaze anything but.

“The boy, how is he?” he asked.

Luke didn’t answer straightaway because he wasn’t quite sure if he was hearing him right. He couldn’t be hearing him right.

“The boy?” he repeated, voice rougher than he’d like.

Peter nodded. “Bull.”

Luke clenched his fists where they were lying atop his knees. Peter, the man who’d just learned that he’d never walk his daughter down the aisle, never be a grandfather, never see her smile again, was asking if the man responsible for this was okay?

At first, Luke didn’t trust himself to speak, so the silence between Peter’s words and his response was yawning and awkward. The only sound was Christine’s muffled sobs.

When Luke trusted himself enough to meet the grieving man’s eyes and not show an ounce of his own fury, he did so. It was fucking difficult, but he did so. “Yes, sir,” he said, his voice gratingly flat. “He has his men around him. His family.”

It cost Luke a lot to say that. But the price of comforting a good man who’d just lost his daughter was never going to be too high for Luke.

Peter nodded again, face entirely too lucid and yet too far away at the same time. He stood.

So did Luke.

He held out his hand.

Luke took it.

Peter looked him straight in the eye. “Thank you, son.”

It cost Luke every fucking thing to look back at him and say, “You’re welcome, sir.”

The man was thanking him. Him. Who’d failed in his most basic job of protecting the innocent, prosecuting the club before this could happen.

Just as much blame rested on Luke’s shoulders as it did Bull’s.

* * *

Luke barely remembered driving to the Sons of Templar compound. He vaguely recollected wondering about the sheer lack of bikes or signs of life as he pulled in. He hadn’t pondered on that for too long.

But he was completely lucid as he pulled out his gun and rested the barrel on the back of Cade’s head, who was sitting in front of the bar, one bottle of whisky in front of him.

He didn’t flinch.

Nor did he even turn.

“Expected you might come,” he said calmly, and clearly, despite the bottle being almost entirely empty. “Didn’t think you’d be using your weapon. My money was on the handcuffs.”

Luke’s grip tightened on his gun. “Don’t have anything to arrest you for. In the eyes of the law, you’re innocent.” He spat the word at him.

Cade turned, clearly not minding that when he did so, the barrel of the gun now rested comfortably between his eyes. He met Luke’s gaze with icy determination, a snatch of sorrow dancing in those cruel eyes, something that he didn’t try to disguise.

“And in your eyes, we’re not,” Cade said.

Luke tried not to let the sheer depth of Cade’s obvious suffering get to them. “My eyes, God’s eyes,” he gritted out.

Cade raised his brow. “After everything. After….” He was unable to continue for a moment, taking a long and unhurried swig from the whisky. “After what happened to Laurie, you think there’s a man up in the sky protecting the innocent, punishing the guilty?”

Luke’s hand danced on the trigger. “No, I don’t think there is. Which is where I come in.”

Cade gazed at him thoughtfully. “You gonna shoot me, then?” he asked calmly. “Thought that would go against your ironclad morals.”

“Nothing’s ironclad after what I saw today. After telling Peter and Christine that their little girl was never coming home.”

Cade flinched. Actually flinched.

Luke’s grip on the trigger softened.

Cade took another swallow. “Do it, then,” he invited. “Shoot me. I sure as fuck deserve it. We sure as fuck deserve it. We never would’ve laid a fucking hand on that girl. Each and every single one of us would’ve fucking died to prevent her from getting a goddamn hangnail. Wasn’t our hands, but that doesn’t mean the blame doesn’t lie firmly with us.”

Luke’s resolve flickered. He hadn’t consciously made the decision to come here. Nor had he intended on murdering a man in cold blood. Whether that man was a murderer or not, he didn’t think he’d have been able to do that. Then again, a human being was able to do anything and everything under the right circumstances, more so under the wrong ones.

He toyed with it. The idea of pulling the trigger, calling in that he’d come here to take a statement and that Fletcher had pulled his piece, self-defense. He wouldn’t be the first cop to do it. Despite the fact that Cade wasn’t even carrying. His gun was, for some reason, right at the other end of the bar.

Later, he wouldn’t like to admit just how close he’d come in that moment. How easy it would’ve been. How selfish such an act would’ve been. He also wouldn’t like to admit that one thing, one person stopped him.

The girl with wild hair and an equally wild heart. Though it may have been wild, that didn’t mean it wasn’t big, vulnerable, and already bleeding.

If Luke pulled that trigger, he’d be responsible for breaking that beautiful wild thing.

And he might’ve been able to live with murder, but he sure as fuck wouldn’t have been able to live with that.

So he lowered his gun.

Cade looked at him with surprise. And relief. Or maybe disappointment. Luke wasn’t sure which. He didn’t want to think too much on that either, because that would’ve meant that Cade was much more than the simple outlaw that Luke had pegged him as.

“No, that would be a disservice to Laurie’s memory,” he said. “That girl would’ve chosen that exact same fate if it meant no blood would’ve been spilled but her own. I want you to live with that knowledge. And the rest of that fucking horrific shit. You can barely deal with the knowledge of that, but imagine how Laurie felt living that.” Cade flinched again but Luke ignored it. “That’s more of a punishment than a bullet could ever be. Bullet for you is mercy, and you deserve none of that. Maybe this will make you see what your club is doin’. Killing. Not just people who chose this life, but people who were forced into it by their hearts.” Luke regarded him with contempt. “Maybe. But I expect not. I expect you’ll need a lot more blood. Not your own, of course. Maybe your family’s, maybe your sister’s, to make you see fucking sense. And then, like now, will be too fucking late.”

With Luke tasting the bile of even entertaining the idea of Rosie sharing a similar fate as Laurie, he lowered his gun and left.

He didn’t start shaking until he left the lot. He might’ve even broken down completely if he hadn’t seen Rosie’s car speeding past the lot and toward the outskirts of town.

The small glimpse of her face in the fading light told him she wasn’t heading for the outskirts of town.

She was heading for Hell.

And no way would he let her near there.

Not alone, at least.

* * *

Rosie

Present Day

I went to a bar. Straight from the hospital.

I knew it wasn’t the best coping mechanism, but I didn’t feel like shopping. My best friend was recovering from almost dying so I couldn’t exactly unload on her, and my family would likely excommunicate me if I went to them with the truth. Not the lies I hid behind after I’d survived my encounter with Luke.

The waiting room was full of everyone I loved, which meant they all descended on me.

Lucky snatched me into a fierce hug. “We’ve been worried sick,” he said into my hair, then pulled me back to inspect me. “Well, Cade’s been worried sick. I’ve just been pissed that you didn’t bring me and Becky along for the fun. We’re a boring old married couple now.” He pouted.

I rolled my eyes and looked to his beautiful wife. My beautiful friend. Somehow smiling and whole after she was shattered. She’d put herself back together, made friends with her demons.

I wish I could’ve done that.

“You blew up our car two days ago,” she said dryly.

Lucky huffed. “Because I was bored. And no one even blinked. Like we have one car bomb and suddenly, poof! It’s not even a big deal anymore.”

She grinned, her face lighting up as she did so, cupping Lucky’s cheek. “I know, babe. It’s not fair.”

My heart smiled. Or tried to.

“I’m sorry I didn’t make it to the wedding,” I said.

Becky focused on me, yanking me into a hug. “You should be fucking sorry,” she hissed. “I had the cashmere mafia planning my wedding. Not that I don’t love those babes, but they wanted me to spend five grand. On flowers.”

I laughed as she let me go. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to rescue you,” I said sincerely, sadness creeping into my tone.

She regarded me shrewdly. Not only did Bex not buy into bullshit, but she saw right through it all. Once you’d made it through the other side of Hell, you recognized the people only halfway there.

“I think you need a break from the rescuing,” she whispered, reaching out to squeeze my hand. “Sometimes even the kick-ass biker babe needs rescuing too.” She said it so low, even her eavesdropping husband couldn’t hear.

We shared a moment, both too long and too short before the rest of the family interrupted.

Steg yanked me into his chest, and I inhaled the smell of the man who had turned out to be my father when I lost mine.

He held me back, regarding me with shrewd, wrinkled eyes. He didn’t say anything for the longest time. I knew he was like Bex. He saw it too. But he wouldn’t say anything. He may have loved me like a daughter, but he wouldn’t rescue me. Knew he couldn’t. He was one of the ones who’d taught me how to rescue myself.

“’Spect there’s a story behind those eyes. Guessin’ it isn’t pretty,” he observed.

I blinked at him. “Is it ever?” I whispered.

He stroked my cheek. “No, baby. But you always will be. Despite the ugly that surrounds you. Best remember that.”

Then he let me go, not one to linger on the emotional shit. I silently thanked him for that.

He let his wife, the only mother I ever knew, descend upon me.

Unlike a mother, she didn’t cry or yank me into her arms, declaring how worried she’d been.

She put her hands on her hips, narrowing her blackened eyes at me.

“You took your time to turn up,” she said sharply.

“Had a long trip,” I replied.

“I don’t know how. Hell isn’t that far from LA,” she deadpanned.

I got it now, those lonely people you saw withering at the end of the bar, staring into a glass as if something could be found in there.

That was me, staring into my own, realizing I’d never felt more alone. And because I felt alone, empty, I had to fill it up with something.

I pushed the glass away. “Another.”

He complied.

And although I’d traveled from the hellish destination where I’d taken my demons for vacation, in that dark and dirty LA bar, it was like I was back there. I could’ve been anywhere.

But I was nowhere.

Maybe that was the idea.