Lynn

When I arrive home in mid-afternoon, Mom is sitting at the kitchen table, fully dressed and wearing shoes. The room reeks of her perfume, because she put on too much of it like she always does before going out. She always insisted I wear just as much of it too, because she's convinced there's no point putting it on otherwise as it just fades too fast. I never liked wearing perfume, it masks all the other scents. Like Scar's scent, which is still all over my skin although I haven't seen him for hours.

We spent the night at the house. I dozed off in his arms after we made love again—true, pure, lasting love, not the rough and passionate kind, which is great too — and afterwards I had the best sleep in years. I think he did too, because he wasn't grumpy at all this morning when he took me up to the ranch.

He wouldn't stay, but he gave me his phone number, so we can make more precise plans from now on. I planned to message him as soon as I got home to ask when we can be together again. All day, I felt like I was walking on clouds, and I still do. Something very heavy was weighing me down all these years, not even something I was carrying but more like a very heavy winter coat I wore year round. It's gone now, Scar removed it for me. Or more precisely, he gave me the strength to finally toss it off and live again.

"I thought we could go grocery shopping today," Mom says after I greet her cautiously.

She reacted with curt silence to my text that I couldn't make dinner yesterday and that I wouldn't be spending the night at home again. She also didn't reply to the one this morning when I told her I'll come home in the afternoon. I have no idea what kind of mood she's in.

"We're out of everything," she adds.

I hope my sigh of relief wasn’t too audible. I think she's in a normal mood.

"Sure, Mom, let me just shower and change and then we can go," I say and rush upstairs.

I'd much rather be setting up an early date with Scar, but my mom doesn't drive very well, and besides, she needs the car to get to the store and we only have the one I use to get to and from the ranch.

I also wanted to take a long bath before tonight's date with Scar, maybe curl my hair the way I used to every time I went out, but haven't for more or less the past twelve years. But this works too. I'll be able to buy some more makeup and maybe even a few new dresses.

"I'm ready," I say as I come down to the kitchen less than a half an hour later with my hair still wet. I'll set it later, when we get home. "Let's go."

"You're so chipper lately," Mom remarks as she gets up from the kitchen table.

She didn't say it, but I'm pretty sure I heard a, “How is that possible?" at the end of that sentence.

"Things are going well at the ranch," I say. But maybe I should stop keeping her in the dark about Scar.

"And I met a man," I add rather quietly, but she heard me well enough. She turns to me so sharply she loses balance in her high heels and sits back down in her chair with a thump.

I giggle at the sight of her reaction, which is straight out of some slapstick comedy. "Wow, Mom, are you alright?"

She smiles too. "Well, that was quite possibly the last thing I expected you to say. Come, sit down, tell me more."

She taps the table next to her, urging me to take a seat. "Who is he? Where did you meet him? I want to know everything."

There's a very wide smile on my face as I take a seat. "I didn't think you'd be this happy about the news, Mom."

She shrugs and keeps smiling. "Of course I'm happy. You need someone by your side, and you need to shake your fear of men."

We didn't discuss that part of my lingering affliction much over the years, mainly because it was too painful for both of us to talk about, so I didn't know she felt this strongly about it.

"He's not someone I just met. I met him a long time ago. He's the one who saved me from the men who abducted me. He came back to tell me…" I pause, realizing I probably shouldn't tell her exactly what Scar's news was. "To see how I was doing."

"That guy?" she says pensively, the expression on her face no longer happy or excited. Now it's just worried and dark. She doesn't say anything more, but I can see she's thinking about saying more. Thinking about saying things I probably don't want to hear.

"Yes, that guy. The one I owe my life to," I say.

"That's no reason to just jump into bed with him," she muses, and I have no idea how she can think I’d do that. Does she know me at all?

"That wasn't the reason," I counter. "As I already told you, we spent a lot of time together before I was abducted. We were friends, but I was kind of in love with him, and I think he was kind of in love with me too."

"What's kind of in love, Lynn?" she says with a tone that suggests I'm the most naive woman in the world. I get the feeling sometimes that this is how she perceives me, but I know it's probably just in my head, so I try to ignore it.

"It's like when you're friends with someone and then you start falling in love, but there's that period of time before you realize you're actually in love, as in when your heart already knows it but your mind doesn't yet," I say, my words not coming together the way I want them to. "It's hard to explain…"

"Oh, like when your hormones overtake your reason?" she says harshly.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I snap back, since I don't like her tone at all right now, and this time I'm not ready to ignore it and start convincing myself it's all just in my head.

She looks at me thoughtfully, frowning as though she's trying to decide how to continue this conversation.

"I don't think he's the right man for you," she finally says, clearly not willing to let me down easy. She's completely wrong. He's quite possibly the only man for me.

"He's the perfect man for me. He's the only one I wanted to kiss me in all this time for one thing," I say, oblivious to how the words are coming from my mouth, because they're coming from my heart. "And he's the one who rescued me, in case you forgot. So I don't think I have anything to worry about from him, and I don't know how you can think that I do."

She shakes her head and purses her lips. That's never a good sign. "I never said this to you, since you were intent on putting him on a pedestal, and I thought that maybe you needed to do that, that maybe you needed the idea of a knight in shining armor coming to your rescue, so you could get better after your ordeal. After all, you were always prone to daydreaming and such. But I think he was with the ones who abducted you, and probably just felt remorseful enough to save you, because clearly you did have some sort of friendship."

Some sort of friendship? We were in love. She thinks Scar abducted me? That's nonsense. Absolute nonsense. And I know that. I know it because the only reason he came to see me now was to tell me he helped kill all the men who tortured me. But I can't tell my mom that. In fact, I don't want to tell her anything more at all.

"Why can't you just be happy for me, Mom?" I snap and stand up. "I've barely lived these last twelve years, and now that I'm finally living again, you're trying to spoil it for me. I know you think I'm a naive, defenseless idiot who can't take care of herself at all, but you're wrong. I know my own mind, and I know he's a good man. I'm certain he cares about me very much and that he'd never hurt me. And it's enough that I know it. You don't have to know it too, you just have to take my word for it."

I was going to fly out of the room after I gave her this piece of my mind, but the expression on her face as I finish speaking is so puzzling I just stare at it.

"You can't take care of yourself, Lynn," she says after a few seconds of dead silence. Her face looks angry, but her voice is very calm and cool. "You need someone to guide you, and that someone has always been me."

"You're wrong, Mom," I say, shaking my head in disbelief that she just said that. "I can take care of myself just fine. I was just never given that choice, since you were always right there, insisting I take your hand and let you lead. It's been like that since I was a little girl, with all those beauty pageants and later when you wanted me to continue doing it. I've lived my whole life according to what you wanted from me. I appreciate all you've done for me, but I can take care of myself, and I don't need you to guide me. I don't need anyone to do that."

My voice is shaking by the time I finish speaking, and I know I'll burst into tears if she says just one more hurtful thing to me. So I bolt out of the kitchen, run straight to my room and plop down on my bed, trying not to start crying.

All I told her is true. I've known it for a long time and ignored it to keep the peace. This is the first time I've ever voiced it, ever even came close to it. It's pathetic to be doing it as a thirty-three-year-old woman, but here I am. It needed saying, and it's time I start living by those words too.

That calms me down enough to chase away the tears. I text Scar, asking him if he can pick me up soon, then call when I don't get a reply.

The house is quiet and I'm starting to feel guilty over the way I spoke to Mom. She sacrificed her life to take care of me. And for awhile that was absolutely necessary. I shouldn't have spoken to her like that.

I can't tonight, doe. Scar texts after he doesn't return my call.

I wait for a full five minutes for more to come, but it doesn't. I want to know why, I want to know when I'll see him again. I need to see him soon. But instead of asking that, I just text back, OK, pity, and add a smiley to the end, so he'll know I'm not too upset.

He doesn’t reply to that and after fifteen minutes of staring at my phone I finally toss it away from me to the edge of the bed, so I'll stop. He has a life. He's busy. I get that. But I also need him to hold me, need him to reassure me what my mom said about him isn't true. I already know it, but I'd still like him to say it.

Mom's walking down the hall outside. She stops by my door and knocks. "Come on, Lynn, let's go get that shopping done now."

She sounds happy and boisterous, the way she always does when trying to cheer me on and up. I guess she's sorry for the way she spoke to me too.

"OK, yeah, give me a second," I tell her.

That's how arguments at my house are handled. We ignore them and then forget about them. And I'm a pro at ignoring the things I don't want to see.

* * *

Scar

Hawk was nowhere to be found when I got back to Sanctuary this morning, and by the time Cross finally told me that he'd gone to do some hands-on inquiring about our latest prey's whereabouts, I'd pretty much given up on finding out where Reggie is today. Hawk could’ve called me so I could ride along, but that would cut into my time with Lynn, so it’s not as infuriating as it might’ve been a couple of weeks ago.

She's still a little skittish if I get too rough, but that's part of the fun by now, and I'm loving the chase. Not that I felt like getting rough with her last night after she said what she said about my face. She meant it. And it's hard to admit it now, in broad daylight, but that shit touched my heart the way nothing has in decades. I just wanted to make her feel good after that. Didn't know I was capable of it, never thought I'd enjoy it as much as I did.

What's pleasure without pain? Not as good as it could be, that's for sure. At least that's what I always believed. She taught me different last night, and I'm not sure exactly what to make of it. But I do know I want more of what only she can give me. Much more.

The rumbling of bikes returning snaps me out of my daydreams of Lynn. I do a lot of thinking about her when we're not together, all the time really, and I don't know what to make of that either. I'm prone to thinking about fucking while I'm not doing it, but before Lynn, I never daydreamed about doing it with any particular woman. It's odd, sounds kinda girly, but there it is, and I kinda enjoy thinking about her all the time.

I exit the garage where I've been working on my bike for the past two hours while waiting for Hawk. The choppers returning are kicking up a lot of dust, since it hasn't rained in ages—another reason for the fires that upset Lynn so much.

Hawk is the first one to reach me, just in time to stop me from regretting taking her to see the fire last night. I think she got my point by the end of the evening, but what's more surprising, I think I got hers too. Those damn wildfires really are the devil's work for some. I just never saw it that way so clearly, since I was too deep in doing the devil's work myself.

"Scar, have you been waiting for me?" Hawk asks mockingly as he dismounts in front of me.

"Cut the shit," I snap. "You got any news for me?"

"Easy now, where's the fire? Let me get settled first," he says, grinning at me. "Or are you in a hurry to go see your beauty queen? Don't worry. She'll wait for you if she's worth it."

The brothers who were with him have all dismounted by now and more than a few of them chuckle at his joke. Hawk's not the best judge of what he can say to who and in which situations, I've noticed that about him plenty of times before. It makes for some interesting conversations when he's interrogating people, and it's a good thing he's a big guy, who knows how to protect himself against the fallout that results from him running his mouth off. It also makes him a good intel getter, since he asks the questions others—even tough-as-nails bikers—would avoid asking straight out. But all that aside, he's just pissing me off right now.

"Alright, Hawk, that's enough of your shit. Just tell me what you found out then I'll let you get back to watching porn in your dark room," I counter and that earns me a bunch of chuckles from the others too.

"You never could take a joke," Hawk grumbles and starts walking towards the house. "Come with me."

"Did you find him?" I ask before we reach the front door, since I figure he's heading inside to find Cross and brief us both at the same time, but I can't wait that long.

"I don't know where the three Spawns are yet, and Cross ain't gonna be too happy about that," he says. "But I'm fairly certain Reaper is laying low with the Renegade Knights MC over in Santa Lucia. In fact, I'm almost 99.9 percent sure of it. I didn't see him when I visited them earlier, but those dumb fuckers don't know how to keep a secret and more than a few of them started whispering amongst each other like a bunch of schoolgirls when I asked if they knew where he was."

I stop dead and he halts too. "Santa Lucia as in the town an hour south of here?"

Hawk nods. "That very one. But don't go looking for him on your own. He’s under the Renegades’ protection, so you won't get him without starting shit with them. We’ll tell Cross about it. Maybe he can get him out for you," he says, but I'm already heading for my bike.

"At least take some backup, Scar," he calls after me.

"I don't need fucking backup to deal with my brother," I snap and keep on walking.

Lynn texts me as I'm mounting my bike. She wants to meet, but it ain't happening tonight. She calls just as I reach the front gate in the wall surrounding Sanctuary. So I stop aways beyond it and text her back to keep her calm. I do want to meet her, but this is important.

I'm not daydreaming about her anymore right now.

Right now, all I'm seeing is my brother's scared eyes as life leaves them. That's something I've daydreamed about for a lot longer than I've known Lynn. And tonight, it's finally gonna become reality.