“I love you, too,” he says. I look at him and smile. A smile so bright it chases away all the cold and all the dark thoughts.
“You do?”
“I do,” he says. “I shouldn’t. I know I shouldn’t. This is a dangerous life, Vi. More dangerous than you know, and I know you think you’ve seen a lot, but you don’t know the half of it. But there is something about you that keeps pulling me in. You’ve got heart, you’re giving everything you got to protect your friend and, when I saw you back there at the bar and the way you were so full of fucking fire as you were laying out your plan, I knew that you were someone special.”
I stop, and I turn, and I kiss him.
“I love you,” I say. Three brief words light me up and have me happy despite all the madness in my life.
He puts his arms around me and pulls me into an embrace, kissing me deep.
“I can’t help but love a woman like you, Vi,” he says. But there’s a layer of sadness beneath the warmth of his words. “But I can’t be with you, either.”
It hits me like a punch in the stomach and I freeze, staring at him in shock.
“What do you mean?” I barely say those words, my heart is in my throat, choking me with anguish.
“I’m trying to protect you, Violet. If we stayed together, your life wouldn’t be the same. This isn’t something you half-ass. Once you’re in, you're fucking in, and you do not understand the danger you’d be stepping in to. Hell, you don’t even have a full idea of the danger you’re in right now,” he says. His words are cold, bitter, they cut into me and shock my grief into the background.
“I don’t know the danger I’m in now? What the fuck do you mean by that?”
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is, if we stayed together, this good life that you’ve built for yourself here would fall apart. You’d lose it, and you’d probably end up in Lone Mesa, and probably end up resenting me for what happened to everything you’d built for yourself in Carbon Ridge. And neither of us wants that.”
“No,” I say. “I will not let you just talk your way around my questions. Why are you saying I don’t understand the danger I’m in right now?”
“Two men broke into your house the other night. Death’s Disciples. They were after you and Josie.”
I stop, stare at him, my fists clench. “What happened?”
“I killed them. Well, I got one with your kitchen knife, Snake got the other. You want to know where those bruises on my throat came from? Well, there’s your answer. The deeper you get into this life, the more you can expect shit like that to happen to you. That’s what I’m trying to protect you from, Vi.”
I hit him. Not a slap, but a punch, as hard as I can swing and square in his jaw. I am full of rage and disgust; at what my life has turned in to, and at the things I’ve had to compromise on due to having this man in my life.
“You murdered two men in my house while I — and my best friend’s eight-year-old daughter — slept upstairs and you didn’t fucking tell me about it? That isn’t protecting me — that’s just fucked up. So fucked up.”
Then I hit him again, because my first punch hardly seemed to phase him. This next punch doesn’t do much, either. Nothing except make his eyes flash and make me angrier at my inability to hurt him.
“This is what I’m talking about. This is why I didn’t want any fucking messy local entanglements, this is why I wanted to keep this shit strictly to business instead of letting myself feel something for you, no matter how fucking good it feels — because once you open the door to anything else, shit gets messy. Real fucking messy. And people get hurt. And here I am, risking my life — along with the lives of my brothers and the mission I’m on for the club — in some hasty, half-cocked plan because you can’t fucking think straight.”
I try to swing at him again, but he catches me by the wrist and I fall off balance and drop my ice cream cone. Just fucking great. Another thing this cold bastard has ruined.
“You’re right, Crash. You are so fucking right. Let’s bring this back just to business. It doesn’t fucking matter that I loved you — yes, that’s right, fucking past tense — we’re going back to our original deal. Because who the fuck am I to entertain the stupid fucking idea of loving a cold-hearted bastard like you? I’ll call Max, tell him to finish the repairs on your stupid fucking truck and have it ready so that, tomorrow morning, once we have my friend back, I never have to see you again. And, out of everything — even getting my best friend back — being free of you will be the thing that brings me the most happiness. I hate you, Crash. I hate you so fucking much.”
“Good. Glad that business is settled,” he says. Cold and even, like usual. He sounds like he isn’t even hurting, like he’s relieved that we’re finally back on our original terms instead of foolishly thinking we could love each other. “I will go round up the boys, finish getting prepared. Meet you back at the bar at nine, and then we can finally settle this shit between us, and I can be free of this fucking nightmare.”
With that, he leaves me. He gets back on his fucking bike and he leaves me standing on the street corner, with nothing to show for
