I nearly vomited at the thought that it would never happen again.
Gage would never be inside me again.
I knew Amy would make me face reality, that she’d try to help me heal, help me fight. She was that kind of woman. All of them connected to the club were.
Hence me avoiding them.
Ignoring all the calls and texts.
Until Friday came and so did a knock at the door.
I was going to ignore it, but it was purposeful and obviously not to be ignored. And I didn’t procrastinate. Because logical people didn’t do that.
My legs were dead weights descending the stairs.
I had barely opened the door before a small and surprisingly strong figure pushed through it. She was a flash of blush pink and a floral perfume that definitely smelled expensive.
“Wh… Gwen?” I stammered, looking back up as she glided up my stairs effortlessly in shoes I would’ve tumbled from on a flat surface.
“I’m getting us wineglasses. We need wineglasses,” she called over her shoulder, disappearing in the direction of the kitchen before I could tell her I didn’t have wineglasses.
Or wine.
And I couldn’t follow her and tell her that because a baby—yes, a live human baby—was thrust into my arms.
A beautiful and rather frustrated-looking—yet still crazily inhumanly put together—Amy stared at me. “Take him, would you please? He’s being a total asshole.”
I looked down at the baby in my arms, who was just as surprised as I was to be there. He was probably one of the most beautiful infants I’d ever seen, with striking large green eyes and a smattering of amber hair on his adorable little baby head.
Amy winked at me, and it was then I realized she’d been holding her baby in one hand and a bottle of wine in another. Like Gwen, she traipsed up my stairs in heels even higher than the woman before her, and a figure that was scientifically impossible given the age of the beautiful and placid baby who was happily toying with locks of my hair.
“You can’t call your own baby an asshole, Amy,” a soft voice called to her.
It belonged to Lily, who was holding an adorable baby and smiling at me in sympathy and apology before hustling in my door.
“Um, yes I can if he’s being one,” Amy said, stopping on the stairs and looking from the baby to Lily. “And he’s his father’s son. So he’s being an asshole. And he’ll grow up to be an asshole. But he’ll get his mother’s looks. And wits. So hopefully he’ll pull off being an asshole, like his father seems to do.” And then she disappeared at the top of the stairs.
“It’s easier if you just go along with it,” Lily said. “They mean well, really. Apart from when they call babies assholes.” She gave me another shy smile that lit up her almost violet eyes. The same eyes the quiet baby in her arms had.
And then she followed Amy up the stairs.
Mia was next. “Don’t worry, I didn’t bring the hellions,” she said, kissing me on the cheek. “I brought something better.” She held up two bags. “Processed sugars and complex carbohydrates!” And then Mia went up my stairs too.
Bex wasn’t smiling or holding anything like the rest of them. Her gaze was hard and a little intimidating.
“He’s doing absolutely fucking horrible, if that helps,” she said.
My stomach clenched and I squeezed the tiny human in my arms for some strength. “No, it doesn’t,” I whispered.
She nodded. “It never does.” She nodded to the stairs. “At least these mad bitches might serve as a distraction. Or at the very least a reminder that you’re not alone.”
And she climbed the stairs too.
I waited just in case anyone else decided to show up.
In case one person in particular decided to show up,
But his bike wasn’t sitting in the spot where no one was allowed to park. No, a cherry red BMW with a car seat was parked there, half on the curb and half off.
I stared at it for a long time. Then the small human in my arms started to fuss.
So I closed the door and climbed the stairs too.
“That’s it?” Gwen nearly spluttered her glass of wine from her mouth. “He doesn’t want marriage or kids?”
I chewed my lip, hoping for a small amount of pain to distract me from the massive hole in my heart.
It didn’t work.
“Um, yeah. Is that not enough?”
She nodded, then shook her head. “For normal men, maybe. And for normal women. Gage sure as shit isn’t a normal man. Like way off the spectrum.” She leaned forward and patted my hand. “In a good way, of course.”
“Or in a bad way,” Bex interjected.
“Which is, of course, absolutely good,” Amy put in.
“Great,” Mia said with a grin.
Lily just shook her head and smiled, mouthing, “Go with it.”
The hand patting my own moved to squeeze it. “And honey, you’re nowhere near normal,” Gwen continued, her voice warm. “That’s a good thing. The best. Because normal is boring. A construct. And not something men like ours live within. They tend to smash down constructs.”
“Or blow them up just because they’re bored,” Bex cut in.
Amy gave her a look. “But we got to toast marshmallows on the flaming remains. Plus Lucky bought you a kickass cherry-red Jeep to replace. Win-win.”
Bex shrugged.
I gaped.
“So unnormal and fabulous people don’t break up for normal reasons,” Gwen clarified.
“Not that this is a real breakup, honey,” Mia offered, her eyes soft.
My broken heart—which was a constant ache—sent a sharp burst of pain through my nerve endings. “Yes it is.”
She smiled and it was sad. “I know two things, babe. You put Chris Hemsworth in a movie, any movie, I’m watching it. And I know these men. Well, I know my man. And he’s beautiful and unique and a total fucking puzzle twenty-three hours and fifty seconds of the day.” Her smile warmed. “But he’s also of the same breed as all the men of that little club. The thing about these men? Once they find their unnormal and fabulous women, they aren’t going to let them go. Like ever.” Her eyes shimmered. “No matter what demons they’ve got clutching onto them.”
“Or what demons are clutching onto you,” Bex said, her voice scratchy.
My heart bled a lot for these kind women. I knew their histories, their tragedies. Bex’s was worse than most, from what I’d heard. And I knew it wasn’t the full story, but the bit I’d heard had tears stinging the backs of my eyes before I even knew her.
Now I knew her. Knew her connection to Gage that I hadn’t had the chance to learn about.
I knew all these women.
What they’d been through should’ve been enough to take away their ability to smile for life, or at least darken whatever happiness they would ever have. But it didn’t. My living room had never shone so bright, felt so warm, and it had nothing to do with the sun streaming in my windows.
“So,” Gwen said, jerking me out of my pity for them. They didn’t need pity. No way, no how. They’d made it through their darkness to find sunshine. “You and Gage can’t possibly be breaking up because of normal reasons like marriage and children. That just does not jive.”
“Plus,” Amy said, draining her glass and leaning forward to pour another, “like Mia said, these fuckers are all of a same breed. And they’re all about pounding their chests, pissing circles around us and telepathically tattooing their ownership on our foreheads.” She grinned at me. “We mere mortals might not be able to see it, but it’s like some kind of flashing sign to every alpha male in the vicinity.”
“That or the fact that our men can be scary as all hell when anyone with a dick looks at us the wrong way,” Mia interjected. “Zane damn near ripped the arms off a guy in the supermarket who was just asking me my opinion on what peppers he should buy. I mean seriously, peppers.”
Amy grinned at her. “Honey, he was not asking you about peppers.”
/>
Mia furrowed her brow. “How do you know? You weren’t even there. I could have the look of a pepper connoisseur, if you will. The Jamie Oliver of pepper choice.”
A chuckle almost escaped my mouth, taking me by surprise. I didn’t think I’d feel like smiling, let along laughing, for the longest time.
“Have you looked in a mirror lately?” Amy asked. “Because I’m sure the thing you see is not a pepper connoisseur. It’s a stone-cold MILF.”
“I’m not stone cold,” Mia argued. “I’m smokin’ hot, thank you very much. I’m married to stone cold.” Her face brightened. “Oh my God, that’s a wonderful new nickname. I’m getting Zane and I T-shirts and we’ll wear them to the supermarket.”
Amy rolled her eyes.
“Seriously, that would make a great TV show,” Mia continued, eyes dreamy. “Smokin’ Hot and Stone Cold put away another ruthless killer, plus bust a cockfighting syndicate.”
“I don’t think it’s called a cockfighting syndicate,” Lily said, eyes light.
Mia waved in dismissal. “Details. I’ll pay writers to do the boring research. I’ve got the million-dollar idea, plus the pretty face. I’ve got to give them something to do.”
“Technically I gave you the million-dollar idea,” Amy interjected.
Mia waved again. “More details. I’ll mention you in my Emmy acceptance speech.”
Amy narrowed her eyes. “I want 50 percent.”
Mia narrowed hers back. “Thirty.”
“Forty-five.”
“Thirty-two.”
And somehow, when I’d been so sure that heartbreak had physically severed the muscles necessary for me to smile, the corner of my mouth turned up.
It wasn’t much, but it was something.
And when you were dying from the inside out, not much was better than nothing. It was the only thing left to hold on to.
Sixteen
I woke up coughing.
Being strangled by the very air around me. The air inside my lungs. An invisible hand clutching at my throat.
At first, my sleep-addled mind thought it was a panic attack that had woken me up from a nightmare—something that happened rarely but enough for me to know that it would pass, as long as I realized it was my mind controlling my body’s processes and not my body itself failing. It wasn’t a surprise, since in the nights I had slept in the past week, I had woken up with that same strangling feeling.
But my eyes burned as I tried to blink away the last of my sleep, and a bitter and acrid smell filled my nostrils.
Smoke.
Smoke was filling my room, and I was coughing because it was entering my lungs and I couldn’t breathe through it.
My body worked for me while my mind tried to grasp the reality that my apartment was on fire. Panic clutched at my chest with the same force as the smoke that had filled my bedroom.
The wood of the floor was still somehow cool on my bare feet.
Was that good?
No, nothing was good. My freaking house was on fire. I was going to be burned alive.
Calm down, Lauren. Panic will kill you surer and quicker than the fire. Especially since smoke inhalation is one of the main killers in house fires.
Right. The longer I stayed in one place freaking out, the longer I was letting smoke pollute my lungs and slowly rob me of the ability to breathe and live.
I was attached to the ability to breathe.
Gage’s face entered my mind, and instead of the chaos he usually brought, he urged calm.
If I wanted to be around for his chaos, I needed the calm to keep me alive. I needed to believe what the women had told me that afternoon, that this wasn’t the end of us.
If I was going to live for anything, I was going to live to make sure they were right.
I looked around my bedroom, which was hard to do with all the smoke, but there were no flames which meant the fire hadn’t spread. There was a window directly off my bedroom, and an attached fire escape. It wasn’t in the best condition, rusted and unused; it was more for the aesthetic of a New York-style building than anything else.
My hands fumbled on my nightstand, finding purchase on my phone as everything else tumbled to the floor, including my glasses. But I needed the phone more than I needed to waste time scrambling for them. So I tightened my grip around the device, then rushed over to the window, yanking up my nightshirt to cover my face from the worst of the smoke.
Tears poured down my face as the fumes burned my eyes, and I tried to blink them away furiously, not rub them—that would make it worse.
I fumbled against the window fastenings, yanking at the wood to bring the crisp night air into the room. Saltiness from the ocean battled against the scent of the smoke rushing out to meet it. I sucked in desperate and hungry breaths, my body crying out for clean air. Of course, that made me splutter and cough, and my throat burned, but I could breathe. And that was the most important part.
My vision was still blurry from not picking up my glasses, but I didn’t need to see in order to kick my leg out the window and lay my foot on the chilly iron of the fire escape.
It creaked slightly as I put pressure on it, and I really hoped it would hold my weight. I blinked away the worst of the grit in my eyes and glanced down at my phone, typing three numbers into the unlocked screen—maybe I was wasting time by calling 911 before I was safely out of my apartment, but if the fire escape failed me, I’d go tumbling to the ground, and even though the fall was only one story, I’d likely be injured. Maybe too injured to call anyone.
My area of town was all but deserted at that time of the night. Plus, fire was silent, tearing through the night with only heat and smoke and amber flames to alert anyone of its presence. I was lucky it didn’t just kill me as I slept.
So unless someone was taking a moonlit stroll, I couldn’t take my chances on someone else noticing it. It could be too late.
The phone was to my ear and the shrill dial tone never seemed louder, nor did a response from the other end of the phone seem to take longer.
“911, what’s your emergency.”
“My name is Lauren Garden and my apartment is on fire,” I said, my voice raspy yet somehow even. “It’s 35 Ocean Blvd. Hurry,” I pleaded.
“Miss, I’m going to need you to—”
I cut the call off. I didn’t need a trained professional, miles away and safe in their office, to try and calm me down. I needed to do that. Plus, they couldn’t save me. Nor could the man whose image had been tattooed on my mind since I awoke with death in my throat minutes—or was it hours?—before.
I had to save myself.
And standing half in, half out of my apartment wasn’t going to do that. I had to make a choice.
As I was about to take my chances with the integrity of the ladder, I paused. One side of my body was prickled with goose bumps as the air assaulted my bare skin, the other burning with the rapidly increasing temperature of my apartment.
The apartment that was on fire.
A fire that would likely rip through most of my possessions before the local fire brigade could put it out. We didn’t have a round-the-clock crew in Amber. We were a small town, barely needing the few paid firefighters we even had. The rest were volunteers, which meant they would need to yank themselves from their beds, race over to the station, wait for their crew, and then come over.
My apartment would likely be cinders by then.
As well as everything inside it.
My paintings.
I had pulled my foot back in the room and was halfway to the door before I figured out what I was doing, I reached back and yanked at the throw I had on the end of my bed.
It was stupid. Reckless. Maybe suicidal to go back into the structure that was on fire when the fresh air and safety was only feet—and a short, treacherous climb—away. But it was also unthinkable to let years, decades of my work, those pieces of my soul, just melt away and become nothing but ash.
They were my memories.
&
nbsp; All the beautiful ones, and more importantly, all the ugly ones. How was I supposed to even live with myself if I didn’t at least try to save some of the only things I had left of him? Of myself before he was gone?
With one hand, I whipped off my nightshirt, thankful I was wearing a cropped Calvin Klein tank underneath. It wouldn’t do much for the local firefighters to rescue my topless self from a burning building.
Or your shirtless corpse, a voice shot at me. The sensible voice that was also urging me back to the window as I sloppily tied my shirt around the bottom half of my face.
For the second time in recent months—the first being when I’d hopped onto the back of the motorcycle in the middle of the night—I ignored that voice.
And I used the throw still in my hand to turn the handle and wrench the door open. Heat assaulted me with such force that I was certain my skin had been flayed from my face.
It hadn’t, but I likely would’ve needed to pencil in an eyebrow appointment—if I survived, that was.
Though smoke was thicker and my vision blurry, I still saw the flames. Caught them eating up sections of my sanctuary without mercy, without hesitation. The vision of my home being taken away from me, literally before my eyes, punched me in the chest harder than the wall of smoke and flames.
Move, a different voice than the one before ordered. If you’re going to do this, there’s no time to stop and mourn, to be weak. You’ve got to be quick if you want to succeed. If you want to survive.
Again, without thinking, I slammed the door to my bedroom shut, having realized I’d left my window open, and standing in the doorway was not only eating away at time, it was giving the flames what they needed to breathe, to quicken. The one thing I needed to breathe—oxygen.
My eyes focused on the room, the way the fire was thickest at the front of the apartment, eating away at the frame of the structure already. It was closing in on the door to my studio, but it had yet to fully engulf it.
Which meant this idiotic crusade could still work.