I didn’t mind that.
I didn’t want froufrou, or pink or Barbie. I didn’t want to be a princess.
I wanted to be a warrior like my daddy. Like my big brother.
Until that moment outside the school, on my very first day. When I saw the prince. Then I wanted very badly to be the princess he saved from the bad guys and rode away with to live happily ever after.
The problematic thing was the bad guys were my family. The ones I loved with all my heart. If you wanted to get technical, I was a bad guy too. Maybe the worst of them all.
The bad guys didn’t get a happily ever after.
As it happened, neither did princes.
Chapter One
Rosie
Age Six
“Why can’t I be like them, Daddy?” I asked, nodding toward the men roaring away on their motorcycles.
Daddy ruffled my hair. “Because even for a Fletcher, six years old is too young to be on a motorcycle,” he said, his voice smiling. “But don’t worry, kid. Soon as you can reach the pedals, you’re on a bike. It’s in your blood.”
I smiled too, but I also frowned because that wasn’t what I meant. “No, why can’t I be in the club too? Like you.” I tugged at the leather he always wore, so much so that it was a part of my daddy, just like his gray eyes and his smile voices. “Is it because I’m a girl?”
Daddy grabbed my chin. His eyes weren’t smiling. “Simple answer? Yeah, baby, it’s ’cause you’re a girl. ’Cause my pops lived in a time where women didn’t have much say in anythin’ and he quite liked it like that.” He paused, and even though he was looking at me, I thought he might’ve been seeing something else. “Still like that now, I guess. Society is moving on in that respect, but our club doesn’t move with society. Our club just is. Not many rules, but the ones we got ain’t gonna change. I’m sure of that. Not while I’m around, at least.” He looked at Cade, who was helping Uncle Steg with a car. “I have a feelin’ your big bro might shake things up a bit, though. Maybe after I’m gone.” There was both a smile and a frown in his voice.
I slipped my hand into his.
Daddy looked down, staring at my teeny tiny hand. He squeezed mine, not too tight, just right, then smiled.
“You’re gonna shake things up more than a bit, my little princess,” he said. “I already know that. Which is why even if the club wasn’t the way it is, I wouldn’t have you wearin’ a cut, following rules. There ain’t many, but there’s enough to tell you to be a certain kind of person. My Rosie will never let anyone tell her what kind of person she is. You’re my caterpillar. You’re gonna grow wings, baby. And you’re gonna soar and be the only version of you in this whole world. I know you’ll be the heart and soul of this club. In more ways than one. But you’re destined to be somethin’ different. Somethin’ bigger.”
Age Thirty
Something magical happens when you separate from someone you love and it’s someone you shouldn’t. When it’s too totally Fucked Up—Fucked Up requires capitals because of the sheer consistency of that phrase in my life—to ever work. When there’re a million and twelve reasons why it won’t. You know it when you’re together. Even when those little cracks of sunshine peek through the darkness that is un-destined love, disguising themselves as happiness for a fleeting moment, even then you know.
You make your plans to end it. You convince yourself that you’ll be okay. It’ll hurt, of course. It won’t be easy to walk away with a broken heart, but you’ll do it. You’ve broken things before and you’ve survived. You know the pain will be crippling, but you’re also sure you can do it.
Self-preservation and all that.
So you leave.
Walk, run, crawl. Whatever it is that gets you out the door so you can commence the process of repairing yourself. Or re-breaking everything he fixed because you can’t be whole without him; you only know broken, can only survive broken.
Then it happens, once you actually do it. All those reasons, those concrete barriers to true and lasting happiness that had seemed so unsurpassable before they melt away. The reasons, all one million and twelve of them, don’t seem so important anymore.
Because of the magical thing that happens when you leave someone when you don’t want to. When you leave someone because you know it’s ultimately the best thing for both of you, even though in your entire life you’ve always known that the best things for you have never been right for you.
You forget all the bad. The blood trickles down the drain, not leaving a trace of the wounds you sustained while together. Making you forget they even existed, convincing yourself that you imagined them. The only ones left are the new ones, so raw and painful that they have to be real. The ones that, in the empty air of loneliness, cut even deeper than the ones you couldn’t handle before. The ones that made you leave. The ones that you perhaps imagined.