“Yeah. It was bad. We got mixed up in their crowd. Then I started seeing this guy Jethro.”
“Ah, Sienna’s Jethro,” he said.
“That’s the one. And incidentally the reason the SWS exists—it stands for Scorned Women’s Society.” I cleared my throat. “We are all, uh, Jet’s exes.”
“That’s not weird?” he asked.
“It’s really not. It’s hard to explain. Plus, if I wasn’t friends with any of his exes, there wouldn’t be anybody left to be friends with,” I teased. My fingers itched for a smoke though I hadn’t since I left the Wraiths, just talking about that time brought up muscle memory.
“So, Jet and I dated. I worked at the Dragon Bar, this place where bikers hang out, to be closer to him and the MC. To a kid who had basically been abandoned, hanging out with the Wraiths felt more like family than anything I’d ever had. Gretch too. But she was gone with her guy more and more. Then they got engaged and she stopped coming around completely. She was trying to get him to leave. Anyway, that’s a whole other story. But the point was, I was Jet’s old lady. I had a place … even if it was a pretty shitty one in hindsight.”
I blew out a long breath.
“Then one day Jet stopped coming around the bar. Stopped coming around at all. He got out of the MC. I still don’t really understand how, to be honest. But he was gone. He left without a single look back. I was pissed. And I found myself abandoned to a group I wouldn’t have even been with if it hadn’t been for Jet and Gretch in the first place.”
“I’m so sorry,” he said.
“This is turning out to be a longer story than I thought.” I fixed my bangs unable to meet Sanders’ gaze. “Anyway, I was pissed. One day Gretch comes and says she was taking me away and Jet wanted to marry me to make things right. I just had to go with her.” I shifted on my feet.
“But I was pissed off and stubborn and let myself think I had found people who really cared. I told her to leave without me. After that, things got pretty bad. When you aren’t a single person’s old lady, you sort of become shared property.” I shook my head. “I won’t go into it. I convinced myself I was okay with things that I wasn’t. I did drugs and drank a lot just to cope. It was bad.”
“But you’re here now?” he prompted.
“Yeah. I got a second chance,” I said. “A few months later, Gretchen came back again. She was on a rampage. Her lover was dead. And I had been completely oblivious. Nobody told me anything. It broke through my fog to see someone I loved so fucked up. Her pain cracked right through the shell of hurt I’d built around myself. She was screaming over and over that they murdered him. That she was going to kill each and every one of them. She was drunk and sloppy, her clothes were a mess, her makeup was running. She looked skinnier than I’d ever seen her. Nobody was scared, a few of the guys laughed at her. But the gun she was waving around was real. That look in her eyes was real. I knew that girl well enough to know that she wasn’t messing around.
“I was pretty coked out of my mind and wasted, but I knew I had to distract Gretch. I had to make her see me. I went stumbling up to her. I can’t imagine how terrible I must have looked after so many months apart. It took her a moment to even register me. She was so far gone and lost in her own head. But when she did, the arm holding the gun dropped and she looked at me with sadness. Even in that situation I was the pitiable one.
“It was like a lightbulb suddenly turned on and I could see that I was in a room with cockroaches and filth all the while thinking I was in a palace. When she saw me, it seemed to break her too. In that minute, I made a choice. I never wanted to end up like this. I didn’t want either one of us to be broken by the Wraiths. I knew in that moment that if either of us wanted to be saved from that life, we’d need each other.”
I took a deep, shaky breath in. I had never shared this with anybody. But seeing Sanders’ patient, open expression, feeling his concern for us without judgment gave me strength to finish.
“I told her to take me away. She looked me up and down and she saw it too. The nights ahead of us. Prison maybe for her. Me being passed around like an object. Slowly morphing into my parents at best, a whore for the Wraiths at worst. It was this moment of extreme clarity. I knew we couldn’t go on like this. Even though no one had ever told us, we both understood that we were made for more than this. We believed in each other.”
“I’m so glad you did,” Sanders said in a low, steady voice.
I squeezed his hands. “She wiped away the tears from her face, then nodded once. I took her hand and grabbed my bag from the bar, shoving the gun inside it. We turned to the door, holding hands like a lifeline. Some random biker tried to stop us but Gretchen looked him straight in the eyes and said, ‘I’m taking my best friend and we’re getting the fuck out of here. If you try to stop me, I will kill you.’ Completely sober. He stepped right out of the way. Out front she turned to me and said, ‘No ex left behind.’ She saved me that night.”
When I finally stopped talking, tears hovered in my eyes. I blinked them away.
“You saved each other,” Sanders said as he pulled me in for a hug. “And I’m so glad.”
I squeezed my eyes tight and the tears leaked out. When we finally pulled away from each other, I sniffed and said, “So now you see.”
“See?”
“Why this job is important to me. Why maintaining my focus is so important. Gretchen gave me a second chance at life.”
“And you’re worried that I’ll mess things up?” he asked with a small crinkle in his forehead.
“I’m worried thatI’llmess it up.”
I frowned. For so long that’s what I had thought. I thought if I gave in even a little to deeper desires, then I’d totally backslide. That I would ruin the second change Gretchen had given me.
“I don’t want her to feel like I’m wasting my chance,” I said honestly.
“People who love you, love you for the person you are, not your job or your clothes,” he said, our hands clasped together.
“I know she loves me, but I don’t have anything else I can offer.”
