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Not that I was going to write a fucking book about it. But she would figure a way to make it happen.
That was Emily.
Apparently my story got all sorts of praise. Awards. I got job offers and emails every day. Dream jobs. A dream life, presumably.
But I didn’t want my dream life.
I wanted my nightmare.
I stared at the screen. At the words.
They’re sinners, but they’re not devils.
They do good deeds, yet no one would call them angels.
You’d put the Sons of Templar slightly toward the worse end of the good vs. evil scale if such a scale existed. Which it doesn’t, of course.
We fool ourselves with the notion that there is a good, right way to live life and a terrible and wrong way to live it. And to the outsider, the Sons of Templar must look so wrong and terrible.
In my time with them, sure, they did some wrong and terrible things. But not because of the cuts that serve as a second skin. Because of the fact they’re human beings. Just because you live on the ‘right’ side of the picket fence, doesn’t make you immune from making terrible choices or doing ‘bad’ things.
Humanity is a disease that plagues us all, and the only cure is death.
So for better or for worse, we’re all human.
Which is what the Sons of Templar are.
They love their wives with a ferocity I haven’t seen in my life. They respect women, despite the backward fact that ‘club girls’ are treated as property. Because these girls are not without agency. Their titles, from what I see, are not shackles, but something that makes them freer to do what they want with their bodies and lives.
Elders are respected.
Children are cherished.
Brotherhood reigns supreme above everything.
Blood is thicker than water. And it’s blood and motor oil holding this chapter together. Because it was torn apart last Christmas. With a death toll that sickens the soul. Especially when you understand what a family the club is.
One that breaks the law, is prone to violence and doesn’t shy away from a gunfight, but a family nonetheless.
This reporter had planned on a story that was glaringly honest, that stripped the ugly underbelly of organized crime and showed it to the world. I could do that. In my time with the Sons of Templar, I witnessed damning acts.
But then, what does damned even mean?
In my time there, I learn we’re all damned. In our own ways.
So I’m not going to do my duty as a reporter to tell the unvarnished truth, no matter who it hurts. I’m instead going to do my duty as a human being.
And I’m going to shut up.
I shut my laptop, deciding I was never going to open it again.
A woman entered through the front door that I was sure had been locked. She stepped inside, her heel crunching on something. A takeout box, or more likely a can of something. Beer, that I’d got for when my brother came to visit, and I’d used as a last resort. She looked around, wordlessly, expression blank.
“So how does rock bottom feel?” she asked.
I dropped the bottle I’d fallen asleep cradling. I didn’t hear it hit the floor. She was definitely blurry, I was definitely drunk, but I was pretty sure I was sober enough to make out the fact that Scarlett was here, in my living room, in Castle Springs.
I squinted against that terrible light she was bringing into my dark living room. It illuminated the absolute mess I’d been living in. It illuminated rock bottom. Bottles of wine. Cans of beer. Barely eaten takeout.
I saw scenes like this in movies, when someone got their heart broken, got fired, or just had a complete mental break. I watched these scenes with scorn, thinking no such thing happened. People couldn’t just check out. I’d seen the worst of things, experienced the worst, and I didn’t gorge myself on food and booze and live in filth. No, I kept going.
My arrogance was shattered when I got home from New Mexico. After I’d seen my family, cuddled my nephew, used the last of my strength to put on a front.
And then I came home.
I wrote my stories.
Submitted them.
Fielded calls, offers, went through the motions of actually living life. I saw my family every day because I yearned for their company. Comfort was uneasy, wrong when I was with them. I felt dirty, carrying around the secret of where Liam was now. Who Liam was now. I was good at deceiving them, though. It became what held me together.
But there was only so long that it could last.
It happened at the grocery store. Because pivotal, horrible moments usually happened in the most mundane of places.
I was contemplating Ben and Jerry’s in the frozen food section, wondering if I would actually be that cliché.
