AllFreeNovel
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Ian and I never were too good at peace.
So, they put us in battle. We were good at it. I don’t think there is such a thing that would ever make me less proud than being good at that. But at the time it seemed like something. But there was no glory in that. Sure as fuck no nobility. The things I had to do. Had to see. Nightmares.
But I can handle nightmares.
What I can’t handle is the memory of my best friend dying in my arms while bullets flew through the air.
That’s the simplest explanation for that day. Holding you in my arms with bullets flying around me had me back there. And for a second, I thought I was holding another corpse.
Fucked with me. Hard. So, I needed to make sure you were alive. We were alive. The simplest way I knew how. And then after, it wasn’t simple. And I was all kinds of fucked-up, babe. You didn’t deserve to drown in that. I left so you didn’t have to.
That’s it. I didn’t want you to drown. Not in that. I want you to breathe. Clean. Not air polluted by that.
I was waiting for my air to be clean again.
L.A. may be dirty and full of fuckin’ smog, but the air’s never tasted cleaner.
K
I got the e-mail a day ago. The words circulated in my head. Around and around. Unable to shake them. Unable to breathe that clean air.
“This has to stop,” I muttered to myself.
Something had to give. Sometime soon.
“Ugh, One Direction releasing pop songs without Zayne, I agree,” Rosie said, switching the station so AC/DC boomed through the speaker system. “I mean, you had a good run. Now go and endorse some shampoo and leave,” she shouted over the music.
Rosie didn’t believe in doing anything by halves. Including listening to music. It was either ear drum–poppingly loud or complete silence. I was used to it.
And the same went for every aspect of her life. She threw herself into everything. One thousand percent. Like she might die the next day.
She got wild hair and decided to do a countrywide road trip for eight months, and then I had to come and pick her up when that countrywide road trip turned into an intercountry road trip in Columbia where she ran out of money because she “bet it all on a horse that Jose ensured me was a sure thing.”
She didn’t love by halves either. She would die for her friends in an instant. Kill for them in a second. Her loyalty was unwavering—maybe a side effect from the club she grew up in, where loyalty meant more than anything. But mostly it was just her.
Which was why she buried the greatest love she’d had since middle school down in serial dating and bad decisions and countless parties, constant motion. Because she was a motorcycle club princess. And the royal family didn’t fraternize with the very enemies trying to end their monarchy.
The law.
Her loyalty and love for that club meant she broke her own heart every single day because of what that patch meant to her.
I hurt for her. I wanted it to be different, but I knew I couldn’t reason with her. Not with Hurricane Rosie. Not with the family she loved so fiercely, more than herself.
She loved hard because she lived hard.
And because the club she loved so much taught her how easy it was to die.
She was my best friend, and I didn’t even understand her. You couldn’t reason or analyze a hurricane. You just weathered it.
And this hurricane, currently wearing a Grateful Dead tee, ripped jeans and combat boots—when the day before she was wearing a sequined miniskirt, sky-high heels and a cashmere sweater—wanted to party.
“Why we come here when neither one of us actually screws the guys inside that building is beyond me,” she groaned, nodding to the clubhouse while she parked in an empty lot.
I smiled at her, but it felt tight and unnatural. “Well, maybe because they’re our family, and we love them?”
She put her finger to her chin. “Could be. But I don’t love them that much to go nun on it.”
I grinned, that time more natural. “The free booze?”
“Getting warmer.”
“And although we may not indulge in the men, we come to look. Like window-shopping,” I deduced, grabbing my black purse from the back.
Unlike Rosie, I wasn’t a fashion chameleon. I usually dressed in black but favored other monochromatic styles. You wouldn’t see me in ripped jeans, though Rosie worked the shit out of them. Nor fluorescents—only Cyndi Lauper could rock the shit out of those. Audrey Hepburn was my muse. Even amongst the leather-wearing men and the rough culture that came with them, I wanted elegance. Maybe because elegance in fashion was so streamlined, orderly, unlike my life.
My mom and sister sure as hell couldn’t understand where I got it from. They wouldn’t wear anything unless it had at least one pattern on it, preferably five.
