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He took a shaky step forward at the same time he lifted the gun. His eyes glinted with something that had me thinking my survival was not looking good right now.
“Yoo-u’re dead. You’re fucking—”
The gunshot cut him off.
Just not the one I was expecting. Not the one that splattered my own brains across my comforter.
Just his.
I blinked against the blood and brain matter covering me, against the ringing in my ears.
A figure rushed toward me, muffled shouts of concern addressed at me.
I expected the figure who’d just murdered a man to save me to be wearing a Sons of Templar cut.
I did not expect it to be wearing a uniform.
I did not expect it to be Luke.
But that little part of me, that part that I had no choice but to listen to, she was more relieved than anything else in the world.
He’d just killed someone for me.
He’d just ruined his fucking life for me.
He wasn’t clean anymore.
We’d be tainted together.
There might’ve been a small chance for us now that we were both sinners.
So why didn’t it feel better?
Luke
The gunshot had paused everything and also sped it all up. Not the one that came from his gun but the one before that. That had come from Rosie’s.
As she’d killed a man right in front of him.
As she’d killed a man for her family.
Put a mark on her soul for them because, in her mind, she had no other choice.
He hated her a little in that moment, for chipping off another piece of herself, amassing more demons for her to fight against, sacrificing part of her peace so her family could have justice.
Revenge.
He hated her a little, but he’d never loved her more.
And that made him hate himself.
Because he didn’t feel disgust watching her murder someone. At her doing it because she knew he wouldn’t arrest her.
That was Rosie.
She would never sit around and wait for someone to solve things for her. Save people for her.
She’d save everyone. Even if it killed her. Wouldn’t blink.
She was the strongest person in that club. She was that club.
He’d known it all along, of course. Just hadn’t admitted it to himself. Hadn’t let himself. Had some warped fucking idea that he’d save her from it.
His version of saving her was her version of him fucking destroying her.
He saw that now. In her eyes after she’d killed that man. He was a despicable human. Luke knew that. Rosie would never end someone’s life if they had even a shred of humanity lingering in their soul.
That didn’t make it right.
Not Luke’s version of right, at least.
But Rosie’s was different.
Didn’t mean it was wrong either.
He saw it all, all his fucking mistakes in that lingering moment that paused after that gunshot. Then it sped up. And he found himself in his cruiser, driving away.
Like his father had that day.
For different reasons, perhaps.
But he got it now. Why his father did it.
And fuck if he wasn’t furious at himself for punishing his father too.
He’d driven around. Not to the station, though he fucking itched to walk in there, hand in his gun and badge and be done with it all. Those hours were a blur of running through the years, inspecting how majorly he’d fucked up while believing he was doing the right thing.
Believing that trying to end the Sons of Templar was somehow a noble cause.
And maybe it had been. At the start, when they were running guns, when there were dead bodies littering the battle lines of their war. When Laurie was murdered.
When he’d had to sit in front of two innocent people and tell them they’re even more innocent only fucking child had been brutalized and then murdered. Because of no other crime but loving the wrong person.
But even then, his cause, his noble fucking cause, had poisoned into a vendetta.
And when the club started going legit, when they started learning from their mistakes, when they started to try and live their version of a normal life, that’s when he should’ve stopped.
Should’ve shrugged off his hate, buried his hypocritical self-righteousness and inspected his own mistakes. Tried to learn from them.
But he didn’t.
Somehow along the way, he’d become worse than the men he’d considered criminals.
“Fuck!” he roared, slamming his hands on his steering wheel.
He’d been driving around like a coward for all these hours because he didn’t know where to go.
He still hadn’t learned from his fucking mistakes.
It was like that day when he was a kid all over again, his dad driving the cruiser away, abandoning the girl.
But this time he had control. This time he didn’t have to abandon the girl.
He couldn’t save her, because she didn’t need saved. But he could fight for her. And fucking save himself.
He hurried across town to her house, though he didn’t exactly know why. He’d waited thirty years for this; what was a few more minutes?
