And Gemma. Gemma is in the middle of all of it, a glass of wine in her hand and a smile on her face, talking to a woman I don't recognize. Probably someone from the network of advocates she's been building, the community that's grown up around her consent education program like wildflowers after rain.
I built the Iron Brotherhood because I needed something to hold onto when everything else was gone. I didn't know I was building a place for her to find me.
The banner hanging over the bar reads "Iron Brotherhood" in blocky letters that Gemma painted herself, with the club's founding date underneath. Tonight is the anniversary of the club's founding, but it's also a celebration of something else.
Last week—after countless meetings, planning sessions, and late nights at The Forge—Gemma officially launched her program at The Forge, a series of workshops designed to help survivors of abuse and others understand the difference between healthy power exchange and coercive control. She's been working on it for months, partnering with Dr. Reyes and reaching out to other clubs in the region. Three of them have already asked to implement similar programs. By this time next year, she'll have changed more lives than she realizes.
I watch her across the room, this woman who walked through my door eight months ago with shadows in her eyes and fear in every line of her body. She's not that woman anymore. The shadows are still there, will probably always be there in some form, but they don't define her. She laughs now, really laughs, the sound carrying across the bar and settling somewhere deep in my chest. She touches people easily, a hand on an arm, a hug that lingers. She takes up space in a room instead of trying to disappear into the walls.
She's radiant. And she's mine.
The thought still catches me off guard sometimes. After Sarah died, I was so certain that part of my life was over. That I'd had my chance at love and lost it, and the best I could hope for was a quiet existence surrounded by the family I'd built from broken men and shared purpose. I didn't expect Gemma. I didn't expect any of this.
Craig's trial ended three weeks ago. Guilty on all counts: assault, stalking, violation of a restraining order. The judge sentenced him to four years, which his lawyer is already trying to appeal, but Shaw says the appeal doesn't have legs. Gemma sat through every day of the trial, her hand in mine, her spine straight and her chin lifted. She didn't look at Craig once. Not when he took the stand and tried to paint himself as a misunderstood romantic. Not when his lawyer implied that she'd exaggerated the abuse for attention. Not when the jury delivered the verdict and he finally, finally understood that he'd lost.
That night, she didn't cry. She just held onto me and breathed, slow and deep, like she was learning how to fill her lungs again. And then she said, "It's done. I can stop looking over my shoulder now."
She hasn't looked back since.
I take a sip of my beer and let my gaze drift to the photos on the wall behind the bar. There's one of Sarah there, taken a year before she got sick, laughing at something off-camera with her head thrown back and her hair catching the light. For a long time, I couldn't look at that photo without feeling like I was drowning. The grief would rise up and swallow me whole, leaving me gasping in its wake.
Now I look at her and I feel something different. Not less painful, exactly, but softer. More like gratitude than grief. My time with her taught me what love could be. The years of watching her fight, of holding her hand through treatments that didn't work and nights that felt endless, taught me what it meant to stay. Losing her broke me open in ways I'm still discovering.
But broken open isn't the same as destroyed. I know that now.
Sarah loved Gemma. I remember them together, back before Gemma left town, Sarah pulling her into conversations, treatingher like a little sister. She saw the strength underneath Gemma's uncertainty even then, the fire that Craig tried so hard to extinguish. And at the funeral, when Gemma stood beside me at the grave without saying a word, Sarah would have understood what that meant. She always understood things I couldn't see.
I can almost hear her voice."You don't get points for suffering, Will. And martyrdom was never a good look on you."
The corner of my mouth twitches. She always could make me smile, even when I didn't want to.
Loving Gemma doesn't mean I love Sarah any less. It took me a while to understand that, to stop feeling like I was betraying one by wanting the other. But hearts don't work that way. They're not zero-sum. The love I had for Sarah is still there, woven into who I am, part of the foundation I stand on. The love I have for Gemma is something else, something new, built on different ground but no less real.
I can hold both without betraying either. It took me a long time to learn that lesson, but I finally have.
Gemma catches me watching her. She always does. Her eyes find mine across the crowded room, and the smile that spreads across her face is just for me. She says something to the woman she's been talking to, squeezes her arm, and then she's moving through the crowd toward me. People part for her without being asked, the brothers nodding as she passes, the regulars smiling. She's family now.
She slides under my arm like she was made to fit there, and I pull her close against my side.
"Hey you," she says, tilting her face up. "You've been brooding in this corner for an hour."
"I don't brood. I observe."
"You were definitely brooding. I could see it from across the room." She pokes my chest gently. "What's going on in that head of yours?"
"Just thinking."
"About?"
"About how different things are from when you arrived. How different you are." I press a kiss to her temple. "How lucky I am."
She makes a soft sound and burrows closer. "I'm the lucky one."
"We could argue about it, but I'd win."
"You always think you're going to win."
"That's because I usually do."
