“Ugh, I know.” The urge to literally smack my forehead is so strong that I curl my hands over my legs and grip hard. “I’m so tired of my fear controlling everything about my life. It’salwaysthe loudest voice in my head. I just want to get better. Why is wanting it not enough?” Christ. Putting this on her is bullshit too. “You don’t have to answer that. I’m just fucking frustrated.”
“That makes you just the same as everyone else. What you’re going through is normal, especially after surviving what you did.”
I know that’s not true, but Sylvie is wearing herdon’t argue with me, it’s not going to workface.
“You’re brave. You’re resilient. You’re stronger than you know. And youaregetting better.” She shoves the stack of books to the side and reaches for my hand. “One day, you’ll be able to do everything that you want to do. I fucking know it, and youknow that I knoweverything. Don’t doubt the daughter of a fortune teller, even if my mom is fake as shit.”
I rapid-fire blink to keep the stubborn tears at bay. Even so, my voice is thin and wavery. “When the world gave me you, it was the biggest damn blessing.”
“I feel the exact same way. Where else would I have got all that free lawyering from? Or the sweetest cat cuddles.”
“Where else would you be lucky enough to have to haul heavy bags of used litter down three flights of stairs to a gross communal parking lot dumpster?” I ask sarcastically.
“Where else?” she agrees, with a huge grin. “Also, Maverick can’t be his real name.”
“It is… well it’s the name he goes by. I looked it up. I looked up the guy he’s going to be staying with too. He’s a biker.”
In the past two years of knowing Sylvie, I’ve seen very little surprises her, but her mouth literally drops open. “You’re not serious.”
“I am. Apparently, the club is more of a good thing than not. From what I read.”
“Dude’s getting out of prison and going straight into a hotbed of crime? How is that even allowed?”
“I don’t think they operate like that. I’m slightly worried about him being there, but it’s my understanding that the club has done a lot for their community. He’s written to me about his cousin, and he seems like a good guy.”
“It’ll work out,” Sylvie promises. “All of it.”
I want to believe her as badly as I want to have faith in one day finding a way out of this apartment, and the shit in my mind.
“Just in case it doesn’t…” Sylvie draws her eyebrows on. They’re whip-thin black arches. One of them dances as she studies me. “Know that life’s an ass and we’re all a work in progress. I’m going to custom design you a poster for that. Motivational style. With a big donkey looking backwards and the words blasted across his rear.”
I haven’t felt much like laughing in a while. Added to my most recent failure, I’ve been entirely in my head about Maverick’s release. I’ve felt so empty and so full of worry, nerves, and pain. All the bad shit. I should have reached out. I should have texted Sylvie. I didn’t want to bother her, but I know she wouldn’t have seen it that way.
“It would be a literal masterpiece. I’d be proud to hang that on my wall.”
I try very hard to keep myself from spiraling back down into the bullshit abyss. At the bottom of that chasm is the worst shit, all the blackness, despair, all the self-loathing and bitterness that I don’t want to give into.
I can’t help but think of how ironic it would be if Maverick and I met. If I know anything about him, it’ll be awhen, not anif. He’ll be the ex-prisoner who found himself on the wrong side of the law and finally free, and I’ll be the woman on the right side of it, but a prisoner of her own making all the same.
Chapter 2
Maverick
“Aren’t you supposed to not be around computers or something?”
Scythe appears out of the gloom, his massive figure casting eerie shadows on the unfinished concrete basement walls. He appears more demon than man, at least until he flicks the light switch. Some people might still say demon, given his shaved, tattooed head, the scar that cuts along his cheek, gauged up ears, and his leather club jacket with all the patches.
My eyes land on the one that says ‘ENFORCER’, as if regular lettering wasn’t enough to get the point across and it had to be screamed in all capitals.
It’s ironic. I needed a place to go when I got out of jail, but even after ten years on the inside, I look less like a thug than my mom’s cousin. I hadn’t seen Scythe since I was a kid, and back then his name was Dalton. He once winked at me and told me that family was everything, and if I ever needed him, all I had to do was call. I think he meant to reassure me. My mom’s life was never all that predictable, code word,stable, and it sure as fuck wasn’t easy.
I didn’t take him up on the offer for a good eighteen years. I called last week because I had no money and nowhere else to go. He didn’t hesitate to come pick me up and bring me straight back to his house.
It’s nicer than I imagined. An older bungalow but nicely renovated, in a pretty regular suburb. He’s even got a two-car garage. He let me sleep on the couch the first night, but by the second, members of his club brought over all sorts of furniture to fill up the basement. It might be unfinished, a lot of concrete all around, but I don’t give a shit about that.
He gave me a couple of grand as an advance that I could pay back once I found a job, and the keys to a beater truck that I could have wept over being able to use.
I could have wept over it all, honestly, if the past decade of my life hadn’t beaten the tears, and most other proper emotions, right out of me.
