Some men were not just imperfect.
Some men were bad soil.
I had ink on my skin and blood on my hands. Blood that had washed off and stayed anyway. I had done things for mypatch, for my brothers, for survival, for money, for revenge, and sometimes because the man standing across from me had it coming and I was the one sent to deliver the message.
Destiny needed empty pages.
I was written over in black.
I leaned my head back against the palm tree and closed my eyes.
Regan’s words came back.
Maybe that leads her back to you. Maybe it doesn’t.
Sometimes when you loved something, you set it free.
Not that I loved her.
Of course I didn’t.
It didn’t go that deep.
Couldn’t.
A week wasn’t love. A kiss at a grave wasn’t love. Finding a girl in the desert and keeping her alive wasn’t love. Watching her heal by inches and feeling something in your chest loosen every time she smiled wasn’t love.
That was trauma.
Proximity.
Adrenaline.
Bad timing.
A man could explain anything if he was scared enough.
Still, I understood the sentiment.
Let her go. Let her fly high and far away. Let her get Malibu and nursing classes and ocean mornings where nobody whispered Mandy’s name behind her back. Let her meet people who didn’t know what she looked like with smoke in her hair and blood on her mouth. Let her become whoever she was supposed to be before everyone else’s sins tried to claim her.
Maybe she flew back.
Maybe she didn’t.
But that didn’t mean she hadn’t meant something to me.
It didn’t mean I wanted to vanish from her story like I had never been there.
I took another drink and looked out at the black water.
“What do you get the Royal Bastards’ badass princess for her eighteenth birthday?” I asked the empty beach.
The waves answered by breaking.
Helpful.
“What can a guy like me even give her?”
