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He stared at me while he pulled on his tee.
“I’m not stayin’ here while we spew this shit at each other. One of us will say somethin’ we regret.” He paused. “I’m done doing shit I regret in regard to you. You’ll always be Rosie to me. Just fucking Rosie. My fucking Rosie. And it’s that simple for me. But it’s not that simple for you, is it?”
“No!” I yelled. “Of course it’s not that fucking simple. Us, we were never fucking simple. Stop expecting me to be someone who’s going to relax into this and forget the world around us exists. Forget the past exists. I’m torn in fucking two, Luke, and I don’t know what to do, who to be.”
“You, Rosie. Just be you.” He said it softly, but it impacted as if he’d yelled it.
And then he walked out.
“Yes!” I yelled back to Gwen, the events of the hour before still echoing in my mind. I reached for another glass so I could pour her some wine. I’d already had two. And now that she wasn’t breastfeeding, she had a lot of making up to do.
I had a lot of making up to do with my sister. It had been a year. A year of her being a mom, being a wife, being a crazy fucking bitch. I’d missed out on a lot. I missed her.
I should’ve hated her.
Gwen.
Not at first. At first, she was the beautiful, exotic woman with pain behind her eyes but a kind smile that swept my brother away from himself. Who yanked him into something that wasn’t the quest for revenge he’d started the day our father died.
To set him on some sort of track for living instead of just fighting.
The day of my barbeque, when he only had eyes for her, when he dragged her off like a caveman in a show of his version of affection that was almost unheard of, I didn’t hate her. No, I loved her. Because even though he didn’t smile—in fact, he scowled more than usual—I knew my brother was venturing toward happy.
Because of her.
And he deserved whatever version of happy that our version of life could provide him.
And by the looks of the ghosts and demons behind Gwen’s pretty face, she deserved it too.
But life, or love, was rarely that simple.
Or casualty free.
It just so happened that I was the casualty of my brother’s bloody and drama-filled road to an unexpected fairy-tale ending.
The one where he knocked up Gwen, lost her when she left after her brother died and she found him in bed with another woman, and then he went halfway across the world to get her back. And he brought her back here, where she belonged. At the club. With him.
She ended up shooting and killing the man who shot Steg—while nine months pregnant. And then she gave birth to my niece in the clubhouse with my brother delivering the baby. Oh, and her kidnapping came before that.
So not the traditional happy ever after.
Though, considering every man’s road to love, marriage, and the babies in the baby carriage, it kind of was the Sons of Templar version. It wasn’t a courtship without at least one kidnapping, an explosion or a drive-by shooting.
You’d think I’d be kidding, but I wasn’t.
Though, those weren’t my stories, despite the fact that I managed to get tied into every single one.
Me and Luke.
But because of the drama-filled romances that demanded every inch of the club’s attention, our relatively uneventful dramas went unnoticed.
Which was the way it needed to be.
The way it had to be if I wanted to keep my family.
So back to my point, where it all began. For Gwen and Cade, at least.
They wouldn’t say it, or at least Gwen wouldn’t—my stoic brother turned to a marshmallow around his wife and children and would shout from the rooftops that it was love at first sight. That didn’t mean that it was a relationship at first sight.
Gwen’s demons were dark, even for Cade. Or maybe they resembled Cade’s so much and that was why she fought it. Why she gave Luke the prime opportunity to distract himself with a woman who didn’t represent everything he despised.
A clean woman.
And that’s why I should’ve hated her.
My mind went back to that moment, before she and Cade were concrete. When I realized how brittle Luke and I were, despite everything that had already happened between us.
It was a week or so after Gwen came into town, four years ago now. At the store where I would end up spending some of the best times of my life. It just so happened one of the worst occurred at the opening party. At the opening when Luke only had eyes for her. Or no, it was worse than that. His eyes had touched mine the moment he set foot in the store. But they didn’t stay on me. The pointed movement of his gaze, of his attention to Gwen, hurt more than if he didn’t see me at all. But because I was Rosie, carefree on top of all of those monsters I was so good at hiding, I did the only thing I could think of.
