Love Hard

by Hazel Parker

  I texted Vance and asked him to hang out.

  My emotions were a little bit scattered so it wasn’t inconceivable that this wasn’t the greatest idea. In a different world, maybe I would have waited a little bit of time before messaging him. But I had decided sooner was better rather than later, and so my message went to him with nary a regret.

  I asked him to meet me at the outdoor seating section half an hour before noon. Just a couple of minutes before that, I heard the roar of his bike approaching and felt a smile creeping over my face. I wanted to maintain something of a neutral facade to keep my emotions in check, but in the privacy of this moment, I had to confess that I was excited to see him.

  He approached wearing his jacket, which I had since learned was called a cut. Nothing about seeing it bothered me anymore—well, maybe not nothing, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been before. He nodded to me with a short smile, and I motioned for him to sit down.

  “I read what was in the envelope you gave me,” I said, deciding we were better off getting right to the point.

  “I guessed as much,” he said. “I didn’t think you would have texted me otherwise.”

  “Mmm,” I said, not quite sure if that was true. I’m not sure I would have been as excited about it, but I think I would have wanted the chance for something more positive thanks to having read that.

  “What did you think?”

  Boy, for a question that only had four words, that sure was awfully loaded. That was asking me what I thought about the most significant and most life-changing document I think I had ever read in my life.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry for choosing to believe whatever I wanted when it all went down. Clearly, if I had read the actual report when it came out all this time ago, I never would have had this issue. But. Well, I did. So, I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t even sweat it,” Vance said, looking out over the road as two bikes roared by, though with guys not wearing the Savage Saints cut. “I think you know I’m awfully good about burying things I should have mentioned long ago.”

  I smirked at him in amusement. It was kind of funny now, honestly. The thing I was so mad at him for was something I never should have even been triggered by. It was hard to say who was most at fault here, but it was clear we had both erred along the way.

  “Aren’t we all,” I said.

  A gentle silence fell over us. I wasn’t surprised by this—both of us still seemed to be walking around eggshells around each other.

  “So…” he said.

  “So…” I repeated back.

  We both shared a short laugh.

  “Your head is better, huh?” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said, scratching it. “I still get sensitive to some things, but I got really lucky.”

  In so many ways that I’m not sure I could ever express even if I wanted to.

  “I can imagine,” Vance said. “I feel the same way.”

  I smiled again. OK, let’s just get to it. We’re doing this silly avoidant dance again, and it’s not working very well.

  “In the past few days,” I said. “Have you thought about us at all?”

  He bit his lip, stared straight through my eyes, and widened his own.

  “Do you want me to tell the embarrassing truth or just the casual, avoidant answer that’ll make you laugh because of some witty joke?”

  “Wow, that’s pretty meta there,” I said as I laughed. “You know which one I want. I want whatever you are comfortable saying.”

  He didn’t look off-put by that; in fact, he looked relieved that he was able to address it thanks to his corny joke.

  “I’ve thought about you and us a lot,” he said. “A great deal of me is disappointed in the way things ended, especially because they were preventable. If I’d had… well, we’ve beaten that point to death enough already, I think. But when I’ve been with the Saints…”

  He trailed off.

  “I want to tell you everything that the club did this weekend,” he said. “But I need to know that you’ll be OK hearing it. This isn’t just that I’m a part of the Saints. I want to be more honest with you and lay it all out. I just want to avoid being too honest with you. I don’t want to push you away that way.”

  I smiled, leaned forward, and took his hand.

  “Go ahead.”

  It was as if he got all the confidence he needed to keep speaking.

  “We had an opportunity to end the threat of the Devil’s Mercenaries. I had the idea that we would go down there, kill their leader—he’s a true sociopath, he’s the one that put our guy into the hospital—but take the rest prisoner. Give them the option to either move away or to become a member of the Savage Saints.”

  A long pause came.

  “And?”

  Vance just smiled at me.

  “It went better than I could have ever anticipated,” he said, unable to hide his grin. “We took out Zane, their leader. We had to kill a few others, but they all tried to kill us, anyway. We only suffered a few wounds, nothing serious. I’d say if there were about twenty Mercs there, probably fifteen of them ultimately agreed to join us. As a matter of fact, I think a couple of them just drove by us to meet the club.”

  I was floored at what I had just heard—not the killing part, but that Vance had given these guys, these rivals, a chance to join them. It felt like the ultimate show of forgiveness, an act that I’m not sure I could have ever brought myself to do with anyone I had known. I mean, hell, I knew that was true—I’d pushed away the Saints for so long in the belief that they had killed Nathaniel that forgiveness just didn’t seem possible. My inability to forget made it all but impossible to forgive.

  And yet, here was Vance, who had seen members of his club actually killed by the enemy, giving them a second chance.

  “You’re an amazing human being, Vance,” I said, almost marveling at him. “You letting those people in… it’s unreal.”

  “Well, I’m not going to pretend I’m Mother Theresa,” he clarified. “Let’s get it clear. I did this to end the violence. The Mercs who joined us weren’t very high ranking in the club. They were either forced in or joined without realizing what was involved. I think a lot of them had family and were looking for a way out. But the club members would have killed them if they left.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “Quite a violent excommunication, huh?”

  “Unfortunately,” he said. “But… well, I think the worst of it is over. I said that before, so I’m not going to say it’s all over and jinx it. That would be bad!”

  He let out a hearty laugh, the kind of laugh that a man could only make if he was unburdened by fear or by past failure. It was clear that even if he wasn’t trying to jinx it, he wasn’t afraid to act like he had won.

  “Things are good, though,” he said, nodding his head and squeezing my hand. “What about for you? What’s going to happen to you?”

  “I…” He told you his truth. You tell him his. “I’m actually going to a rehab facility on Sunday.”

  “Really?” he said, pleasant surprise in his voice.

  “I let myself get really bad that night, Vance,” I said. “I did things that I swore I’d never do. I blamed you at first, but it wasn’t your fault.”

  “It—”

  “No,” I stopped him. “It wasn’t. It was me. I was thinking about it, and then Principal Patrick came in and said I was on admin leave until the end of the school year and if I didn’t get help, he wouldn’t let me come back. So at this point, yeah, it was an easy choice.”

  Vance pursed his lips, breathed out slowly, and looked at me with hurt eyes.

  “What?”

  “I’m gonna miss you,” he said. “You know, I thought that when I came here, we might have a shot, but you have to do you, which is fair, but… what?”

  My smile was slowly growing as he spoke. He had no idea. He didn’t realize what I had figured out. It was honestly so cute to see him be so stressed, only to realize that I wasn’
t moving.

  “I think you’re thinking of rehab as something where I go to someplace far away for a month or two months, and then you don’t see that person until they’re done. Those places exist, but I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to do something where I could remain connected to the community. So I’m going to a place like that for two weeks, yeah, but then I’ll just be at something where I can come and go as I please.”

  The gears started to turn in his head as he started to realize.

  “And, by the way, since you confessed how you felt about me just now, I suppose I’ll tell you what I’ve realized in the course of this conversation,” I said. “I felt like I broke up with you on false grounds, Vance. I mean, it wasn’t good you didn’t tell me your connection until after the fact, but I never bothered to read five pages that could have prevented all of this, so I suppose we’re even. You said right before you left the hospital that you’d let me read it and I could decide whatever I wanted?”

  I leaned forward, taking his hand in both of my hands.

  “Well, let me tell you what I’ve decided,” I said. “I’ve decided I want us to give this a second whirl. I want us to see what will happen when the full truth is out on both sides. But I do it on one condition.”

  “Anything.”

  Oh, he’s ready. He and I… we’re going to make a good team here. I can’t wait to hear how Alyssa reacts when she sees me tomorrow.

  “We don’t avoid any ugly truths,” I said. “There are going to be moments in the future where we fuck up because we’re human. Hopefully, those fuckups aren’t as bad as getting into a drunk wreck or lying about the club you’re with, but we will fuck up. When that happens, we need to be fully honest with each other. I promise to do that. Can you?”

  I pulled my hand back to give him a handshake. Vance took his hand in mine and then smiled.

  “Can I show you my promise?”

  I didn’t say a word as he got out of his seat and came over to me. He leaned down and planted a gentle kiss on my lips. He didn’t break contact until it became virtually impossible to breathe.

  “I’d say that you showed me the right kind of answer there,” I said.

  He sat back down at his seat, scooting it over so it was only about ninety degrees from me instead of right across from me. He put a hand on my thigh, sending shivers down my spine. I eyed him up and down.

  The memories of what had happened the last time I had my hand on those thighs came roaring back. Had I not been going to rehab on Sunday, I might have tried to push away the temptation to engage him in something more and held myself back. I might have made myself promise that I would be a good girl and not do anything.

  But I was about to go through two weeks of rehab where I wouldn’t so much as have the privacy to touch myself, let alone the space to sleep with Vance. I had to do this now, especially since we both seemed to be on the same page now.

  “I have a question,” I said, putting my hand on the inside of my thigh. “Can you show me a better answer than the one you just gave me?”

  He smiled, peered at his bike, and nodded in its direction.

  “Can you say yes to that?”

  * * *

  I said yes to that.

  I said yes to everything that he did.

  I said yes to him picking me up and carrying me up the three flights of stairs. I said yes to him ripping my clothes off on that kitchen counter. I said yes to him having me naked there once more.

  But unlike before, when he had carried me to the bedroom, this time, he was not in such a rush to put me in there. In fact, he seemed determined to make this the most adventurous sex to date.

  It started, as it had last time, with him eating me out, grabbing a chair to make it easier for him to lean forward. I had to position myself so that I didn’t knock over half of my kitchen possessions, because once more, Vance knew how to eat me out like no man ever had. There was just something about the fact that I thought I had lost him, only for him to suddenly come back into my life, that made it that much more pleasurable.

  It took me no time to come. I shook so violently that my hips fell off the counter, and Vance had to use all of his upper body strength to prevent me from falling to the floor. It felt incredibly good, though, given that his hands cupped and squeezed my ass as part of the process.

  “Jesus Christ,” I said. “I need your cock.”

  “You got it,” he said.

  I looked up at him as he tore his pants off. By now, I had slid my feet down to the kitchen floor, looking up at Vance. I wanted to suck him off and stroke him good, but he didn’t give me the chance; he grabbed me, took me to the kitchen table, bent me over, and slammed me from behind.

  This was so much better than the last time, where we kept ourselves contained and confined to the bedroom. Now, my entire apartment was available for sex. Every position, every piece of furniture, every square foot of carpet was available to us, and we rode that and did that and tried just about every position. We only remained at the kitchen table for about a minute before we transitioned to the couch, where I rode him cowgirl style, my breasts in his face for him to kiss and suck.

  As erotic as the physical aspect of it was, and as much as I enjoyed coming multiple times again, it was actually a surprisingly emotionally deep experience. I suspected that much of my drinking from before had come as a result of me trying to avoid the pain from thinking I had lost a man as good as Vance; it was about the club, not necessarily the man. Had Vance admitted that he was actually a part of the California League of Gun Owners or something crazy like that, I would have been annoyed, but I wouldn’t have dumped him.

  I tried to hide that fear that I’d made a mistake by drinking, and now that it was over, I could see clearly how much I liked him and how much I wanted and needed him. I was not going to let this man go anytime in the future. Maybe right now, it was impossible to say if we would get married or if we’d have kids. I wanted kids, but with Vance about to finish up with Alyssa, maybe he was ready to retire from that. Maybe he was never going to get married again after his wife’s passing.

  But for right now, things were absolutely perfect, and not just because we were naked. They were perfect because we were together, and there was nothing that could pry us apart.

  The moment that Vance finally did come was when he had pushed me up against a wall with me facing him. When he came, I looked directly into his eyes. I refused to let go until he had finished and pulled out. I realized then he hadn’t even used a condom—that told me he either was quite certain that I was the one, or…

  What else could it have meant? He wasn’t drunk. He had plenty of time to decide if he didn’t want a kid or not. He could have pulled out at any second if he wanted to avoid having a kid. But he must have only decided that if he knew that he wanted to be with me. He wasn’t a dick—maybe an avoidant nice guy, but someone who was working on getting rid of that part.

  “Vance…” I said, putting my hands on his cheeks.

  He looked so perfect. We looked so perfect. The whole situation just felt so perfect.

  “I love you, Courtney.”

  The words came out of nowhere, and admittedly, I was caught off-guard when I first heard them.

  But then I thought about them. I thought about what all his actions meant, from just going out with me to taking me to the hospital to even the act of finishing inside of me. His words might have seemed to have come out of nowhere, but they hadn’t been without very subtle signs that I had just missed.

  “Oh, Vance…”

  I took a second to think about if I felt the same way. Did I love this man?

  Did I love the man who had rescued me from the darkest parts of my life? Did I love the man who had invigorated me and broken me both out of my depression and my alcoholism? Did I love the man who now vowed to be with me through his actions and his words?

  I don’t think we need to avoid the answer on this one.

  “I love you too.”

&
nbsp; Epilogue

  One Year Later

  I was beyond exhausted, but it was a much better kind of exhaustion to feel in comparison to what I had had in the years before.

  The club had gone through a run of relationships about a year ago, and as soon as Courtney and I became official—we waited until the school year ended to prevent any awkwardness for Alyssa—the club made a pool on who would get married first. Would it be the originals, Jane and Trace? Would it be the odd couple in Amber and Splitter? Would it be the quiet but sweet couple in BK and Megan?

  Or would it be the latecomers to the party in Courtney and me?

  The debate raged on for a while, oftentimes comprising much of our hall time. We didn’t have much to talk about because, just as I had hoped, the decision to bring in some of the lower-ranking Mercs into our club had all but eliminated the worse of the violence. There was an added bonus that not even I had anticipated in that the Mercs who surrendered to us also gave us contact information for many of the non-compliant Mercs, making it easy to scare them out.

  As a result, one calendar year later, we could safely say that the Mercs were either all Saints or all gone. Truly, finally, the club had found peace.

  Well, except when we got back to those debates about who was going to propose first. Personally, I figured it would come down to BK and Megan or Trace and Jane. I didn’t think Amber was so ready to get married right after her divorce, and I had come in so late into the picture that we needed more time. Part of Courtney’s rehab process involved the process of setting boundaries, and one we mutually agreed upon was to wait at least a year before we got married.

  The operative word, of course, was at least. By now, I knew I was going to marry her; she always told me that I brought vibrancy and joyfulness back into her life, but she had done the same for me as well. It was more a function of the fact that both of us were in no rush. She wanted kids, but she and I agreed that if she got pregnant before she got married, we’d get married before the birth. It wasn’t a stopping factor for us.