Shield

by Anne Malcom

  He watched me, knowing the invitation behind my words. “I’ve got enough regrets to curse and inspect in the winter of my life, babe,” he said. “But I’ll be okay inspecting them if I’ve got a thousand summers with you. Making mistakes, maybe, but one I know I won’t make is standing right in front of me.” His hands fastened at my hips, yanking me close to him. “Maybe there was a time where I was that first type of person. Actually, there’re no fucking maybes about it. I was. You were too. Because you lived wild and free, babe, that’s true. But livin’ wild when chaos is your normal is the same as livin’ normal when you know nothing else. Maybe we both did the dance of regret with each other. I’m not gonna let us do that. Any mistake I make with you will be a treasure as long as I’ve got you beside me in the winter of my life.”

  “But—”

  He took the shield from my hands.

  “This badge.” He fingered the shiny silver item that weighed so much more than the sum of its parts. “It used to be everything to me. There was nothing more important than this. What it represented. Who it represented. Me. The man I wanted to be. The man I thought I needed to be. This badge used to be my reason for getting up in the morning. For being. My purpose.” He paused, not really looking at me but at the same time staring into whatever was left of my soul. He was choosing his words carefully. “I was doing something. Something good, maybe,” he continued. He didn’t sound sure at the last part, like it was more of a question. Not to me, to himself.

  I wanted to look away. I wanted to escape the stare of an intimate object, the blame that came with it, the guilt. The incredible guilt that followed me around the country and then out of it, which I knew I couldn’t run from yet I itched to try once more. To escape. To do what I always did when the emotional going got a little too real.

  I wanted to escape him too.

  Even though every cell in my body rebelled against it, even though he held everything I ever wanted in his hands. Not the badge. Just him. I wanted to run. Not from him. For him. To give him back the life I’d stolen from him.

  I wanted to trick myself that it wasn’t too late for him to get it back, that I hadn’t put it through the wood chipper like I had my own heart.

  He seemed to sense my struggle, or at least my eagerness to escape. The lawman in him, I guessed. He knew when an outlaw was going to make a run for it. Instinct.

  The silver clattered to the floor in a resounding echo and he was on me before I knew what happened. Before I could register just how pivotal that abandonment of that small piece of metal was.

  His hands framed my face and his eyes searched mine. I couldn’t bring myself to hide it. My utter love for him. The love that had started out as innocent and pure and had been warped, tangled into something ugly and brutal and nothing like the movies, yet I was loath to let it go. Even if it had already begun to destroy us.

  Even if we had been goners the second I’d seen him on that curb at five years old.

  His grip on me, both with his hands and his eyes, made it seem like he didn’t want to let go either, even though it was bad for him. Even though I was bad for him.

  “That badge used to be everything, Rosie,” he rasped. “Who I wanted to be, my reason for being.” His hands tightened at my face. “But fuck, baby, I didn’t know shit about living for somethin’. Breathin’ for something. Dying for something. Willing to kill for that something and still sleep at night as long as that something, you, is gathered naked in my arms.” He yanked us closer together so no air separated us.

  “But I’m not good,” I whispered, my voice so small and vulnerable I didn’t even recognize it.

  He flinched. Full body. Like I’d struck him. Like the words actually hurt him to hear. “No, baby,” he said, voice thick. “You’re not.”

  “I’m not good,” I repeated in a tone that belonged to someone rocking back in forward in a padded room wearing a straitjacket. That’s who I was on the inside.

  He nodded, not hearing the crazy in my tone, or ignoring it. “No. You’re not.” There was a beat, a palpable heaviness in the air at his pause. “Such a word doesn’t even fucking scratch the surface of what you are. Labeling you as one singular thing would be a gross disservice to the magnificent creature that you are. You’re so much fucking more than one side of two binaries, baby. You’re strong. Stronger than most who wear badges, stronger than most who fight those who do. You’re loyal. So fucking loyal I know you’d take a dagger for anyone you let into your life, and that list is fucking long and full of people who seem to brush with death too often for comfort. Know you’d do it for people you haven’t even met yet. You’d take the blow for anyone who didn’t deserve it just because you could. Because you would willingly and without fear be a shield for anyone. That scares the shit out me.”

  Fear, true fear, danced in his eyes at his words. It shook me to the core. Because it was that life-or-death kind of fear, when something happened to make you realize how fragile life really was.

  “Every day, I have this bitter taste on the back of my tongue because I know you’ll jump in front of a bullet without hesitation. Because of that thing you have inside you. That loyalty. Yet I love you for it. Your spark. Your fight. Your beauty. Not just on the outside, but the shit you got inside you. It’s worth it.” He glanced to the reflection of silver on the ground. “It was worth it. Giving it up. Whatever fucked-up me I was trying to be without you. I’d walk through fire for you, baby. I don’t give a shit about the other stuff that kept us apart. That kept me from being a stupid bastard and burying my feelings so deep I hid them even from myself. That means nothing with you in my arms. In my bed.”

  His eyes searched mine, yet the vision wasn’t crisp since mine were murky with tears.

  “Which is where you’re going to be for the rest of your fuckin’ days, Rosie. And despite your penchant for taking bullets for those you love, there’ll be a lot of them. Because you want to be the shield for people? Fine. But the thing is I’m your shield. And whatever shit you face, it’s gotta go through me first.”

  “But I want to be your shield,” I whispered, tears running down my face.

  He wiped them away. “Okay, we’ll be each other’s,” he murmured back. And then he took away any more words I could use as excuses or escapes and he kissed me. Reminded me of the one thing that mattered. The one thing I could control.

  Not the bullet with my name on it. Or his.

  But us.

  And maybe it was going to be a big Rosie Fuck-Up. But it was going to be for life.

  Two Days Later

  “You’ve got to be fuckin’ shittin’ me,” Cade spat, his shades directed to the parking lot.

  Luke’s own shades focused on Cade’s glare, visible even beneath the dark glasses he wore, because he wore that glare in his entire body. Luke instinctively yanked me closer to him, obviously expecting a threat.

  And he wasn’t wrong.

  My mother climbed out of a beat-up Camaro, her leopard-print heels hitting the pavement unsteadily at first. Then she righted herself, yanking off her knock-off sunglasses so we could see the streaks of makeup running down her face.

  “My babies!” she screamed.

  Yes, screamed. In the parking lot of a memorial.

  Today marked a year to the day since Scott’s death. I wasn’t there for the funeral, which I was kind of glad of. I hated burying people. It was something we did for all the fallen brothers, but it meant a lot more to me, because I didn’t get a proper chance to say goodbye.

  Not just to Scott but to the person I was. To the demons I’d entertained after that day.

  But there was my mother.

  Screaming.

  At a memorial.

  Granted, it was a Sons of Templar memorial, so there would likely have been screaming at some point in the night once the bottles were empty and hearts were a little lighter. Or heavier.

  But not now.

  And not from her.

  She went for me first, because
I was always the easier one. I was always the one who forgot for a moment, that I was meant to be angry at the mother who abandoned me because I’d slowed down her party. Because I would always react as a little girl, even as a woman, I’d instinctively want my mother’s embrace.

  Wanted to pretend that she wanted it too.

  But that time it was different. Because I was being held by someone who definitely wanted me, someone who wasn’t letting me go.

  Mom dropped her knock-off bag at our feet, arms open as if to hug me, glancing at Luke in a gesture for him to let me go.

  Luke knew our story with Mom. Therefore, he did not let me go.

  She awkwardly leaned in and kissed me sloppily on the cheek, her cheap perfume embracing me even though her body didn’t.

  “Oh, Rosie, baby,” she cried, pretending that the moment hadn’t happened when she leaned back. “I came as soon as I heard you were home, that you’d lost another one. This is just horrible. Horrible. I knew my babies would need their momma to get through this.”

  Cade snorted. Actually snorted.

  All eyes went to him.

  Not just because such a sound was foreign and never before heard. Gwen was gaping.

  “Bullshit,” he said. “You came because you’re outta money, too old to get the attention you want, and too fuckin’ washed up to hide your crazy from whatever guy is stupid enough to fuck you. You came back here because you’ve got nowhere else to go, not because we need you,” he growled. “Clue in. You weren’t here when we buried our father. When Rosie went to prom. Graduated. When she lost one of her best friends. When my daughter was born. My wedding day. My son’s birth.” He listed them off like bullets, aiming to hurt and maim the woman who birthed us. “We sure as fuck don’t need you or want you,” he spat. “You have any fuckin’ respect for this club and for your children, you’ll get back in that piece of shit and never come back here again.”

  Mom was gaping at him, with the audacity to look appalled. Hurt.

  The truth did hurt. Especially when it was ugly. Especially when it showed you how ugly you were.

  Mom wasn’t. The years hadn’t been kind to her, shown by the deep lines around her mouth and forehead, the makeup she slathered on sinking into the creases. Her eyes were a little sunken in, bloodshot. But she was still beautiful, under it. Or at least she had a shadow of something that told the world she used to be beautiful.

  She dressed like she still was. She was slim, but more out of malnutrition than anything, her tight black dress molding over bones and tired flesh. It was much too short for a woman her age, even a woman who lived as hard and wild as she did.

  Crocodile tears ran down her face. I was sure apologies, excuses, and tragedies were about to come spilling from her lipstick-smudged mouth.

  They might have, had the barrel of a gun not settled in a deep wrinkle in the center of her forehead.

  “You’ve got about thirty seconds to get out of here before I shoot you,” Evie said, her eyes hard.

  I blinked at her. Cade and Luke both stepped forward, as if to do something.

  Evie wasn’t worried. “You don’t get to come and spread your poison upon these kids. Upon this day. You won’t do it again. You may not remember how to be a mother, never were one. Nor a good person. But I’m sure you’ll remember that I don’t do empty threats. Today of all days. Death is visiting today. And he’ll welcome another addition. I won’t hesitate to give him one.”

  Evie wasn’t lying. I knew that. She would shoot Mom, right there.

  It felt strange to me that I didn’t have immense panic at that thought. It was hurt. A lot of hurt. But not at seeing my mother killed in front of me. It was having a mother who put herself here. Took herself away from us, then put herself here.

  She blinked at me, pleading with her eyes, expecting me to speak up, to fight for her.

  Except that day I didn’t feel like fighting. I hooked my hand into Luke’s belt loop. He immediately turned, sensing my need, and took me into his arms, his body a barrier between me and my mother.

  “They ain’t gonna say shit,” Evie croaked. “They got one true mother standin’ here. It’s the one holdin’ the gun. I’ll kill for them, and I’ll kill for myself. So go, bitch, before I decide to spill your blood just to make this anything but the day we revisited the family we’ve lost.”

  Mom only had a sliver of hesitation, a painfully short amount, before she turned on her heel and left.

  Evie didn’t lower the gun until the engine started.

  We all watched her leave.

  Mom didn’t look back once.

  “I need a fucking drink,” Evie muttered, turning on her stiletto heel and moving toward the clubhouse as if nothing happened.

  “Me too,” Cade said. He yanked Gwen into his side, giving me a look before following Evie.

  I went to do the same when Luke stopped me, hands going to my face.

  “What?” I asked, confused.

  “Babe.”

  I waited. He didn’t say anything else. “Babe is not an answer,” I snapped. “I know you’ve taken to hanging around with men who think it is, but make no mistake, that’s not gonna fly with me,” I informed him.

  “That was your mother,” he said quietly, looking to where the Camaro had disappeared.

  “No it wasn’t,” I replied. I jerked my head toward the clubhouse. “That was my mother. The woman who was wearing too much perfume and not enough clothes is just someone who gave birth to me and pops in when she needs a break from the party. And needs money, more often than not.”

  “Fuck, babe. I’m sorry,” he murmured.

  “I’m not,” I replied. “Seriously. I may be damaged in a lot of ways, but that’s not one of them. I don’t have a hole where I’m meant to have a mother because I have them.” I nodded back to the clubhouse once more. “They’ve given me more than she ever could have, even if she’d stayed. So I’m good. Don’t worry about that. I’d be more focused on the crime lords out to get me,” I teased.

  He kissed me long and hard. “Fuck, I love you.”

  I grinned lazily. “I love you too.”

  “I’m thankful for her,” I said to the fire.

  Cade and I had gotten through the day. With each of the people who acted as our other halves beside us.

  That was until Luke brought me into his arms, lips on my ear. “Think you and your brother need a moment?”

  I leaned back, gaped at him for suggesting something I didn’t realize I needed until right that second.

  “I love you,” I blurted in answer.

  His eyes were oceans. “I love you, baby. To my bones,” he murmured back.

  Then he let me go.

  Just like Gwen let Cade go when I wandered up to her.

  Cade scoffed from his place across from me. “You’re shittin’ me.”

  I glanced at him. “Trust me, there’re a lot of things I want to hate her for. I should hate her for.” I took a pull of my beer. “She’s a shitty mom and an arguably worse person. But she designed herself, you know? She majorly fucked up, don’t get me wrong, but I think that’s why Dad loved her. She saw through all the bullshit of how people thought they were meant to be. She created herself for herself. She didn’t follow any rules.”

  “Like bein’ a fuckin’ good mother,” Cade spat.

  I nodded. “Yeah, that. But if there’s anything I got from her apart from great hair is that ability. That rebellion, I guess. Against that little part of every human that strives to be like everyone else for some illusion of safety that comes with unity. That’s bullshit. She taught me, without even trying.”

  Cade regarded the fire. “No, kid. You did not get that shit from her. Or even Dad.” His eyes met mine. “You got that shit from you. You were born with somethin’ that no other human being has business having inside them before bein’ able to speak. Born with chaos. Swear to God, I saw it the moment I looked into your eyes, a day old. Fuck, even as a kid, I looked at you and knew it.”
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  I blinked away my blurry vision at the beautiful and heartfelt words coming from my brother.

  “You’re an exceptionally good man, Cade Fletcher,” I whispered.

  “Exceptional runs in the blood, just like trouble. Only thing we inherited from that bitch.”

  I screwed up my nose, trying to match the bitterness and hate in Cade’s tone with the memories of my mother.

  I couldn’t.

  In my fuzzy memories, she was the one smiling, dancing, laughing. Turning the music up so loud my teeth chattered. Letting me wear leopard-print cowboy boots with my ballet uniform. As I grew older and she visited less, those memories were all I had to cling to.

  Today was my first real glimpse of the truth.

  The ugly one.

  “Was she really that bad?” I asked.

  Cade’s face softened. “Roe, no. She loved you. In her way. She just didn’t know how to love herself, so she couldn’t do it right. She did you a favor by leaving. I don’t like to think how fucked up you’d be if she’d stayed.”

  I grinned. “You mean even more fucked up?” I faked a shiver. “Me neither.”

  There was a long silence—well, immediate silence. The low hum of heavy metal and grumbled conversation carried from the wake that had now turned into a party.

  “You okay, Roe?” Cade asked softly.

  “No,” I admitted. “Not at all.”

  “Yeah, me neither.”

  I looked over the shadows, past Death who was staring right at me, grinning that toothless grin, to my man. To Luke, holding his beer, chatting easily with the men who, up until a year or so before, he would’ve loved to have put in a prison. Now he partied with them.

  He was doing that, and would be doing that forever.

  For me.

  And then Death wasn’t in front of me anymore. He was still there, but behind Luke. Behind Luke’s shield.