“You want to come with us, Grace? Hang out. Just have some fun. ’Cause, to be honest, babe, looks like you could use it.” Sam squeezed my shoulder, and then his hand slid down and stroked my upper back. “Offer stands, Grace. We’ll be at the Bullock if you want to let off some steam. No obligations, no questions asked. You don’t feel like going home to that husband of yours, baby, you don’t have to.”
Description:
I am that gash in her soul.
Once I loved Grace, really loved her.
And she loved me, and it was so fucking beautiful.
Once.
That pendulum swings to and fro.
We’re here,
and then we’re—
No.
How can that rare beautiful be rendered irrelevant, intangible when I still feel so damn much?
Does all that energy, that glory, that significance simply dissolve?
Turn to smoke?
To nothing?
It can’t. It just can’t.
Are the moments that shape us absolutely random?
Is time not fluid?
I made promises to them, to her.
Especially to her.
Promises I still burn to keep.
I suppose some of us have to get really dirty before we can become truly clean.
I was allegedly South Dakota’s most famous old lady.
Sixteen years ago I survived my old man’s murder
Never again.
Never again will I surrender my heart.
Never again will I sacrifice to the Club.
But that all changed in one night.
I came home and crashed into him,
and my past and present blew up in my face.
Both of us lonely, running on empty, and unwilling to admit it.
Until now.
Now I feel things I’d forgotten about, want things I’d cut out of my insides.
Love not only stings when you lose it, when it’s ripped away from you.
When it first sinks its teeth in you, it can cut just as raw and sting just as deep.
I’d forgotten that.
Who holds the keys to betrayal? To suspicion? To trust?
To brotherhood? To family?
To redemption and a bleeding heart?
Right now, I just might.
EXCERPT
“You want to come with us, Grace? Hang out. Just have some fun.
’Cause, to be honest, babe, looks like you could use it.” Sam squeezed my
shoulder, and then his hand slid down and stroked my upper back. “Offer stands,
Grace. We’ll be at the Bullock if you want to let off some steam. No
obligations, no questions asked. You don’t feel like going home to that husband
of yours, baby, you don’t have to.”
“The fuck you say.”
A sudden hush filled the bar. My eyelids slid closed at the raw
anger in the deep voice I knew so well. Sam’s hand on me stilled.
Tania pivoted on her stool. “Now that’s gotta be your old man!”
Sam let out a choking noise from the back of his throat and removed
his hand from me. From behind the bar, Randy fidgeted and swallowed.
“Yes, that’s him,” I said.
“That’s your cue to leave, Sammy,” Tania said in a sour voice.
I glanced up at him. “Bye, Sam.”
“Have a nice road trip,” Tania continued. “And I’d advise, you
should find an alternate route on your way back to Texas, if you know what I
mean. I’d watch it in Colorado, too. There are One-Eyed Jacks there as well.”
“One-Eyed who?”
Tania chuckled. “Best get going now.”
“Yeah.” Sam frowned, his eyes glued in the direction of the
doorway.
I still faced the bar. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see
Sam’s friends gathering their jackets and shiny helmets and hustling toward the
exit.
“Goodbye, Grace,” muttered Sam.
I raised my head and focused my strained vision on the reflection
in the side mirror of the bar to see a towering and very wired Miller clad in
ripped jeans and a white T-shirt smudged with oil. His large dark eyes looked
fierce from behind a curtain of raven hair, the colored prisms of the late
afternoon sunlight glaring around him, as he filled up the doorway, standing
perfectly still.
Tania slid my phone down the bar to me. “I called your hubs on
your cell, so you know.”
“I don’t like being thrown under a bus, so you know.”
“You were dragging this shit out. That is not the Grace I know.”
Miller’s gaze was drilling lasers into my back. I tucked my phone
in my bag.
Tania strode over to Miller. “She needs to wake the fuck up.”
“You Tania?” he asked.
“Yes, I am. Spank her if you have to.” Tania marched out of
Pete’s, the door swinging behind her.
I took in a breath and wiped a hand across my mouth. Heavy booted
footsteps drew closer, and my breath caught. His chest rubbed against my back,
fusing his body heat with mine, as his long arms framed me, his hands planted
on the bar top. His warm breath was like steam on the side of my face.
“Babe, what are you doing?”
“Hanging out. Bumped into Tania.”
“Who was the dick hanging over you? Took everything I had not to
bust in that pretty face of his.”
“Old boyfriend from Texas. Passing through with some of his
friends.”
Miller picked up my beer glass and drained it before slamming it
on the bar and pressing his chest into my back. “Oh, yeah? He didn’t know you
were living here?”
“How would he know that?”
He tilted
his head. “Long as he’s not passing through you
on his way out of town.”
About the author:
Cat Porter was born and raised in New York City, but also spent a few years in Europe and Texas along the way. As an introverted, only child, she had very big, but very secret dreams for herself. She graduated from Vassar College, was a struggling actress, an art gallery girl, special events planner, freelance writer and had all sorts of other crazy jobs all hours of the day and night to help make her dreams come true. She has two children’s books traditionally published under her maiden name. She now lives in Athens, Greece with her husband and three children, and freaks out regularly and still daydreams way too much. She is addicted to the History Channel, her iPad, her husband’s homemade red wine, really dark chocolate, and her Nespresso coffee machine. Writing keeps her somewhat sane, extremely happy, and a productive member of society.
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