Page 41 of Fire
“This crew made regular patrols on a nightly basis. I made it one week with them. We’d been sent to Memphis to broker a deal with a local gun dealer there. The deal had gone down easier than usual, and it left the guys restless and ready to burn off some steam.
The whole patrol went downtown to a local bar. Two pretty girls were there kissing and holding hands and an asshat Reiver named Monty had gone over to them and hit on them. When they sent him packing, he got drunk and talked the crew into some payback. He ordered me to follow them when they left and scare them into a back alley where the rest of the crew would be waiting.
“I just stood watching the girls who had to be around the same age as I was but were so much fresher and unscarred than I was. The way they looked into each other’s eyes like they were everything to each other.
I stalked up to them and peeled off a fifty from my wallet. “You are being targeted. Call a cab and have it meet you at the back door. They just looked up at me in fright. ‘Do it now,’ I roared, which finally caused them to follow my orders.
“I watched them until they got in their cab, and then I met with the rest of the Reivers in that alley and beat each and every one of them, especially Monty into the ground.
“I drove back to Adeline that night and told Digger I wanted to be culled. Being culled is a?—”
“I know,” Evan interrupts. “Johnny told me about his experience…he said only two people ever survived it. And you showed me your scars.”
I nod. “Johnny was one, and I was the other. We are the surviving members of a shitty club. But the night I walked into that cage, I didn’t care if I lived or died. I just wanted the ugliness and violence to stop.”
“Some part of you cared,” Evan says. “I can’t imagine someone who didn’t care about living would fight that hard to stay alive.”
“I think I wanted the punishment,” I confess
“Why?”
“Because I deserved it.”
Evan doesn’t say anything, and I give him time to soak up the story I just told him, each second feeling like forever. Finally, I can’t wait any longer. “Now that you know who I am, I understand if you want nothing to do with me.”
Chapter 18
Evan
“Now that you know who I am,” Luca says, my expected rejection showing clearly on his face. “I understand if you want nothing to do with me.”
My first reaction is to bridge the gap between us on the bed and comfort him. Kiss him and tell him, that his past doesn’t matter.
It’s not that simple. Luca just performed emotional hari-kari on himself and he deserves for me to take the time to examine my reactions.
Since I was nineteen and the Reivers upended my life, I’ve made it my life’s work to expose the Reivers and make them accountable for their crimes. Luca’s details of the violence and hate he took part in, is everything I’ve been fighting against. I owe it to us both to carefully look at what that means to me.
I replay Luca’s story in my head, and I’m brought back to the first day when Luca showed up at my apartment and told me he’d been part of the Reivers and given me the option to have someone replace him as my bodyguard.
That day I’d chosen to let him stay and since then, I’d made him my lover. It seems way too late to pass judgment on him now. The day of the Freedom Fest I saw the violence he’scapable of up close, and instead of judging him, I was grateful for it. And then afterward, I was grateful that the same arms that violently injured my attackers, wrapped around me and offered me comfort.
I think about the boy who patched with the Reivers, that Luca described himself as being. Filled with hate. A bully. Striking out at the world with the anger he felt for himself.
Then I think of the yoga teacher slash bodyguard I’ve spent the last several weeks with under intense conditions. Protective. Slow to anger, even when provoked. A man who risked his own life to save mine.
I’m pretty sure I would have hated the Luca from the past, but I don’t know him. I know present Luca, and I know him to be a good man.
I know more than that. I know I’m in love with him.
Doing a deep dive of introspection into his life made me realize that I’ve been in love with him since the night I woke him up from his nightmare, maybe even before that.
And though the old saying goes, love is blind, I think in this case, my love acts as a spotlight into the kind of man Luca is. Being super aware of his every move since he first walked through my door, I’ve seen his dedication to protecting me and the hours of hard work he’s put in with Grave in working on tactical attacks against the Reivers.
I’m in love with a good man, I know it.
One who just asked me if I still wanted to have anything to do with him.
The answer is yes. It’s always going to be a yes.
