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  When Remy was recovering, I spent most of my time watching over him and dreaming of the day that we’d be whole, far away from all the blood and danger. I was so thankful we had survived at all, and with each passing day, Remy was getting better. Stronger.

  It made me think about an actual future with Remy, but I had a lot of trouble visualizing what I wanted that future to look like. Would we eventually get married? Have children? It was what I always wanted before Remy Daniels, but now…

  I didn’t know. Those white picket fence dreams belonged to another girl. The Star that was left behind and buried with her aunt and uncle.

  We were always so caught up in the now that we hadn’t given any real thought to what came afterward. We had a little more breathing room, but it still felt like we were only living for the moment. Was going west our way of pushing normal off for a few more weeks? Would we ever truly be normal? And would we even like it once we were?

  Remy hated his job, and I wasn’t doing all that much better here either. I could tolerate it better because I guess I had more experience putting up with shit than he did, but I, too, did notice that it was getting more and more difficult. I had a much harder edge than I used to. I used to be such a pushover.

  I was in a daze after the two men left. Looking down at what I was doing, just spreading the guacamole around, I stopped. I wasn’t cleaning anything. This wasn’t even my job to do!

  Fuck this.

  I stood up, feeling a calm wash over me as I left the mess and walked out of the kitchen. I took off the gaudy vest with the bullshit buttons they made me wear and dropped it all on the floor as I passed Molly. She didn’t notice. She was still sitting where I last saw her, still doing nothing when everyone around her was busting their asses.

  “Ra-shel, hun, I need you to pull a double tonight. FYI, we have a catering job for the law firm later,” Molly said in her typical, condescending fashion, not bothering to lift her gaze from her phone.

  Of course, she would wait until I had grabbed all my things and was already on my way out to tell me this. Something she’d known for hours. That was the kind of person Molly was. Incapable of consideration of any kind. To her, it was the Molly Show all day, everyday. I was so tired of all the Mollys in the world.

  “No.” I was fed up. I realized that whatever this was, it wasn’t working for me. My time with Remy had changed all that.

  “Thanks, hun.” Molly hadn’t heard my reply at all.

  When I reached the door I turned around and narrowed my eyes at her. The old me would have taken it or sulked off. That didn’t really feel like an option any more.

  “Hey, Molly,” I said, walking back over to her. When she, of course, didn’t look up, I snatched the phone out of her hands and dropped it in her soda. “Get fucked.”

  “What?!” She gazed at the cup in horror. I left with the widest smile I’d worn all week before she could pull herself together enough to say anything else.

  Molly came running out of the restaurant and caught up to me as I was unlocking the car door.

  “Who the fuck do you think you are, bitch? You just lost your fucking job, cunt! You’re nothing, you four-eyed twat. Do you have any idea who my father—?” Molly was throwing her arms around and around, making a scene in the parking lot.

  Like the click of a gun’s safety switch, all my mental safeguards – the ones drilled into me since childhood on to behave in public, on how to tolerate shit from others – snapped off. I turned abruptly, my face a hairsbreadth from Molly’s. Her threats cut off mid-sentence, and her face turned pale when she heard the click of my switchblade followed immediately by the cold, metal kiss of the blade’s tip lightly pushing into her stomach.

  We stayed there motionless in the parking lot for a few seconds as customers walked in and out, regarding us first curiously then with concern. I didn’t care about them, and I sure as hell didn’t care about Molly. To be honest, I was quickly running out of reasons not to stab her in the gut.

  Molly felt that, too.

  “That’s the thing about threats,” I said evenly, repeating something Remy once told me. “Words backed with inaction were nothing compared to action wrapped in silence and dripping with intent.”

  It struck me in that moment just how much of a spoiled little bully Molly was. When push came to shove, she was just a little, spoiled bitch. I wondered how I had ever put up with such small people. Not just her, but every shitty boss and every soul-sucking job. Over the past several weeks, I had developed this stern hardness, like steel tempered in fire and cooled in oil. I wasn’t scared or intimidated at what I’d become. I was just prepared to do whatever was necessary. Courtesy of Remy, I guess. Those princess dreams, that normal future, fell flat in the face of who I really was. It took a woman like Molly to finally show me that.

  “One more word comes out of that ugly cock sock, and I’ll tear your heart out through the new cunt that I carve in your stomach.” My eyes narrowed as much as hers opened.

  Molly’s entitled anger became vapor. It went up like flash paper when she saw the black fire in my cold eyes. Her confidence and superiority were replaced by abject terror at the severity of her mistake. She knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that I wasn’t bluffing.

  And she was right.

  I wasn’t bluffing.

  “Wh-wh-who are you?” she stammered, shaking and on the verge of pissing herself.

  “Fuck you, that’s who I am,” I growled. “Now, run along, little meat-puppet, before Daddy has to clean you off the pavement with a fucking shovel.”

  Chapter Five

  …

  Star

  Remy was sitting on the floor on the far side of our one room apartment smoking when I came home. I hadn’t dwelled on Molly or what I’d done at all since leaving the restaurant. Actually, I was in a great mood. I felt lighter than I had in a long, long time.

  Remy, on the other hand, appeared to be the opposite.

  I put my bag down cautiously, trying to assess the situation. He’d occasionally get lost in thought as he tried to work something out. This time, though, he seemed more focused in his distant concentration than I have seen him in a long time.

  It had me worried.

  “Everything all right?” I tested the waters.

  No answer.

  “Remy?” I asked again.

  He ignored me and took a pull from his cigarette. The cherry tip danced in his eyes, and smoke streamed from his nose. Still nothing, but that fiery gaze as it bore directly through the opposite wall. I half-expected the wallpaper to start smoldering any second.

  “Rem—”

  His searing gaze snapped at me.

  I immediately felt uncomfortably warmer. I swallowed and continued, “Are you okay? Did something happen?”

  At some point while speaking, he went from staring at me to staring through me. I felt translucent.

  “Goddamnit! Talk to me!” Burn me, scream at me, anything to let me know you’re still in there! I could deal with damn near anything at this point but not a rift between us. I needed him to be able to talk to me because I needed to be able to talk to him.

  All we had in this life was each other.

  “I can’t do it.” His voice was a guttural whisper.

  “What? Can’t do what?” I had no idea what he was talking about.

  Remy shot up and whipped the ashtray at the far wall, shattering it then kicked the nightstand and lamp across the room. The lamp was still plugged in and smashed with an electric flare and fizzle.

  I recoiled, but only at the sound. Remy still frightened me, but I didn’t think he’d ever hurt me on purpose.

  “All of it!” he screamed. “This playing house bullshit. I’m not cut out for the nine to five grind. ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘No, sir.’ All these toilsome, fucking, parasitic jobs are eating me inch by inch! I’ve never had more homicidal rage than working fucking retail! How the fuck do people do this and not kill everyone?”

  He saw that his outbu
rst had startled me and walked outside, slamming the door behind him.

  I was hesitant to follow him. What happened today?

  My heart was beating as fast as it had when we walked into the Lobos clubhouse, and then I was dressed as a stripper. Remy was a frightening man when he wanted to be. Just because a tiger was docile at times didn’t make the animal less of a fucking tiger.

  After a few deep breaths to steady myself, I started thinking about what he said. I thought back on all the jobs I had and all the shit I had to put up with over the years. Between managers and customers, I had been trained to be an obedient little worker bee who made just enough to continue working.

  It was a form of economic slavery.

  I guess that’s why I was going to college to escape the cycle. Then I thought about all my insane school loans and the unemployment rate. I understood Remy’s frustration. The normal world sucked. I wasn’t timid enough for it any longer. I wasn’t obedient enough to just fall in line anymore.

  I went outside to find him sitting in the station wagon the priest gave us. I opened the passenger door and sat next to him. I waited until he was ready to speak.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he finally muttered.

  “What happened?”

  “I lost my job today.”

  My creeping smile couldn’t stem the laugh that escaped me.

  Remy was taken aback and eyed me suspiciously. Of all my possible responses, that wasn’t one that he’d expected.

  “I’m sorry.” I finally got myself under control. “You, too? We’re one hell of a pair, huh?”

  “You got fired today?” Remy’s demeanor lightened.

  I told him about all the events of the last two weeks with Molly that culminated in me pulling a knife on her in the parking lot and threatening her.

  “You told her you were going to tear her heart out through her pussy?” Remy cracked a smile and put a hand on my knee.

  “Something like that, yeah.” I covered my face with my hands in embarrassment.

  Remy pulled my hands away and kissed me.

  His face was coarse, but I didn’t mind the sting from his beard. Those sweet, warm lips were all I cared about.

  Regardless of the day I had, I could always lose myself in them.

  “You’re too good for that place anyways,” he said when we eventually came up for air.

  “I take it you had a shitty day, too, huh?” I asked.

  Remy told me about the robbery and how he thought it was a Lobos hang around initiation. He told me what he’d done to the robber and what his boss had said to him.

  While he was talking, I lit a small joint I had bought off one of the dishwashers. It wasn’t particularly good weed, but it was better than nothing.

  “What bothers me the most is just how willing the Lobos were to pull this shit in their own backyard,” Remy spoke, reaching over and snagging the joint from me. After he took a few hits, he gave it back and picked up where he left off, “No one talks to the cops here because they know the Lobos will come knocking if they do, and there isn’t shit the cops can do about it. I can only imagine what they’d do in territories that the Veins had been pushed out of.” Remy shook his head, and I could tell he was thinking about Leslie.

  “There’s something else I need to tell you.” It was no longer a difficult decision to make. Remy deserved the full truth no matter what path it would lead us down. “Nachomama’s is a money laundering front for the Lobos. The owner is related to one of the Lobos cabinet members, Spyder.”

  Remy didn’t look all that surprised. We were in Lobos country, after all.

  “I found out today,” I continued, pulling out a pair of tweezers and pinching the end of the joint so I wouldn’t burn my fingers. “I overheard a conversation between the owner and Spyder. They were talking about expanding Nachomama’s due to a lot more money coming in soon. Spyder said there was something big coming up next week that would let them know for sure when and if it was going to happen. They’re planning on putting a Nachomama’s restaurant in Leslie—”

  “They’re going after something big enough to cripple the club.” Remy’s face went stiff.

  “What is it? What could they be talking about?” I asked, coughing as the last of the weed was spent.

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to at least warn them.”

  “Are you going to call T— your brother?” I couldn’t say his name without my stomach turning at what he tried to do to me. Thinking about him made my skin crawl.

  “No. He’s already buried both his brothers. I should stay buried at least for now.” Remy’s face pulled hard to the side. I could feel the burning sorrow in his heart. “Tee. I’ll call him instead. Give him the heads up.”

  Remy desperately wanted to reconnect with his brother and his biker family. He was torn between wanting to help them and wanting to honor his vow to keep us safe and start a life together. It killed me to see that turmoil in him. I didn’t want to be the burden he was sworn to carry because eventually, he would resent me for it.

  If I let things continue on like this with him knowing he could’ve done more to help but turning his back on them because of me, it would poison everything we ever tried to build together. If I cared about him above all else, then I would let him be the man he needed to be. I had to believe in Remy and give him the support he needed to spread his blackened wings and do whatever was necessary

  “Remy…” I took his hands in mine. “I want you to know this. No matter what it is or what the consequences are, whatever you decide needs to happen next, I’m with you till the end of the road.”

  “Thank you.” Remy’s brow furrowed upward. Hard-earned gratitude was heavy in his beautiful, dark eyes. He wasn’t one for spoken, soft pleasantries, preferring instead to show me how much he cared with subtle actions and meaningful gestures. So whenever I heard it out loud, it really mattered.

  It made my heart flutter.

  Remy started the car and drove us to our door. “Grab the bag and lock up.”

  “Where are we headed?” I asked, stepping out of the car.

  “To find a payphone if they still exist.”

  “And the bag?” We didn’t have that much money left in there, so it was mostly just the guns. And for this kind of a shitty area, we didn’t have any problem with people trying to break in.

  “You’ll see.” Remy smiled. It was a smile thick with more fun than trouble... well, maybe a little trouble.

  After a few hours of searching and asking around, we’d given up on the phone booth hunt. We had pay-by-the-minute burner phones, but he didn’t want to use them for fear of having our location traced. Remy had decided we needed the remainder of the light for whatever he had planned so we picked up a case of soda and drove deep into the desert. When we stopped in the middle of nowhere, he finally told me what was going on.

  “Pick out a gun you feel comfortable with. You’re going to learn how to use it.” Remy opened the bag. He started holding them up and explaining them to me – what each was called, the various parts, how to load them and unload them with extra care given to show me how to turn the safety on and off.

  Fucker.

  “Is this because of that whole safety thing?” I asked him. The incident made me a little wet just thinking about it. God, it was hot. CRAZY, dangerous and stupid, but hot.

  “No.” Remy stripped down a Beretta nine millimeter, breaking it into five parts, then reassembling it in seconds. Afterwards, he looked up at me through a small gap he made between his extended thumb and index finger, a gesture that meant “a little” and mouthed the word, “maybe.”

  I shoved him.

  “You’re pretty when you pout,” he said mockingly.

  I slid the magazine into the Beretta with a click and pointed it at him.

  “See, you’re already learning.” He put his hands up like I had told him to freeze. Then I thumbed off the safety. “We’re off to a great start.”

  His hands and leg
s were a flash of motion as he stepped out of the path of the gun and stripped it from my hands.

  “Hey!” I protested.

  “Now you just need to learn how to hold on to it.” He winked at me, thumbing the safety back on, and tossing the gun to me. “C’mon.”

  He’d set up cans of soda all along an eroding stone wall. I lined up the shot as best I could and pulled the trigger. Miss. I winced from the noise. He motioned for me to continue. I stepped forward and tried again. As I pulled the trigger, my eyes narrowed like I was expecting a blow.

  Miss! I dug my feet into the sad and pulled the trigger again.

  Another miss.

  Growling in frustration, I emptied the rest of the magazine toward one can of soda, and I swore the last shot only nicked it, but the damn thing didn’t have the decency to fall over! I was terrible at this.

  “This is impossible!” I’d decided, handing the gun back to Remy.

  Without a word, he reloaded it and fired off six quick shots, each hitting their marks and clearing the fence of soda cans.

  “Show off.” I huffed.

  “Here.” He loaded the gun and put it in my hand. “Hold it like this. Now—” Remy swung around, wrapping his body over mine from behind. I felt every part of him press into me. “Turn your head to the right a little. Just... like that. Look down the barrel. You want to line up the front and rear sights. Should look like a capital E laying on its back. You see it?”

  “Yeah.” I was trying my hardest to concentrate, but Remy was so close that I found myself just taking him in all over. My mind drifted to each part of him that touched me, the vibration in his voice as he explained the basics, the heat of his breath, his scent—

  *Blam!*

  “Fuck!” I startled from the noise.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Shit! Yeah, sorry. It just kinda went off. I’m sorry.” I was blushing, but I don’t think he saw, or at least I hoped not. Focus, Star!

  “Don’t jerk the trigger. Squeeze it. Line up your shot and fire at the bottom of your exhale.”

  His voice was warm-honey calm. So soothing and smooth, I could drink it.