Page 97 of Justice for Radar

“You do, baby. For a lot of reasons. Now I could list them all out one by one and get you all blushing and embarrassed like you do or you could just nod and take my word for it,” I said.

“Aren’t you scared?” she asked cautiously a little while later.

“About what?” I asked.

“Things not working out?” she asked.

I laughed a little. “No. I just have a radar for these kinds of things,” I said. “Always have and always will. It’s part of how I got my road name. That and I’m a bit of an amateur meteorologist… still. I have a radar for those things too. How bad a storm is going to be and if we should take cover or to what degree we should batten down the hatches,” I said. I shrugged. “All intents and purposes, I knew that whatever storm clouds you had rushing up on you weren’t all that bad and it wasn’t anything me and mine couldn’t take care of – and I was right.”

She looked at me wide-eyed and stopped, I stopped with her and took her in.

“What?” I asked.

“That wasn’t that bad?” she asked, and I could hear the shock in her voice.

“No, it wasn’t that bad forme. It was plenty awful foryou. Too awful, you ask me. You have every right to feel how you feel about all of it and I know it’s going to take time and the like to come to an understanding with it all, and even accept that there won’t be much understanding to be had in the end… but as for me? I’ve done a hell of a lot worse, seen a hell of a lot of shit and I’m not sure that for me that what I did to help you was the worst I’ve ever done… but that being said, there’s a whole lot worse I would be happy to go through for you and to keep you safe.”

“You keep saying things like that, I’m apt to fall in love,” she said jokingly but I could hear the test of her words in the tremor of her voice. She was already there, just scared to say it - which I understood, so I took the leap first, pulling her into the circle of my arms and kissing her forehead, a lingering touch of my lips to her silky soft warm skin. I breathed in her scent, woman and flowers like a field of wildflowers in bloom and pulled back to look her in the eyes.

“I’m already head over heels in love with you, babe and I don’t want to turn back.”

She looked up at me and her face was so starkly beautiful in that moment. She looked stunned as well as stunning, her eyes misting as she cuddled into me and rested her head against my shoulder, looking out over the water. I didn’t rush her, or this, I just held her and stood with her for as long as she needed me to do it.

Just soaking her in and this moment, until I was pickled in happy.

32

Justice…

We slept in, enjoyed some sights, meandered our way down the inner coast stopping for lunch and enjoying ourselves, content in one another’s company. Radar kept checking his phone throughout the day texting back and forth with Atlas about business and the need to get back to it and soon and I was alright with that. If anything, I felt guilty I had kept them from it for so long… even if I could recognize it was through no fault of my own.

By the time we got off the freeway and took the little side highways and roads leading to Ft. Royal, the sun was setting. By the time we reached the leading edge of town it was full dark. I was tired, and my heart sank just a little when Radar said, “Gonna stop this end of town and swing into The Plank, check in with the captain and the rest of the crew if that’s alright with you.” I smiled and nodded.

Really, all I wanted was to be home, with Radar, snugged up to him safe and warm settling into what I was hoping would be my new home for a very long time, but I was scared about that. Scared that after a week more, a month, six? That he wouldn’t find me attractive anymore or that I would be too needy or too broken or that therapy, which I desperately wanted to seek out, wouldn’t be enough and I would… I don’t know.

I honestly never envisioned surviving my husband. Never envisioned having a future… and now he was gone, and I was here, and I was so scared. Scared about all of the what-if’s and what-to-do-next’s and I know that was some of the PTSD talking but… but…what if? What if his club decided that they didn’t trust me or they didn’t like me? What would I do then? How would I react? What would I do? Where would I go and how would I honestly survive having to start all over again?

Was this my life now?

Just picking up from one disaster after the next, forever and ever and ever? Not being able to have anything consistent or that was my own?

I huffed out a harsh sigh with how my mind ran away from me and Radar threaded his fingers between mine as we turned onto a road unfamiliar to me, just on the leading edge of town as we were about to dip down the boulevard.

The Plank was a nondescript bar with street parking only, but not street parking in the traditional parallel parking sense of the word. No, it had back-in angle parking all along its front. I knew we had reached the right place by all of the motorcycles parked out front, all shiny gas tanks and gleaming chrome where the overhead light over the bar’s front door reached them, as well as the neon beer logo signs in the window.

There were wooden slat blinds behind the beer signs, and they were pulled down, the slats angled so you couldn’t see in the front windows and I wondered if that was for safety or just aesthetic.

Safety, because my mind drifted back to a girl in the survivor’s group that I had been in who had been badly burned when her boyfriend had some of his gang member buddies drag her out of her car outside her work, pour lighter fluid on her, and set her on fire. She said she always kept her blinds closed, always expected a drive by any day, even though her ex was locked up for ordering the hit on her and a multitude of drug charges as well.

Radar put my car into park and looked over at me, he frowned slightly and asked me, “What’s wrong?”

“I…” he gave me a look of consternation and I closed my mouth swallowing the‘don’t know’that I’d been about to utter.

We stared at each other in the close dark of the car, and I said, “I’m scared that this is all going to fall apart, that your club won’t like me and that this will all be over before it has a chance to start and I’ll be left on my own to start my life all over again,againand I don’t want to.”

He nodded slowly, undid his seatbelt, and picked up my hand, kissing it and peering over it at me with such a grave expression.

“What?” I asked. “Please say something…”

---