Page 16 of The Trust We Broke
I’ve seen it a million times.
When I reach the other side of town, I open up the bike and let her fly.
The white lines splitting the road go past me in a blur. Wind bites through my layers of clothing. Especially my thighs. I should be home right now, not riding the streets.
This is fucked up.
I know it is.
Everything about it is the definition of losing my mind. And the irony isn’t lost on me that Killswitch Engage’s “The End of Heartache” blasts through my helmet singing about waking to the misery of being without the person you love.
Because I have no business lingering down from the gates that block off the De Bose estate.
Pretty sure I shouldn’t have put my fucking tracker on Lucy’s father’s truck while she was at the grocery store. But I need to know where she is. I keep telling myself it’s so I can avoid her. That I can make sure I’m never where she is.
Yet, I now find myself outside her parents’ place because I know she’s in there. Like a fucking magnet, she’s pulled me in. Once again, I’m still on the wrong side of the tracks, watching for the woman I married.
They’re probably drinking some fancy French wine that matured a hundred years ago and costs four figures. I remember when her dad tried to make a fool of me, telling me I was drinking some fancy bottle that tasted like piss.
Turned out he’d gotten a bottle from a discount store, some alcohol-free shit, and decanted it to make it look fancy.
When they poured me a glass of the expensive shit, after having a laugh at my twenty-year-old ass, I knocked it over on purpose, and it was my turn to laugh as the red wine caused an ink blot across the tablecloth and De Bose’s crisp white shirt.
And Lucy, man, she looked at me as though I were the king of the world, grabbed my hand, and led me out through the manicured gardens to the fields of wildflowers beyond.
I couldn’t remember a time before her, and thought we’d be together forever, until I grew up into the man I’d always been becoming.
Until it got real.
Until I got locked up for beating the shit out of a man who dared to touch her, because the law her father lived and breathed couldn’t help her.
Until her father thanked me for looking out for her by using my actions as an excuse to get me away from her.
Until the divorce papers arrived the day of my sentencing.
And maybe one day, I’ll find out why.
I didn’t hit him as hard or as violently as his injuries showed. But I definitely threw him down.
And him…he who was arrested but never charged becausetheysaid it was a he said, she said. Think it was the first and last time a case Lucy’s father was involved in went to the opposition.
I fucking held Luce that night as she shook in my arms. She arrived at the clubhouse from that fancy society party, her pretty face tear stained. There were rips in the gorgeous pink dress she’d been so excited to wear, and four bruises on her right arm that almost matched the placement of my own fingertips.
He’d violated her with that same hand.
Didn’t feel a moment’s regret for charging to the party to lay that asshole out once I’d got Lucy settled. I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Even if I knew the result would be the same.
I can’t prove it, but I’ve always known there was only one person who could convince Lucy to divorce me, and that was her father.
He couldn’t bear to see her with acriminal hoodlum.
What makes my blood boil most about the whole thing is that Lucy let him win. She knew what he was like. He never liked our friendship. When we were young, he paid no attention to Lucy or who her friends were. I always wondered if she chose a career inlaw to try and get his attention and approval. We were fourteen before he realized that the Zach his daughter knew was the son of an Outlaw, and how that would look for his career. Early in our relationship, he’d threatened to withdraw all offers to pay for her undergrad and law school if she didn’t break up with me, and she didn’t.
I’m not sure what he said to her, or what he had to hold over her.
But whatever it was, it was big enough for her to no longer confide in me.
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