by Hazel Parker
One Week Later
“Ladies and gentlemen, let us celebrate tonight.”
I laid out seven shots of whiskey for the seven officers, placed out about a dozen more shots for various other members of the club, and got champagne for the ladies of the club—including the woman I now called my old lady, Jane.
Of course, she wasn’t nearly the old lady that some of the others had had. We weren’t married yet, and I hadn’t even bought a ring. But there could be little doubt that with all that had happened on that fateful day a week ago, for everything that we had gone through, she was mine and I was hers. Everything that would happen was just a formality at the appropriate time, not something that I had to ponder and consider.
The rest of the club knew as much as well, referring to her as “ma’am” or just “Doc.” Splitter got to call her Jane because of how close she was to him in age, but otherwise, the older members kept a respectful distance of my old lady. It was the perfect level of involvement between the club and her.
She would come and visit and offer her services whenever we needed it. We let her work at the hospital on her shifts, making sure not to distract her from her job. But she, too, kept a distance on her off days, allowing me to handle club business—business that had gotten a lot more peaceful since we’d killed Diablo. None of us were naive enough to believe that the war was over, but we knew that we had perhaps had our version of Normandy, storming their beaches and wiping out a critical front of theirs.
“Tonight,” I said in front of about three dozen people, “we celebrate the legacy of Paul Peters. On this day some thirty-six years ago, Paul founded the Savage Saints with a single purpose. To form a commune of brothers, to protect the town of Green Hills, and to ensure that anyone could lead the life they led, so long as they did not harm others. He wanted every human to discover their full potential, removed from the moral trappings of those who would judge them. That legacy lives on through the Savage Saints, through all of us here, most especially one person in particular.”
I could already see Jane beginning to blush. I had not told her this was going to happen, which was the plan all along. I’m pretty sure she mouthed, “I’m gonna kill you later,” but it just made me laugh.
“To the daughter of Paul Peters, Doctor Jane Peters,” I said, drawing some cheers and table slapping from the rest of the attendees of the party. “We can see the courage you have and the strength of character that your father had. You help us, but you also stand up for what you believe is right. You do not let people push you around, and when necessary, you even deliver a few good slaps.”
Thankfully, the crowd laughed at that one—I had a small fear that it would fall flat and be more awkward than not, but it had gone the other way.
“But most noticeably, in a moment of crisis, like the one with the Mercs last week, your quick thinking saved lives and helped us emerge victorious. All of us would be walking around with a lot less blood if not for your service, service which most exemplifies what your father did for us. So to Jane Peters.”
“To Jane!” a roar went up as we all did a shot.
I finished mine, blew her a kiss, and watched her turn even redder than before.
“To the rest of you all,” I said. I let the words hang in the air for the second as anticipation rose. But there was only one thing left to say. “Celebrate!”
A raucous roar broke out, someone started the music, and the alcohol started flowing freely. It didn’t take long for the mamas and the single club members to slowly start gravitating toward each other, but there was nothing slow about the way that Jane approached me.
“You’re a sly little bastard, you know that?” she said.
I just shrugged innocently, as if what I had done was nothing more than compliment her personality.
“What?”
“Uh huh,” she said, pulling me in for a kiss. “Do that to me again, and I’ll humiliate you with all of your childhood stories.”
“Aww, Jesus, please don’t, not—”
Jane just laughed and kissed me once more. This time, though, I didn’t let her pull away as if trying to set a record for the longest kiss ever. I wanted those lips on mine, her body pressed against me so that our souls might better come closer together and bond. I wanted nothing more in this world than for the club to last forever and my love for Jane to last forever.
And I had to say, at this point, it was a pretty good bet that I’d see both to fruition.
The only thing that interrupted me, in fact, was a loud knock on the front door. I ignored it, hoping someone else would get it, but then I heard Splitter yell for me.
“Gimme a sec?” I said with a smile.
“Make it a fast second,” Jane said back.
I hurried over to Splitter, waiting by the front door, and he asked me to come outside.
“The hell’s going on?”
Just then, I noticed that Sheriff Wiggins was leaning against his squad car.
“I know y’all are celebrating and having a good time tonight,” he said. “So I wanted to take this outside, away from it all.”
He came forward with a heavy sigh, his hands in his pockets and his feet kicking at the ground.
“They have a warrant out for Splitter’s arrest,” Wiggins said.
“Goddamn, seriously?”
So much for everything going great.
“The evidence they found at the warehouse scene was pretty strong. It’s not perfect, but it’s enough for them to have one. There’s no getting around this, Trace. We gotta bring him in because if we don’t, the state police will.”
I put my hand on my head, closed my eyes, and tried to wonder how badly we could have fucked this up.
“Don’t worry, boss,” Splitter said. “We’ll figure it out. We always do. And worst case, I take the fall for the club.”
“Fuck,” I said.
There was no such thing as a good arrest. It meant money we had to raise, time lost from a valuable member, and an eroding of our relationship with state officials.
“Look, unofficially, I have to arrest him, and when other cops show up, you best believe I’m going to act the part,” Sheriff Wiggins said. “But I know a gal. Great lawyer. Real cute too. Amber Reynolds is her name. Look her up. She’ll be able to help.”
“I sure fucking hope so,” I said with a sigh.
I looked at Splitter, saw his eyes welling as he tried to look tough, and pulled him in for a hug.
“We’ll get you out of this, bro,” I said. “You’re family. We protect our own.”
“I know,” he said. “Love you, brother.”
“Love you too, man.”
I pulled away as Sheriff Wiggins put Splitter in cuffs, gently led him to the car, and then drove off. I looked behind me and saw Jane standing at the entrance of the doorway, stunned.
“What happened?”
“They got him on warehouse-related stuff,” I said. “That’s the fucked part. But at least we got a lawyer. A recommendation. Some gal named Amber Reynolds.”
I was too frustrated to do anything other than drop my head and lean into Jane. It was clear, for better or for worse, that our troubles were far from over.
At least, though, as long as we had the love of our brothers and the love of Jane, we wouldn’t give up until we had no other choice.
Lust Hard
So many reasons I shouldn’t...
Shall I count them?
He’s my client—
which should be reason enough to steer clear of Splitter,
Both because of ethics
But also the fact that he’s in legal trouble.
So that’s two things right there.
Three, he’s the VP of the Savage Saints, a local motorcycle club.
And those are just the strikes against him.
The fact that I just ended a relationship—
And made a big splash in the media with the divorce—
Means that I should stay far, far away from
relationships.
But those eyes,
That voice,
The way he makes me feel.
What’s that saying?
Forbidden fruit is the sweetest?
Let me tell you how true that is.
But when a rival gang threatens the Savage Saints,
I realize I’m caught up in a world I know nothing about.
And lust isn’t the basis of a lasting relationship.
The real question in the end is
Can I trust Splitter?
Or will I end up broken in more ways than one?
Prologue
It was a bright, sunny Sunday afternoon on the outskirts of Northern Hollywood, and I, a devout Catholic, found myself in my office—the only place where I could guarantee privacy.
Dressed in a professional suit, heels, and wearing my gold cross necklace, an understated silver watch, and dark-rimmed glasses, I sat down at my oak wood desk, pushing the chair back as far as it would recline. I looked up at the ceiling, giving a long sigh, as I wondered just how I had gotten here.
I felt my phone buzz, but I didn’t feel a particular rush to answer it. So much of my days were spent answering legal questions for Hollywood celebrities, professional athletes, and musicians, all of whom needed their questions answered yesterday. Could evidence get buried to prevent getting judged in the court of public opinion? Could they get a delayed trial? Could they avoid jail time?
The nature of, being one of the best lawyers in the entertainment capital of the world—though I hated that title; I only used it because others did—meant that I, from Sunday night to Saturday night, almost never had a moment of respite. Even when I went on vacation, I found it all but impossible to fully detach from the working grind that had consumed my life. I knew what I was walking into after graduating from Duke Law, but even then, it could sometimes be overwhelming.
For that reason, my nine a.m. church on Sundays, followed by twelve hours of complete detachment, gave me the much-needed escape and respite from that world.
But on this particular day, something very personal, very legal, and very public required my attention, and no matter how much I prayed for it to have gone differently, no matter how much I had sought counseling, no matter how much I tried every conceived notion to prevent the worst from happening—and God sincerely knew I had tried everything—I could not escape it. Only in the confines of my private office, away from my home and everything associated with it, could I feel comfortable having the conversations I had needed to have over the previous couple of months.
I stood, grabbed my phone, and saw that Mark Leslie had messaged me. This was to be expected; Mr. Leslie had represented me in my case over the previous couple of months. But I knew that when I had this phone call, it would finalize that which had seemed impossible just five years ago but now was a reality.
I, Amber Reynolds, a native of Columbia, South Carolina, a woman who had won Miss South Carolina, a woman who had gone to Yale for undergrad and Duke for law school, a woman who had just about every actor’s phone number in her phone, was seeing my picture-perfect life fall apart. For all of the external praise I’d been fortunate to receive, none of it mattered in the face of what I was going through now.
I was getting a divorce.
And when I spoke to Mr. Leslie, the phone call would finalize it. I would no longer be Mrs. Amber Reynolds, but Ms. Amber Reynolds. To some in the city, this represented a chance for me to find a man “worthy of me.”
To me, it represented an utter failure on my part, most especially because of how my faith and family would justifiably look poorly upon the decision to get divorced.
But the alternative—staying in a dead, broken marriage, one in which my soon-to-be ex-husband, Jacob, had decided he no longer wanted kids—left me terrified. I didn’t want to turn 35 in a few years only to realize I had missed out on my chance to have children. Granted, sadly, my odds of finding a man who would have kids with me and be a good father were slim—Lord knows, embarrassing as it was to admit, I had more than enough actors and athletes proposition me—but a five percent chance of having it work was higher than the zero percent chance I would have with Jacob.
Staring at that phone, I knew what I had to do.
“God forgive me,” I said, knowing that many in my hometown would judge me as having become too full of myself, of the childhood couple having split apart not because we had just grown apart, but because I had gotten too big for my britches in Hollywood. I wished it were that simple—if I were that arrogant, I probably would not feel as bad as I did now about everything.
I called Mr. Leslie. He answered on the first ring.
“How are you, Ms. Reynolds?”
How was I? Oh, of all the ways to answer that question.
But I didn’t need to drag Mr. Leslie down into my swamp of despair, guilt, and self-loathing. He was doing a fantastic job for me, ensuring that Jacob and I had an amicable split. He didn’t need to feel what I felt.
“I’m doing well, thanks,” I said, trying to sound cheerful.
“Well, there’s no need to be dishonest,” Mr. Leslie said, his voice warm and sympathetic. “But I understand why you say that. In any case, I suppose you would like to get right down to it?”
“Rip the band-aid off,” I said as I brought a box of tissues closer to me.
“Well, I can make that much easier for you, actually,” he said. “I wanted to come to your office. Would you mind?”
“I…”
This, I had not expected. Were we really that close to finalizing the divorce that all he had to do was come here, have me sign some papers, and leave it at that? Goodness, how terrifying that was. How… real it was.
“I would not, no,” I said. “You’ll have to forgive me, though. I will admit I am not at my best.”
“If you were, I would question your sanity,” he said politely. “There’s another reason I want to come to you, Ms. Reynolds. Unfortunately, TMZ and the other paparazzi outlets have taken a keen interest in this.”
I didn’t bother to hide my disgust. I forgave them for what they did, but they had a way of pushing my boundaries and my capacity for such forgiveness on the daily. They all wanted to know who I’d wind up with first after this divorce finalized; I just wanted to escape to a remote island, have a few margaritas, and shed some tears over what had happened. The notion that I could even find love at a time like this was depressingly laughable.
“I suspect that no matter when you sign the papers, they will have someone tailing you to ask you questions. You will want someone with you to get you away. Unfortunately, as you well know by now, they can be rather pushy, bordering on illegal.”
I knew that too well. I’d had more than a few clients who faced aggravated assault cases for attacking a cameraman. I sympathized with them—that’s why I took the case, after all—but the paparazzi had a way of blurring the line between legal and ethical. If there is such a line for them.
“I can escort you to your car, and you can go wherever you want from there. They may follow you, but I think that you’ll be in a better position if I get you there.”
“Agreed,” I said with a long sigh. “OK, come on over. Front door’s unlocked. You know the office.”
“That, I do,” Mr. Leslie said sympathetically.
He hung up. I grabbed a tissue, dabbed at my eyes, and looked out the windows. Sure enough, I could already see a couple of cameramen lined up, waiting for me to exit. They always—always—seemed to know what was going on. It was impressive for a better lack of words.
Thankfully, Mr. Leslie had not come from far away, and less than ten minutes later, wearing sunglasses and a nice suit, he walked into my building, ignoring the questions from the media outside. I cracked open the door, sat in my chair, and waited.
When Mr. Leslie entered, I stood, shook his hand, and thanked him for coming—with a voice more wavering that I had hoped for.
“You’ve been through a lot, Ms. Reyn
olds,” he said as he took a seat and grabbed his suitcase. “The good news—or perhaps the best news that there is right now—is that all you have to do is sign this, and the process will be complete.”
I will be divorced.
I’d known this moment was coming, legally speaking, for about three months now. I had a gut feeling in our marriage that this moment would be coming for the last year and a half. But when I saw Mr. Leslie slide that piece of paper across to me…
I was a lawyer and knew to read every contract, every fine print, every little detail carefully. Nothing could be overlooked, and nothing mattered more than understanding the implication of every word. But at that moment, I couldn’t.
I just signed the paper before I could think twice about it.
And when I did, I felt like I had just committed murder. Murder of my belief in the perfect life, murder of something that had started when the two of us were childhood best friends, murder of everything I thought I knew and believed in.
Maybe that was a little dramatic, but the worst thing that had happened before this day was vomiting after drinking too much at my Yale graduation party. This was… it was utterly visceral.
“That’s it,” I said, barely able to bring my voice above a whisper.
“That’s it,” Mr. Leslie said. “Well, legally speaking, yes, that’s it. You will want to get your own place—”
“Jacob is moving back to South Carolina,” I interjected. “We’re going to sell the house, yeah, you know that. But… I’ll be fine there.”
That was something of a lie, as much to myself as to Mr. Leslie. That house had too many memories, too many photos, too much stuff to say I could go back there and be fine.
“I’ll still get my own place, obviously,” I said quickly. “But I’ll be good for the next little bit.”
“Makes sense,” Mr. Leslie said. “But you are free to move forward as if you are a single woman. Which you are.”
As if you are a single woman. Which you are.
How surreal. How odd. How…
Words failed.
“Let’s just get out of here,” I said.