Lock & Key

I suppose some of us have to get really dirty before we can become truly clean. I was allegedly South Dakota's most famous Old Lady. Sixteen years ago, I had survived my Old Man's murder. Never again. Never again will I surrender my heart. Never again will I sacrifice to the Club. But that all changed in one night. I came home and crashed into him, and my past and present blew up in my face.

I am that gash in her soul. Once I loved her, really loved her. And she loved me, and it was so f--king beautiful. Once. That pendulum swings to and fro. We're here, and then we're - no. How can that rare beauty be rendered irrelevant, intangible, when I still feel so damn much? Does all that energy, that glory, that significance simply dissolve? Turn to smoke? To nothing? It can't. It just can't. Are the moments that shape us absolutely random? Is time not fluid? I made promises to them, to her.

A knife that cut too deep, a slash that still burns, failures piled high and flammable. I held my losses at bay with knives, with guns, my hands, my bike, my brothers, my iron will. But not my heart. No, my heart was the flame that would light the match, ignite the blaze. I am the enforcer - the killer when called upon, the ruthless hound on demand, the one who cleans the mess left behind. I am the protector - I can make you bleed, smash you to pieces. But she smashed all my excuses, and I shattered hers.

The bad boy. The f--k up. The thief. That was me. Once a king, now a wanderer. I'd thrown the best parts of me away over and over again. I was reckless. Still am. I'd been exiled. Twice. I did my time. I've cleaned up. Well, sort of. I got plans. Yeah, good ones. Then I ran into her. A bolt of lightning - startling, unsettling, breathtaking, out of reach. The woman I once scorned years ago is now the woman I can't live without. I need what I didn't think I'd ever need again.