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rebellion in her soul. She made friends with the dull boys and did her duties, so her parents would be happy with her, but inside, she worked away at becomin’ the kind of woman she wanted to be when she got old enough to do things her way. She listened to rock n’ roll, read copies of banned books by the light of her fish tank late at night, and doodled in the margins of Gideon’s Bible. She was a good kid, a good girl, and when the time came that she turned eighteen, she was ready to take off into the sunset, no man, no rules, just a rucksack filled with booze and jerky, a head full’a crazy
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Loulou was base, instinct, and brimstone. She had so many flaws so beautifully accepted, that they became honed weapons and gleaming treasures. She was unashamed and free.
She made a man who’d felt like a monster his entire life, feel like a fuckin’ angel.
The brothers at my booth, Nova and Bat, ripped their eyes away from Lou, blinkin’ like they’d looked too long at the sun. My fuckin’ sun. “Out,” I growled.
“The first seventeen years of my life, I fasted. I kept my body clean and my spirit pure. Now, I want to feast like a glutton, spread lust on my breakfast toast, shoot violence, and sip greed. And I want you to teach me, sinner man, because you’re the only man for the job,” I told him.
“So happy,” she muttered. “Never been happier and doubt I ever could be.” I thought about all the things she had left to look forward to in life—graduation, marriage, travels, kids—and I thought about all the things I was lookin’ forward to givin’ her—celebration parties, my ring, vacations, baby Garros—and I knew she was wrong. “Gotta lot more of life to live, kid.”
“Could probably sleep without you,” I admitted. “Just don’t want to.”
“What does a big badass biker man eat for breakfast?” “Virgins,” I deadpanned. Her startled laugh was like fuckin’ church bells. It didn’t make sense but that’s what my time with Lou always reminded me of, a religious experience. I felt cowed and unworthy of her goodness, moved to the point of reverence and devoted to the point of worship. I wanted her to be my religion, the reason the sun rose and fell each day. The reason for my entire fuckin’ existence.
“Now, I ain’t makin’ you any promises here, little warrior, but if your fine ass is going to heaven—and it fuckin’ well is—I’ll find a way to get there too. If I gotta move into that fuckin’ church and pay penance every goddamn hour, I’ll do it. If I gotta give up boozin’, guns, and drug runnin’, I’ll fuckin’ well do it and I’d do it now if it meant I got a place beside my girl behind those pearly gates.”
“You lose your moonbeam hair, your bombshell shape, and your sexual appetite, I don’t give a fuck. ’Cause I love your soul better than I love anythin’ else and that includes the fan-fuckin-tastic package it comes in. You got me, Lou?”
I couldn’t breathe because he held my breath, couldn’t think because he’d rewritten my thoughts into ones of his own making. He controlled me but only to love me, to make me understand how I could love myself better than I already did.
“Want you to cut it for me, Lou,” he explained. “No!” I said immediately. “Yeah, little warrior. See, it’s important to me you get that I’m in this with you. Can’t suffer what you suffer, can’t take that pain from ya like I want to more than fuckin’ anythin’. But I can stand with you. Don’t know if you’ll lose all that hair but if you do, I wanna do it with you.”
He grinned at me, amused and feeling indulgent. “And what’s that?” “A true fallen angel, too bad for heaven, too good for hell, stuck on earth like a living divinity.”
“Wonder if those motherfuckers who ended Mute woulda done it if they’d seen a movie of his life. They woulda seen a neglected, abused kid with huge brown eyes wiser an’ more soulful than ten grown men. They woulda seen his character grow with the struggle of bein’ different, how he found acceptance with a brotherhood that nurtured ’im and how he threw himself body and fuckin’ soul into givin’ that back and more.” The sobs were louder now, in my ears with more in my throat. Fuck, if I was gonna cry but fuck me if I’d ever had a better reason to.
was staring into his silver eyes, counting the rings of deeper grey radiating through the iris like rings in a tree so I watched as they went shiny then wet then as one tear welled up in the wedge of his lower lashes and spilled down his cheek into his beard. He was crying. “Lou,” he croaked, tears falling. “Fuck me, I thought you were gonna leave me. I really fuckin’ did.” “I’d never leave you,” I promised turning our hands so I could link our pinkies and shake my thumb with his. “Fucking swear it.”
“He said something about God having different paths for everyone and then something about some princesses needing dragons to protect them instead of Prince Charmings to save them.”
