Shooter’s Saving Grace (Saint’s Outlaws MC: Memphis Chapter #2)

Prologue

Amelia

Ithought that love was supposed to be a happily ever after with the one you loved.

The one that you chose to spend your entire life with, to create a family, create memories, and love until your dying breath.

Fate was supposed to give you the person to call your own.

But I guess fate chose differently for me.

Love was never supposed to hurt in any capacity. Love was supposed to be protected and respected. Then again, I guess the scars and the pain spoke to that lie. Scars that would never fade and remain present from the moment you woke up to the moment you closed your eyes.

I chose someone I thought would fit this perfect picture in my head, the idea that kept hope alive.

Who would show me that life was full of dreams and adventures.

Someone to laugh at my jokes or the chaotic ways I looked at the world.

Or even telling me that they were proud of me and kept cheering me on.

I was blinded by hope, and then life changed to where I waited for him to sleep it off before I could scurry off to the bathroom and wait to shed tears that had been hiding.

I wished that I could turn back time. To warn my younger self that fate would be wrong.

To save on the pain and the heartache that followed.

I couldn’t show him that I was broken inside and out.

That’s what fed him to rear his cruel face.

He overpowered me, showed me that I was weak and I’d never be anything else to him.

I had to face myself in the mirror, look at the person I had become, fearful of her shadow.

I shook my head, asking myself how could I let this happen? How could I have been so blind?

I saw the girl in the mirror. She wasn’t the bright person she had grown up to be.

She wasn’t the woman that would rather spend the day in the sun on her family’s property than cower in the dark.

She wasn’t the wild dreamer that walked this Earth.

She was the woman with a red mark on her face from anger rather than from a gentle touch.

Her bright eyes no longer shined but darkened from the past.

I was the woman with the tears silently rolling down her cheek with her hair a mess from his fingers tangling themselves in it.

I was supposed to smile. I was supposed to believe that all would be possible with love on my side.

What I was left with was nothing but heartache, bruises, and a mask to show the world. I wondered if the light would ever return in my life.

I was left with the ache for freedom. But freedom came with a cost, and threats to make it harder to believe in leaving. I shoved that thought of loving him again deep down and aimed to work toward the freedom I craved. Even if that meant I had to work for his freedom from his demons.

His freedom would mean one signature on a paper that meant more than any riches of this world. I was left with all the weight to carry, to atone for his sins.

Then after two years of our marriage, Chris got himself in a bind with loan sharks from his gambling debt.

And yet I was the only one working since Chris had been bouncing from job to job.

He had found every way to tell me it was all my fault.

He’d say I didn’t praise him, giving him the extra push he needed to succeed.

He’d say that if it wasn’t for the miscarriage and me ending up in the hospital that he could have worked.

He’d say because I didn’t love him enough that it was his fault he was gambling, trying to find other pleasures in the world.

I could have left, but not with everything tying me to him. I was the one that got screwed over.

There would be no more love, no more promises of a family, no more promises of growing old.

Gone was the promise of tomorrow and the charm I fell for. Instead, I was living with the nightmare of the one I thought I chose.

In the end, I was young. Young and blinded.

But I had to grow up. I had to survive. I had to find a way out. Because I didn’t know how much longer I could take the pain and suffering. I needed to survive; I wanted so much out of this life.

So, I would live, and I would fight. And I would pray that I would not end up in jail for setting my house on fire with Chris in it.

Because the way I see it, he was dead to me.

He was just the demon that came to torture my soul.

I would never want him, love him, nor ever go back to him.

I was divorced from him for a long time, but he was never going to let me go, not until everything was cleared.

One signature, one paper, one step closer to the light.