Chapter 21
EMILY
She went back to her apartment a few days later.
For the next month she wrapped everything up.
Chloe cried, but said she understood. They wouldn’t be too far away from each other, after all.
Emily was excited for the future. She’d signed a lease for a small studio downtown in Grand Ridge where she would be teaching yoga classes.
She and Rampage had rented a temporary apartment about half a mile down the road together, until they found a house they wanted.
He’d told her most of the officers had their own houses outside of the compound but kept their apartments inside.
They came and went, splitting time between the two.
She moved in officially on a Tuesday.
There was no ceremony to it. She and Chloe followed Tyler's truck and once they arrived, Makenzie directed the men in unloading it with the authority of a woman who had opinions about the placement of furniture and was not keeping them to herself, even if it wasn’t her house.
Emily loved her enthusiasm and generally agreed with her.
Although, there were a few things they didn’t see eye to eye on.
"The desk should face the window," Makenzie said.
"The desk is fine where it is," Emily said.
"You'll get more natural light."
"I'll get distracted by the trees."
"Is that bad?"
Emily looked at the window. At the view. Beautiful green trees against the backdrop of the Rocky Mountains. Nature could absolutely not get any better than the Colorado landscape.
"No," she said. "You're right. Move the desk."
Savage and Irish moved the desk. Savage did not comment on the quality of the furniture. This was noted. He’d started to earlier, but Rampage had given him a look.
Rampage for the most part, stayed out of the furniture arranging.
He appeared periodically with coffee and sandwiches and the particular expression of a man who was monitoring from a distance without interfering, which Emily had come to understand was one of his specific love languages.
He could be present without pressure, available without hovering.
By afternoon the apartment looked like home. Her books on the shelf, her blanket on the bed, the coloring pencils in their tin on the nightstand. Her workspace set up, her external monitor connected.
She stood in the doorway of the office and looked at the desk facing its window and thought about her apartment, the one she'd left, the careful independent life she'd built in it.
She'd been fine there. She'd been genuinely, functionally fine.
This wasn't fine. This was something better and different and fuller, the distinction between surviving and living that she hadn't known was a distinction she needed to make.
"Hey." Makenzie appeared beside her. "You okay?"
"Really okay," Emily said. "Not performing okay. Not just saying it because that’s what people like to hear, but like actually okay."
"Good." Makenzie leaned against the doorframe. "The girls want a video call tonight with your book club. Lily's been sending prayer hands emojis into the void for three weeks. I think we are all about to become official members"
Emily laughed. "Tonight works."
"Nicole's going to want to be included. And Savannah."
"Obviously."
"It's going to be a lot of women on one call."
"That is the correct amount of women," Emily said.
“The more the merrier,” Chloe added.
The call happened at eight, crowded onto the common room couch at The Watchmen Compound. Emily, Makenzie, Nicole, and Savannah sat on one side of the screen, and Madison, Lily, Holly, and Chloe on the other, and the noise level was immediate and absolute.
"You moved in," Madison said, somewhere in the first minute. "Emily Carter moved in with a member of a motorcycle club."
"It's not just a motorcycle club—"
"She moved in," Madison repeated, to the room.
"I was there," Chloe said. "I helped."
"You're all so calm about this."
"I'm extremely calm about this," Emily said. "That's the point."
From the kitchen, audible through the open doorway, Irish said something that Rampage replied to in a low voice, and Clover barked once, and the domestic normalcy of it landed on Emily. She was home. Their apartment or the clubhouse, it didn’t matter. Both had become home because Rampage was there.
Lily leaned close to her camera. "Tell us everything. From the beginning."
"I already told Chloe everything."
"Chloe told us some things and then said it was your story to tell and we've been waiting very patiently."
"You sent forty-seven emojis in three days," Emily said. "That's not patient."
"For me that's patient." Lily's expression was earnest. "Emily. We love you. We want to know. We're your people. And we have to do something about there being two Lilys. One of us is going to need a nickname." Everyone laughed.
She looked at the screen. At the faces of the women who'd been her people through bad dates and job stress and moving boxes and 2 AM texts and the particular specific intimacy of being known.
She told them everything.
An hour in, Rampage appeared in the doorway of the common room. Looked at the screen. Looked at Emily.
"I'm going to make rounds," he said. "You need anything?"
She held up her mug. Empty.
He took it without comment and disappeared to the kitchen.
Six faces on the screen watched this with varying degrees of composure.
"He just—" Holly started.
"Yes," Emily said.
"Without being asked—"
"Yes."
Madison pressed both hands over her heart.
He came back with a full mug and set it beside her and went to do his rounds, and Emily picked up the mug and went back to the conversation, and if she was smiling more than was strictly necessary, her people were gracious enough not to make too much of it.
They made a little of it.
That was fair.