Fearless Read-Along: Chapter Ten

 

               “C’mere.” He patted the bench beside him. “Come sit with me a sec.”

               That was so dangerous. And if he was nothing to her but a former lover, she could have resisted his magnetic pull.

               But Mercy had been her surrogate uncle, watcher, keeper, friend, brother…he’d been this tangle of people in her life. This man had meant so much to her. He’d snatched himself out of her life, but he’d been such a part of it…she was powerless to resist. 

Chapter Ten is a bit of a milestone because it marks the end of "Part One," back when Fearless was first released in installments. It's also the last present-day chapter for a while. The flashbacks so far have been delivered in bite-sized chunks, but going forward we're going to have a big look at what happened five years ago, all laid out at once. I know there are some who would disagree, but I maintain that this is still the best way to tell the story. The first ten chapters present the current tension, so you know what's at stake going forward; then we can go back and examine what happened to while we're already invested in the main story. 

If this was commercial fiction, and aimed at a trad-pub audience, the scene where Ava meets with her advisor could be cut. From my end, it was a chance to drop some Byronic breadcrumbs about Ava and Mercy, and to show that little bit of steel backbone that makes Littlejohn a good security tail, and not just a cardboard standee in a cut. 

The meat-and-potatoes of the chapter is, of course, Ava's run-in with Mercy at the clubhouse. I've been writing him as the doting husband and father for so long now that it's wild to look back at ten years ago, and see what an ass he was at the start of Fearless. 

“What the hell are you dressed up for?”

               She didn’t owe him an explanation. She didn’t owe him anything. But she propped a hand on her hip and said, “I had a meeting with my advisor at school. I start class next week.”

               “School. Jesus, haven’t you had enough of that?”

               “I don’t know. Haven’t you had enough of this conversation yet?”

               His grin widened. “You used to be so sweet. You used to dress better, too.”

I've talked often and at length about how there's a few disconnected wires in the parts of Mercy's brain that control his maturity. He's not wild and rebellious and impulsive like Aidan; he's logical, and methodical, and he thinks ahead. Ava mentions his rationality here, and he is, in general, a very rational person, even when he's "extracting." That's the thing about Mercy: he's not going "red zone" with his violence. It's a very logical process start to finish. 

Except when it comes to Ava. He simply cannot be logical or rational or mature about her. That's where we see his immaturity. His arrested development. It would be easier for both of them if he refused to acknowledge her presence, but he can't do that. Just as he fills multiple masculine roles for Ava, he fills ALL of the feminine roles in Mercy's mind and heart. He loved his grandmother, but she didn't fill that maternal role he subconsciously craved. He didn't think he'd recover after he lost his family, but Ava became everything to him. 

Is it twisted? Oh yes! That's what makes it so fun to write. 

There was this place at his side that would always be hers; they both knew it; neither of them needed to say it. 

I think, at first, that it was mostly willful blindness on Ghost and Aidan's parts, assuming Mercy just saw her as young, and hot, and available. It took them a while to catch up to the truth that she's everything to him. And when Ghost did figure it out, he used it against them.