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Fearless

Price of Angels

11 Years ?!

 

January is "birthday month" for Fearless. 

Writing books didn't turn out to be the self-sustaining, successful career I'd hoped, but I suppose you have to look at the odds: the odds of finishing a book; of publishing a book; of finding even one reader; of hearing that your words impacted someone in a positive way. Eleven years later, readers are still buying Fearless, still giving Mercy and Ava a chance to charm them, and that's a pretty special thing. 

Thank you to everyone who's been along on this wild ride with the Dogs! ❤ I can't believe it's still going. 

Fearless Read-Along: Chapter Thirty-One Part One

Monday. Funeral day. Ava sat up before her alarm went off at six with a strange weightless feeling in her stomach. She’d been to almost a dozen such funerals, but never because of murder, and never after such a strange few days as these last few. MC funerals were bedecked in pomp, steeped in nostalgia, works of art, really, and for the first time since coming home, she woke up and felt almost like her old self. Like the club daughter, instead of the country club girlfriend. 

Welcome back to the Fearless read-along! Picking up where we left off, Chapter Thirty-One is a long one, so I'm going to split it into two posts. 

It's funeral day for the Lean Dogs: time to lay Andre to rest, and to make statements to the public, and to their enemies. 

In a fictional sense, funerals make for great tipping points. The reminder of our brief time on earth, the harsh reality of our own mortality, brings characters to decision points. This happens in real life, messily, imperfectly; in a novel, it can be cold and clean and a necessary catalyst for change. 

 

             The second her feet touched the floor, in the chilly dark of her room, the energy began fizzling in her veins, that strange, morbid excitement. A member was dead. Bring out the bikes, say all your prayers, give thanks for your once-percent blood. And so it always went. 

Ava wakes the morning of the funeral nervous and (guiltily) excited. The club daughter in her will always love the chance to show up for her family; to be counted amongst the Dogs. She's her mama's right hand, and there's a certain importance that makes her relish the role, even as a pall of sadness lies over them all. 

She begins the day comparing Ronnie to her family, and not merely finding fault with him, but actively asking herself why she's with him. Oh boy, Ronnie. It was never going to work, but then he drives the point home by being an ass at the funeral home. He's tried the Understanding Good Guy route, and now goes for scorn and shame; he's really so stupid he thinks that she'll chase after him, and put some distance between herself and her family. 

Ava cast a glance into the next room, at Ronnie massaging his scalp from his slump on the sofa. Why? she wondered. Why am I not allowed to have what my parents have? Why do I have – Ronnie dug his phone from under his pillow and checked it – this?

On Mercy's side of things, president-to-president contact is made with the Carpathians. Ghost lays down the law, Jasper bristles, and the stage is set for active combat. 

“Alright, Jasper,” Ghost said. The conversational tone, the assumed familiarity was grating on the younger man’s nerves, Mercy could see; Jasper’s jaw worked. “As much fun as this is, I didn’t come here for a social call. This” – Ghost circled a finger in the air, indicating the trip they’d all made to this side of town – “is your warning. Your polite warning. I am not having some all-out war with your crew. I don’t have time to play Cowboys and Indians with you. If you make one more move toward that end, I will kill you. I will destroy you, in every way possible.”

It's surreal to revisit this war with the Carpathians after Lord Have Mercy. The club started out fighting local enemies, and as the Dogs gained power and influence, so too did their enemies. It makes me want to shed a proud little mother tear over the ways they've grown since this first book; the challenges they were able to tackle and overcome as the years went by. 

The back half of the chapter contains all the ~revelations~, and the steamy bits, and I'll post about that next Monday. 

Fearless Read-Along: Chapter Thirty

High school had treated a select handful like kings, and all the rest had been churned up in the machine, spat back out with an impressive collection of bruises and scars. Aidan had known one way of life, and because of it, he’d never been one of the kings. He’d had girls, and he’d had his share of notoriety, but his fame was the kind granted to drop-outs, back-talkers, bathroom-smokers, and class-skippers. He hadn’t ever hated school, it was just that it had always felt like such a massive waste of time. Men were dying, his father’s men, in a war of outlaw against outlaw, and kids two desks over had been having meltdowns about who to ask to homecoming. 

I don't ever write straight-up self-insert characters. That would be silly, because all of my characters are the children of my imagination, so I work some of my own experiences and sentiments into all of my characters - sneakily, I hope. I wasn't a drop-out, back-talker, bathroom-smoker, or class-skipper, but, like Aidan, I felt like school was a massive waste of time. I was in all honors and AP classes, and always did my homework; performed well on my SATs. But there was so much pointless sitting around, and movie watching, and group reading. Lord deliver me from the in-class group "popcorn" reading. I would have much rather studied at home and focused all my efforts on my equestrian endeavors, but alas, I had to go to school. 

I feel like Aidan and Tango meeting with Greg at Stella's is the Big Scene of this chapter. It's Aidan's first POV moment (he's a brat, and not my favorite Dog in a personal sense, but he's very fun to write), and it's the club's first step toward engaging with the rival Carpathians. 

The Greg storyline is actually my favorite secondary plotline in the book. It offered me the chance to explore Aidan in an active, relevant way so that, going forward in the series, you know what sort of person he is. And there's a nice little line in this scene where we start see how deeply his sense of inadequacy runs. 

Aidan grinned – nice and big, lots of teeth showing – and glanced over at Tango to get a matching one in return. They’d played this scenario out so many times over the years – he might not be his father’s go-to guy, no, but he and Tango could circle like boxers with the best of them. Maybe, one of these days, Ghost would take note of that.

Poor dude just wants his dad to be proud of him.

And I think Ghost, had he seen the exchange, would be very proud of Aidan for his little visit to a hungover Mercy at the bike shop. 

“I think I misjudged you, five years ago,” Aidan said, levelly. “And I won’t make that mistake again.”

Aidan's not a confrontational guy when it comes to his club brothers, and he does genuinely like Mercy. But he's got his eye on him. 

Downtown, Ava has her first run-in with Mason Jr. since coming home, and it's as traumatic for her as you'd expect. Not only does she have a physical anxiety response to seeing him, but she's forced to face the hard truth that, no, she doesn't love Ronnie, and doesn't think she ever will. Hardly a shocking revelation. 

What I wanted to touch on with more depth is actually her description of the book shop. 

Wherever she was, whichever city or state, whatever mood she was in, there was nothing like a book store to fill her up with happiness. Her favorite in Knoxville was Fourth Down, a tiny, cramped shop that boasted selling second-, third- , and fourthhand books of all genres, just around the corner from the university, the wall behind the register hosting a huge, artistic shot of Neyland. In this shop, she didn’t have to slog through the double-spaced, fast-read novels that leapt off the center displays in the chain bookstores. Here was where she found fat paperbacks with curling covers, cramped print, and coffee stains on the edges of the pages. Here were her favorites from the nineties, the lyrical novels that redefined genres. Here was where she stumbled across faded hardbacks with handwritten dedications in the fronts, that collection of Kipling poems dedicated to Martha, dated 1917. Fourth Down smelled of ink and dusty paper, collapsing bindings and musty cardboard covers. Dust motes swirled in big sprightly columns in the narrow shafts of sunlight that came in through the high windows. It was a magic place: books on shelves, on stools, in stacks on the floor, spread out in heaps on tables, piled to the ceiling between the windows. Shopping here always brought to mind the scene from Fellowship of the Ring, Gandalf digging through scrolls at Minis Tirith.

               “Isn’t it wonderful?” she asked, voice dreamy, as she floated down an aisle and passed a finger along the spines of the books.

               Ronnie followed a few steps behind. “It smells like–”

               “Heaven?”

               “Old people, I was gonna say.” He made a laughing sound in his throat. “You really do love books, don’t you?”

               She sighed to herself. Once upon a time, she hadn’t ever had to explain that to her man. Once upon a time, she’d been stupid. 

Here's a non-shocking confession: I love words. I love when a book has an enthralling or thrilling plot, sure, but I want that to be accompanied by an author's obvious, uncontainable love of words and the play of language. I grew up reading in the nineties, when books of all genres were lush and fully-fleshed, and I don't ever mind - in fact I prefer - stopping to smell the roses. Or, in this case, the old books. The hottest, trendiest books of the last ten years do not jive with my personal stylistic preferences, and it's one of the reasons there's been such an attempt to trash my work as "unedited" by a subset of GR control freaks. 

It is edited, it's just not written to trend. I'm writing for the word lovers out there, and, as such, I get a little indulgent. Ava's moment here is not only reflective of that, but also my statement on the issue. 

Fearless Read-Along: Chapter Twenty-Nine

 

Irresponsible hoodlum was Grammie Lowe’s favorite descriptive phrase for Ghost. Denise Camden Lowe, of former Little Miss East Tennessee fame, had made what she liked to call an educated decision the day her teenage daughter dragged a twenty-seven-year-old biker through the front door for the first time. Men who rode motorcycles and marked themselves in permanent ink were wastrels of the worst kind. “He’ll never amount to anything,” she’d warned Maggie. “And taking advantage of a little girl – he’s a monster!”

               The monster part was debatable, depending on which angle you were looking from. But irresponsible…clearly, Denise had never been on the receiving end of one of the man’s lectures.

               “…at all times,” he was saying, pacing back and forth in front of the sofa, hands jammed at his hips, his posture comical. He should have been a drill sergeant, Ava reflected.

               “Why doesn’t he just duct tape you to his back?” Aidan whispered from the corner of his mouth.

               Ava bit down on her tongue against a giggle.

               “What?” Ghost whipped around on them, dark eyes flicking between the two of them.

               Aidan cleared his throat and said, “I was just explaining to your sweet princess here how important it is to listen to your wise–”

               “Stuff it,” Ghost said, and resumed pacing.

               Aidan lifted his brows at her and she pressed a hand over her mouth to keep from snorting.

               Princess? she mouthed, when she could. Kiss my ass. She stuck out her tongue at him.

               He feigned a deep bow in a moment when Ghost was turning on his heel and had his back to them, sitting upright and munching jerky innocently when their dad passed them. 

I don't care how big, bad, scary or powerful someone is, his kids are always going to mock him behind his back. This is one of the lighter scenes in the chapter, like Mercy's antics at Bell Bar later, and I love the chance to sprinkle a little silly in amidst all the angst. 

Twenty-Nine manages to be fun, somber, and, thanks to that, one of the beefier chapters of the book. The emotional meat of it consists of Ava starting to put some labels on her unhappiness since coming home, wrestling with its causes, and the attitudes of the men in her life. Ao3 trope tags would include things like #mutualpining, #jealousy, #ghostisanasshole, and #alcoholconsumption. 

Very Serious plot beats are discussed here, chiefly with regard to the Carpathains' return to Knoxville and all their probable revenge. But one of the scenes mentioned to me most often (and fondly at that) by readers is the Bell Bar scene, where Mercy and Ava both get a little drunk at their respective tables, miss one another, and think the other is beyond reach. 

Mercy said, “Lemme ask you something.” He leaned against the back of his stool, arms folded. “What do you think of that boyfriend of hers? Does he look shifty to you? You know, just your bodyguard opinion. Off the record.”

               “Jesus Christ, Merc,” RJ said.

               Walsh pulled the Johnnie Walker deftly out of reach – both glasses.

               “Hey,” Mercy protested, and Walsh held up a finger in silent refusal.

               “Um…” Littlejohn scratched at his hair. “Shifty like…how?”

               “Like shifty,” Mercy said, exasperated.  Jesus, why was this kid so thick? And why couldn’t he come up with any appropriate synonyms? He wasn’t drunk. Not really… “Like…no es bueno.”

               “Oh, look,” Walsh said, “he’s trilingual.”

               Mercy flipped him the bird. “Write me a sonnet, Shakespeare.” And turned back to the prospect.

               “This is so not good,” RJ muttered.

This is one of the reasons I love Walsh: he's trustworthy. Up to this point, Mercy hasn't been able to talk to any of his club brothers about the way he still feels about Ava, and how difficult it is to see her with Ronnie. Every Dog knows what happened five years ago, but it's not exactly something he can discuss with any of them. Here, it's mostly an alcohol-induced slip of the tongue, but he does trust Walsh, even sober; everyone does. Walsh is the guy who can know all about your dirty laundry, and isn't ever going to gossip about it with anyone else. Though he might try to save you from yourself. At least a little. 

         

     “I want my drink back,” Mercy said, and Walsh moved the glass even farther away.

               “Well that’s not happening.”

 

These bar scenes are also where we meet Holly for the first time! Spoiler alert: I was already mapping Price of Angels in my head at this stage, so I decided to bring her to life a little early and shave off some explaining time in book two. 

“See?” RJ said. “She’s just…something’s off.” He shook his head and poured the beer, frowning as he tried to puzzle it out.

               “She’s scared,” Walsh said. A quick glance to the Englishman’s ever-present flat expression proved that he’d detected the fear, too. His blue eyes touched Mercy’s and they acknowledged each other’s perception. “Of what, who knows. But she ain’t interested in letting any of us help her figure it out.”

               RJ snorted. “Not us, no. But she’s got her sights on somebody for sure.” He motioned across the bar with his mug, and Mercy was surprised to see that Michael had a corner booth all to himself.

               The guy was reading, some thick hardback book open on the table in front of him, hand stroking idly through the condensation on his beer mug. His usual lack of expression seemed appropriate for once, given what he was doing. If it weren’t for the cut, and the hard bulges of muscle visible beneath the long, thin sleeves of his shirt, he would have looked like a professor. As it was, the benign, emotionless picture was set off by a certain terrifying aura of calculated violence.

               And Holly made a beeline for him, sliding into the booth across from him, letting her tray rest against the seat, propping an elbow on the table and saying something to him with a smile that set her whole face to glowing.

               “Michael?” Mercy asked. “She likes him?”

And Ronnie proves that a) he's not as naive as he seems, and b) definitely knows that Ava had some sort of romance with a biker. He'd be stupid not to at least suspect it, given she grew up with the club, but he definitely isn't expecting her ex to be the scariest looking dude he's ever seen.

“Which one is he?”

               Ava felt her throat constrict. “Which one is who?” She tried to play dumb.

               “Okay, I may not have a clue about this club stuff, but I’m not so stupid I can’t see that you obviously had some sort of thing with one of these guys. What was the name ? – Mercy?” He nodded and tipped his head toward the table of Dogs. “Which one? He’s over there, isn’t he? And that’s why you look like you just got punched in the stomach.”

               The waitress returned, with perfect timing, and set down their drinks. Ava ordered them a basket of wings and a plate of fries, and threw down half her drink in one swallow as the brunette stowed her pad and walked away.

               Ronnie may have enjoyed the cleavage, but once the girl was gone, he was laser-guided on Ava again. “So?” He lifted his brows.

               She sighed, and ran her finger around the rim of her heavy glass tumbler. “Mercy, yeah,” she said, feeling defeated. There was no sense pretending at this point, not if he’d figured it out. Her face heated and she furthered the problem with another slug of Jack. “He’s the tall one, with the black hair.”

               Now it was Ronnie’s turn to look like he’d been punched in the stomach. “What?” He twisted around in his chair and took a good long stare at Mercy; he had to be seeing the same stalwart man she saw, the way he made all furniture seem insubstantial. “No.” He was shaking his head when he turned back around, his eyes wide, face pale. “No. No way were you ever with that guy.”

My personal favorite scene of the chapter is the final one, the nighttime kitchen table moment between Ava and Ghost. 

Ava's been rattled, unhappy, and afflicted with a yearning she doesn't want to name outright because it reminds her of five years ago, and makes her feel like a kid again - in a bad way. A lot of this is about Mercy, but not all of it. 

I'm hard-pressed to think of a post-coming-of-age story in which a character is able to return to a life cut short by circumstances and pick right back up where they left off. Student of literature that she is, Ava knows this well, and has told herself, during her time away at undergrad, that she hasn't just moved on, but that she's become a better version of herself. But hearing Ghost say that hurts, because the longer she's back in Knoxville, the more she realizes that her "growth" was a valiant attempt and a convincing charade, but nothing true and spiritual and deep. She's the same person she was before - and that's a person (she thinks) Mercy never loved, and which her father and boyfriend think no longer exists. 

Much is made in literary circles of subverting reader expectations. I chose, in this novel, and the series as a whole, to subvert character expectations instead. Probably the "good" or "correct" outcome would be for Ava to have actually moved on; to fulfill the old "you can't go home again" trope. But I went for the opposite. Ava's fast nearing a crossroads, and quietly accepting here that Ghost will never understand her is another nudge toward a complete and total return to her factory setting. 

“You’re finding your way. Your way, and it has nothing to do with the club, or me...” He frowned savagely. “Or people who ought

to know better.” Read: Mercy. He snorted, then the softening came again, such a rare and valuable thing, that Ava hated that she hated what he said next. “I’m proud of you.”

               Her smile was thin, but she couldn’t seem to help it. “You wanted me to be different.” From the rest of you, she left unsaid.

               “I wanted you to be better,” Ghost corrected. “And you are.”

               The backs of her eyes burned. She blinked and stared at her hands.

               “I just…” Ghost took a troubled breath. “I wanted you to know that. That you’re doing a good job and I’m proud.”

               That was probably her cue to leave, because she wasn’t going to get bigger praise than that. But she felt unsteady. It had been a very long time, she suddenly realized, since she’d sought shelter in the arms and leather-covered chests of any of the Lean Dogs in her life. She missed that. She was rabidly nostalgic for that, and wanted to dive across the table and into her father’s lap so he could tuck her under his chin and promise to put bullets in all her fears.

               But she wasn’t a little girl anymore – not that club-attached girl she’d been growing up – and he was proud of that.

               “You okay?”

               “Fine.” She shoved to her feet so fast her hip caught the edge of the table, and she bit down on a yelp.

               Maggie would have called her back, forced her to sit down again and talk about whatever was putting the stricken expression on her face. But Ghost didn’t – he never did – and he let her go.

Fearless Read-Along: Chapter Twenty-Eight

 

Finally, our long sojourn to the past comes to a close. Did anyone have to go back and peek at what was happening pre-flashback to get up to speed? No shame; i did it, too. It feels like an age has passed while we witnessed Ava and Mercy's disastrous first attempt at romance. But it means that, going forward, we know exactly what happened between them, and not only do their actions in the first part of the novel make sense, but we have underlying context for everything that's about to happen. Stylistically, I enjoy that gut punch of Part Two. You know from chapter one that they're exes, but now you know how painful it is to be around one another again. 

In Chapter Twenty-Eight, we have a sweetish brother/sister moment.

               “He’s outside, you know.” Aidan pretended to find the contents of his jerky bag fascinating.

               “I know.” She sighed again. “How f***ed up is it that I miss him?”

               “Pretty f***ed up.” He bumped her shoulder with his in what amounted to a big show of support from him. “But I get it.”

               “You do?”

               “Not even a little bit. Just being nice.”

               She snorted. “That’s a first.”

               “Hey, I’m nice. I’m super fucking nice.” Wicked half-grin. “Just ask Monique.”

               “Ugh.” She let her head fall sideways, so it was supported on his shoulder. “You’re hopeless.”

               “Kinda great, huh?”

               Ares looked between them, thumping his tail on the floor, hoping for another handout.

               “Hey, Aidan? Thanks for running the creep show off.”

               He made a dismissive sound.

And we have some world-building and plot movement on Maggie's end of things. 

The casket showcase had a view of the street through tall windows Maggie had always found ill-placed. Because of them, she and Jackie had been sitting ducks while they shopped. Flanders’ wasn’t the nicest funeral home in town, but it was one that had always served the Dogs, and for that, they were all loyal customers. Down a short, carpeted hallway, they found the owner, Byron Flanders, waiting for them amid the potted urns in the sunlit lobby. Bright rays slanted in through the front, white-swagged windows, finding the delicate hollows of the orchids and lilies.

               Flanders – narrow, petite, immaculate, almost effeminate – glided toward them in a tan summer suit, his footfalls silent on the short-napped carpet. “Ladies, I trust you found something that will suit?”

I love the world-building scenes. While I do use some real-life Knoxville landmarks, the shops and restaurants are all fictional. I feel like creating a tangible environment beyond the main characters' homes grounds the story in a way that lends credibility to the wilder, more extreme moments of action. Once you're fully submerged in the setting, and it feels like a real, walkable place, the plot is easier to accept. 

The chapter ends on a "dun-dun-DUN" note with the knowledge that the Carpathians are back in town, and likely out for revenge, given what Maggie tells Jackie here. 

Maggie bit down on her lip as one of the bikers plucked at her memory. “That one.” She tapped a finger at the glass. “The old president’s son. Jasper Larsen.”

               “How do you know that?” Jackie asked.

               Maggie sighed. “Because Mercy killed his father and uncle on Ava’s bedroom floor.”

Fearless Read-Along: Chapter Twenty-Seven

 She’d been at school three weeks when Maggie’s usual phone call took on a shivery edge. They talked about class and Aidan’s typical stupidity back home as Ava picked through a microwavable lasagna at her tiny apartment table. All alone. No roommates. Just her and her books and her mother’s voice.

               Maggie said, her words becoming tiptoe careful, “I got a phone call today.”
               Ava knew, before she swallowed her burned hunk of noodles, exactly who’d called. “Really?” she asked, tone casual, as her heart accelerated.
               “Ava,” Maggie said. “I gave him your address.”

And here we have Maggie Teague once again winning Mother of the Year. 

Okay, that's not fair, and I don't really mean it. I always let the readers decide whether Maggie is a "good" or a "bad" mom. For me, she's not only a sympathetic one, but an empathetic one. She understands Ava's heartbreak acutely. When she cries when they drop Ava off in Georgia, she's sad to be away from her baby, yes, but mostly she's very afraid of Ava's mental state. From detachment, to outburst when Mercy left Knoxville, and back to complete and total detachment - shutdown, even - Ava presents a portrait of very shaky mental stability. Likewise, she knows Mercy isn't doing well, to put it mildly. When he calls, she weighs the pros and cons of telling him where Ava is. She decides - or hopes, rather - that, out from under Ghost's judgmental gaze, they can comfort one another. 

Needless to say, the comfort's a little cold. 

               Mercy’s large, rough hand settled in the middle of her back, a warm brand against her skin, some silent communication she didn’t know how to read.

               “I don’t know you anymore,” she said again, voice broken and shivery, “and that’s the worst part.”

               She listened to him get to his feet, straighten his clothes. He kissed her, one lingering stroke of his lips against the top of her head, and he left. Again.

               The next morning, as she pressed a cool washcloth to the dark circles under her eyes, she cut him out of her heart for good.

               At least, she thought she did.

There are always things that I know that the audience doesn't. If we play the What If game with this chapter, Mercy would not have broken down the door if Ava hadn't opened it. Both of them know this, but the threat of it offers Ava a glimpse of his pain. A small one, and one that, after they've crashed together on her apartment floor, she's able to dismiss in the face of her own pain, and post-coital clarity/regret. 

Instead of reconciling, Mercy and Ava both walk away from this moment with nothing but another helping of hurt. 

I've said it before in these read-along posts, but going back ten years later and truly reading the book, word for word, as opposed to keyword searching to write later books, hits totally different than when I was writing it. While writing, I'm mentally rubbing my hands together. "Haha, yes, this is going to be so angsty!" But coming at it from a reader, it's just sad. It's tragic, and stressful, and frustrating. I find myself most frustrated with Mercy, because he won't tell her here what happened; he should have totally thrown Ghost under the bus, professed his undying love for her, and lived happily ever after. I understand now why I get all those "I was so angry!" responses. And I love it. 😈

This marks the last of the big flashback chapters. Next time, it's back to present day, and all the chaos that's about to unfold. 

Fearless Read-Along: Chapter Twenty-Six

“Mercy.” Her voice was breathless now. “What’s the matter?”

               His cut was hanging off the doorknob, on the inside of the front door, and he plucked it up, shrugged into it. When he faced her, he did so decorated with all his patches, the stains and scars in the old leather. And his face hardened. The worship, the sweetness, the tenderness – all replaced by a professional steel. This was Mercy the extractor. Mercy the club man, the Lean Dog. Not her companion and protector, her lover and friend.

               Ava felt her heart become a drum inside her chest, beating out a dire rhythm. Danger. Danger.

               “I’m going back to New Orleans,” he said. “I’m moving back there.”

               Her brain refused to compute that. “You hate New Orleans.”

               “I’m heading out first thing in the morning.”

               “But…you hate New Orleans.”

               “Bob down there says he has work for me.”

               “You love Knoxville,” she insisted. “You have work here.”

               Mercy gave her one long, flat look. “I’m leaving, Ava.”

               It hit her then. She surged to her feet. Her voice trembled. “You’re leaving me, you mean, right?” 

This chapter is short, but anything but sweet. The heartbreak's been brewing since that first afternoon in Ava's bedroom, when Mercy gave in to temptation, and it's even more painful when it finally arrives thanks to what happened at Hamilton House. 

This is why I love multi-POV storytelling. Thanks to spending time in Mercy's head, we know how much this is killing him. We grieve not only for Ava, but for him as well. Perhaps worst of all, neither of them has had the chance to share their grief over the miscarriage with one another. 

I don't ever hate any of my own characters, but I come pretty close with Ghost in this instance. However...I wonder how many parents of girls Ava's age would have done something similar, hypocrisy be damned. It's a bad situation all the way around, and I think that's what makes it feel authentic. All that thorny, lose-lose energy results in honest reactions from characters, as opposed to "correct" reactions. 

Fearless Special Edition Alert!

 

Over the past few months, I've had the very exciting opportunity to work with Beyond the Pages Book Box on a special, limited edition of Fearless, and it's finally time to share it with y'all! 

Fearless is part of The Buddy Box, along with Good Gone Bad by Giana Darling. These are gorgeous hardcover special editions with limited run covers, endpapers, and dust jackets. Charli is offering several ordering options, so you can buy the books individually, or as a complete box, along with custom swag. Proceeds go to a charity hand-picked by Charli, and this one sounds like a wonderful organization. 

The front and back Fearless covers above are for the hardcover book, and I'll drop a look at the reversible dust jacket and chapter heading pages below.

This is the full, uncut version of Fearless available on Amazon, all four parts put together, unabridged, plus stunning, one-of-a-kind artwork! It's going to be gorgeous!

I've never had a book in a box before, so I am pumped! And Charli has been wonderful to collaborate with throughout. 

Here's her price breakdown and instructions for ordering:

 All the details for the Buddy Box! 

Available to purchase separately (book only) or as a full box with both books + matching swag items!

 Optional Extra: Choose hand-sprayed edges (limited to just 30 full boxes) for an additional cost — each set hand-sprayed by my husband!

 Prices (AUD):

 Good Gone Bad – Book Only $95 + shipping (≈ $82 USD total)

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Fearless Read-Along: Chapter Twenty-Five

         

 

Collier and James stood just outside the chapel doors. Collier gave him a halfhearted half-smile. James clapped him on the shoulder, but said nothing. He’d relented, then; whatever Ghost had wanted in this case, James had approved it. Already, Ghost was casting his shadow over the president’s chair, eclipsing his predecessor with brute force.

               Inside, the chapel was dark as evening, the lamplight finding places to hide in the deep corners, the folds of the velvet-seated chairs. Ghost stood with his back to the doors, behind Troy’s favorite chair, a lit cigarette smoldering in one hand.

               “Take a seat,” he said, his voice emotionless. 

 

Here we are, when the sword falls. Mercy's day of judgement has arrived. 

His chapel conversation with Ghost is one of those make-or-break scenes that I knew would be pivotal long before it came time to write it. I needed it to have a certain vibe: the immediacy and tension of the conflict between Ghost and Mercy as men, yes. But I also wanted to tap into that Knights of the Round Table, king-and-warrior mythos at the core of the civilian fascination with motorcycle clubs. They're organizations "out of time," and I wanted the ghosts (no pun intended) of the past to sit deep and dark in the corners of the room. 

   

           Ghost was a man out of time, some displaced warrior king deserving of better vestment than denim and leather, more dignified than the wallet chain at his hip, in need of an audience more tractable than his one-man punching bag. 

 

I think it's a scene that speaks for itself, without need of a play-by-play breakdown. Even ten years later, I'm very happy with it.

The rest of the chapter is Ava slowly cracking. Maggie absolutely knows that she's detached from reality as an emotional defense mechanism, and that a big crash is coming, and she's trying to gently guide her through the day to day. 

Ava's fast-tracking the early stages of grief - but in a distinctly blunt, Ava-like way. I wanted the audience, like Maggie, to sit back and watch her process and think "oh no, this isn't going to end well," but in Ava's POV, she's behaving in a rational, grownup way. (She's not, but that's the fun of unreliable narrators.)

I've always enjoying using nightmares to portray underlying anxiety or grief because I personally have lots of nightmares. I hate dreaming in general because I don't have good dreams. Not ever. I've been plagued by detailed nightmares ever since I was a little girl, everything from sharks, to aliens, to ghosts, to home invasions, and armed robberies. Nonsensical and Lovecraftian and deeply disturbing. I even have the full-blown sleep paralysis BS every few weeks. So I think they make for useful tools when it comes to pulling back the curtain on a character's subconscious. 

Leah blinked, and gave her that same odd look everyone had been giving her.

               “Oh, not you too,” Ava said. “Come on. Everyone’s acting like I’m some sort of freak show.”

               “Sorry. Totally not doing that.” Leah was the first person to let it drop and change the subject, but that look…Ava was so tired of that look.

               And still, nothing from Mercy. 

At this stage in the book, Ava is blaming herself. Hindsight tells her she should have been more suspicious of the texts from Carter and protected her baby better. What she needs right now more than anything is Mercy's comfort and reassurance. The simple balm of his presence. 

But, well, we know how that goes. 

Fearless Read-Along: Chapter Twenty-Four

 

Mercy felt a prickling up the back of his neck when Ghost walked in. He heard the bell above the door, and he knew it was his VP, before Ghost came around the table and rested a forearm on the back of the opposite stool.

               Mercy was full to bursting with guilt, with remorse, with the kind of raw, familiar pain of Louisiana, but none of that was connected to Ghost in any way. He didn’t feel anything as his vice president fixed him with a freezing look, his jaw locked. He sipped his coffee with lifted brows, waiting, refusing to even hint at an apology.

If this book had chapter titles, Chapter Twenty-Four would be "A Series of Confrontations." There's not a single pleasant conversation in this one. 

The whole situation here just plain sucks, for all parties involved. I wanted it to be messy; I wanted none of them to have the right answers. My goal with every scene was to write them as a real family, not one that quickly and neatly comes to the correct decision. 

The events of the night before shocked everyone. Daylight is for ramifications. To Mercy's credit, he doesn't run, nor does he go to Ghost to apologize and beg forgiveness. At this point, Ghost hasn't decided to transfer him back to New Orleans, and had Mercy groveled, he wouldn't have, because he does see him as an asset for the club. Ghost spent the overnight hours rationalizing that Mercy didn't respond to his command in Hamilton House because of adrenaline. It was a crazy scene, and Mercy was in redzone attack mode. In the harsh light of day, though, it becomes quickly apparent that, when it comes to Ava, Ghost has zero control over Mercy. If he'd been able to threaten him, and forbid him from seeing Ava, and keep him around, he would have. But the moment in the bakery tells him all he needs to know. Plan B it is, then. 

Cut to Ava and Aidan in the hospital. 

He lifted what smelled like a sausage biscuit in offering. “Food?”

               “Not hungry.” She pushed the covers down to her waist and frowned at her hospital gown. “When are they going to release me?”

               More of that careful look from Aidan. He took a biscuit for himself, put the first on the side of her bed, and dropped into Maggie’s abandoned chair. “Probably when you’re ready to be released.”

               She rolled her eyes. “I’m fine. I have so much schoolwork still to catch up on. I can’t afford to take any more days off.”

               Aidan paused with breakfast halfway to his mouth. “Um…you know what happened to you, right?” He cringed, like he hated the thought. “Or did the bump on the head - ?”

               “I know exactly what happened to me.”

               He took a bite, chewed slowly. “Okay.”

               “You’re the one being weird about it.”

               He swallowed. “I expected–”

               “Crying? Screaming?”

               “Yeah.” Some of the usual snark came back into his voice. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you how to be a girl?”

               She twitched a thin smile. “No. I was raised by Dogs and the women who take care of them.” She glanced at the door, the freedom that lay down the hall. “I want to see Mercy.”

               Aidan snorted. “Yeah. That’s not happening.”

Over the years, both Ava and Aidan have caught their fair share of heat, and even some hate from readers. Not to be That Author, but I think, at times, neither of them get enough credit. I also think it can be easy for readers to say that they would do things differently in the given situation, when the given situation is a bad one. People have a habit of thinking of themselves as mature and rational at all times, when, really...well. You know. 

I love this scene because the thing about Aidan is that, at his core, stripped of all outside influence, he's a goofy, sweet sort of guy, with a little of his dad's mean streak, granted, but basically a decent person. He loves his sister. He brings her breakfast. His worry is genuine. But he also grew up in this violent, unforgiving outlaw world, and he's spent his life both consciously and unconsciously trying to fit into it, and so he's always at war with himself. He checks those kinder impulses and replaces them with assholery enough times that he starts to be an asshole. The push-pull of inherent personality and circumstantial environment makes him seem immature. And he is, to be sure. But that's to be expected when you're a club nepo baby rather than someone who sought out the club after a traumatic past, like Michael or Mercy. 

Ava is Aidan's inverse: she's naturally ferocious, and struggles with comporting herself in a societally accepted feminine manner. She doesn't have Maggie's natural social grace - but that's partly because Maggie grew up in a house where it was forced upon her, and Maggie in turn let Ava be herself. Ava only had to put on a performance outside of the house, and so she's clumsier with it, and more quickly resorts to bluntness. The funny thing is that her same ferocity is seen as valuable in Maggie, but earns Ava the label of "bratty and spoiled." *shrug* Writing books about women for women is a minefield. The fact that there's never a consensus on why some readers hate her tells me she's a very real character, and that if she strikes a nerve, it's about outside perspective, and not my execution. Also, it's okay to dislkike a character; it doesn't mean she's poorly crafted. In this scene she goes full Maggie - and full Ghost. Miss Scarlett O'Teague is going to "think about that another day," remember? The wallowing will come, but for now she's compartmentalizing like a mother, and she's not going to take any lip off her brother, of all people, Dog or no Dog. 

Cut to Maggie at the DAR meeting. On SoA, Gemma went around hitting people with skateboards and threatening bitches constantly. Maybe that's how they do things in California, but Maggie's a Southern gal. She'll pull her gun when she needs to, but her first approach is going to be beating these women at their own game. She's going to poison enough wells with a cotilion smile so she doesn't take the fall for anything. Don't let the Southern drawl fool you: things get bloodthirsty down here...we just do it elegantly. 

In the hospital, Mercy already senses what's coming.

How strange, she reflected, that it was her comforting him in this moment, that it was Mercy struggling, and her doing the petting.

               “It’s okay,” she whispered, pressing her lips to his temple.

               She felt his lashes flicker as he blinked. “No it’s not,” he said. “Oh, fillette, no it’s not.”

Not to come to Ava's defense yet again, but she's young. She's still convinced things can work out in their favor. 

This last scene contains one of my favorite moments of the book.

 

             “She is seventeen–”

               “So was I!” 

There's something delightful and rewarding about getting readers angry with a character; it's stopped feeling like words on a page, then, and the characters are real people you want to shake. Every time someone says, "Ghost is such a hypocrite!" I smile. He is! I love it. To be a parent is to be a hypocrite, at least to some degree. Do as I say, not as I do. And outlaw or not, a father seeing a distinction between his own romantic past and those of his kids feels terribly universal, especially when it comes to daughters. 

“That was different.”

               “How?” Maggie demanded. “Please, for the love of God, Kenneth, explain to me how that was even a little bit different.”

               “It just was,” he growled. “You knew what you were doing. You–”

               “I was a slut? Is that what you’re reaching for?” She slammed the closet doors and went to flounce down on the end of the bed, arms knotted across her middle. “I’d been pawed at by two boys” – she held up two fingers – “in my class, and you knew exactly how much I didn’t know. Age didn’t seem to slow you down then.”

               “It’s different,” he insisted, but she could see some of the fight bleeding out of him.

               Maggie softened her tone. “Because she’s your daughter, and it’s always different with daughters.”

               He swallowed hard, Adam’s apple punching in his throat. “After everything I did for him…”

               “There’s two different kinds of bodyguards,” Maggie said. “The ones who care, and the ones who don’t. You picked one who ended up caring…and now you want to crucify him for caring too much. You can’t have it both ways, baby. If I’ve learned anything from club life, it’s that.”

               Ghost shoved away from the wall and left with his shoulders set at high angles.

I didn't write up any discussion questions ahead of time, but feel free to hit me with any of your own questions. Thanks for being here!