Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 134057 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 670(@200wpm)___ 536(@250wpm)___ 447(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 134057 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 670(@200wpm)___ 536(@250wpm)___ 447(@300wpm)
It didn’t.
Caroline
Five Months Later
I was making my list.
I did it every morning.
My therapist suggested it. Does anyone do anything like write the things that made them happy in a day without some kind of shrink telling them to do it? If you had to write down reasons you were happy, then it was a big sign that you weren’t happy.
But I did it anyway. It was a visceral and actionable thing to do to control my state of mind. Or at least create the illusion that I could control something as unhinged and damaged as my mind.
“I want you to write a minimum of three,” she said. “And there is no maximum. Some days it’ll be hard to get three. But others there will be days when you fill up a whole page.”
I quirked my brow but didn’t say anything. What a load of bullshit, I thought.
That was four years ago.
And I’d done it every single day since then.
I have yet to fill up a page.
One day I’d gotten up to the number seven.
Most days I still struggled to get three. No, I battled to get three, and that was with the first one on the list being consistently the same since I started the damn thing.
I am inhaling and exhaling.
Yeah, most people wouldn’t consider the mere act of breathing as a reason to be happy. Because it wasn’t unique or special. Even people going through the worst shit a human being would ever have to face were still breathing. Inhaling and exhaling didn’t denote happiness. But I had to start somewhere. And I also had to remind myself that breathing wasn’t something to be taken for granted.
2. My sister is finally pregnant after trying for two years.
3. My paycheck is enough to cover my rent and bills and buy myself a coffee every day for the next month, plus those shoes that are on sale at Nordstrom.
I chewed on the top of my pen.
Three was all I had in me today.
Plus, I had better things to do.
I had a story to write. Well, I had a story to research. One that might leave me with more than enough money to buy half price designer sneakers and an overpriced coffee every day.
The roar of motorcycles made me glance up as I watched a line of them pull into the parking lot of the Sons of Templar compound.
An automatic gate with barbed wire at the top started to close as the bikes disappeared. Security cameras were mounted on the gate and pointed toward the street. I was parked down the road enough not to be caught in them.
Their clubhouse was now a fortress.
Or as close as it could get.
It made sense since a handful of months ago almost every single member of the club was brutally murdered. The police had no leads.
Because they were paid to have no leads.
In a small town in the middle of New Mexico, one-percenter gangs could still pay off the underpaid local cops.
Shit, they could do it anywhere. Money spoke louder than morals. Always.
If I’d learned anything in my years of covering some of the most dangerous stories in the world, it was that. Even embedded in warzones throughout the planet, I saw what a handful of dollars could do. It could change a life. End one. Buy my entry. Buy my exit. Buy my safety. Or buy my pain.
Much more than a handful of money was what bought wars. But they were always paid for in full and in cash, and so much more in pain.
I might’ve been stateside once more, but I was in the middle of a warzone, no doubt about that. I’d done my research. As much as I could without getting myself on the Sons of Templar’s radar. And I knew about their sordid past. The Amber chapter in California was the most notable. Throughout the years they’d had rapes, murders, kidnappings, drive-bys, explosions, all of which somehow involved the women married to some of the most dangerous men in the country.
But I also knew that despite all this, the Amber chapter was relatively legit. Well, as legit as a previous outlaw motorcycle club could be. There were some stories there for me.
But not the story.
The one that might blow up my career. In ways that my war coverage never could. Yeah, I was somewhat of a household name when people thought of conflict correspondents. But that was likely because I’d stayed alive longer than most of my contemporaries.
And war was now the wallpaper to the newsroom.
It wasn’t shocking.
Nor was it even news.
Because it was too common.
Imagine living in a world where mass genocide and crimes against humanity were too common for people to care about.
Worse, because we didn’t have to imagine that world.
We lived in it.
But I’d lived enough to know I couldn’t change it.