Free Tying the Knot by Susan May Warren

to meet you. We transplants need to stick together or the locals will gang up on us.” She winked at Sandra, who rolled her eyes. “Will you be here long?”

    Noah surfaced into the twilight-soaked air and hoisted himself from the lake onto the dock. The crisp June breeze turned his skin to gooseflesh but soothed the frustration threatening to boil him alive. He’d felt ill watching his hopes flee with Anne’s desperate escape three hours earlier. Instead, he’d stood there, fists bunched at his sides, listening to a thousand voices tell him he’d failed . . . again.
    What was a guy with his past trying to achieve by this do-gooder impersonation, anyway? Didn’t he know he couldn’t escape the generational tug into a life of misery and sin? Noah sat down, squeezed out his wet hair, and scrubbed a towel over his face. He didn’t mind the chill seeping into his bones. Maybe it would snap him into reality, out of the dream he’d been living for too long. Maybe it hadn’t been a godly vision he’d seen three years ago but desperation.
    It had obviously been sheer desperation that made him believe that Anne Lundstrom would join his team. From her expression when she’d peeled away, only whips and chains could drag her back to Wilderness Challenge.
    He didn’t blame her; he didn’t feel one ounce of reproach toward her. Noah dug his hands into his hair and hung his head. No, he alone owned all indictment. Her accusation had ripped a hole right through his chest: A man who wanted to use me to get money.
    He let out a groan that echoed across the lake. Oh, God, I’m sorry . His throat burned. Guilty. He had been thinking only of his camp, his wants. He hadn’t given a solitary consideration to how Anne wanted to spend her summer, nor had he given her a chance to choose. So his intentions were honorable, even righteous. But he’d trampled over her feelings with the sensitivity of a stock horse. The realization made him sick.
    If only Anne could see the despair in the kids he’d left in Minneapolis. If only she could watch what drugs and prostitution did to their innocence, count the times he’d buried teens next to their brothers and sisters. If only she could peek inside his own life and see the scars buried in his past. Then maybe . . .
    He cupped his hand over his left arm, hiding beneath his grip a gray blue, tiny five-point star. He still battled the urge to have it removed, wanting to erase all remnants of that former life. But something inside him—he couldn’t pinpoint what—kept him from obliterating the last piece of concrete evidence. His fingers dug into his flesh, remembering the day he’d been branded, body and heart, for life.
    Rock Man, they’d called him. He figured it had something to do with his bullheadedness when they’d tried to beat him senseless the night of initiation. His jaw hadn’t closed right for a month, but he’d stayed standing and earned the right to be a Vice Lord. He’d belonged. Forever.
    His fingers formed the three-finger homeboy salute and gang lingo flooded his memory. To this day, every time he heard all is well, “the People’s” typical expression, he bristled.
    All was never well when he’d run with the Lords. He should have figured that out the last night of initiation. Noah shuddered and lowered his forehead onto his knees. What an idiot he’d been—over a bag of tortilla chips.
    Shorty Mac had shoved a 9mm Glock into his hand as they crouched in the shadows. Cold and heavy, the weapon sent a thrill of fear through him as they watched the Tom Thumb Convenience Store, waiting for L’il Lee’s sister to emerge. “She’s unlocking the back door,” Shorty Mac said, a devious glint in his eye.
    Noah hadn’t seen the deceit, even then. Shorty Mac, childhood friend turned homeboy, had learned well in a month’s time how to lie with the best. But Noah had believed him and inched toward the back door, the October wind whistling under his Chicago