The trouble with relief, Ellie had learned, was that it didn't last the way you wanted it to.
The Route 9 pressure was gone. The fire was repaired. Dutch had found his other corridor and the Saints had settled back into the rhythms of a club that was not currently at war, which was steadier and quieter and still not simple.
Because the world hadn't changed. She understood that. It had always been going to be this way -- the particular bittersweet of loving someone whose life was what it was, whose obligations ran deep and sideways and sometimes into the dark. There would be other Dutchs. Other eleven p.m. calls. Other mornings when she would unlock the kitchen and not know if the thing she was afraid of had happened yet.
She had chosen it with clear eyes. She chose it again.
What she h
