Chapter 124 Girls' Night

Chapter 124 Girls' Night
Evelyn's POV

Sarah showed up at my apartment at seven with two bottles of wine. I'd invited her and three other women whose husbands worked with the Junkies. It felt weird mixing Sarah, who knew nothing about this life, with women who lived it every day, but I wanted to try.

"Thanks for inviting me," Sarah said when I opened the door.

"Of course. Come in."

The other three were already there. Lisa whose husband ran security. Maria whose husband handled logistics. And Chen whose husband worked directly under Marcus. They were all sitting in my living room when Sarah walked in.

"Everyone this is Sarah. She's with Braydon."

"Nice to meet you," Lisa said.

Sarah sat down and I poured wine for everyone. For a few minutes, nobody talked, and it was awkward. Then Maria broke the silence.

"So how long have you and Braydon been together?"

"About a year total but we broke up for three months. We just got back together last week."

"Why'd you break up?" Chen asked.

"The mafia stuff scared me. I didn't know if I could handle it."

Lisa nodded. "That makes sense. It's not an easy life."

"How do you all deal with it?" Sarah asked. "The constant worry that something might happen to them?"

Maria took a sip of her wine. "You learn to live with it or you leave. There's no middle ground."

"But how do you actually live with it? Don't you think about it all the time?"

"At first yeah," Lisa said. "When I first got with my husband I couldn't sleep. Every time his phone rang I thought it was bad news. Every time he came home late I imagined the worst."

"What changed?"

"I realized worrying didn't protect him. It just made me miserable. So I had to choose between leaving and accepting that this is who he is."

Chen leaned forward. "Love makes you brave. That's what my mom told me when I started dating my husband. She said, " If you really love someone, you find the courage to stay even when it's hard."

Sarah looked at me. "Do you worry about Gyran?"

"All the time," I said. "But I also trust him. He's smart and careful and he always comes home."

"What if he doesn't one day?"

The room got quiet. That was the question we all avoided thinking about.

"Then we deal with it," Maria said. "But we can't live our lives waiting for the worst thing to happen."

Lisa refilled her glass. "My husband almost died two years ago. He got shot during a deal that went bad. I spent three days in the hospital not knowing if he'd make it."

"What did you do?" Sarah asked.

"I prayed. I cried. And when he woke up I told him I couldn't do this anymore. That he needed to find safer work or I was leaving."

"What did he say?"

"He said he'd try. And he did. He moved from field work to security which is less dangerous."

Sarah nodded slowly. "Braydon promised to keep stepping back from the dangerous stuff. He's focusing more on legitimate business now."

"That's good," Chen said. "My husband did the same thing. He used to be a soldier but now he handles paperwork and inventory."

"Do you ever regret it?" Sarah asked. "Staying with them even though it's hard?"

Maria shook her head. "Never. My husband is a good man. He provides for our family and he loves our kids. The mafia stuff is just one part of who he is."

"Same here," Lisa said. "I knew what I was getting into when I married him. You can't love half of a person. You take all of them or none of them."

I thought about Gyran and how much he'd changed since we got together. "Gyran is trying to build a legitimate career. He works at a security company now and he's good at it."

"Does he want to leave?" Chen asked.

"I think so. He wants a normal life."

"Normal is overrated," Maria said and we all laughed.

Sarah took a big sip of wine. "I'm scared I won't be strong enough. That I'll fall apart the first time something bad happens."

"You're stronger than you think," I told her. "You already left once and came back. That takes guts."

"Evelyn's right," Lisa said. "The fact that you're here means you're willing to try. That's all any of us can do."

We talked for another hour about everything. How to handle a family that didn't understand. How to explain our husbands’ jobs to friends. How to deal with the looks people gave us when they found out.

"My mom thinks I'm crazy," Maria said. "She tells me every time I see her that I should leave him and find someone normal."

"Mine too," Chen said.

"Because we love them," I said. "And sometimes love means choosing the hard path."

Sarah looked around at all of us. "Thank you for being honest with me. I was worried you'd all think I was weak for leaving."

"We don't think that," Lisa said. "We've all thought about leaving at some point. The difference is whether you come back."

"And you came back," Maria added.

By the time everyone left it was almost midnight. Sarah stayed to help me clean up.

"I like them," she said while washing wine glasses.

"Me too. They get it in a way other people don't."

"Do you see them often?"

"Once a month usually. We need each other. This life is too hard to do alone."

Sarah dried a glass and set it on the counter. "I'm glad I came tonight. I feel less alone now."

"You're not alone. You have all of us."

She hugged me and I hugged her back. When she left I sat on my couch and thought about the night. Those women understood my life in a way Jessica never could. They knew what it meant to love someone in this world. They knew the fear and the worry.

But they also knew the other side. The loyalty and the strength and the love that made it all worth it. We were a community of women who chose hard men and hard lives. And we had each other's backs.

That meant something. It meant I wasn't going through this alone. None of us were.