“You weren’t even on your third drink by the time a different woman was hanging onto you like she owned your body, and you didn’t mind one bit. Again, I had front row seats for that. I also had a prospect serving me Sprite or waters and begging me to let him call someone to come get me. The pity in his eyes when he glanced from the scene you were making back to me hurt so much. I kind of wanted to die that night. I didn’t though. I stuck around, because I had nowhere else to go. I couldn’t even call a cab to take me to your house because I didn’t know where it was or have a key to get in.
“You had a few shots and some more beers before the blond girl who was here earlier started pawing at you, only this time you didn’t just tolerate it. You pawed back, you danced with her, you made out with her and you did it all in front of me.” Her third finger had gone in the air on that one. “The worst part of that was, I don’t think you were doing it to hurt me, because you didn’t even know I was there. You should have since you drove me there, but it was like on the way from the courthouse to the clubhouse you had managed to make me disappear in your mind, and by the time you walked through the club house doors I no longer existed for you.”
“When you started kissing that woman was about the time Merc came out of his office, saw what was going on, and took me home. I’m not sure how long after I left that you waited to let her suck your dick. I don’t think you would have cared if I had been there, but like I said, I also don’t think you realized I was.” She shrugged her shoulders, speculating again about my frame of mind that night. “You left me in your truck when we got there, and I guess you thought I’d stay like a good dog so you could go in and have your guilt-free fun.”
“Anna,” I hissed out her name on a ragged breath. “I promise, it wasn’t like that.”
“It doesn’t matter what it was like for you. You weren’t the one being treated worse than an unwanted dog. You were the one making me feel less than the scum beneath your shoes while you reluctantly married me. You were the one who left me in the car while you went in to get drunk. You were the one who forgot all about me. And you were the one who had other women all over you, kissing you, blowing you, and waking up with you apparently. So no telling what else happened in between.”
“Nothing else happened,” I tried to assure her.
“How would you know if you don’t even remember the blow job or anything else from that night?”
“Trust me, you don’t want the details, but I know.” How could I tell her that I still had a lipstick ringing my dick and that it would have been gone if I’d had sex? There was also the fact that the club had video of what went down. It had been erased since then, but I’d seen it so I knew what my night consisted of. Once again, I found myself wishing I could kick my own ass.
She scrunched her nose up at me then and shook her head as if to get rid of the memories, or the thoughts, I’d just put in her head. “My point was, it’s embarrassing for me. It was bad enough watching that happen, and then having someone send me a picture of the rest on the day I married you, but to have my family witness the woman coming back and knocking on the door for more?” She grabbed hold of her stomach as if it were bothering her. I wondered, and not for the first time, if all of this stress was harming our baby. That was part of the reason I asked Double-D to take her out of here.
“Are you okay? Is the baby okay?” I asked worriedly when she glanced down at her belly with a funny look on her face. Then she started laughing. What the hell?
Once she got herself under control she explained. “All day long I’ve been feeling this weird fluttering, bubbly feeling in my stomach. It gets worse when you talk.”
“I’m sorry, I’ll stop.” If you ever want to feel completely dejected just talk to a pregnant woman who is mad at you. Apparently, they don’t pull any punches.
“No,” she giggled, grinning down at her belly again. “I just realized what it is. I thought it was nerves at first, but it’s not. The baby must like to hear your voice because I’m pretty sure that’s what I’m feeling. It’s moving. I’ve been getting that feeling on and off for a couple weeks, but I didn’t realize…” She grinned up at me. “I thought it was just nerves or something else.”
I froze momentarily as I realized what she was saying. The baby was moving inside of her. Our baby. She could feel it moving. My eyes locked on to her stomach and before I knew it I was across the room and sitting on my knees at her feet. “Can I feel?”
“Probably not,” she stated as she continued smiling at her belly and mostly ignoring my presence.
“Oh.” Well, that was a kick in the balls.
“No, I meant that I don’t think you can actually feel it yet. It’s just a small fluttering inside me. I can’t feel it with my hands. That will be a little bit longer.” She must have seen the forlorn look on my face because she scooped my hands up and placed them on her belly. “You can try, but I can’t guarantee the results.”
I glanced up at her while my hands were wrapped around her small baby bump. The fact that she had just listed off the ways I’d embarrassed and humiliated her on our wedding day, and then turned around and offered me this opportunity astounded me. I hadn’t given her even half the consideration she had handed me. She was proving, once more, that the woman was really too good for me in every way.
“Remember when you called me Lise and I called you Evan?”
“Yeah,” I responded quietly wondering where she was going with that.
“You know what I loved the most about that?” I turned my head slowly from side to side indicating that I did not know. “I talked, you listened. You really and truly heard what I had to say. When you spoke, I gave that back to you in return. Aside from me using a different nickname for my name it was all beautiful truth and I think you were the first person who ever really understood me and knew what I was all about.”
“I felt the same. Everything clicked into place when we used to talk,” I admitted.
“Yeah,” she mumbled sadly. “That’s our problem.”
“What that we clicked together?” I asked, confused.
“No. Our problem is that we don’t anymore.” Not gonna lie. That sucked to hear from her. “We can’t,” she continued talking. “When you got angry with me we stopped talking and despite signing our names on paper vowing to do better we never started talking to one another again. So, no click. Just confusion, sadness,” she looked me right in the eye before adding the last. “And pain.”
I took a moment to process what she was trying to tell me. It was understandable that we stopped talking considering how betrayed I felt by her lies. They had almost cost me everything. Hell, I wasn’t even sure she was telling me she wanted to start talking. Not for the first time, I wanted to just hop on my bike and ride out because I couldn’t understand what she wanted from me. The problem was, I knew I’d regret the minute I did that because life without Anna was misery and I already knew that for a fact.
Chapter 12
“So, are you proposing that we start talking again or that we stop altogether?” Joker asked warily. I couldn’t hide my smile at the hint of insecurity he showed with that question.
“We need to start talking. As much as I was ready to walk out of here with my parents today, I couldn’t.”
“Do you mind if I ask why? Fuck knows, I don’t deserve for you to stay, but if they’re forcing you to, I’ll…”
The idea was absurd so I waved it off with the flick of my wrist before he even finished. My mom had been tempted to have my father take me from the house against my will, but he had explained how that would go over about as well as a lead balloon. “It’s not like that. Actually, something Ever said not so long ago came back to me when I was talking to my mom. The bottom line is that we have to be able to communicate with one another. We have to be able to forgive the things we’ve done to hurt each other and to move past them without drowning in the misery we’ve created. I don’t want to see my child grow to hate either, or both, of us
because we continued to hurt each other and our child as a result. So, we need to talk this out and get past the bad stuff so we can move on to becoming two adults who can speak to one another without flinging mud at each turn.”
“When did you become the adult in this relationship?” He teased.
“Yesterday, by law,” I answered cheekily, making him laugh.
“Anna, about earlier,” he started by I shook my head.
“Don’t. There’s no need. Today was a good example about why we need to communicate better. Not being open and honest and getting everything off of our chests when it happens just makes it all a festering wound. It doesn’t take much to pull at the seams and split the wound wide open again.” He simply sat, watching me when I was done speaking, looking for his moment to chime in if I was done. I wasn’t. I needed to clarify about the events of the day.
“The picture, and what it represented were things that I had sitting around festering inside of me. If we had talked about it, and been honest about what happened, what you had been up to since, and all the in between stuff, that woman popping up here today would have been a tiny blip on our radar. Hell, you might not have known she was here until after everyone left, because I could have sent her away from the beginning by asking what she wanted with my husband.
“The thing is, I didn’t send her away because she opened that wound, and all I had left was to go on the attack. If I’m being honest, I didn’t know whether to believe her or not. I had already been struggling with why, after you said you would come and move back in, you never showed up last night and left no word either. I sat here for the longest time trying to stay awake until you got back, but then I couldn’t anymore.” When I said nothing else, he grimaced and then stood to move toward the kitchen to grab himself a beer and me a bottle of water.
Waiting for him to sit back down was like torture because he just stood, pacing back and forth for a few minutes. Maybe he was trying to decide how much he could tell me, or if I really meant it when I said I wanted us to be open and honest with one another.
“I should have told you immediately, but I honestly thought I was sparing you. Truthfully, I was deeply ashamed of myself when I realized what I’d done. Having you hurt worse by my actions wasn’t something I wanted. I can see where I went wrong with not telling you though.”
“Don’t ever try to spare me. Besides, you never know what I might already have seen or been told.”
“Speaking of that,” he stated as he came back to stand in front of me. There was a menacing edge to his stance, though I could tell it wasn’t aimed at me. At least, I hoped it wasn’t. “I don’t supposed you’d be willing to let me know who has been filming and spreading around club business?”
“My father knows. He asked the same question and he’s dealing with it.”
Surprisingly, Joker nodded and left it alone. “What you saw in that picture was all that happened besides her passing out on me later. I swear, nothing else happened. When I was sober enough to realize it wasn’t you lying with me, and that no one knew where you were I checked the cameras in the clubhouse. I know exactly what happened that night. I just don’t know from first hand memories, only the fast-forwarded images that played out on the security tape. Since that incident there’s been no one. Hell, there was no one before that since I found out about the baby.”
My jaw probably hit the floor at that revelation. I couldn’t wrap my head around that at all. “Why?”
“I know I made an ass out of myself on our wedding day and I fucked up bigger at the clubhouse, but when I said I’d marry you, I meant it in every way. I didn’t think it would be just a convenience. I told myself it was, or tried to, but deep down…” he shook his head and couldn’t hide the trace of a smile on his lips. “Every time I closed my eyes, I pictured what it would be like to live with you, to hold you again. I saw you in my dreams all swollen with my baby, and even so far as holding our baby one day. Granted, I was still angry and working through things, but deep down I was ready to start a family with you too. I just needed time to figure out how to get past what I saw as a betrayal. I never would have thought myself capable of completely obliterating that feeling and going above and beyond in retaliation, but it seems like that was what I did.
“At any rate, I planned to remain true to our vows in case things worked out, and if they didn’t, I could stand on my high horse and tell everyone about how hard I tried.” He huffed out a miserable excuse for a laugh then. It didn’t convey any humor, simply frustration with himself for the way he had been thinking in the beginning. “Anna, I don’t know what the fuck happened in my head that day. Everything got so twisted up and my anger reached its peak.”
I understood that. Even if I wished that I didn’t.
“I think that’s where it would have been beneficial for us to actually speak to one another before we showed up at the courthouse. I didn’t think you’d be faithful to me considering the circumstances of our marriage, but I never thought you’d treat me with so much disrespect and hatefulness. It was all a symptom of that open, festering wound. You were like a hurt animal lashing out against those who try to help it. I’m guessing you lashed out at me because I’m the one who hurt you and made you feel caged as a result.”
“You ever think about going into the therapy business?” He asked in all seriousness.
“No. I want to be a writer so I can make sure my characters all walk away with their happily ever after.”
“Not everyone gets a smooth ride in life,” he argued.
“No, but I’d like to think they can overcome the obstacles to find happiness. If they can’t do that in my fictional worlds, what hope do I have of ever being happy myself one day?”
I could see that my own personal truth hurt him in some way, but I wouldn’t lie about how I was feeling anymore. Not to him, or anyone else, because that particular lie cost me too much already.
“Were you with anyone else while we were apart?”
I laughed at that. “Are you kidding? Who wants to date the girl who’s knocked up?”
He raised a brow at me. “Too many men and boys would gladly do it because they’d think they can get in there without protection since you can’t be pregnant twice at the same time.”
“Well, that’s not exactly true. There have been cases where…” I started to tell him, getting off track. He stopped me though.
“Anna, I’m sure that’s all very interesting, but it doesn’t answer the question.”
“The answer is no. I haven’t been with anyone else or even thought of doing it.” The instant relief on his face made me want to punch the crap out of him. “I was too heartbroken to even notice other people at first,” I told him, quickly wiping the smirk off of his face because he knew he couldn’t say the same thing since he was already with another woman when I found out I was pregnant. “Then, I started getting sick and had more important things on my mind anyway. Plus, after I was married, there was no way I would break those vows I made since I’d already made such a huge mistake by stretching the truth to begin with.” The smirk was completely gone and he was sitting there looking as miserable as I felt inside. Okay, well, being able to talk without slashing wounds open would obviously have to be a work in progress for a while.
“Sorry,” I finally managed to get out. “You smirking about it made me angry.”
“You have every right to be, Anna. We both handled things in very different ways, and of the two of us, your way was the healthier one. Don’t feel bad about putting me in my place when I need it.”
“Fine, then I suggest you clean up the party stuff that was never used, since everything got derailed.”
“I think I have a better idea.”
Chapter 13
“I will gladly clean up, but first I need to ask you something else,” I told her. Her lack of response beyond a nod prompted me to continue on with the question. “When is your lunch break at work on Monday?”
“Lunch is anytime I w
ant to take it, so long as we aren’t swamped at the shop. Beth is super lenient and nice about things. I guess she figured since I was pregnant, things might be up in the air about when I got hungry or needed a break.”
“That’s good that she’s been that way with you,” I told her. It still didn’t sit right with me that she was working at all while pregnant, but as my old first shirt used to tell me in the Army, I needed to learn to choose my battles and when to fight them. Today wasn’t that day. Besides, it got Anna out of the house, wasn’t strenuous, and she genuinely seemed to enjoy going to work and hanging out with Beth and Gretchen when she was there instead of the tattoo studio.
“How about you call me just before you’re going to take it so I can meet up with you and we can get lunch together?” Seeing the question in her eyes, I didn’t wait for her to ask it before adding the reason. “I won’t be around tomorrow. I have to go on a run for the club down to Jacksonville tomorrow. I most likely won’t get in until late, if at all, depending on how things go. Crow and Kane are probably coming with me. J-Bird was supposed to be the one to take this run, but he’s been mostly AWOL since…” I left off the last part, because she already knew where I was going with that. J-Bird had gone off the rails a bit after T-Bone’s death, and he hadn’t really come back around since.
“I wonder if he’s going to be okay?” I could see the sadness in her eyes. Both T-Bone and J-Bird had been brothers to her, even if only one had been by blood. It had to hurt to basically lose them both all at once. The only saving grace was that one of them might come back if he ever got past the hurt of losing his best friend and brother.
“He’s still grieving. Things will work out, and he’ll come home.”
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