by Krane, Kasey
The door to the office opened, and out walked Carmen, gorgeous as ever, but…
“Where’s your bandage?” I asked before I could stop the words. She laughed, exhaustion in every line of her face but clearly still in possession of her sense of humor.
“The doctor says it’s healed up enough that it’s better if I leave the bandage off. I have to be careful and not rub my head in a pile of sand, but otherwise, I’m cleared. Have you seen Maggie?”
“She’s out in the waiting room with the rest of the students. They redid the bandage on her arm, now that she’s not trying to duck and dodge the nurse to get to you, but otherwise, she’s in great shape.”
I stood up and took her arm, helping her towards the main waiting area. We were in Deming’s tiny hospital, no doubt giving the medical staff more excitement than they usually saw in a month, but the staff were doing their best to work their way through all of the students efficiently. Carmen was so tired, she was dragging her feet but she had her shoulders back and a determined look on her face. She was going to take care of Maggie if she had to kidnap her yet again.
When we reached the main waiting area, Maggie ran and attached herself to Carmen’s side as the Deming police approached them. Officer Lopez put out his hand in greeting. “Glad to see you again under such happy circumstances,” he said warmly to Carmen. She smiled back at him and then said simply, “Can I take Maggie home yet?”
Officer Lopez exchanged glances with his partner, and then back to Carmen. “I’m guessing you haven’t seen it yet.” Confused, she shook her head. “Your plea to adopt little Maggie here,” he reached out and ruffled her hair, smiling down at her, “has gone viral. You were already a hero—” I saw her shoulders tense and I knew she hated being called that but she bit her tongue, letting the officer continue, “but now you’re a hero with a cause. A cause that apparently the whole world has decided to help you succeed in accomplishing. Someone has already set up a GoFundMe page for Maggie’s legal costs and you should see Twitter. #AdoptMaggie is the top trending hashtag.
“I’ve talked to Social Services and under the circumstances, they’ve agreed that letting you take Maggie home was the best for all involved. They went through the system and verified that Maggie is a foster, so I think that, combined with your celebrity status, should help grease the wheels a bit.”
Carmen thanked the police officer and then bent over and explained it all to Maggie. Her face lit up and she threw her arms first around Carmen and then around the officer. I smiled too because smiling is what I was supposed to do, but inside, I was dying a little more with every word.
Carmen could adopt Maggie. Carmen was a heroine.
Carmen was going to take Maggie and start globetrotting again and leave me with Turbo who really would chew the chair leg off this time and…
Black nothingness. Life without Carmen was literally unimaginable.
We drove back to my house in Bishop’s borrowed pickup truck while Carmen did her best to keep up with Maggie’s rapid questions. Their conversation was conducted entirely in Spanish, leaving me out of the loop.
Then when Maggie met Turbo and they set up an immediate Mutual Admiration Society where my dog fell in love with yet another person who was not me and refused to leave Maggie’s side, my frustrations boiled over. No doubt the dog would leave with Carmen and Maggie on their globetrotting adventures, and I’d be stuck with…what? A house that needed entirely too much work and a best friend who was so wrapped up in his own fiancée that I registered somewhere down at the bottom of a very long list of things Bishop had time for?
I was in a good ol’ fashioned “poor me” funk by time Carmen had tucked Maggie in for bed on the couch. Turbo curled up at the end of the couch, plenty of room for him at Maggie’s feet.
Goddamn traitorous dog, anyway.
Watching Carmen sing to Maggie, tucking the blanket in around her a little tighter, brushing her hair away from her face, my heart clenched. There were bands around my chest and I fucking couldn’t breathe. Watching Carmen with her daughter-to-be, it was like looking into a crystal ball, seeing the future I could have had with Carmen. We could have had a family together, spent the evenings laughing and hanging out, Carmen could have loved our kids with all of her heart and soul…
And instead, Carmen was leaving and taking my future could-have-been-my family with her and it was goddamn motherfucking killing me, bit by bit by bit.
When Maggie finally fell asleep, I turned and walked away to the bedroom, wanting to get away from small ears that may wake back up at any moment. I left Carmen with the choice to follow me or not.
I stopped by the side of my bed where we’d spent so much time fucking each other during the last week and just stared at it, remembering how her back would arch and her eyes would squeeze tight as she’d come apart in my arms…
Carmen walked up behind ne and slid her hands up my back and onto my shoulders, stroking me.
“So, when are you going to leave?” I snapped, turning, staring down at her. I couldn’t hold it inside another moment. I had to make it clear that she had to leave.
It was too painful. Too awful.
I couldn’t last much longer without breaking into a million little pieces.
“What?!” she exclaimed, staring at me.
“You made it clear last night that you thought I was nothing more than a lapdog to Bishop, and that you can’t love a lapdog. And then today, all you talked about was how you were going to adopt Maggie. Well, I can’t continue to keep you and Maggie here, not if you’re just using me as a pit stop in the road. It’s too fucking painful.
“So, I need you to pack your shit in the morning, and get out. I’ll sleep on the floor. You’re free to have my bed, but tomorrow, you’re gone.”
She just stood there and stared at me and didn’t say a word and my jaw clenched and I felt the tips of my ears turn red and I knew that I was on the verge of losing everything I cared about and I fucking couldn’t change any of it. It was a walking nightmare that I couldn’t seem to wake up from.
Finally, she whispered, “Can we sit and talk for a minute?” Jaw still clenched, I nodded and we sat down on the bed, since that was the only place to sit in the bedroom and I pulled my t-shirt away from my neck, suddenly stupidly turned-on by seeing Carmen on the bed with me and I couldn’t go there.
I wouldn’t.
“Judge,” Carmen said, breaking into my thoughts, “I’m not leaving you.”
I opened up my mouth to argue - how dare she just move herself right on into my house without my permission - but she held up a hand to forestall me. “Let me talk for a moment, and then you can tell me to go, and I will then, I promise. If you still want me to.”
Grumpily, I gave another jerky nod of my head. I would listen to her and then kick her out.
“I had an epiphany today, as we were riding to the old mine. Which, by the way, how the hell did you know they’d be up there? And did you guys kill all of the Sangre? No, never mind, you can tell me all of that later,” she said, waving her hand in the air dismissively. “This is more important.
“Anyway, as we were riding to the mines, I realized: I trust you like you trust Bishop. I’ve trusted you to save me from slithery things and carry me when I can’t walk straight and break me out of hospitals when the Sangre are trying to kill me and drive like a fucking maniac on a bike and yet get me safely to wherever I need to go. But, I’m not your lapdog. I just have this deep trust in you that is beyond love, beyond knowledge. It’s instinctive.
“With you, I am safe.”
She took a deep breath and looked me in the eye. “You’ve lied to me twice now. You lied by omission both times, by the way - I’m not sure what that says about your personality, that you can’t state a lie but you’ll let a lie be believed,” she chuckled softly, “but as long as we’ve known each other, to have only lied to me twice that whole time is not a bad track record.
“But God, Judge, the shit you chose to lie
to me about… lied to me because you didn’t want me to think any less of you. You hid the fact that you are, in fact, Judge Michaelson,” I grimaced and she laughed. “I promise never to call you by your full name again, Judge. But you hid that from me, and then you hid the fact that y’all went illegal after high school, even making deals with the Sangre, God forbid.
“Someday, when you’re telling me how you figured out where the Sangre were hiding the little girls, I want you to also tell me what happened the night that Ghost died. From what Jules was saying, it sounds like all hell broke loose.”
I nodded, keeping myself from blurting the story out then, because I wanted Carmen to tell me everything that she was thinking. I wasn’t super happy about the turn the conversation had taken - listing off every time I had fucked up wasn’t my idea of a good time - but I also knew that if I was going to have even an inkling of a chance with Carmen, I had to own those mistakes.
“I’m not going to lay the blame for the Cruddy Carmen incident at Bishop’s feet,” she winked at me, “but he did tell you to vote for Ghost as president, and he did tell you to vote yes to the gun deal with the Sangre. Those were both bad decisions, but unless I’m wrong, I think you and Bishop both realize that now.”
Staring into Carmen’s brilliant aquamarine eyes, I gave an emphatic nod. I couldn’t say anything, not yet, not until she was done, but I hoped she could sense my seriousness in my demeanor.
“I can’t expect you to be perfect, any more than you can expect me to be perfect. In high school, I turned a blind eye to how much the Dead Legion meant to you. I ignored your ties to James and Mary and Bishop because it was convenient for me. I liked the idea of motorcycles just being a phase for you, because it meant that I got to keep you after high school - that you’d move with me, and we could travel the world together and I’d get my way.” She smiled sadly at me and said, “I’m not sure if you noticed this yet, but your Carmen can be a little on the stubborn side.”
My heart leapt at the words “your Carmen” and I reached my hand out and stroked her cheek. She turned her face into the palm of my hand, nuzzling it, and I just tried to so hard not to hope but also not to panic - to just let her talk and then I could let myself react.
But not until then.
“Judge, when I stood in front of those reporters and told them that I was going to adopt Maggie, I had no idea if you still even wanted me in your life. At that point, we weren’t exactly on speaking terms. I couldn’t go on national television and say, ‘Oh, and by the way, my hunky biker badass boyfriend who isn’t even speaking to me right now is going to adopt this little girl with me, even though he just met her three minutes ago.’ I couldn’t make that kind of commitment for you.”
I swallowed hard and felt the tips of my ears grow red again, but this time from embarrassment. Because she was right, of course. To have expected her to make that promise without talking to me first was…a stretch.
“But, I’m asking you now. If you’ll take me back, even after the awful things I screamed at you, will you be my partner in raising Maggie?”
Finally, blessedly, she stopped talking, and I knew that this was my chance to seize the day. To seize my chance at happiness.
“Carmen Williams,” I said, taking her hands into mine and she scooted closer to me and my heart almost stopped beating because she was just too fucking beautiful for words but I had to keep talking and not just stare at her like a blithering idiot, “I love you. I will love you to the ends of the earth. I told you that I wanted you to leave tomorrow because I couldn’t handle the pain of watching you and Maggie together, knowing that I couldn’t have you in my life. It was just too fucking much.
“But if you’ll have me,” I raised her knuckles to my lips and softly kissed them, “I want to marry you. I want to stand up in front of family and friends and the whole goddamn world and tell them all how much I motherfucking love you.” She snorted with laughter and I grinned at her and said, “I sure know how to romance a girl.”
“It’s amazing you aren’t married already,” she agreed drily.
“Fucking miracle, really.”
My demeanor grew more serious and I said, “I don’t really know Maggie, but based on the strength of your love for her, I can only believe that I will love her too. I know that some men can only love their own biological children, but James and Mary loved me more than I was ever loved by my own biological parents. I’d be honored to pass that legacy on to our own children - to teach them to love regardless of blood relationship.
“I want you and Maggie and even my goddamn traitorous dog in my life for always. I want to wake up next to you and have Maggie jump on the bed and feed Turbo her vegetables under the table and take a family trip to New York and buy a fridge just to hold Maggie’s cheese and make love to you every single fucking morning for the rest of our lives.
“If you’ll have me.”
“Yes!” she threw herself at me, wrapping her arms around me. “Yes, I will marry you.” And then for a third time that day, she cried.
But this time, they were happy tears.
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About Kasey Krane
Kasey Krane is a tattoo artist living in the beautiful (and hot) state of Texas. She enjoys drawing but writing has recently become a new passion for her. Especially when it's too damn hot to do anything outside. Whiskey neat is her drink of choice and she's never met a truck she doesn't like. Enjoy her bad boys, she sure does.
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