Flick (The Black Sentinels MC Book 4)

by Victoria Johns

  Every time I heard a bike, I shook inside, but then remembered his bike was under a tarp in the garage. Wolf and Angel came around often, it was hearing Wolf’s bike had the same affect. The first time they appeared, I knew something was wrong, they never just came around, but when he told me that Beckett had been deployed in an emergency, I didn’t question it or argue even though he knew I knew something about it, I just hated it. It was good of him to keep Angel in the dark though, I wouldn’t have wanted to lie to her any more than necessary.

  I hated that Beckett had had the time to get in touch with his club president, but not me, the person who he’d declared his love for, demanded I say it in return. No… he didn’t call me, he just took off..

  Even when Wolf continued the story about him being some kind of reservist, I held it together, but I also recognized that look in his eyes, I knew that he wasn’t letting on just how much he really did know, Beckett had told him more in that phone call than I knew and it was then I began to hate that others knew more than me; Wolf could see what I was feeling. “Look, he only called me to make sure I was ready to step in should you need something doing.”

  “Like a handyman!” I shouted, unable to push down my anger.

  “No, like your family, your brother.”

  When he gave me that I felt like shit, instantly. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize,” Angel chipped in. “We get it.”

  “How come everyone else is okay with this? Even the kids.” I sat down at the kitchen table, feeling like the hole in my heart was widening every day we were apart.

  Angel leaned over to squeeze my hand. “You need help with the kids, you just call.”

  I got up, urging them to leave, I needed my space and they knew it. “We won’t let you become a stranger while he’s gone, so don’t even think about falling off radar. You don’t turn up at the club regular, I’ll come looking for you.”

  Angel smiled, clearly proud of the caring side her burly old man possessed. “And if he doesn’t come looking, me and the girls, loaded with chilled vodka and snacks, will.”

  They both hugged me at the door, and I watched them leave. When I closed the door, the silence hit me. Oddly enough it was no quieter than when he was here, creeping around, lost in thought or just not talking because there was nothing that needed saying, but I felt it now.

  I sat down on the floor behind the door and cried.

  I’d been doing that a lot lately, and I knew I had to pull myself together.

  Over the last few months together, we’d made this house a home; infused it with some life, some spirit, and now it felt like he’d taken it all with him.

  At night I lay there thinking about all that Beckett had told me, his special skills, the truth bomb of what he’d gotten wrapped up in that wasn’t his fault. Something that I couldn’t talk to anyone about.

  I hated that I was thinking about Beckett the same way I thought about his sister; like I was keen to keep him alive in our hearts and home, present in our day-to-day reality.

  Month two passed and it was getting harder to carry on as if everything was okay. I was a single parent, and although I could cope, I just didn’t want to. It was me who now got the constant reminders this time, and my emotions were dredging up feelings of the past, like when he left me last time. At home he was everywhere. His clothes in the closet, his stuff still in the bathroom cabinets, his bike gathering dust.

  The other old ladies all rallied around me, but I felt like I’d lost it all, my connection to them, my anchor to the new life I’d found myself thrust into, my spirit and purpose in the life I was looking forward to with Beckett.

  “He’ll come home soon,” Gigi smiled one night when I’d taken the kids over to hers to play.

  “At the moment, I just don’t feel like that. Why?”

  “Probably because it feels just too scary to hope.”

  Maybe she was right, if you expect the worst, you can’t be disappointed when it happens, but deep down I knew it was more than that. “Why can’t I feel him? Why does it feel like he’s… gone?”

  Gigi looked at me shocked. “No. No. I refuse to think like that and so should you. Shadow would go insane if he thought you were losing it like this.”

  “Yeah?” I shouted, “Well, he’s not here to argue, is he?”

  “Have some faith.” She rubbed my hand. “You need to take better care of yourself. You looked tired and you’re losing weight.”

  Is this what grief looks like? Loss of appetite, sleepless nights, haunting dreams.

  I looked at the kids feeling thankful that they’d never really had night terrors over the loss of this man. Then I remembered just how haunted Beckett had been when I’d first arrived.

  Was he suffering wherever he was because I wasn’t there to hold him? Or was it ten times worse this time because he’d been thrust back into the life?

  I carried on with my life and the kids as month three rolled around. I thought about the fake wall socket and wondered if it would hold all the answers, but every time I stood in front of it chewing my nails, I couldn’t bring myself to look. Looking in it would be like admitting that he was gone, and I wasn’t ready to do that. Beckett had told me that opening that socket was only in case of a dire emergency. Did missing him, not eating or sleeping, and worrying about his safety constitute a dire emergency? Every time I decided to do it, something stopped me from taking that final step.

  Then I realized I was losing faith in all sorts of things, the blackness of depression constantly hovering above me, but something inside me stopped me each and every time.

  Whatever it was that kept stopping me, I trusted it. That feeling was what held my truth and belief in us as a family, as a couple.

  By the time I’d got to month four I could feel that something was fundamentally different within me. And when I peed on a little white pharmaceutical stick, I cried buckets.

  I was pregnant.

  Hardly a surprise, we’d approached sex with wild abandon and never used protection; like life could have been snatched from either one of us at any time. In hindsight this had been the right thing, one of our lives could have been taken away; right now, it was Beckett’s.

  The tears I cried weren’t from fear or sadness, they were from serious joy and happiness. Whatever happened now, I’d wait for Beckett Hope. This time he hadn’t just left taking my heart with him, he’d left behind a piece of himself too, and I would cherish that for the rest of my life.

  I would have something to remember him by, for me there would always be a second chance at love, but this second chance would be a different kind of love. I would love my child, our child.

  From the moment I found out, I spoke to him—I was utterly convinced it was a mini badass, just like his dad. I loved him like he was already here. This baby inside me made life without Beckett bearable. Our child was with me every night, sharing our bed, keeping the fear and darkness of loneliness at bay. I refused to be sad; he was a gift, a gift of redemption that I desperately prayed Beckett would get to see.

  I was approaching six months pregnant before I told anyone. It was news that I wanted to share with Beckett and no one else until I spoke to him. I clung on to the fact that he needed to the be the first to know, and that this would somehow bring him home.

  No one said anything, mainly because they had no clue how to approach it, the Black Sentinels feared it would break me. I’d never even formally told the girls about the baby; I was still keeping my word to Beckett. The perfectly formed bump had grown, and I had more hope than ever that he would return in time to see some of my pregnancy.

  The kids and I were at a hog roast; the club had become the one place I could feel close to him, so Wolf never had to drag me there like he’d threatened when Beckett had first left. I felt a twinge of something in my stomach, and like before when I’d caught Wave and Malia on the way to the bathroom, I stumbled upon a few of Beckett’s brothers, his best friends having a discussion.

&nb
sp; “You heard anything, Prez?”

  “No.” His voice sounded solemn, resigned, worried, the exact opposite of how it was when he talked to me.

  “If… you know… something is wrong, surely we’d be told.” Wave’s voice was quiet and just as worried. He was just as bothered about his best friend as the rest of us.

  “Depends where he is, what he’s doing and who is listed as his next of kin.”

  “Gettin’ harder to be positive around Flick and the little ones.”

  “Least she’s stopped acting like he’s already dead.” Gears sighed. “But what’s with the baby bump, why hasn’t she told anyone? I’m worried she’s losing it, you know, losing it upstairs?”

  I’d heard enough, and my head was starting to throb. A minute ago, I’d felt my baby kick, and now his friends were writing Beckett off, they’d given up. We were still fighting for him, so why weren’t they?

  Stepping around the corner out of the shadows, I surprised them all. “Stop talking about him like that.”

  “Flick. Fuck, listen…”

  “No. I won’t hear any more of your bullshit. Beckett’s alive.”

  Wolf came to me immediately. “It’s been over five months and there’s been no word. We have to face facts; he might never come home.”

  “Stop it! He will, I can feel it.” I looked at his brothers, his best friends, the family he’d chosen and every one of them failed to hide it; pity, sadness and sorrow. All directed at me.

  They’d lost faith in him. These men knew Becket better than I did and they’d already accepted what they felt was to be his fate.

  Was I really the deluded one?

  Had my faith been misguided and was I putting off the inevitable by not coming to terms with the fact that he could probably be dead. Oh my god! I was going to have our baby and he was never going to see him. I was going to be a mom to two kids who I had no right over, and a newborn who would never meet his father.

  “I… can’t… no… I… won’t…” My voice stumbled as my head felt fuzzy, my body struggling to find any available oxygen in the room.

  “Flick, honey, calm down.”

  “I… feel… him.” I thumped my chest wildly. “In here.” The thickness of emotion snaked up my throat and the tears I’d beaten back for the last few months, the sad acceptance filmed over my eyes. “He’s coming home.” My voice was getting smaller, resigning itself to the same fateful acceptance that smothered the free air in the room in which we all stood. “He has to,” I whispered, so quietly, it was getting harder to convince even myself. With my hand resting on my swollen stomach, I saw Wolf register what this conversation was doing to me. “Don’t you see it? He has to come home.” My body swayed, my feet feeling like they were on quicksand. “He has every reason in the world to live now.” My knees buckled as all my limbs lost their rigidity, the feeling I’d been fighting was finally going to consume me.

  “I… I—”

  “Catch her!”

  The sob that had loomed for so long just beneath the surface broke free as two sets of hands stopped me from hitting the deck.

  “Fuck! Get her to Shadow’s room. One of you get the women and some water. Gears, tell your mom to watch the kids.”

  Within minutes I was in Beckett’s bed and that was somehow worse. This space was entirely his, no one had touched it and I never came in here without him. The smell of him on the bed sheets overwhelmed me, this didn’t make it better, it was crueler and with the situation I found myself in, that shouldn’t have been possible.

  “Flick, honey.” The bed depressed and I felt Malia snuggle up close and wrap herself around me. “Wave told me what happened.”

  I sniffed back my tears, not able to verbalize the words the brothers had said earlier, “They said—”

  “Hush now. I’m with you, honey. You keep on believing.”

  I rolled onto my back and wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “You think?”

  “Absolutely. From what I know of him, he’d move heaven and earth to get back to those he loves.”

  “Knock knock,” Gigi’s voice came from around the door as she and Angel walked into the room, before coming to join Malia and me on the bed. “How are you holding up?”

  “Been better, I’m pregnant.”

  Gigi’s face lit up with a smile. “That’s incredible.”

  “Wolf kinda hinted that he thought you might be.”

  “You all think I’m nuts,” I giggled.

  “Well, we sorta guessed, either that or you need to lay off the ice cream.”

  They laughed again while a serious question that I couldn’t hold back crossed my mind. “What if he never gets to see his son?”

  “It’s a boy?” Malia asked.

  “In my head, I see myself with a little guy; the apple of his dad’s eye.”

  “Shadow will be over the moon.”

  “What if I never get the chance to tell him he’s going to be a dad?”

  “You will.” Angel handed me a bottle of water. “Nothing about our men is conventional, but one thing they do best is beat the odds. Throughout everything, they come good and always beat the odds.”

  “Oh! The kids!” I shot bolt upright.

  “Geraldine is taking them for a sleepover at mine. Want us girls to come sleepover at yours?”

  I thought about it, and I didn’t want the burden of entertaining, but liked the idea of company, and there was no way I could face the silence of the house tonight. “Would you mind if I stayed here? I just need to be close to him.”

  “We’re staying here too. We’ll be down the corridor if you need us, but tomorrow we’re getting ready for that baby. No more hiding and pretending it’s not really happening. It’s very real and we’re all so excited.”

  “I’m not pretending, I just wanted Beckett to be the first to know.”

  “We get it, but it’s time for you to live it too.”

  They were right. I needed to start celebrating the life I had growing in me and definitely getting ready for it. They must have thought I was losing it.

  The girls hugged and kissed me goodnight. I took a shower and prolonged the moment when I pulled a T-shirt from his drawers that I knew would smell of him, and with nervous fingers, I inhaled.

  I could smell my man. The memories assaulted me, the good, the bad and all the bickering we’d lost time in. I thought about all the laughs and moments that we’d had while we were building an us.

  With the shirt on, I looked down feeling comfort that his shirt was shrouding his child. “Daddy’ll be home soon; I just know it, bubba.”

  Switching the lights off, I left the drapes open, being able to see the moon and the clouds was just another familiar connection that I ached for. In bed my hands stroked and smoothed my swollen belly, dreaming of a future I hoped would include my baby daddy, as I drifted off to sleep.

  I felt the sheet slowly being pulled off me. This was how he did it. Beckett loved slowly revealing what awaited him, his prize, me. The dreams were good, the dreams were torture and it had been too long since he’d been in my arms.

  I could feel his breath on face, my cheek, my neck, as he studied me like I was too good to be true, like he didn’t deserve me and was offering a prayer of thanks for his good fortune before he relented and devoured me.

  “Beckett,” the plea for it to be real fell from my lips.

  The sheet dropped suddenly, and instead of the warmth of his breath by my neck I felt a chill. So much so, I awoke with a start, haunted.

  Standing at the end of the bed, bathed in the moonlight was a figure.

  Unkempt, dirty hair and a beard so overgrown it could have been matted. The cheeks were sallow. But it was the eyes…

  Without those eyes I would have been afraid, I would have screamed in fear. The eyes were familiar, and I’d looked into them lovingly after years of avoiding them, for fear of them seeing the truth of my feelings reflected back in them.

  We stared at each other; silence thic
k in the air. A stand-off I was too afraid to break. Unable to hide it any longer, I blinked quickly, yet too slow at the same time. That blink was enough for the ghost of Beckett to disappear from my vision.

  “No! Come back!” I screamed and repeated it until I knew it was futile.

  This dream was the cruelest yet, from feeling his touch, more real than I had before, to the stark reality that he wasn’t here.

  My tears flowed, the sobs I cried earlier, nothing compared to what I went through right now and within minutes, Angel appeared in the room. “What’s wrong, do you feel okay?”

  “He was here. But I lost him.”

  “Who?” she asked confused, before her voice turned pitiful. “Beckett?”

  “Yeah.” I wiped my eyes. “It was so real. God, I fucking miss him. He looked so different, so tired, so lost. Angel, I’m worried about him.”

  Angel climbed on the bed and took me in her arms as Wolf stuck his head around the door. “She okay?” I heard him whisper.

  “No. Does she look okay?” she gritted back at him. “Where the fuck is he, Dec?”

  And before he could give her an answer the security lights in the compound tripped on, flooding the room like it was midday.

  “Stay here. Do not leave this fucking room.” Wolf’s voice was cold, self-assured as he stalked from the room in search of whoever was trespassing on the sacred land of the Black Sentinels MC.

  Flick

  “Is she alright, sweetheart?” Wave attempted a whisper, but didn’t quite pull it off.