“That’s a good thing, because you deserve nothing less.”
“Kane,” his name came out sounding like a prayer, but I didn’t manage to get anything beyond that because his lips came crashing down on mine, sealing our engagement with a kiss so hot, I damn near melted into a puddle right there on our bedroom floor. We had stopped using the apartment above the shop a couple months back. Instead, I had moved into Kane’s place. He had a slightly bigger apartment, which was good because when combining our things, the tiny space above the shop would have never worked out. We talked about having a house built eventually, but for now, we were happy. We were also getting married, that weekend apparently.
I scooted closer to him, moving across the floor on my knees. As I got close enough, I knocked Kane over so he was seated flat on his naked ass, then I proceeded to climb right on top of him. We had stopped using condoms months ago, though I was still on birth control. So, it didn’t phase either of us when I sank right down on his thick cock and enjoyed the slow burn that always came with him filling me up for the first time. Being one with this man was absolute heaven, and a promise he had kept to me for nearly as long as we’d been together. We woke every morning ready to enjoy each other before starting our day. Adding to our mourning ritual with a proposal was just icing on the cake for one more amazing day I got to spend in the arms of the man I loved with my whole heart.
Kane always took care of me, and when we were both sated, he took me to the bed and gently laid me down before going to the bathroom to get a washcloth to clean us both up with. “What if I can’t give you a family? The doctors said…”
He leaned in and kissed the words away. “Don’t care what the doctors said. If it’s meant to be that we grow a baby together in here,” he told me as he placed his big, warm hand over my belly. “Then that’s what happens. If not, we’ll grow our family another way, Sweet G. The only thing I need is for you to be there doing it all with me.”
Tears pooled in my eyes as he spoke. I truly couldn’t have asked for a better man. I’m not sure what I did in life to deserve the two wonderful human beings who had both loved me so fiercely, but I was thankful. Toby had been perfect for the woman I was when we were together. Having him taken from me, becoming someone different as a result, made me perfect for Kane too. I would always be grateful that I had both of them in my life. I just hoped that my life with Kane would be a lifetime instead of being cut so short.
I had originally asked Anna to come out to Vegas and be a witness for me, but her daughter, Tabby, had an ear infection that made flying impossible. Instead, we had Zeke and Sully fly out with us. They closed the shop down for the weekend without telling anyone why. I felt a little bad about not inviting Ever to come along, but while we had been working on a new friendship, I just wasn’t as close to her as I had been with her sister. I think a part of that was just because I knew that Kane failed to see me for the longest time because she shined brighter for him at the time. I wasn’t bitter, because it led me to a short, but beautiful love with Toby. That was something I would never want to wish away or forget. Still, no matter how thankful I was for that time with Toby, as a woman, the last person I want standing up for me in my wedding was the woman who my man initially overlooked me for. Life was like that sometimes. Besides, it felt right for it to just be me and the guys. They had been a part of my family since the beginning. My sister would have been a realistic choice, but she had fallen head over heels in love with a man, and she refused to talk about it just yet. I already knew she had a week long vacation scheduled with him before Kane proposed to me. There was no way I was interrupting her sexy time getaway. Beth deserved a little happiness in her life too.
As we were standing there, waiting for our turn to say our vows, Kane pulled me aside. “I need to ask you if you’re sure about this.”
“Of course I’m sure. Why would you even ask me that?”
“I know Toby was the love of your life. I hope I can come in as a close second, but I just want you to be sure about this. About me.”
My heart burned with the words he was speaking. I knew he felt that and it must have been difficult carrying around the burden of being second best. That meant I hadn’t done a good enough job letting him know how I really felt. Placing my hands on his cheeks, I tilted his head down so that he was looking at me. I needed him to see the truth in my eyes as I spoke.
“Toby was the love of my life,” I admitted. I could feel the tug on my fingers as he attempted to pull away from me. “He was the love of my life then. That was a different life for me. I am not the same person I was when Toby was here. I’ve been through things, I’ve died inside, and as ridiculous as this may sound, I was reborn into a new me. I don’t make the same decisions that would have ruled my world back then.” As if knowing some of this already based on my physical changes, his hand shot out and pulled some of my straight, silky-smooth locks into his fingers. I used to wear my hair and clothes in a way that honored 1950s pinup fashion. The new me put all that stuff away. They belonged to a girl who no longer resided in my body. For a while, she was leather, black, and wore her sadness as a part of her skin. Now, I was jeans and t-shirts, flowy skirts and flirty shirts. Sometimes a cute, flirty summer dress and sandals would get thrown in the mix, and my hair was nothing to brag about. I wore it in a simple, sleek style with the long tresses cascading down my back like a sheet of white-blond silk.
Once he let my hair fall through his fingertips, I continued on. “My heart has a new beat. In this life, the one I’m living now, you are it for me. That new heartbeat I have is synced to the rhythm of yours. When you step in a room, I feel it before I see you. You have taken up residence in here,” I told him as I reached down and took his hand to place it above my heart. “You feel that? It’s the song my body sings for you. It’s just as real. Just as profound. And it’s in the here and now. It’s us. It’s our forever that my heart is singing. You are my new forever, the love of this life that I’m living now.”
While still holding his cheeks in my hands, I had to reach my thumb over and swipe away the tears that fell from his beautiful eyes. He started to say something to me, but I moved a finger to cover his lips. “Save it for up there,” I told him as I tilted my head toward where we would soon be united as man and wife in the eyes of the law and before our two very best friends. That’s just what he did.
As our turn was announced, as if marriage was fast-food made to order in this place, we moved into position with Zeke and Sully standing just slightly behind and off to the side of us as Kane made his vows to me. He kept it simple, repeating the pastor verbatim until the end when he tacked on, “As long as we both shall live – because you are my everything and always will be.” My heart belonged to him before he spoke those words, and after, well, if it was possible to own it any more, he did.
Once our weekend was over and we returned home as a married couple, we were not prepared for the angry mob that awaited us. The moment our plane touched down in Columbia, our phones were blowing up with messages that we needed to get to the clubhouse immediately. The giant ball of dread that settled in my stomach with that summons nearly ruined the cloud-nine feeling I had been floating on since saying, “I do,” to Kane two days ago.
We had a two-hour drive to sit and wonder what the hell could be happening in the MC that we were summoned to go there before anywhere else. “What do you think this is about?”
“If I had to guess?” Kane asked. I nodded my head for him to go on. “I think maybe they got wind that we got married, and they might be a tad upset that we didn’t let them in on it.”
“Shit! Can you get in trouble for that? Is that something in the bylaws, that your club has to be present for a wedding or something?”
“Not unless they added it recently.”
“Are you sure?” I asked again, my worry not settling well on my stomach.
“I’m positive, G. I had to know every single one of the fucking bylaws by heart as a prospect.”
I scrunched up my nose at that. “Ew, why?”
“Can’t be a very good club brother if you don’t know what the club is about, who happens to be in charge, or what the fucking rules are,” he insisted.
“I guess so, but I still think it’s weird that an MC has so many rules anyway. Aren’t they supposed to be all about shunning the rules and living free?”
Kane chuckled at that. “Everyone has to have rules, sweetheart. I think they just dislike other people telling them what the rules are.”
“Well, that’s hypocr…”
“Don’t finish that sentence!” He said as he cut me off. “I know what you’re thinking, and it isn’t like that. The rules of the club are there for the members’ and their family’s safety. Remember the recent rule about the club whores no longer being welcome? That’s one. Do you want them to remove it?”
“No. I get it,” I replied sullenly. You’re right. That’s something I didn’t even think about before I let my mouth run away with my thoughts.”
“Babe,” his voice had thickened with emotion as he reached over and put a hand on my thigh and gave a reassuring squeeze. “I didn’t say that to make you feel bad, just so you’d understand why.”
“I know. It just…”
“Brought up bad memories,” he finished for me.
“Yeah,” I whispered. Then I started wringing my hands in my lap. “I don’t want anyone to be mad at me when we get there. I love that I’m married to you! Nothing should dim that right now.”
“I can take you home before I go see what they want.”
“No! We’re a team. We can face whatever it is together, even if they are mad.”
“I like that, G.”
“What?”
“Us being a team.” I smiled then, and we rode the rest of the way to the clubhouse in Charleston in relative silence. When we got there Merc, Double-D, Deck, Joker, Anna, and Evan were all standing around outside near the picnic tables off to the side of the parking area. I swallowed thickly, trying to push the emotion down that bubbled up when I saw the disappointment on everyone’s faces. Well, everyone but Anna and Joker, who had known about and were invited to the wedding.
“Come on Sweet G, let’s go take our punishment.”
“Well, when you say it like that, I think I’d rather go home and let you suffer alone,” I teased. Sort of. I really was ready to just stay in the truck and throw my new husband to the wolves to test the waters ahead of me.
“Oh, no you don’t. We’re a team remember?”
I growled at him, but finally removed myself from the cab of his truck and met him at the front where we walked hand in hand together. Ever was the first one to approach us.
“I’m so hurt. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me, or ask me to come along.” She glanced back over her shoulder. “You asked Anna,” she accused as if there was something wrong with that.
“What my pouty wife is trying to say is that she’s hurt that you would ask Anna, but not her.”
Kane glanced in my direction to see if I was going to answer for this or not. I shrugged my shoulders and let him handle it. “Ever,” he started then stopped, and I could see the blush that stole across his cheeks just above the overgrown five o’clock shadow he was sporting. “This is awkward.”
“Kane used to have a crush on you. Before I was seeing Toby, and before Deck came around, he liked you. I liked him. It was this whole high school mess of unrequited lust in the tattoo shop. It just would have felt awkward to have you there standing up for us when the whole reason we weren’t together from the start was that Kane had eyes for you and never noticed me.” There, I spit it out. This all seemed to come as a complete surprise to Ever, but definitely not to Deck. His narrowed glare was leveled on Kane for a minute before my husband tugged my hand up and showed off my rings to Deck. He simply shrugged and pulled his wife out of the way.
“Seriously, did all of you know that?” Pretty much everyone there nodded in agreement at Ever’s question. “Um, okay. I guess I can’t be mad about that.” She proceeded to pretend to kick invisible rocks with her shoe after that, despite a few chuckles among the group.
“Now that’s out of the way, how about we talk about the fact that we had to put together this damn wedding reception at the last minute, because you didn’t bother to tell anyone that you were running off to get married?” Merc’s accusation was really weird, because he sounded angry, but he definitely just announced that they’d put together a party for us. The twinkle in his eyes gave him away. “We would have loved to be a part of your union with you, but sometimes you just need to get a thing done, and we understand that. Now, the two of you, get your asses inside so we can cut that fucking cake. I’m starving!”
That was the moment when I felt like the club became a true part of our family. Finally.
Epilogue
Full Circle
Kane
I had been standing there in the bar area of the clubhouse when Merc found me. “Need you to go watch security for me, pay close attention to what goes down in the underground. When it’s done, we need it gone.”
That was cryptic. Still, I followed directions and went to the room that housed the security feeds. There, I watched as J-Bird learned first hand exactly what Crow had been up to and why he had targeted T-Bone. The bastard was deluded, and there wasn’t much I could say about that. He never indicated any others beyond Seneca in what happened with Toby. It had been a retaliatory gesture for what had apparently been done to PeeWee for the shit he did to Ever, and the crimes committed against the club. What a fucking unnecessary loss. If they had just taken Crow out to pasture when they retired PeeWee, Toby would still be here. I glanced down at the ring on my finger then.
Guilt swam through me when I thought about the fact that this whole mess led me to where I was in life. I had a beautiful wife, a life I loved to live, a brotherhood I had grown to cherish, and none of it would have happened if things hadn’t gone down in the club exactly the way they had. I couldn’t wish for a different outcome, because it was one that I wasn’t sure I could fathom now, and for that I gave into the guilt for just a few moments as I watched J-Bird take out the man who was – in a sick way – responsible for my own happy ending. “Fuck!” I hissed out as I watched J-Bird go to town on Crow with a red-hot ice pick. “Jesus, that looks like it hurts.”
“I’m sure it does,” Double-D told me as he watched from over my shoulder with interest for just a few minutes. He had heard enough though. Crow, a man who had been Double-D’s friend and club brother long enough to watch Toby grow from a boy to a man, had been the one to kill his son. It didn’t take long for him to step back out of the room, and by the time I turned back, everything was over. J-Bird was leaving, and I was making sure no one else would ever see the evidence of what happened in that room.
Gretchen
There was no way my water could be breaking today. Nope. This was not happening. It had been four years to the day since I lost my baby and Toby. To. The. Day. There was no way I could give birth on the same day I lost my previous baby. The world was not that cruel, was it?
I was standing on the deck of our house. The one we had built on the property that Toby had left to me in his Will. We didn’t build the house that Toby had been dreaming of and designing for me, because that was the dream he and I once shared together. Kane and I needed something different, and I was still able to be close to Toby and our child in a way, because Kane had a memorial built on the land too to honor the both of them. It was a beautiful gesture, and his way of letting Toby know that I would be cared for in this life.
“Kane!” I called out to him. He was over tinkering with his motorcycle in front on the paved drive in front of the detached two-car garage. He didn’t hear me the first time because He, Zeke, and Merc had the music pumping over there while they attempted to be manly men doing things only men do. Merc was really trying to show Zeke and Kane how to do some routine maintenance on their
bikes so they wouldn’t have to constantly take them to the shop for things they should be capable of doing on their own.
“Kane! I yelled, louder this time with a little bite to the end of his name as a contraction slammed through my lower region, nearly taking my breath along with it. He glanced up then and saw me doubled over near the steps.
“What the fuck?” I heard him shout before he got up and ran to me. “What’s going on, G?”
I pointed to the wet ground beneath my feet. “Baby,” I hissed out between clenched teeth. “Zeke, grab her bag by the door and meet us at the hospital,” he shouted. “Lock up for me too.”
Kane helped me into the car in the time it took for Zeke to do everything asked of him. Merc had been on his cell as we got our shit together, no doubt alerting everyone that we were headed to the hospital.
“Call Beth,” I grunted out.
“How about I do that after I get you there?” Kane drove us to the hospital, and still the only thing on my mind was that this baby was coming, and maybe the day wouldn’t always be a sad one for me now. The panic I felt earlier about having to give birth on this day suddenly dissipated and an overwhelming calm swept through me. Of course, that beautiful serene experience lasted less than three minutes and then another contraction came crashing through my uterus. I would have sworn in that moment of tranquility it was Toby and our baby letting me know that everything was going to be okay.
“You okay over there?” Kane asked me.
“I’m just fine. Little contraction,” I managed to get out. He screwed his brow up at me as if he didn’t quite believe me, but that was okay. I’d never be able to properly explain why I no longer worried about any of this. I knew we would be in good hands and we had angels looking out for us.
A Twist of Fate Page 19