by Nicole Fox
Things had definitely changed.
# # #
I didn’t know how long we waited. The buzz from the bar up front went from steady to decayed and there was a lull that told me the boys who stayed had found their places in their rooms, and those that had left had taken their women and gone to spend their nights elsewhere. Brig had called Trip after I’d arrived, bringing his closest boysthe ones from five years ago, the ones that had come up with them—to the back with me.
It was so uncomfortable.
I almost started to fall asleep when the office door opened. My eyes widened falling on the man in the doorway.
“Trip …”
He was the same as he was five years ago. Tall. Handsome. His kutte fit him like a glove still and I was reminded how the look had drawn me to him, all those years ago. His black hair was military cut, and his arms, thick with muscle, were covered in tattoos. Idly, my fingers brushed over the one that I had, inside my left wrist. The only one I’d ever wanted.
Trip.
It wasn’t his real name, but it was the name that he preferred, and the name of the man that I had fallen in love with when I was a dumb sixteen-year-old girl. Before I realized that I was pregnant with Rose, before I knew that living this life and having her—having Trip—just wasn’t going to work if I was going to raise a child. Funny how things turned out.
He stood there at the door, as dumbfounded as the others had been. Looking at him, taking him in, I noticed the slight smudge of color on his lips; he’d definitely been with a woman before Brig made the call to have him come here.
He made no move to walk to me, he only stood and stared, as if I were a ghost. I might as well have been. He didn’t stir until there was a movement in my lap, a sleepy little girl who moved and blinked up at me once more.
“Mama, is it time to go yet?”
“Not yet, Rose.”
There was a choked sound from Trip, and I looked back at him. He was eyeing Rose, taking her in. I could see the wheels turning plain as day—she was old enough to have been born in the time I was gone. Old enough she was either his or some other bastard’s from around that time. But I knew who she looked like when she turned her face on him, and I could tell that he did, too. It was his own eyes that looked at him from Rose’s face; no other man could claim to be her daddy.
“Get out.” He looked to Brig and the others. When they didn’t move, he slammed his hand on the wall.
“Get out!”
One by one, his boys flowed out, Brig being the last to go. I watched as they exchanged a look, and wordlessly, Brig nodded and left too.
It was the first time in years that I was alone with Trip. He walked toward me, slow and deliberate. There was tension in the air. I didn’t know if it was sexual or anger or just longing from the years gone by.
I knew, when he came in front of me and wrapped his arms around me, that maybe it was a little something sweeter.
“I fucking missed you.”
“Language.”
It was a knee-jerk reaction, one that made him pull away from me for a moment. It was as if he’d forgotten about the little girl between us. Rose looked up at him curiously, as if she hadn’t expected him to get so close to touch.
“Oh. Oh fuck—”
“Trip—”
“Is she mine?” he asked, so quiet that not even Rose heard him.
He didn’t have to ask the question. He knew the answer. I gave him one anyway.
“Yeah.”
He sucked in a breath, looking down at her. His hand twitched, like he was going to reach out and touch her, but he never did. She blinked up at him in return. I hadn’t told her a lot about Trip, other than I loved him and I had to leave him, but that one day I’d come back to him and she’d be able to meet him in person.
“What’s her name?” He asked it like he was afraid to ask her himself.
“Sweetie, tell the nice man your name.”
She looked between the two of us, almost uncertain. I nodded at her, encouraging.
“Go on.”
“My name’s Rose.”
“That’s a pretty name.”
“Mama says it’s because roses are the prettiest flowers, and I got to have the name to match me.”
“Well, your Mama would be right, you know. You’re a pretty girl.”
Rose giggled at that, and I shifted her on my lap.
“It’s late …” I looked at Trip. “Can I put her down in a room? We can talk?”
Trip nodded.
“Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s a good idea.”
I stood with Rose in my arms, leaning down to get the duffle bag I’d brought with us. Trip didn’t seem to know what to do—whether to take her, or let me hold her—but he led us out of the office with one last little glance at her, and an almost disbelieving shake of his head.
There were a few locked rooms, and I knew what was likely going on or had gone on behind them. But the room that Trip brought me to was in the very back, set away from the others. I knew it well; we’d spent many nights there when we were younger.
His room hadn’t changed much. There were still pictures on his dresser, clothes sticking out of the drawers. He didn’t have proper curtains; there was an old blanket that his grandma had knitted him tacked up over where the window was.
As much as the nostalgia flooded back in, I wasn’t here for that. After setting our duffle off to the side, I set Rose in the middle of his bed, tucking her in.
“I’m gonna come back when it’s time to leave, okay, Rose?”
She nodded.
“Mmhm, Mama.” She was already closing her eyes and snuggling beneath the covers.
Back in the office, it was quiet. We stood there in silence, now that we were alone. Trip stared at me, long and hard. It was a surprise when he reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.
“I missed you.”
There was passion in his words. It lit a fire in me that I hadn’t felt in years. It was like there weren’t five years between us—
But when he leaned in, as if to kiss me, I remembered that there were five years. Five years and secrets, so many that it was hard to keep track of them sometimes. I stepped away from him before he could lean all the way and claim my lips. I’d be so far gone if that’s what he did.
There was a flash across his eyes. It wasn’t anger; it was hurt.
“It’s been a while,” I said, as if that made up for anything.
“Yeah. It has.”
Trip ran his hand through his hair. He sat back on top of the desk in his office and leveled a look at me. I hadn’t allowed that intimacy to connect, so now it was cut off. This was business. Perhaps it was better that way.
“What happened, Misha?” he asked. “What happened? We all thought you were dead. There was so much fucking blood! Your room was a wreck. And now you’re back five years later. You got a kid. You say she’s mine—”
“She is yours.”
“I didn’t say I thought she wasn’t; her face may as well be mine.”
“That’s what I always thought.”
He ran his hand through his hair again. His arms folded across his chest.
“What happened?” he repeated. “There was so much blood … You disappeared. No one saw you; everyone knows what those Jackal bastards are capable of when they take someone out.” He was desperate for answers, and I couldn’t say that I blamed him for that.
I had known that this was going to come up. How could it not? It didn’t make me feel any better about telling him.
“That night … they came to my place. Packed. Said they were tired of Bobby and the boys—and especially you—footing around them. Not giving them what they wanted. So, they decided to take something that you had.” I tugged at my ear, a reflex, before showing him my palm. A thick, ugly scar arced across it. “They made me cut myself so if you did perhaps get the cops involved, my DNA would be there. The rest was pig blood, just to make it look like they messed me u
p real bad. They wanted to scare you, maybe bait you into doing something really stupid. I suppose you did, just … not in the ways they expected. When you didn’t show up when they thought you would, looking for me—”
“It wasn’t that I didn’t wanna come looking for you—”
“I never said that was it,” I said sharply. Christ, he’s defensive. “It would have been suicide back then. It’d be suicide now. That’s not … that’s not the point. Trip, let me finish.”
He nodded, letting me continue.
“They assumed you’d do what you always did. Act rash. Come guns blazing. They were going to keep me and rough me up. They did, the first few days.” I shifted where I stood; it wasn’t like that was a lie, and the memory of those days wasn’t something I liked to remember, let alone talk about. Especially not to Trip. “When you came, they were going to show me to you, make you flesh out a deal that they wanted from you. When you didn’t, they thought about killing me to make their point drive a little harder than it apparently already had. I told them I was pregnant and—”
“You knew you were pregnant?”
I sighed, looking away from him. My hand found my ear again.
“I was going to tell you. Before the Jackals decided they wanted to use me as Pride bait.”
“Hm.”
“Anyway … I told them I was pregnant. They didn’t believe me, but their president has this thing against killing the unborn. Obviously once I started to show, they knew that I was telling them the truth. So, when that was confirmed, he thought it would be more elaborate, then, to keep me and let me have Rose, and then show up with me and our baby one day and shock you then. Real theatric, Holland.”
“What changed his mind?”
“Me.” I shrugged. “He took to me.”
Something dark flashed across Trip’s face. I wasn’t sure if I should be scared or turned on by the possessive streak that was clearly still there.
“…You were his old lady or something?”
“I wouldn’t call it that. He had an old lady. He just liked me, kept his boys off of me.”
“I see.”
“It’s not like I loved him or anything.” No, I could never do that, no matter how relatively well Holland had treated me.
“Holland’s been out of the game for months now,” Trip said, moving the conversation on like it made him uncomfortable to think aboutme and Holland together in any sort of capacity. “His nephew, Rigger—”
“Is president right now, yeah. Holland got into a crash and went into a coma, I’m sure you know. Not a lot he can do from a hospital bed, hooked to IVs.”
“We threw a party when we heard it happened.”
“I’m sure you did. Rigger’s in charge now, and he was never happy with the fact that Holland didn’t use me as bait for you. He decided, though, since I was already a part of the family, that I ought to stay,” I said bitterly.
“He wanted you,” Trip guessed.
“Holland kept the boys off me. I wasn’t an old lady. I wasn’t a club girl, either. We had sex, but he never treated me bad, at least not after he started to take to me. Rigger is another story, and he’s not too picky when it comes to who he sleeps with or hurts to get a point across.”
There was a twitch in Trip’s jaw.
“He ever touch you?”
I didn’t answer him, which was enough of an answer.
“That son of a bitch.”
“It’s been five years, Trip,” I reminded him gently. He scoffed. Fair enough; five years didn’t make it any better, I supposed.
“He ever touch Rose?”
“Like I’d let that bastard lay a finger on my daughter.”
That, at the very least, placated him, if only a little. No … if there was one thing that I had been able to keep Rose from, it was the touches of a man and the strikes of fists. I’d have taken more and more for her if I had to.
“So, you were basically kept there … A hostage. Personal little thing for Holland until his accident and Rigger sent things all on their fucking head.”
“Being under Holland wasn’t ideal, but it was safer than trying to escape while pregnant and safer still after I had Rose. He might have treated me decent, but he made no mistake about letting me know that I wasn’t to leave. There was security and protection I wasn’t willing to risk with Rose in the picture. That security went away when Holland went under.” I’d been living in fear ever since I learned that Holland’s bike had been hit by that truck on the highway. It’d sent a fear in me that I’d never known quite so hard before and it had been … eye opening to the reality of my situation. I had gotten comfortable. I shouldn’t have. That comfort could have cost me my daughter.
“So how did you get out? Someone else take sweet to you and help you?”
I ignored the mild accusation in his tone.
“No. I escaped after a party they were throwing. Rigger’s birthday. After the partying and … the after party, he passed out drunk as a skunk. I was able to get out of the bed, get Rose, and leave. Everyone was plastered or high, so no one noticed me slip out. I’d been planning it for weeks. I caught a ride hitchhiking—”
“You hitchhiked with her?”
I raised a brow.
“It’s what I had to do. Everyone over the border is likely to give up information if the Jackals ask for it, whether it’s nicely or not. I needed to get out of there with someone that wasn’t going to be coming back.”
“… That’s fair.”
I laughed a little, despite knowing that in telling Trip all of this, I was likely putting more distance than five years already had between us. I shook my head.
“What’s so funny?”
“You’ve known you’re her father all of five minutes and you’re already overprotective.”
“I just think it’s a bad idea to hitchhike with a child.”
We lapsed into a silence again, and my fingers tugged absently against my ear. Trip eyed me a bit. “You guys got a place to stay?”
I raised my brow.
“I was going to go to Daddy’s.”
He stared at me.
“You don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?”
He shifted.
“Your dad left on out after you died—or, I guess, were taken. He stayed around for a while but he couldn’t stay in that house with all of that. He packed up and sold it. No one knows where he went, just that he’s not here anymore.”
My heart sank.
“No one knows where he is?”
“He didn’t leave an address, didn’t leave a phone number.”
That made my plans up until that point fall through rather hard. Where was I supposed to stay if Daddy was gone? Where would he even have gone? We didn’t have any family, and Mama wasn’t around anymore.
“You can stay here.”
I looked at him sharply in surprise. After what I had told him and his reactions?
“What?”
“I said, you can stay here.”
“Where? Back there?” I gestured to the rooms. “Trip, this isn’t the place for a child—”
“Why did you come back, then?”
I stalled.
If only I could tell him.
I stood there for a moment before I sighed.
“It can only be temporary,” I said. “I hadn’t expected. I mean I didn’t—”
“You didn’t come back here for me.”
“I came back because it’s what I needed to do for Rose.”
“Then let me help.” He stepped closer to me, into my space, but not as close as he had when he had tried to kiss me. “This is my daughter too, right? And we were something … even if it was five years ago,” he said evenly. “Even if I and everyone thought you were dead. You never stopped being a part of this family.” You never stopped being my old lady.
I almost wish that he’d have said it aloud, but that would have shortened the distance that I had promised I would keep between myself and
the Pride. I was back because I had nowhere else to go—not because I was coming to tag along again.
“Just until I get on my feet again,” I said. “And … you can get to know Rose, if you want to.”
“I want to.”
I shouldn’t have felt warmth hearing that, but I did. There was something that I needed to know, though.