Some and the Flame

by Michelle, Christine

  Still, as it turned out, my advice to our boys wasn’t always going to be taken the right way. The next day Poppy got called into the Principal’s office and refused to leave until I got there to sit in on whatever the hell was going on with Brantley too.

  “Mr. Lewis,” Principal Morris intoned as I moved into the room where Poppy was hiding her face as her shoulders shook. What the hell was so bad that my son had her in tears?” I turned to look at Brant who rolled his eyes at Poppy’s display and shrugged his shoulders at me. Then I glanced back in time to see Principal Morris cover up a grin he’d been trying hard not to show.

  “Brant, go wait out in the chair by the office door.”

  “But,” he started to argue.

  “Go, now! I had to run down here from the station. You know what that means?”

  “Yes, sir,” he offered up dejectedly knowing he’d be in deep shit later for me having to leave the station in the middle of a shift. I had a radio with me, and would leave this meeting in a hot second if a call came through for us, but that didn’t matter. It would still set my team back to not have me on board with them as they rolled out.

  Once our boy was out of the room, Poppy’s groan caught my attention and I watched as she wiped a track of tears from her cheek. Then she looked guiltily toward the principal. “I’m so sorry, it’s just…” she could not contain her chuckling. “His dad’s bad advice led to this, and I couldn’t help it.”

  “Understandable, Mrs. Lewis,” the principal consoled her and then turned his attention to me.

  “What the hell is going on here?” I finally had to ask.

  “Brant is being suspended for the day for assault on another student,” the principal informed me.

  “What the fuck?” I turned to see Poppy, still trying to contain her laughter. “Our boy assaulted someone, got himself suspended, and you’re laughing about it.” She couldn’t even respond. I turned back to Principal Morris. “Who the hell did he assault?”

  “Well,” he glanced down at some paperwork in his hands. “A young miss Kaylee Swinson was on the playground minding her own business,” he started and it was my turn to groan as I went and parked my ass in the chair Brant had vacated when I sent him out. “I see you already might know where this is going?”

  “Shit!” I huffed out. “What did he do?”

  “Brantley marched right over to her, yanked her ponytail and kept hold of it until the girl was forced to look at her, and then said,” he shuffled a paper out of the way. “Ah, here it is,” he glanced up at me with a grin. “I’m quoting here, ‘I’m the only guy who gets to pull your hair, Kaylee. You’re my girl. I’m snatching you up.’”

  I noticed Principal Morris appeared to have more to say on the matter and I sighed deeply. “What else?”

  “Mrs. Shelton tried to intervene and get him to let go of Kaylee’s hair, but he refused.” He eyeballed me then before continuing. “I’m quoting here again, ‘My dad said that’s how you gotta claim your woman this way!’ was his defense when Mrs. Shelton tried to get him to stop, and asked why he wouldn’t let go.”

  “Jesus!” I huffed out. First of all, it was the first time Brant had acknowledged me as his dad. I’d seen him think about it a time or two as the twins had arrived and Sophie had grown old enough to call out for her daddy whenever she wasn’t getting her way with someone else in the house. My heart physically squeezed tighter in my chest as that sunk in. Then I had to laugh, because I had basically told him that. I just didn’t think he’d run with it so literally.

  “Mrs. Lewis thought it best if you heard it from me, rather than dealing with the situation on her own. She said that you had given your boys some creative advice just last night.”

  “Yeah, Mr. Morris, I did,” I admitted while shaking my head in disbelief over the situation. “Just be glad the twins are still too young to take the shit I say to heart. You might have had three cavemen out there dragging their women away.” Both Morris and Poppy laughed at that.

  “What are we going to do with him?” Poppy asked through her laughter.

  “I’m thinking we need to not let me give middle of the night life advice to the kids.”

  “That’s probably for the best,” Principal Morris stated while getting his own chuckles under control. “While I can see this was all a harmless misunderstanding, little Miss Kaylee had a few strands pulled from her hair and was humiliated on the playground, so I’m afraid I’ll have to insist the punishment still be served.”

  “I understand. I’ll talk to Brant about it when we get home,” I told him as I stood.

  “Maybe, you should let your wife take over from here,” the man told me deadpan, and Poppy started in on a whole new round of laughter.

  “Yeah, you got me there.”

  Chapter 20

  …Three years later…

  Poppy was staring blankly at a wall when I walked up to her after putting the twins down for their nap. “Maybe we should add on another room?” She asked the wall, not even realizing I had moved into the room with her.

  “Why would we do that? The twins are okay sharing for now, and by the time they want their own space, Brant will probably be in his own place.”

  “Yeah, but where will that leave the new baby in seven months?”

  “What?”

  She turned to grin at me while holding out a familiar pink and white stick. It only took a quick glance down to see that there were two very predominant pink lines showing in the window. “We’re having another baby!”

  “We’re having another baby?” I questioned while mocking her very words. I was stunned. We already had Sophie still running around trying to play little mommy to the twins who were getting big enough in their terrible three stages to resent it now. The boys were far too independent in their terrorizing ways to want their big sister to treat them as the dolls she seemed to think they were.

  “Yeah, honey, maybe it’ll be a girl to help even things out around here,” she hummed happily. Another girl? Sophie was already showing signs that she’d be a stunner by high school. Not that she wasn’t already, but she didn’t exactly know how to match her outfits, and there were the big gaps in her teeth from where she was losing her baby teeth left and right. Still, those big green eyes of hers and the dark reddish-brown hair were going to bring boys to a standstill one day. What the hell would happen if I managed to survive her dating, only to have another girl coming up behind her?

  “Are you panicking about another girl?”

  “Have you seen our daughter?” I asked incredulously. “Her future dating life just played out in my mind and I can’t imagine going through that twice.”

  Poppy laughed at me. “Stop being ridiculous. We have three boys, I’m far more afraid of how they’ll turn out when they start dating. Besides, look at the influences they have. A club full of men, who are mostly all good looking and have their pick of women,” she insisted.

  “A club full of men who are all settling down with good women,” I corrected.

  “There will always be the younger prospects and members that they look up to. You know how club life is. Our boys will want to join the club too. Think about it. What happens when one day I show up with you to a party, only to see one of our boys, or more than one of them, doing things no mom should ever witness.”

  “Now you know why some of the old ladies stop coming around late nights,” I chuckled.

  She smacked my chest. “I want a girl!” The words came out of her mouth in a demand.

  “Well, babe, I hate to break it to you, but you’re already knocked up. I think you get what you get at this point.” She didn’t miss the smugness in my tone. I’d given her two boys at once last time. I was sure I shot another boy into her this time. “Then I’m getting a girl.”

  “Let’s just hope you’re only getting one this time, whatever it is,” I mentioned after reminding myself that we’d turned one fertilized egg into two kids last time. Horror flashed across her face momentarily befo
re she glanced down at her belly and her features smoothed out almost immediately. That was my woman. She had already fallen in love with whatever was growing in there. It didn’t matter if it was a girl, boy, or another set of twins.

  “We’ll figure it out, no matter what.” She glanced back up at me with a sheen of tears making her beautiful eyes sparkle as she spoke. “You ready to begin again?” She asked with the sweetest grin plastered to her gorgeous face.

  “With you?” I asked and she nodded her head as she bit into her plump bottom lip. I reached out and pulled her close with one hand holding her lower back while the other sat gently on her belly between us. “Always, honey.”

  Chapter 21

  …11 Years Later…

  Balls deep in some chick, with a firm grasp on her hair, while she was riding him was the scene I walked into when I went to go deliver the message from Poppy to Brantley. Hell, I was still trying to wrap my head around him patching into the club, and earning his road name, and now this. B.B. wasn’t that original, but he liked it because every time someone used it, it was like calling out to both him and his dad. He’d been given Bender’s kutte when he patched in, and while it had been stripped of all the patches Bender had earned or sewn on the damn thing himself, the only ones left were the club patch and rockers on the back along with one patch on the bottom right that simply said ‘family’ and then Bender’s name was still sewn in on the front left portion that would hang over the heart when worn. Brantley said part of it had to stay so his dad could always be close to his heart. B.B. was born that night. The B from Bender’s road name took first position and the B for Brantley took the second. It was a tribute befitting of both the men, and one I knew Bender would be damn proud of.

  He’d probably be proud of the scene before me too, and no doubt, equally as traumatized as I was about to be after seeing our boy thrusting nut-deep, drilling away into whoever the girl was that he had riding him like a fucking bull in the rodeo. I shook my head and cleared my throat to announce my presence. In seconds, he had the bitch flipped over so she was hidden beneath him as he snatched the blanket over them both to cover his ass and any of her bits that were hanging out.

  “The fuck, dad?” He shouted while throwing a glare over his shoulder in my general direction.

  “Sorry, should probably lock that door if you don’t want people busting in here though. I came to tell you that Mom needs you home tonight. She has news she wants to share with everyone.”

  B.B. groaned and I chuckled knowing what happened when you were balls deep in a bitch and someone started talking about your mom. The action he was getting was about to come to an abrupt and rather limp halt. It didn’t matter that Poppy was only an aunt to him by marriage. She had taken in him in as a little boy and he had become ours just as much as he had been my sister and Bender’s.

  The feminine giggling when the inevitable happened let me know that’s exactly what went down. It also announced exactly who my son had in his room.

  “Message received; can you go now?” He growled.

  “Sorry,” I repeated the apology again even though I didn’t mean it. Served the bastard right for all the times he cockblocked me getting with Poppy while we were raising him.

  “Oh, and Kaylee, you should come too. Poppy would love to see you.”

  “It ain’t like that,” B.B. hissed as I heard Kaylee gasp, clearly upset with his response. Shit. I backed up, ready to get out of throwing distance, because Kaylee was a sweet girl, but one that came with a hell of a temper too. Hell, B.B. was responsible for some of her temper over the years the way those two went back and forth so much. Still, I knew better than to stick around for the show that would follow my boy basically announcing they weren’t back together while still cocked up between her legs.

  Those two had broken up when she left for college – his stupid ass idea – the year before. They had dated all the way through high school before that. We were all certain B.B. had claimed his woman the moment he met her all those years ago in grade school and pulled her hair. Poppy had been devastated when they broke up because she loved Kaylee like one of our own. Since I’d already ruined enough shit for B.B., I hit the lock on the door and closed it on my way out so that I could carry my ass home to my woman and our other four kids.

  As we all sat down to dinner later that evening, Devon piped up immediately. “Are you guys getting a divorce?”

  “What?” Poppy shrieked.

  “Fuck no!” I yelled at him.

  “Oh! Then what’s so important? I had a date for tonight.” I was about to reach over and pop the little shit in the back of the head, but his twin beat me to it. I tipped my chin at Decker in response.

  “Well,” Poppy blushed as her eyes traveled around the table making contact with B.B., the twins, Sophie, and our baby girl Haley before she locked them to mine. “You’re all going to have another brother or sister in a few months.”

  Everyone was stunned silent for a few moments, me included, especially since we thought Poppy had been going through menopause or something with the way her periods were messed up, the exhaustion, and hot flashes. Then it dawned on me. Those were not menopause symptoms after all. She’d just been pregnant.

  “Way to go, dad! Guess your geriatric sperm are still firing!” B.B. hooted out while offering up a congratulatory slap on the back. His evil grin said it all. He was about to try to get me back for his earlier embarrassment.

  “What’s a sperm?” My 11-year-old angel, Haley asked causing B.B. to double over in laughter. Her grin gave her away too. She already knew what it was and was just trying to make everyone uncomfortable. The little devil. I always thought she’d be the baby of the bunch forever.

  “Shit,” I huffed out as I turned my own special grin on the love of my life. It looked like we were going to be starting all over again at 45 and 49. How the hell had we managed that? “You ready to begin again?” I asked her.

  “With you?” She questioned, to which I only smiled and nodded my head at the silly woman. “Always,” came her whispered reply.

  Evermore Sneak Peek

  Ghost

  In the beginning

  The roar of pipes cruising towards us down the road pulled my attention from all of my club brothers who had gathered at the party we were having to officially kick off the opening of our Sierra High, Georgia chapter of the Aces High MC. I recognized my daughter immediately but braced for impact when I realized she wasn’t riding alone, and I wasn’t talking about the trail of biker bitches she had bringing up the rear as they all started pulling into the lot.

  My first thought was that Sweet, the Sierra High Chapter President, was going to lose his shit over my baby girl having someone riding bitch on her bike to one of his events. Sweet and my daughter had been dancing around a relationship since before she was legal to do so. Of course, I was the reason everything had gotten screwed up between them in the first place, but I wasn’t sure how much more I could watch them torment one another. Depending on how the day played out, I might need to find a new president for this particular chapter. It would be the second change of leadership before the chapter even got its feet wet, which was concerning enough to give me pause in that decision.

  Just this once though, I was willing to put my daughter before the club, because I’d just gotten her back after having her disappear from my life for seven fucking years, and I wasn’t about to alienate her again. That shit wasn’t happening, not even for a club brother.

  As soon as Jamie, now known as Angel Girl, rolled to a stop I noticed the person riding bitch was a slight thing. My daughter had a chick riding bitch with her, and from the looks of her prior to removing that helmet, I’d say a mighty fine one at that. I let out a sigh of relief thought that it had been a woman, because that was bound to soften the blow for Sweet. It only took until that helmet was off her passenger’s head for me to not give two fucks about what Sweet might be thinking though. The woman standing beside my daughter was one of the mos
t stunning women I’d ever seen. The way she hopped off of the back of my daughter’s bike flashing a brilliant smile as she took the helmet off her head and started trying to fluff her hair back in place. Damn. I hadn’t felt a kick to the gut from just seeing a fully clothed woman since before my old lady, Jamie’s mother, had died all those years ago.

  I sauntered over to where my girl had parked, working extremely hard to keep my focus on her and not the woman who was doing a number on my insides. “Jamie,” I called out to my daughter.

  “Angel Girl,” she corrected immediately, her eyes taking in all the men from the various chapters of Aces High who had been standing around the lot when the women rolled up. Damn. I nodded that I understood I had just demeaned her position in front of the guys. It seemed I was doomed to keep fucking up with my little girl. I shook my head back and forth chastising myself as my daughter continued to speak. “Ghost,” she addressed formally, probably as another reminder of propriety. “This is Leanne Evermore.”

  That had my attention snapping back online in quick fashion. “Evermore?” I questioned out loud, though not meaning to. My daughter’s MC was nicknamed S.H.E. for the full name of Sierra High Evermore. Interesting. Clearly, the club’s namesake didn’t ride her own bike, but was important enough to have her name represented.

  “Leanne, this is Ghost, otherwise known as my dad.” Jamie had continued rambling the introductions as I turned my complete attention to the beautiful blond who stood before me.

  The petite beauty held out a hand demurely as she gritted out a quick, “Pleasure,” in a southern draw so sweet it sent a chill right up my neck and into my hairline. Fuck me. It didn’t even matter that the one word she’d spoken had been dripping in disdain, possibly revulsion, for having met me. No, I just shrugged that shit right the fuck off. Hell, for that matter, words I’d never normally speak to anyone started tumbling out of my mouth before I could pull them back.