Redemption Duet (Aces High MC - Cedar Falls Book 0)

by Christine Michelle

  I leaned in and kissed her, melding her lips with my own in an embrace that promised more where that came from. I felt her in that kiss. Not just her lips, but the promise of having all of her for myself one day. She was the dream, and damn if I wasn’t going to work my ass off to make sure that dream came true.

  “We’re finishing this later, Poppy, and I’m not just talking about where that kiss was going.”

  I was just leaving Shep’s place when I got a text from Chief.

  Chief: Meet me at your place.

  Me: On the way

  No sooner did I have my leg lifting over the bike to get off, than I heard Chief’s voice call out to me from a couple feet away. He had clearly been waiting for me in the parking lot instead of upstairs at the apartment.

  “You need to pull your head out of your ass, brother.” He spat the last word like it was something dirty in his mouth. “If you’re using my sister as some sort of convenience, part-time fuck and babysitter for your nephew, you need to knock that shit off right the fuck now!”

  “What the fuck did you just say to me?” I yelled and didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, I launched myself at Chief and knocked his ass directly to the ground. I managed to get a punch in on his ribs before he used the momentum of my punch to flip me over. He quickly assaulted me with three rapid jabs to my right side and then one hard-core punch to my right that damn near knocked the wind out of me. I felt something snap in there, but knew it wasn’t going to be anything more than a hairline fracture. I’d broken my ribs before. It would heal, but I was going to make the motherfucker pay for the pain he just heaped on me.

  “She’s it for me, you stupid fuck!” I yelled at him as I gave as good as I got.

  “She’s not a fucking toy!” He snarled as he pounded on me some more, trying to get the drop on the rib he knew he already cracked. I kept it protected and nailed him in the eye hard enough that his head was spinning and I was able to flip him over and gain control again.

  “She is the fucking love of my life and you ever disrespect her by talking that way about her again, and this will look like a walk in the fuckin’ park, you hear me?”

  Chief started chuckling then, despite the hurt I was putting on him. “That’s all I needed to hear,” he declared and then brushed me off of him like I was nothing and stood up to offer his hand to help me up too. I declined his help and stood on my own two feet. I will admit, I winced a bit as the movement jarred my throbbing rib.

  “Feel better now? Get all that aggression that’s been riding you so hard out of your system for a while?” Chief asked me.

  I nodded at him, acknowledging what I knew he was trying to convey. It wasn’t so much the work I was putting into finding my sister’s killer that was eating at me and keeping me from finding my way home to Poppy and Brant so many times now. It was the need to feel control over it all. To break something because I was fucking devastated at losing my sister. I needed the vengeance because all of it was sealed up tight like a powder keg waiting to explode.

  “Good, now go home and love my sister the right way.” He thought better of it then. “Actually, come back to the clubhouse first. I’ll wrap those ribs up, so she doesn’t see you gimping around and favoring them like a baby. Knowing Poppy, she’ll point the finger my way first and ask questions later.”

  I laughed at the man, knowing he was afraid of his sister’s reaction to getting into a physical altercation with me. I’d have to remember that, because it was sure to be used to my advantage at a later date.

  Chapter 11

  The last thing I expected to walk into when I finally pulled my head out of my ass after the row I’d had with Chief was Poppy and Walker going at it in the clubhouse in front of everyone gathered like it was nothing.

  “What exactly do you want, Walker? Did you bring signed divorce papers?”

  “What? No, Poppy, I don’t want the damn divorce. I understand you were mad, but you’ve had time to cool off and realize how hard things were on me. Yeah, I should have handled things differently, but I was under a lot of stress and you…” Poppy turned to walk away from him, but must have been filled with rage because she didn’t seem to see anything, least of all me standing in the doorway, shocked as shit that this was going down. How the fuck was this asshole here and no one in the Georgia Chapter thought to give us a head’s up that he was coming. They better not have given someone a head’s up and they didn’t pass that information on to me.

  “Wait, where are you going? We’re in the middle of talking,” he shouted at her. I nearly came undone and flew after him then, but Surfer’s hand came out and caught hold of my arm.

  “You might want to wait on that and see how this place out first, brother.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

  “Not what you’re thinking. She won’t think too kindly of you butting in right now though, trust me.”

  When I glanced back over, Poppy was facing the asshole again. “You have the audacity to come here, demand to see me, and then tell me about how hard your life was and how the stress you were under caused you to fall dick first into every whore at the clubhouse, never check on your wife, or do any goddamn thing for her either? You had it so hard because you couldn’t do simple tasks the doctors asked you to do in order to get your sperm count up like wear different underwear. Yeah, I can see how that demand made you run straight to other pussy to prove what a man you are. Don’t you dare stand here and try to trivialize this shit. You are a grown ass man, who made dumbass decisions and now, as a result, the woman who once loved you with everything she had doesn’t want you anymore. Guess what? It’s time to suck it up, and reap what you’ve sown, because I’m done. I’ve been done, and I don’t ever want to go backwards.”

  “Poppy, I know you were mad. I get it. I fucked up. I know I did, but I’m here now. I pulled my head out of my ass, and…”

  “Stop right there. Even if you had managed to pull your head out of your ass – which I highly doubt considering the first thing I saw when I walked in here was some other woman touching you and you doing nothing to stop it – you’re still forgetting the part where I said I’m done.”

  “You don’t have to be done. We can work through this. We still love one another. I’ll find a way to give you the baby you want, I swear it!”

  Poppy growled out her frustrations so loudly the entire place went silent. I’ve never understood a room being so quiet you could hear a pin drop before, but in that moment, I got it. Everyone tuned in to what was going on now. “I do not still love you. I love someone else. I already have my own baby on the way, and it’s not yours!” She yelled out, stunning the shit out of me. She had what? I glanced over at Surfer to see if he heard the same thing I did. He simply nodded and smiled at me. “You gonna raise another man’s baby?” She laughed a sickeningly, humorless laugh. “Never mind, that’s a moot point, because even if you were man enough to agree to that, I don’t want you to. I can’t count on you to be there for me during a goddamn storm, I sure as hell couldn’t count on you to be there for sleepless nights, teething, vomiting, and any other thing that might inconvenience your life. I am happy here. I am in love with someone, and that someone isn’t you. He’s the father of my baby. Now, do you understand? There’s nothing left of us. It’s all gone, and what little bit had been left before I moved here, you trashed and threw away with your actions.”

  I wasn’t waiting by the doorway any longer. My woman didn’t need this shit, especially if what she’d just admitted was true. The last thing she needed while pregnant was this asshole adding to the stress she was already under with taking care of my nephew, me being gone so much, and all the shit brewing with the club on top of being in a place that was still new to her and trying to establish work clientele to help pay her bills. I moved right up behind her and watched as the asshole gave me a funny look before returning his attention to Poppy.

  “You’re pregnant?” He asked her for clarification.

&
nbsp; “We’ll talk about that revelation later at home, but honey, I need you to know, I love you too.” I whispered into her ear before placing a sweet kiss there to follow my words as I reached around her and cupped low on her belly holding the baby I’d somehow managed to put there. Walker didn’t miss any of that, and I could see his anger building as his face took on a beet red tone, his chest heaved, and his shoulders puffed up as his fists clenched at his sides.

  “You’re my brother!” He yelled out. “You knocked my wife up?”

  “Ex-wife,” I taunted.

  “Those papers aren’t signed yet,” Walker tried to argue.

  I made a tisking noise in my throat that I knew he could hear as I rolled my eyes at the man. “She just told you all the ways you screwed up, all the reasons she didn’t want you back, and that she was happy, finally. She signed the papers already. In her eyes, in her mind, you two aren’t together. She’s just waiting for you and the law to catch up with everything.”

  “Club first,” Walker called out, glancing around the clubhouse briefly, as if looking for the rest of our brothers to back his claim over mine. That shit would not happen in this clubhouse. First of all, Poppy’s sister was a brother here, and he didn’t want her anywhere near Walker. Secondly, our club president loved Poppy and would see to whatever made her happy. Third, these were my brothers. We may have been from the same club, but this was my clubhouse – and wrong or not – they would stand by me. As predicted, no one came to his defense.

  “Yeah, we all know you put the club first, every aspect of it, including catering to the whores. That seemed to be your problem. I don’t regret making Poppy mine, or anything that resulted from that decision. Best damn woman I’ve ever met, and I’d be a fool to let her go. You didn’t hang on to a good thing, and now you’re seeing that, but it’s too late. I suggest you get gone back to Georgia, and do something for someone other than yourself for a change, and sign those damn papers.”

  The asshole ignored me and turned his full attention on Poppy. “I wouldn’t care,” he pleaded with her. The fucker was seriously begging to get hit.

  Poppy laughed at him again. “Yes, you would. The thing is, that part doesn’t even matter, because I’m happy right now. I wasn’t before. I meant it when I said I wasn’t willing to go backwards for anyone, Walk. Not even you.”

  “Poppy, I promise you I’ll get it right this time,” he pleaded. I felt my woman squirm beneath my fingers, and for a brief second, I wondered if she was giving in to him, but I chose to trust in her and see where this went just like Surfer had suggested moments ago.

  “How long, Walk?” She asked him point blank.

  The confused frown on his face meant he was just as stupid as I thought he was. “What do you mean? How long? I plan on loving you forever, just like I said when we got married.”

  “No, how long were you fucking other people?” She asked, and while I felt the subtle flinch in her muscles as she asked the question, I don’t think she showed any outward sign of how much it hurt to ask that question. Hell, I didn’t think she really needed to the know the answer, but I knew she was trying to prove a point to him, even if it ended up hurting her in the end.

  Walker looked like he was about to shit himself as he stared at her, face going pale. He fidgeted with the edges of his kutte briefly before he couldn’t look her in the eye any longer.

  “You won’t even answer her?” I finally asked, calling the bastard out on his cowardice. “You can’t come clean, but you expect her to believe you care enough to stick with her now?” I continued, knowing I was goading him into answering even as I did it.

  “Four years,” he spat out at me, clearly forgetting for a minute that Poppy was standing there as she sucked in a gasp at the truth he was admitting to. Then his guilty eyes travelled back down to hers. I knew she had mentioned they were trying for nearly five years to have a baby so that had to have been a tough blow for her to take. That meant he was fucking around nearly the entire time they’d been trying. I never wanted to knock a mother fucker out more than I did in that moment.

  “We were trying to have a baby then, and you were off fucking other people?” She asked, incredulously as she stared him down.

  “Sex was becoming a chore with you, Pop. It was so important to get the baby as a result, but there was no fun in it anymore, because it was like going to work. You know? Something you have to do and not necessarily something you like doing.”

  What a douchebag. There was no way sex with Poppy could ever be considered a chore. Hell, I’d have made it my life’s mission to try every position possible, and damn near fuck her to death until she had my kid inside of her if that was what she wanted. This asshole didn’t deserve her, and hell, maybe he knew that too. The problem had been he was too much of a fucking pussy to let her go to someone who did.

  “You do realize that you having sex with other people was probably why you kept failing to get me pregnant in the first place, so you literally perpetuated your own problem and made the situation worse?”

  “I didn’t,” he started to say, and we watched as what he’d done started sinking in. I never had an infertility issue before, but from what Poppy had talked about, storing up the baby batter for a person with a low sperm count was key to successfully making a baby happen. If he’d been out there fucking around all that time, he was blowing off any chances they could have had.

  I scoffed at that thought but spoke the rest out loud for him to hear. “Like I said, you’re an idiot.”

  “Well, I think we’re done here,” Poppy finally stated before turning around and patting me to let her go. I did, because I knew she probably needed a bit of space just then.

  “Poppy,” Walker called out to her once more, sounding more desperate than ever and clearly realizing there was no going back from that. I let Poppy go and stood between him and her retreating back.

  “No! If you hadn’t fucked up bad enough before, you have to know that there’s no coming back from that. You don’t come back from that kind of bullshit with a woman like Poppy.”

  “She’s only walking away out of obligation since you fucking knocked her up. We have a love that lasts a lifetime.” He sounded so sure of himself that I just had to laugh.

  “Like I said, you’re an idiot. You may have had a love that would last a lifetime if you’d cherished it, nurtured it, and not fucked around on it. You had to know she wouldn’t put up with that shit. You knew what you were doing. Not only were you betraying her, but you were single-handedly ensuring that her dream never came true. She may have loved you at one time, but you never could have loved her. That’s not something you do to someone you love. You don’t shit on their dreams while betraying them and expect that they’ll still be there to make you feel better about yourself. You fucked up, brother.” I spat the last word out at him because I definitely didn’t feel a club obligation to the bastard. “You fucked up, and now you get to spend the rest of your life living with that decision. What you don’t get to do is try to force yourself back on the woman after you broke every bit of love she had for you. You did that. Got no one to blame but yourself.” I started walking away before I turned back to look at the sorry bastard one more time. “She’s mine now, and I’m not stupid, fucker. She ain’t never coming back to you.”

  “Just wait, you’ll screw up too, because she’s too damn perfect for any of us,” he muttered.

  “No, she was just too perfect for you since you couldn’t see what you had. Now, tuck your tail and go home.” I turned and went left the way Poppy and Chief had gone earlier only to walk in to the middle of their conversation.

  “…tell Smoke first, but every time I tried something happened. I found out when I got home from Pittsburg, and then everything happened with Smoke’s family.”

  “Jesus, talk about bad timing.”

  “Exactly. Then every time I’ve attempted to tell him he’s had to run off or something has happened to make me put it on the back burner,” she man
aged to tell her brother.

  “We’re going to talk about that when we get somewhere private,” I told her without announcing my presence in any other way.

  “Smoke,” she tried to chime in, but I didn’t let her. Too much of our personal shit had been played out for the club before we were even able to discuss it. I just wanted to get her home and fucking chill with my family while we discussed what our future was going to look like. Not that I needed a conversation to know that I wanted our future to be together.

  “Let’s get Brantley, and get back to your house before we talk about anything else, okay?”

  “Okay,” she agreed. Then she smiled so sweetly at me that it took everything I had in me not to just strip her down right there and show her how much she belonged to me.

  I held out my hand to her, but just as we were about to leave, Ghost came in and eyed me. “A minute before you go?”

  “Shit,” I nodded and shook my head as I looked at Poppy who was clearly disappointed by the change of plans.

  “He won’t be but a few minutes behind you darlin’,” Ghost told her. She smiled and then left while Chief stood there glaring at both Ghost and I. I couldn’t say that I blamed him.

  Once Poppy had cleared the room, Chief moved up into my face and pointed a finger at me. “Don’t fuck up. Remember our little chat and make sure you actually get home to her tonight.” He turned a glare on Ghost. “No matter what he has to say. The man should know better than to distract you right this minute after the bomb that was just dropped out there.”

  Ghost at least had the good sense to look guilty. “What’s going on?”

  “I just,” he started, then ran his fingers through his dirty blond hair he’d recently trimmed. “Shit. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have stopped you. It can wait. I wanted to make sure you were okay, and knew that you have Cedar Falls support with what’s happening between you and Poppy. I know it’s not ideal when another brother steps in and picks up a woman who was already claimed by someone else in the club, but I needed you to know that we all support you. This isn’t a normal situation, and we all know that the two of you belong together and that little fucker treated her like second-hand shit. Besides, it’s her opinion that I’m factoring here, and she made it pretty clear out there. I just wanted you to know that I’ve already put the call in to Sweet and let him know where his man really went.”