Taking my right hand off the steering wheel, I place it on hers. “Skull still lives on, Mel. You’re carrying part of him. You can keep him alive in your child and in your mind.”
“I know,” she replies, her voice quiet and low. “I’d never met a man like Skull before, Pyro. He truly ignored our age difference. It didn’t matter to him, and he saw past my exterior to the woman inside. No one’s ever loved me for me before.”
“You don’t want to hear this now darlin’, I know. But when you’re ready, there’ll be someone else for you.”
“Will there?” she snaps. “There never was before. No one wants the fat woman, and a fat woman with a child?”
I pull over to the, slam the car into park and turn on her. “Shut that shit up now, woman. You are not fuckin’ fat. You’ve got curves in all the right places. Those men who couldn’t see how beautiful you are? Fuckin’ blind motherfuckers.”
“You heard the doctor…”
“I heard her say you’re to eat a healthy diet which she’d say to any fuckin’ expectant mother. You are not fat, Mel. You’re so fuckin’ perfect…” I stop before I tell her she’s exactly the kind of woman I want. I stop before I allow myself to even think it. This dilemma is fucking with my head. She’s another member’s old lady. Whether he’s living or no longer breathing, she’s his. If I let myself continue to contemplate in the direction I’m going, I’ll start doing the unthinkable, wishing a brother was dead.
She’s looking at me strangely as I put the car back into drive and pull away.
We say nothing more until we reach the compound, and I tell her I’ve got to get back to work. It isn’t a lie or excuse, but I’m using it as one. I need space, before I say something I might later regret, or, inadvertently, hurt her.
Some hours later I walk into church. Having lost myself in fixing an exhaust on a bike that didn’t want to be fixed, having to concentrate on nuts which didn’t want to be turned and screws that didn’t want to be screwed into the right place, I arrive almost to the dot of when the meeting should start. I’m the last one to take my place.
“Lockdown?” Hell queries before Demon can begin the meeting.
Demon seems to ignore him as he doesn’t immediately leap to answer. Instead, in my view, he starts in the right place.
“First item on the agenda, any news about Skull?”
From all around come shakes of heads. No one has seen or heard from him, and none of our searches have borne fruit.
“He’s dead.” Rusty shakes his head sadly. “No other explanation.”
“We’ve had no word from anyone. No reason for him to have been taken, and no reason for him to have left. Makes sense he was worried about the situation with his ol’ lady and wanted to get things straight in his head. He must have known it would be soon she’d take the pregnancy test, maybe he wanted to get himself in a space where he could trust himself to have the right reaction. Whatever the result.”
I nod at Thunder, how he’s put things together sounds right.
The sergeant-at-arms continues, “He could have been mentally working things through, lost concentration as he rode. That makes more fuckin’ sense than anything else. He wanted revenge? We’d have known about it by now, but there’s been no threat to the club. Someone else out to get him? Unless it was personal shit from outside the club we’d have heard, and if it was personal, we’d have to suppose the result is the same and he’s dead.”
“That he hasn’t been found yet, doesn’t mean he won’t be eventually,” Beef agrees. “I think we should call off the search parties. We don’t know the direction he went. Hate to say this, but even if we’re on the right road, we could be passing straight by him. If he came off his bike and was injured, trapped, after two-and-a-half weeks, he has to be dead.”
Cad nods slowly. “He’s still not accessed his money. Man needs dollars to live. Much as I hate to say it, we won’t see Skull again.”
Beef takes the floor back. “We don’t normally deal with the cops, but in this instance, Prez thought we needed to. We reported him missing.”
Much as I don’t like involving the authorities, Skull wasn’t doing anything for the club, and from what I know of him, wouldn’t have been carrying drugs on his own time. Cops find him, at least we’ll know. Though they’ll probably be looking for a body.
“Doubt they’ll do much.”
I tilt my head toward Lizard. I, too, don’t have much faith in them putting themselves out for a member of a biker club.
“Nah,” Thunder clearly agrees.
Prez is taking it all in, you can see by the focused way he watches each speaker. When it seems brothers have said all there is to say, he pinches the bridge of his nose, then says in a tired voice, “I tend to agree with Cad, that we won’t see our brother again. I can’t see how the club could be in danger, so lockdown is raised.” Hell breathes out an audible sigh of relief, but Demon continues, “We still need to be vigilant, but people can go home to their own beds.”
“What about Mel?”
“Goes without saying, Ro. She’s welcome to stay here or go home. Whatever she feels most comfortable doing. We’d support her in any event, but especially so seeing as she’s carrying our lost brother’s baby.”
“At least you won’t be getting any more stiff necks.” Mace grins at me.
“Have to say, Ro. I thought you’d be sharing your bed with her by now.”
What the fuck? I turn to glare at Ink, who shrugs.
“You are getting pretty close to her,” Lizard backs him up. “What’s all this about you going to her doctor’s appointment with her?”
I bang my hands on the table. “She needs someone. Skull’s gone. I’m just stepping up for a brother.”
“Are there death benefits like prison ones?” Judge asks.
“You’ll get a fuckin’ death benefit if you carry on,” I warn him. “You’ll get dead.”
“Nah, I think it’s a good question,” Hellfire puts in. “If Skull was in prison, someone could step up and see to his woman’s needs. And pregnant women can certainly have them, if you know what I mean.”
Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard pregnancy hormones can make a woman horny. But that’s an old wives’ tale, isn’t it? Though Hell might know what he’s talking about, Mo’s had three kids.
Are they saying they’d give me the go ahead to fuck her? My dick perks up at the thought.
Then I come back to my senses and snarl, “Fuckin’ woman’s got to grieve the death of her man. She doesn’t just have to wait out his absence, he’s never coming back. Last thing she wants is another man pawing at her.” It hits me in a flash. I might not mind being a substitute for Skull when I’m taking her to the doctor, but I’ll be no man’s substitute in bed. When I finally lie with her, it will be because she wants me to be there. Not someone else instead. When? Christ. The question should be if, if it arises at all. What the fuck’s going on in my head?
“It was just a thought,” says an unrepentant Ink.
Prez unsuccessfully tries to hide his grin before stating, “Moving on to other business…”
Chapter Eighteen
Melissa
As much as I didn’t want to, I knew living in limbo wasn’t doing me, and by association, the baby, any good. I couldn’t just go on half-hoping half-worrying, I had to come down on one side of the fence.
If Skull had been alive and he was the man I thought he was, he’d have moved heaven and earth to come back to me. He hadn’t, so he has to be dead. I torture myself at the thought of him dying alone and hurting, and hope it was quick. Not knowing how the life of my man ended is difficult to accept, but I need to come to terms that he’s gone, and I’ll be heading on through life alone.
Though I’d told Pyro outside of the hospital that I knew he was dead, a small kernel of hope remained inside me, until later that same night when it was pronounced that lockdown was over.
There’s a general feeling of relief, a relaxation of tension, but t
o me it seemed like the last nail was being hammered into a coffin. The club had given up on him, and now I must too. I have to be realistic. Any last hopes I’ve been harbouring of having my man back at my side crumble into dust.
While her mother-in-law had been ecstatic, and has already left with Hellfire, Violet understands the decision has a different impact on me.
“You should stay here,” she encourages.
“I don’t know what I want to do, Vi. He’s gone, and somehow, I’ve got to accept it. I just don’t know how.” I’ve cried enough tears today, and I don’t want to shed more. All of my misery can’t be good for the baby. “If I stay here, I’m reminded of him every day. If I go home…” I’ll be reminded of him there. He was living with me. His clothes will still be hung in my wardrobe, his manly stuff in the bathroom.
“If I go, Pyro can have his room back.”
She dismisses that. “Pyro can move into Skull’s now, or you can if you prefer. There’s space for you, whichever way you look at it. These past weeks must have shown you how much you’re part of the club. We want you here, Mel.”
I came to the compound with a biker. What’s here for me now he’s gone? What does anywhere hold for me?
“I’ve got to find a way to move on, Vi. I’ll think it over tonight, but I believe going back to my own place will be the best thing for me to do.” Or maybe I’ll sell up and move somewhere new, somewhere that doesn’t hold memories. “I’ve got to make a life for me and the baby.”
“It’s our baby too,” she reminds me. “I don’t want to lose touch.”
“I’m not cutting the club off, Vi.” It would be stupid to do that. I’ve made so many friends here, and Pyro’s been such a great help. “If I stay, I’m not sure I’ll do more than just exist, if I force myself out of this bubble, then hopefully I can move on.”
“Don’t think we’re going to abandon you. I’ll come and drag your ass back if we don’t see you.”
“Vi, you’ve become such a good friend. I want to keep that friendship. I just think I need to find my own space. I’m…” I choke up, “I’m not an old lady, so here I don’t have a place. Oh, I know you’re going to contradict me, but we’ve got to face facts.”
“He may still come back.” Her voice is quiet, but firm and optimistic.
She’s probably one of the few holding out hope. Sure, there’s a part of me that still does, that can’t give up on the man who fathered my child. But unless he’s lying in hospital unconscious, he could have gotten a message to me somehow. If there is a valid reason, oh how happy I’d be. But if there’s not, I’ve got to face something that’s possibly even harder than concrete evidence, he’s dead. That the man I believed in, the man I gave my heart to, was never what I’d thought him to be. That Skull wouldn’t have walked away from me without a backward glance. If he came back now with no genuine excuse and wanted to pick up where we left off, I’d be extremely wary about it. It’s one thing for a woman to return to a man who’s abandoned her, very different if that woman has a child, even one not yet born. I wouldn’t subject a baby to a childhood where his or her father couldn’t be trusted not to walk out.
It’s easier to think of him as dead. Too many questions, and too many directed at myself and how I could have been fooled if he’s alive.
Violet’s waiting expectantly, so I let her in on my thoughts. “Much as I’m grieving for him, Vi, if he does return, I don’t think it’s possible to pick up where we left off.” I might still love a dead man, but a man who thinks he can take off leaving everyone behind him to worry? That’s not the man I knew.
“You’re going to decide to leave, aren’t you?” Her regret shows on her face.
I can’t lie to her. “I think I am.”
The next morning, Pyro doesn’t like it when I tell him I plan to go home.
“At least you’ll be able to sleep in your own bed.”
“I’ll sleep on your fuckin’ sofa,” he warns. “I don’t like the idea of you being alone.”
“Pyro, come, sit.” I invite him to park his ass beside me. “We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“Of course we fuckin’ are.”
“Then we’re going to stay friends. I’ve… lost my man.” It’s still so hard to say it. Every time I do, another little piece of my heart breaks, and maybe I’m drawing nearer to accepting it. “I need to come to terms with that, and I won’t be able to do that here. Not with every man wearing a cut the same as his, not with people talking the same as he did and not when I’m being referred to as Skull’s old lady, or when I know the only reason I’m here is because that’s what I am. Was,” I correct.
“I wear a cut and talk like a fuckin’ biker. You gonna shut me out too? Because I fuckin’ remind you of him?”
“No, Ro, no. I want to stay friends. If you will, I want you to come to the hospital visits with me. If you will…” I hesitate, wondering if I’m asking too much. “If you’d like to be, I’d like you there at the birth.”
Pyro’s eyes open the widest I’ve ever seen. He swallows before he answers, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, “You really want that?”
I swallow. “I do.” Then hold my breath for the answer. It’s a lot to ask of a single man.
But his face breaks into a huge grin. “I’d like that too. Seems I’m already invested in my niece or nephew.”
“I’m looking forward to finding out which it is.” But only because he’ll be at my side sharing the joy with me. On my own, I wouldn’t be able to cope so well. I don’t know why, but in this short space of time, Pyro’s become my rock.
“Me too, Mel. Me too.”
“I’d like you to come visit as much as you want. The only difference is I won’t be here, sleeping in your bed.”
He glances at me quickly, opens his mouth, then looks away. He sighs. “You need help getting anything ready. The nursery painted…”
“I’m not going to ask that much of you.”
“You can’t really see me waving a paintbrush around, can you?” His eyes open in mock horror. “I was going to say I’d send the prospects around.” He winks as I burst out laughing. “I’m going to fuckin’ miss you darlin’.”
“I’m going to miss you too,” I respond, genuinely.
“You planning on leaving straight away?”
I nod. “I’ll just call for an Uber…”
“No you fuckin’ won’t. I’ll take you.” He glances at me. “You can come on the bike if you’re feeling up to it, if not I’ll take a car.”
“I’m not ill. And I haven’t put on weight yet…”
“Mel,” he starts in a warning tone, “you could put on a good few pounds and still be fine to ride.”
I ignore him. Soon I will be gaining weight and there will come a time when I won’t be able to be behind anyone on their motorcycle. But for now, I’m fine. I’m looking forward to riding again.
He takes me home, removes my house keys from my hands and takes his time looking around while I stand rolling my eyes. What does he expect? A rapist hiding under the bed? He checks out the garage, makes sure my car starts, then, comes back inside.
“You sure?” His stare is intense.
“I’m certain. I’ll be fine, Ro.” Well, I’ll try to be. Try to summon up the will to get up every day and carry on with life, even though there’s a big part of it missing. I can see by the expression in his face that he understands, without me putting it into words.
After giving me a moment’s examination, he sighs. “Okay then. I’ll go. But you’ve got my number in your phone. Anything, Mel, anything. You need a carton of milk or have a fancy for ice cream? You’re feeling down and want another body around? Anything, just call me.” He pauses for a moment. “Not sure how good I’d be painting your nails but I’m willing to give it a go.”
I laugh, and mock punch his arm. “When I can’t see my toes, you might need to.”
His hand curls behind my neck, and he pulls me in closer, pressing his lips to m
y forehead for a second.
“Take care of yourself, Mel.”
“You too, Ro.”
When I hear the sound of his engine fade into the distance, I realise I’m truly alone for the first time since Skull disappeared. I shiver, hugging my arms around me. Glancing around my living room, it strikes me how little of Skull is left behind. Okay, so most of his stuff he’d kept in the club, but apart from the clothes I know are upstairs, there’s not much else here. An open Harley magazine, a candy bar wrapper in the wastepaper basket. No photos, no knickknacks.
At least there isn’t much to remind me.
I stand, my head tilted, my brow creasing. Did Skull ever live with me? There’s hardly any evidence that he did. Based on what I see around me, he could have been a figment of my imagination.
I rub my stomach. “I don’t even have a photo of your daddy, baby.” Skull wasn’t into taking selfies, even with me and would always cover his face if I tried to take one of him, in the end I’d given up seeing how much it upset him. I think I’ll ask around at the club, someone must have one, even if he’s at the edge of a group shot. It pains me to think I could forget what he looked like.
I try to settle back into my old routine. The one I had before Skull. I go to work, do my job as best I can, then come home and force myself to eat a lonely meal for one. I try to convince myself I lived like this for years, it can’t be that difficult to slip back into old habits and return to the woman I was before Skull. But it’s hard, he changed me in so many ways. He might not have left much of himself behind, but the memories are there, and along with them, expectations. I can’t help but look up when I hear a loud engine noise or fool myself I hear his key in the lock. His voice echoes around the house, though I’m only hearing it in my head.
His ghost seems to haunt me, almost to the extent that I change my mind and return to the clubhouse, but my sensible head tells me I’ve got to face life alone sometime. It must be like an addict coming off the drug of their choice, at first impossible to see how they can make it through, but with the knowledge, in time, there’ll be light at the end of the tunnel, and less reliance on the crutch they used in the past.
Devil's Dilemma: Satan's Devils MC Colorado Chapter #4 Page 15