Michael sighed, obviously seeing that I was putting the pieces together. “That’s the night Jess and Phoenix broke up,” I stated. “There was some big blow up, but no one would talk about it…” I shook my head then. “Around me,” I clarified. “No one talked about it around me.” Sickness burned up my stomach as I shifted the little gift bag I had brought with me when I had hopes that this conversation was going to be something else entirely. Stupid. I was so goddamn stupid.
“Babe,” came from his lips on a tortured sigh as he attempted to reach for my hand. I snatched mine away then and glared at the man I thought was my life, my soul mate, my everything.
“Finish your story, because if I’m not mistaken, you’re keeping more than me waiting right now.” The guilt on his face told me I wasn’t wrong.
“I guess Phoenix was busy after he tucked me in his room. He got called away to handle something. Jess found her way to his room.” He buried his head in his hands then. “I was dreaming. I fucking thought I was dreaming that you were there, blowing me.” I cringed at that because I had been down with a horrible case of strep throat mixed with an even nastier case of bronchitis at the time. No way was I blowing anything beyond my nose. “Never even looked. Just laid there enjoying as my dick got hard from being sucked,” he was saying as my stomach’s meager contents turned over at the fact that he wasn’t even attempting to soften this blow with nice words. Nope, he was going all out like he was taking a trip down pleasant memory lane with the boys, not telling the woman he was supposed to love about another woman sucking his dick.
“Then you were riding me, but it felt weird. Different because we always used condoms, and everything was so hot and wet, when I finally opened my eyes to ask you where you’d learned to do that…” he cut himself off there because he noticed I looked nearly ready to puke. “It wasn’t you. It was Jess, and she was riding me.” He looked away guiltily again. “I didn’t stop her.” I could hear the remorse in his voice and I couldn’t bring myself to care. “I didn’t stop her because I’d never felt sex like that before. I knew I should have stopped her. She was my brother’s girl, and then there was you.” So happy to hear I was his second concern. He didn’t notice my narrowed eyes though, and just continued on. “I was coming before I knew what happened and then Phoenix burst in the room.”
“So, this girl basically started out your night by cheating on her man, your brother, while RAPING an unconscious man – you. Instead of doing anything about that duplicity when you realized what was happening, you went with it because it felt better than anything you’d had before? That also means you were comparing her to me, since we were each other’s firsts?” I asked and his wince told me that hadn’t been true either. “So there were others at some point?” My voice lost something at the end of that question, becoming almost a whisper.
“Before we ever had sex, babe. I had to know what I was doing before we did it so I wouldn’t hurt you, or make it bad for you,” he explained.
“Yeah, because my soul’s other half being with other women wasn’t going to hurt me more than a fumbled first time fuck?” I questioned angrily.
He snapped back like my words had struck him. “I’m assuming the sex was so good with her bare that you’re here to tell me we’re done?” I finally managed to choke out behind the thick emotion clogging my throat, as I did everything in my power to hold back my tears.
“It’s not like that, babe. I swear, I never touched her again after that.”
“But you kept in touch somehow, and for some reason, because her smug face keeps grinning over at me. Oh, and thank you so much, Michael,” I sneered out using his given name instead of his road name. “Thank you for showing me the immense respect due an old lady by bringing your side piece here in order to ridicule me. You were my best friend on earth, my soul mate, the man I was planning my entire future with, and you decided to destroy me in front of your side piece, as if the truth of what you’ve done wasn’t enough? I needed to suffer a more public humiliation to go with it? I appreciate having her as an audience to that level of humiliation you’ve just heaped on me.”
Again, he appeared as though I had struck him with my words. “Fuck. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! You don’t understand,” he whined.
“Then fill me the fuck in so this horror show can be done, Michael.”
“She’s pregnant,” he whispered and everything whooshed out of me in that breath. This man was supposed to be the father of my children. He was supposed to be my everything, our kids’ everything, and he’d not only cheated, but he’d given some other woman the child I’d been dreaming of. He’d taken not only himself from me, but the future children we’d planned. Our future. It was all gone with those two words.
“I can’t leave her to raise our kid alone, Myra. She said she’d terminate the pregnancy if I didn’t break things off with you, and promise to be there.”
“Have you verified her pregnancy?” I asked after glancing at the still smug bitch sitting at the table behind ours. She didn’t appear to be having difficulty with morning sickness, and the drink she had did not appear to be a virgin one. Interesting.
“What do you mean? She told me she was,”
“You were with her ONE time, supposedly. She had a boyfriend and proved she had no qualms about cheating on him. If she’s even pregnant, and doesn’t miraculously have a miscarriage in the next couple weeks before you can get to a doctor appointment with her…” I sighed. “If she’s really pregnant and I’m wrong about that part of her bullshit, then how the hell do you know it’s even yours? Could be Phoenix’s, could belong to anyone.” I informed him.
At the rate the little color he had left in his face disappeared, I knew he hadn’t thought of any of that. “She’s drinking a Mimosa at breakfast, for fuck’s sake, Michael. It has alcohol in it. Great choice of potential baby momma for you, because any truly pregnant woman would not be sucking back her third alcoholic beverage of the day before 10 a.m.”
His eyes moved from me to glare in Jessica’s direction. “What the fuck have I done?”
“You just admitted to cheating, multiple times, on the woman who thought you were her lifelong everything, Michael. You destroyed me and everything we were and you did it all based on that cunt,” I pointed to Jessica, “who started out what you had by raping you, and then destroyed what we had with a lie about a baby.” I stood then, the gift bag I no longer wanted to use in hand, as I put my purse on my shoulder.
“No! Baby,” He stood too. All eyes in the café were on us by then, including Jessica’s worried ones. I had to get out of there.
“Enjoy your life. Do not call, message, or come anywhere near me. Do not even let my name leave your lips on a whisper because you may have once been my everything and my future, but now you are nothing.”
“Myra, please, babe, don’t do this.”
“You did this!” I spat back angrily. “You get to live with the consequences you forced on me with your decisions.”
As if my words conjured hell to unleash it’s demons, five of them stormed into the café at that moment. My father was in the lead. Phoenix wasn’t far behind. He took note of Jessica, Michael, and myself and came directly to me, whispering in my ear. “I’m so sorry, baby girl. I wasn’t allowed to tell you, and I begged for the right to do so.” At least one person had wanted to do right by me. Too bad it wasn’t any of the people who should have done it.
“All of you knew?” I asked. He nodded his head as my father raised unholy hell yelling at the “dumb son of a bitch,” as he punched Michael.
“STOP!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. Everything stopped. My father pulled back mid-swing and glanced in my direction. “Just stop. Unless you’re going to have someone beat the shit out of you too,” I told my father, my words laced with seething hatred. He paled when he realized it was all aimed at him.
“What does that mean?” He asked.
“You knew. That party was in the beginning of August, and every single one of
you knew. Phoenix was allowed the opportunity to ditch the bitch who cheated on him. I realize I’m not, and never have been, as important as your fucking club brothers, but I’m your daughter!” I yelled. “And you let me continue to be with him. He was unprotected with that whore and who knows what she has besides a fake as fuck pregnancy.” Jess attempted to get up then to slink out, no doubt. Phoenix moved and held her in place.
“I get that it wasn’t the place of the rest of the boys to tell me when my man was too much of a coward to admit what he’d done. But you…” I glared pure hate and hellfire at my father. “You’re my daddy. You, above all, are the man who was supposed to protect me, to help ease my pain, and never to be part of causing me more. You knew. You probably knew about the others too, huh? The ones he admitted to just now – three years later – the ones he used to practice on?” I could tell by his face that he did.
“You knew, and let him keep coming home to me. You knew that I have never loved anyone else, that he was it for me, and you let me continue believing in a giant fucking lie! I’ve never been anything but loyal to ALL OF YOU!” My voice cracked as I shouted them all down.
“It wasn’t a lie, My. I’ve always loved you,” Michael spoke softly.
“Fuck you! When you love someone, you don’t fuck another person. If you love someone, you don’t lie to her face that they’re your first too. You don’t keep fucking a bitch who is RAPING you because you discover how much better it feels without a condom. You love someone, you don’t leave them home sicker than a dog, for their friend to look after, so that you could go to a party where this shit went down to begin with. You selfish piece of shit! You sure as fuck do not come home talking to the woman you love about starting a family so you can fuck her bare after you discover the joys of doing so with another woman.”
Silence.
You could hear a pin drop in the café until Phoenix spoke.
“You also don’t believe the lies of a whore who would cheat on one brother, take advantage of another, and has a fucking implant in her arm that prevents pregnancy.” He pulled up her shirt sleeve and showed where you could see the lines of the implanted birth control there.
Michael staggered back, barely getting into the chair he fell back on. Tears streamed unchecked down his face.
“Baby girl,” my father said as he approached me cautiously.
“Do not!” I yelled at him, and everything stopped again. “Do not call me your baby girl. Do not come near me. Do not touch me. Do not fucking address me unless it’s absolutely necessary, and then you call me Myra only. Because you don’t lie, hide shit, and condone his bullshit treatment of me behind my back and then think I have any respect or love left for you.” My father jolted back with the last of my words. “You helped make this worse. If you knew he wanted, or hell, needed lessons, in order to please a woman when we were teenagers, YOU should have told him to put us on a break first. Instead, you condoned his cheating for stupid fucking reasons, and being ignorant to it then doesn’t make it hurt less now.
“It just makes it worse because everyone else knew, and I’m stuck looking like a fucking fool. You knew about her and did nothing. I know, because he hasn’t had a mark on him in all this time. So he sure as fuck didn’t get a beat down for it. I didn’t get the truth.” I moved my watchful gaze around the room. “I didn’t get the truth from anyone. My own father. My friends. My uncle. The man I thought was my future. You all kept it from me. Every single one of you, every single bit of it.”
My glare turned to Jessica then. “Thank you,” I told her. “You’re a filthy fucking cunt, but you’re the only person here who bothered to make sure I knew what was going down. Maybe the rest of you, who supposedly loved me, should take note. The duplicitous whore who rapes brothers, cheats on them, and lies to them about being pregnant is a better person to me than the rest of you lying, disloyal bastards. Enjoy your fucking brotherhood. You’ve all lost your daughter, your niece, your friend, and your lover.” I pinned each of them with my stare in turn as I said those words.
“Your brotherhood was more important than my health. Worse, it was more important than my heart. My heart that is broken a million times over what it should have been, if only I was dealing with one lying cheater.” Then I glared at my former love. “Just so you know, I had something to talk to you about today too.” I huffed out a very unamused laugh then. “I thought, before I got here, that you were going to talk to me about finally getting hitched like everyone kept begging us to do, which would have been perfect, considering.” I tossed the gift bag that I’d been holding tightly to at his feet and watched as the contents of the bag spilled out when it tipped over.
A pair of tiny, black leather, biker boots fell out along with the note that said, “Congrats Daddy! A biker baby will arrive May 23rd” Michael reached out his hand as shock, awe, and then devastation rolled across his features. My father’s gasp made me glance up at him. He knew what this meant. I was having a baby. Only now, I’d be doing it alone instead of with my soul mate by my side like I’d always planned.
“Congratulations,” I stated coolly as I turned my focus back to Michael. “You got your wish. You knocked me up, but you chose a whore and her fake baby over the one you’ve been so enthusiastically trying to make with me.” I scoffed out a heartbreaking laugh as I shook my head back and forth.
Glancing up at my father, I let the tears finally fall free. There was no more stopping them anyway. “Now, maybe you see why you should have cared more about your own daughter?” I pointed to Michael who was clutching the boots in his big hands and crying again. “He was leaving me to take care of a whore’s baby. He didn’t even know for sure she was pregnant. No proof of it existed, no proof that it was even his. He loved me so much that it was that easy to walk away from me, and to make the break in public where she could be a spectator to my humiliation. Now, I have to raise my baby alone, one that wouldn’t even be here if I had known he had cheated, because I sure as hell wouldn’t have gone bare, or been with him ever again, had I known. None of you fuckers, aside from Phoenix, wanted to do the right thing though, so now I’m stuck with a cheater’s baby in my belly and no one to help me raise it. That’s how fucking much I’m loved.”
“No, babe, you won’t be alone.” Michael stated clearly.
I laughed. “You will have no part in my pregnancy, asshole. I suggest you snuggle up close at night with your whore’s non-existent baby belly. Plan names with her. That’s what you were choosing to do when you called me here knowing this could be a possibility since we’d been trying, right? You chose her.”
“She said she’d terminate if I wasn’t with her,” he yelled.
“Yeah? And what did you think I’d do? Did you think I’d invite her in and we’d be one, big, happy family? Or were you hoping you hadn’t knocked me up after all?”
I could see from his demeanor that was exactly his hope. “I’ll let you know when he or she is born. Do not contact me. In fact, stay far the fuck away!” I turned to my dad who was coming to me as well. “You too. I’m done with you. I’m done with your club and the asshole men who don’t give two fucks about the women in their lives. My child won’t grow up around it to learn these fucked up lessons the hard way. My child will know I will always have THEIR back. Always!” I turned back to Michael. “Keep the boots, give ‘em to your whore for her fake baby, or save them for the next one who is unlucky enough to believe your bullshit.” I stomped my way over to the door then.
“Do not come home. You will give me the week to process everything and then we’ll decide what to do about the apartment.” I told Michael as I began to push the door open. Then I looked at my father. “If you give two shits about redeeming yourself in my eyes, or even care about my heart or health at all, you’ll see to it that he stays gone.”
“You have my word,” my dad’s voice sounded broken when he spoke. I didn’t relent though.
“Your word means shit to me right now, so we’ll call this
a test to see if you can actually keep it. Keep everyone else away too. I see so much as a prospect within spitting distance of my place over the next week and I will never see or speak to any of you again. I’ll check in with my mom so she knows I’m okay, but I’ll be doing that by phone too. No doubt she knew at least a little of this too.” She did. That was obvious by the way my dad shifted his weight from foot to foot.
“Yeah, right. Like I said, stay away. Keep him away.”
“If you promise you won’t do anything stupid,” my father stated.
“Like what? Hurt myself? My kid? Fuck you! You’ve all done enough to hurt me already. I’m not adding to your mess. I need a week to sort how I’m going to clean it all up and how to move on with my life.” With that, I left. I left knowing I absolutely was going to do something stupid, but that it wasn’t going to hurt any more than I was already hurting.
Chapter 3 - Myra
My good friend Cherry Carson had gone to South Dakota two years ago for a Sturgis rally and she never came home. I knew she was a dancer in a club owned by bikers there, but she was also the only friend of mine who didn’t live in my town on the Oregon coast or anywhere near it. When I called and explained the turn my life had taken, she was at first stunned silent. My whole life, there had never been Myra Adrian Chase without Michael Allen “Blaze” Sanders by her side. Until now. So, I got it. Even when I didn’t want to deal with my own reality, other people had to get over their initial reactions before they could move on to understanding.
“You’re coming here,” she finally said to me as soon as she wrapped her head around the bomb I’d dropped. “There’s a little apartment above Spinner’s garage you could stay in, and I’ll find you work too. Did you finish your degree?” I smiled at that. I’d graduated high school early with almost two full years of college credits under my belt. Then, I’d gone into the nursing program to earn my degree there.
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