by CM Genovese
Car tires screeched in the street outside and car doors opened and closed.
“He’s back,” Tayla said, pulling away from me.
“Good,” I said.
Through the thin linen curtains over the windows, I could see outside where three guys walked up the front drive. The sun outside made them very visible. One of them held a baseball bat. The other two had no weapons.
Quickly, I scanned Tayla’s living room, looking for something I could use to protect myself. I had a knife and a gun on me, but I really didn’t want to stab her husband to death. Shooting him would bring all kinds of heat. Not to mention Caleb thought he was his dad. And he was Myra’s father. This was too personal. I couldn’t actually kill the fucker.
The dining room was through an open archway and I spied wooden chairs.
“That’ll do,” I said.
“What?” Tayla replied. “What’ll do?”
I flipped one of her chairs upside down and unscrewed one of the legs from the seat. It was heavy in my hand, the fat part with the screw in it resembled an old-fashioned wooden club.
“Oh, my God,” Tayla said. “Pipe, no.”
“There’s three of them,” I informed her, “and one of them is carrying a bat.”
“How do you know—”
The door leading from the kitchen to the garage opened and in stepped Captain John and the merry two. John wasn’t holding a weapon. That was good for him. If he’d been the one with the bat, I would have bashed his head in.
“This him?” the guy with the bat asked. He was wearing a camouflage uniform.
I had to laugh at his dumb question. Of course, I was him. I was standing in her living room wearing my Royal Bastards kutte. Who else would I be?
“That’s him,” Captain John answered.
“I’m him,” I said at the same time.
Pulling Tayla into the light of the dining room, I gently held her chin in my hand and showed off her blackened, swollen eye. “You gentlemen okay with knocking women around?”
The two men behind Captain John were unaware of their friend’s hobby of manhandling his wife.
“Cap?” one of the guys said. “Did you—”
“Don’t fucking listen to this asshole,” Captain John said.
“Listen to me,” I said, “don’t listen to me. I don’t much care.”
“What you plannin’ to do with that club?” the guy with the bat asked.
“More than you’re gonna do with that bat, I can tell you that much,” I said.
From their side of the table, they wouldn’t be able to see me put my foot under the seat of the upside-down chair.
“Stay back,” I warned Tayla as I pushed her gently behind me. “Keep the kids upstairs.”
“Pipe,” she said. “John.”
John wasn’t listening to her. His eyes were bloodshot, and his grin was as menacing as he could muster. Not scary in my world but possibly concerning in his. I wasn’t one of the flunkies under his command.
“Come on, John,” I provoked him. With my free hand I touched my left eye and said, “Here’s a fresh eye for you to bruise. But you’re gonna have to work for this one.”
“Get him,” Captain John said.
The guy with the bat came at me first, but as he rounded the table, I scooped up with my leg, launching the disfigured chair at him. It smashed into his stomach, knocking the wind out of him. My club came down hard against his bat-wielding hand, breaking something, probably his thumb. The bat clattered to the floor where John bent to pick it up.
I brought my club down against the spot between his shoulder blades. This wasn’t the time to be delivering death blows. A shot to the back of the head might have been just that. It was too risky. This wasn’t the Samoans and the Russians. This was the asshole, deadbeat husband of the one woman on earth I actually loved.
“John!” Tayla yelled from behind me. “Pipe, please don’t kill him.”
I looked back at her, kind of surprised at the concern she was showing, and that was when John’s other flunky decided to get brave. He must have stepped around John quickly because the moment I turned back, a solid fist nailed me in my right temple, and I went down to my knee.
John rose to his feet.
“How’d that punch taste, asshole?” he asked.
“Tasted like it was cooked by somebody else,” I replied.
“How about this one then?” he said, but he never got the chance to land it.
I yanked my club up and smashed him in the nuts. It was a hell of a swing too. He doubled over, and I stood and swung the club around. I wasn’t aiming for a home run, but I connected with the asshole’s jaw who’d hit me. He crumpled up on the floor, holding his mouth and spitting out a tooth or two. Blood splashed against the laminate flooring.
The guy who’d originally wielded the bat had backed up against the stove, his broken hand hanging loosely at his side. With his left hand, he picked up a greasy pan that had been sitting on the stovetop.
“Put the pan down,” I warned him, “unless you want me to break those fingers too.”
“Fuck,” he muttered as he set the pan down and backed toward the door.
John stood, clutching his balls in one hand, and tried to swing at me once more. This time I didn’t use the club. Instead, I hit him with an uppercut that sent him sailing onto the dining room table. With him lying there on his back, I walked over to him and punched him once more in the mouth. He was barely conscious at this point.
Grabbing hold of his shirt collar I said, “I hope you’re awake enough to hear this and understand it. You won. She chose you. I backed away. But that wasn’t good enough, was it?” With that, I pulled the gun from my hip and shoved it into his mouth. “You might think you’re from a world of tough guys but let me tell you something. I don’t fly planes. I don’t follow commands or obey orders. I don’t have to go get my gun from a fucking armory and account for every bullet spent, and the only thing stopping me from putting a bullet down your throat is the kid upstairs… the one who came from my fuckin’ balls you sorry sack of shit.”
“Please, don’t shoot him,” the guy with the broken hand said.
“I could have my buddies bury you all where nobody would ever find you,” I hissed. “You ever strike a Royal Bastard again, that’s where you’ll end up.”
John’s two friends looked past me at something. My heart dropped as I realized what it was.
“Daddy!” the sweet child’s voice was like a sucker punch to my gut.
Wheeling around, I saw Caleb standing behind his mom. She was holding him back with one hand. From where he stood, and with the position of my body, I was lucky he couldn’t see the gun, but he did see a wild, dangerous man threatening his father. The man he thought was his daddy.
“Tayla,” I said, “you were supposed to keep him upstairs.”
John’s friends helped him up.
“I want you out of my house,” John said to Tayla as he limped toward the door. “When I get back, you better be gone. And you better take that little shit with you.”
This son of a bitch was calling my son a little shit. The boy who’d just been concerned about him. I wanted to kill him. His friends seemed to sense that and rushed him out the door, slamming it behind them.
“Caleb, come here,” I said as I turned toward my son.
“No!” he screamed. “Mommy, keep him away!”
The boy turned and ran upstairs to his bedroom. His door slammed on the second floor.
“I should go—” Tayla started.
“No, let me,” I insisted.
“He’s afraid of you.”
“Of course, he is. He was taught I was some strange uncle who brings him gifts and now beats up his dad.”
“Pipe.”
“Let me talk to him.”
I wasn’t waiting for her permission. She’d already fucked up my relationship with the boy enough. It was up to me to salvage it.
At the top of the stairs, I saw
Myra standing in her doorway looking afraid. She must have heard all the commotion downstairs and didn’t understand what was going on.
“Come here, baby girl,” I said as I approached her.
She wasn’t afraid of me. After all, I was the cool uncle who’d given her a pink dinosaur. She held her hands outstretched to me as I walked over to her, so I picked her up and carried her to her bed. “Did you brush your teeth?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“Well, we’re gonna need to get those teeth brushed, kiddo,” I said. “Your aunt is coming to pick you up.”
“Auntie Jamie?”
“Aunt Jamie, that’s right.”
“Yay!”
“Can you do me a favor and hang out in your room and play with your toys while I talk to your brother?”
She nodded.
“Good. Find your favorite toys, the ones you’d want to take to Aunt Jamie’s house, okay?”
She nodded again.
I rapped softly on Caleb’s bedroom door.
“Who is it?” he called from the other side.
“It’s Uncle Pipe.”
“Go away.”
“Can I talk to you first?”
“You’re scary.”
“Sometimes,” I admitted, “but I’d never do anything to hurt you, your sister, or your momma. I’m only scary to the people who try to hurt you.”
I tried the knob, and the door was unlocked, so I entered. Caleb was sitting on his bed, his back against the wall, with his knees tucked up under his chin. His adorable button nose and cheeks were wet with tears. He wiped his hand across his nose as I sat down on the edge of his bed.
“Listen, what you saw downstairs, that was only adults getting rowdy. You fight with your sister sometimes, right?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Sure, you do. Your mom told me about it. She wanted to play with one of your toys and you were playing with it already, so you started yelling at her and tried to take it away.”
He laughed. “Yeah.”
“Well, your dad was kind of playing with one of my toys, and I wanted it, so I tried to take it away.”
He looked up at me and didn’t seem to understand.
“My daddy plays with toys?”
It was my turn to laugh. “Yeah, something like that.”
Maybe I explained it wrong. Maybe I was the one who’d played with one of his dad’s toys, and he wanted it back. Tayla was his long before she was mine.
“You know,” I told him, “you have to remember to be nice with people and things. Don’t hurt them. Don’t break them.”
“But you were hurting my daddy.”
“You’ll understand when you get older, buddy, but I was only doing what I thought was right.”
“I don’t get it.”
“I don’t suppose you would. Just trust me on this one, Caleb. Things aren’t always the way they look, okay? Your Uncle Pipe is one of the good guys and I’m only trying to protect you.”
“Protect me from what?”
I stood and walked to his window where I peered down at the street.
“Anything and everything that would try to hurt you,” I said.
“But nobody tries to hurt me.”
I looked over at him and smiled. “That’s good, pal. Nobody ever should.”
When I returned to my view outside the window, I saw the black limo parked at the curb outside the house. Chills ran from my feet all the way up my back, stiffened it, and then crept into my shoulder blades and up through my head. The car’s back window was rolled down slightly, and I swore I saw a cold, grey hand reach through it, its fingernails tapping against the glass, one finger at a time in a rolling motion, the way someone does when he or she is waiting for something.
“Come here for a second, kid,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Come here.”
I didn’t take my eyes off the car, but I could hear Caleb’s feet padding across the carpet. He was barely tall enough to see out the bottom portion of the window. I considered picking him up, but I didn’t want the people in the car to see him.
“Can you see outside the window?” I asked him.
“Yes.”
“What do you see?”
“Stars.”
“Down at the street. Do you see that car parked out there?”
“Yes, I see a car.”
“What color is it?”
“Black.”
“Stay up here,” I said as I stomped down the stairs and headed for the door.
I didn’t need my damn club for this one. My gun would do.
“Is he okay?” Tayla asked, but I paid her little attention as I made my way out the front door and ran right into who I guessed was Aunt Jamie.
The brunette with chin-length hair whooped and jumped out of my way, frightened by the scary biker storming out of the house. I was ready to shoot holes through the windows of that black limo, but it was gone. Where it had been parked a minute before was nothing but empty curb.
“Tayla?” I heard Aunt Jamie call out behind me.
“Jamie,” Tayla said. “Pipe?”
“This is Pipe?” Jamie asked.
I turned back to them and Aunt Jamie checked me out. Her smile was wide.
“Wow,” she said.
“What is it?” Tayla asked.
“Nothing, I thought I saw something out here.”
“You saw me,” Jamie joked, “and I saw you.”
She was a flirtatious one. She must not have heard the whole story between Tayla and me, or she had and didn’t care.
“Guess I better pick up the kiddos,” Jamie said as she walked into the house. “Oh, children, your great and powerful aunt is here,” she sang.
Alone outside the front door, Tayla hugged me tightly and put her head against my chest. “What is it? What did you see?”
“Nothing, really. It’s nothing.”
She didn’t buy it, but she let it go for now.
Aunt Jamie had the kids packed and out the door in a matter of minutes. Caleb and Myra hugged their mother and waved goodbye to me.
Tayla and I were alone together for the first time since the last time we’d had sex. I remembered that night vividly. We’d gone to a hotel with the understanding that it would be our last time. She was going to be faithful to Captain John, but she needed to get me out of her system. She got me out of her system the next morning too. Then, as she’d sworn to do, she forgot about us completely. We only met so I could see Caleb.
Now, here we were.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I can’t stay here. If he comes back and I’m here…”
“Come with me to the MC.”
“Pipe, if I go with you there, everyone in that place is going to know about us.”
“Let them know. BP already does.”
“What? Are you crazy?”
“I didn’t tell him. I guess he followed us once or twice.”
“Stalker much?”
“Definitely a stalker. Look, I don’t really care if the guys know anymore. It’s not like they’re your husband’s buddies.”
“No, but they’re my dad’s buddies.”
“They’re more loyal to me. Do you trust me?”
“This is fucking crazy,” she said under her breath as she rested her forehead against my chest.
13
When I parked my Harley out in front of the clubhouse, Tayla squeezed me tightly from behind.
“Are you sure we have to go in there?” she asked. “I’m married, Pipe. They’re gonna think I’m some kind of tramp.”
“The truth of it? Yeah, they’re gonna think I’m fucking the wife of an Air Force guy, Cubby’s daughter, but they also know more than most people that we’re all human. We’ve got needs. If they think I have the need to fuck you and you’ve got the need to fuck me, then they’ll be all for it.”
“They’ll think I’m a tramp,” she repeated and nodded. “OK, let’s go
on in then.”
As she climbed off the bike, she grabbed my arm and stopped me, turning me around to face her. “One more thing,” she said. “Do you have the need to fuck me?”
It caught me off guard and I laughed. “What?”
“You said if they think we have the need to fuck each other they’d be okay with it. Do we have the need to fuck each other?”
“I don’t know. Do we?”
She rolled her eyes and grinned.
“Too soon?” I asked.
“You mean an hour after you and my husband got into a fight in the kitchen soon? I don’t know. Maybe.”
She winked at me before leading the way into the clubhouse, and I was so tempted to grab the pockets at the back of her jeans and yank her to me. Once again, I found myself wrestling with my wants, needs, and know betters. As I told her a couple of weeks back, at the park, this was going to end badly. She’d already fucked with my heart once. If this was handled messily, it would hurt Caleb and Myra too.
Before the door was even open, I could hear the music blasting on the other side. The Smashing Pumpkins’ ‘Zero’ set the party mood and I couldn’t help thinking how fitting the song was. Here I was struggling with knowing everything about this situation was wrong, but at the same time, I wanted so badly for Tayla to go for a ride.
She pushed through the door and we were instantly greeted by dull light and cigarette smoke. The music was up loud and the first thing I saw as we entered was Pinky dancing to it on top of one of the pool tables. She guzzled from the beer in her hand and did a double take as she saw me enter with Tayla.
Clad in tight jeans and a blue Tennessee Titans sweatshirt, Tayla was still the hottest thing in the MC, even with her blonde hair in a ponytail and her face barely made up. Captain John was an idiot for throwing this one away.
Fucking hell. You know you want her. Take her. It wouldn’t be the first time.
“Hey gorgeous,” Oosik said as he passed by Tayla and scooped Pinky up off the pool table.
A few of the guys would recognize her from the rare occasion she’d stop by Cubby’s VFW to have a beer and chat with her dad.
“You chickening out on me, Oosik?” Rain’s woman, Cassie, called from the living room area twenty yards away. She held a hatchet in her hands and was trying to get the big man to throw with her. She was good with those hatchets.