He’d gone pale, and then his cheeks reddened. “You think she’s not happy?” She heard the shock and worry in the words.
Grabbing his hand, Bibi gave him a strong, reassuring squeeze. “I know for a fact that she’s happy. She loves this life like you do. I know that, because I see it. And she says it. But it sounds like you’re pushin’ for more, and you’re makin’ her deny you somethin’ you want. She loves you, Deme. It hurts to say no to somebody you love. And it hurts even more when that person you love isn’t hearin’ what you need.”
“Fuck. I’m an asshole.”
She laughed and kissed his cheek. “I think you fix this by sayin’ you’re sorry and listenin’ to what she has to say.”
Demon grabbed her and pulled her tightly into his arms again. “I love you, Mama.”
“Oh, baby. I love you, too. I love you so.”
~oOo~
Bibi sat in the same fucking uncomfortable chair she’d been sitting in nearly every day since January.
The ground she’d been so sure Hoosier had made was lost. All of it, as far as she could tell. Since that day in the therapy room, when he’d hit his therapist and then begun to hit himself, trying to hit his fragile, broken head, he’d been sedated into a state she thought of as a waking coma. He simply lay there, blinking. Wearing the absurd helmet that he had to wear during therapy.
When they let the meds wear off, he got agitated again. They’d done some tests, and Dr. Philpott had sat her down and talked a bunch of big, cold words at her, all of which came down to one bleak, frozen fact: her man was lost to her. He was “degrading,” or some such bullshit like that.
Philpott wanted to schedule the surgery to put Hoosier’s skull back together, even though he hadn’t made the ‘cognitive progress’ he needed. But those hours under anesthesia could take him away forever.
She’d asked for more time.
Sitting at Hoosier’s bedside, alone while he lay in the bed next to her, Bibi wondered if there were time enough.
Once, she’d thought their time together seemed infinite. Hoosier, though—he never had. For more than forty years, he’d loved her every day like he could lose it all the next.
The biggest fight they’d ever had had been about time. It had not been much different from the fight Demon and Faith had just had, in fact.
~oOo~
Bibi heard the water turn off in the shower as she put the macaroni and cheese in the oven and set the timer. When Hoosier came home from a long run, he wanted comfort food. So she was making one of his favorite meals: pan-fried chicken, homemade mac-n-cheese, and okra. He’d never had okra until she’d first made it for him, sautéing it with onions and cashews. Now it was his favorite vegetable.
He didn’t do club runs often. The Desert Blades served as support for a much bigger, badder MC. After two years of marriage, she had more or less figured out the workings of his world. She knew that he was a full-time mechanic and a part-time outlaw. Usually, he and his brothers were errand boys. But every now and then, maybe once in a couple of months, they were needed for darker work.
For the most part, Bibi had learned to fill in Hoosier’s blanks. He didn’t like to talk about what he did for ‘the club.’ None of his ‘brothers’ had old ladies, so there was no one to give her the scoop. She stayed clear of the clubhouse, and she relied on her smarts to piece together a whole picture from the scraps of images in Hoosier’s words.
Or she’d just sit back and listen when Blue came over and the two of them got skunked.
So she knew that her husband and his best friend had killed. That knowledge had been difficult to assimilate, but she’d made herself right with it, letting what she knew of her man shape the knowledge into a certainty that he would not have killed unnecessarily.
She knew when he went on a job like the one he’d just gotten back from, that he’d been in danger, and that he’d been a danger to somebody else. And she was learning how to make herself ready for all the things that could mean.
He came up behind her now and put his arms around her waist as she stood at the stove frying up his dinner. He was still warm and damp from his shower, and she could feel that he had barely dressed. Nothing but jeans, under which she could feel his hard cock, pressing into her back and ass. They’d already fucked hard; it was usually the first thing he wanted to do when he got back from a run.
This time, he’d come back with a track of badly-done stitches across his right arm. All he’d said about it was that it was a “work-related injury.”
“Hooj, c’mon. You’re gonna get us both splattered with hot oil here.”
He moved her hair out of the way and nuzzled her neck, while he pushed a hand into her shorts and between her legs. “I need you again, Cheeks. I can’t get enough of you.”
“What happened this time? You’re so intense.”
“Shut up, Beebs. Just let me fuck you. I want to put you on the counter and fuck you raw.”
When his fingers flicked sharply over her clit, she whimpered and turned off the burner.
At her surrender, he chuckled and spun her around, then tugged her shorts and panties off and down until gravity took over, and they fell to the floor. He picked her up and sat her on the counter, right in the middle of the flour mess from the chicken breading.
She leaned forward, seeking his mouth, but instead he framed her face with his hands and held her off. “I want a baby.”
“Don’t, Hooj. Not now.” They’d been married two years. For the last year, he’d been bringing that up with increasing frequency.
But she was twenty-two years old. She was trying to get a little business off the ground doing wedding and prom makeup. She was married to an outlaw biker and had no real friends. She hadn’t seen Gina or any of her old crowd in almost two years.
And she still hadn’t figured herself out. She was nowhere near ready to be responsible for the shaping of another human being. She needed to get herself in shape first.
“Yes, now. Get off those goddamn pills, Beebs. I need this. Let me put my baby in you. I don’t ask for much. Give me this.”
At that, she laughed bitterly and pushed him back. Jumping down from the counter, she bent to grab her clothes off the floor, but he took her arm and hauled her back up before she could.
“Don’t laugh at me. You’re my wife. Mine. I want a family with you.” He pulled sharply on her shirt. It was a rayon pullover with a deep ‘V’ front and back, so it fell easily off her shoulder. Then he hooked his hand over her shoulder and pushed his thumb into his name, inked in script just under her collarbone.
Wrenching her arm but unable to get free of his grip, she stopped pulling and glared at him. “The first night we met, you told me you wouldn’t ever hurt me. The night you proposed, you swore it. You plannin’ on breakin’ that vow now?”
He eased up and let her go. “Goddammit, Beebs. How long’re you gonna make me fucking wait?”
“I thought we were forever, Hooj. There a time limit on us all of a sudden? I’m twenty-two. We got time for all that.”
“I’m not twenty-two.”
“Thirty-three. Big whoop. You’re not the one who’s gotta bake the kid, anyway. I need time.”
He turned and took his Jameson down from the cabinet next to the fridge, then grabbed a glass from the drainer. When he’d poured until the glass was nearly full, he set the open bottle on the counter and drank the glass down. “How much time?”
“Jesus! I don’t know. You told me you’d stay outta my way while I figured out what I wanted. Who I was. I’m just startin’ to do that.”
“Putting makeup on rich little princesses? You’d rather do that than raise our kids? How’s that better? Seems to me you were doing the same thing when I met you. You just don’t look like a Barnum & Bailey reject yourself now.”
“Well, that was a shitty thing to say.”
Instead of replying, he turned and filled his glass again.
She let his nasty dig about her punk phas
e fall to the wayside and focused on the much more important thing. “But you’re makin’ my point. I’m just startin’ to figure it out, and I ain’t gone far yet. Hooj, you married me, took me away from the people I knew, stuck me halfway in your life and halfway out, and you left me to try to figure out what that life even was, ‘cuz you won’t say. Now I’m married to a man who comes home with stitches no doctor made, with blood on his boots, and I guess I’m not s’posed to notice. I got no friends. There’s no women around like me that I can see, so I got nobody who’ll tell me what the fuck I’m s’posed to do. So I’m figurin’ it out on my own.”
His brows drew in and his eyes went dark, and Bibi felt a thrill of anxiety tighten her spine. He was furious. “You saying you’re sorry you married me?”
“God! You’re so damn thick sometimes! No! I love you! But I need time—that’s what I’m sayin’. I’m not gonna want kids until I feel like I understand me, and I understand our life. And we’re settled in some way.”
“How long?”
“I got no idea, Hooj. As long as it takes. I need you to be okay with that. You say it’s all you’re askin’ for, but it’s not. You ask for shit every day. You ask me to trust you, when half your life is a mystery to me. And I do. You ask me not to ask questions when you come home bloody. And this thing—havin’ kids? You’re askin’ me to be nothin’ but a wife and mother when I don’t know yet if that’ll be enough. You told me to figure out what I want for me, and I never thought about it before. Now you’re askin’ me to hand myself right over before I figured it out. It ain’t fair.”
“I want a family with you. I need it.”
“You’re askin’ for the world, Hooj. I need some time to put that together. Can you give me time?”
He dropped his glass in the sink and walked out of the room without answering. A few minutes later, she heard the front door open and slam shut. He’d left the house.
Bibi spent the next few hours crying and wondering if her life had fallen into shambles again after all.
~oOo~
When he came back, she was surprised that he was sober. She’d been sitting in the living room, staring without focus at the television. He walked in and turned it off, then leaned back on the wood frame of the console set.
“I love you.”
She smiled at him, trying to convey as much love and trust and hope as she could in that upturn of her mouth. “I love you better.”
It had become affectionate, sweetly teasing habit between them, that the person who said it second added ‘better’ to the sentiment. Hearing her now, Hoosier almost smiled himself.
“It’s not about what I do? Who I am?”
She understood him right off. “No, Hooj. It’s not about that. You’re a good man, and I know you’ll be a good father. I don’t know if I can be a good mother, though. Not yet.”
“You can be, Beebs. You’ll be fantastic.”
“I need to know it for myself. Inside. Give me time to know it.”
He sighed and dropped his head. “Okay, baby. Okay.”
~oOo~
“Hey, Mom.” Connor came into the room and closed the door.
“Hi, honey.” She moved to stand, but he laid his hand on her shoulder.
“No, sit.” He kissed her cheek and then frowned over at his father, who was sleeping. Or just had his eyes closed. Not moving, either way. “No better?”
“No,” she sighed. “I think he might really be gone now.”
“Don’t say that. It’s not true. He’s just going through a bad patch.”
“Connor…”
“No, Mom. Don’t you give up. He was doing better. This is just a bad patch. He needs some time, that’s all.”
How much time was left to them?
She reached out and grabbed her son’s hand, strong and hard like his father’s. “Okay, honey. Okay.”
SEVEN
Connor had been right. Another set of scans had revealed a minuscule bleed in Hoosier’s brain, so small that they hadn’t been able to detect it right away. His agitation had most likely been due to pain. Pain he hadn’t been able to communicate.
They’d taken him to the hospital that very day. Dr. Philpott had repaired the bleed and restored Hoosier’s skull.
And now, again, they were waiting. Waiting for Hoosier to wake, waiting to see if there was anything left behind his eyes. Bibi was exhausted.
The hospital was full of Horde, and Connor and Bart had all but physically shoved her out of the room on the third day, demanding that she get some rest, some decent food, a shower. Demon had taken her home.
She’d showered, and she’d picked at dinner. As for sleep? No. Maybe she’d dozed a few minutes here and there, but otherwise, her head had been full of all the memories she’d been reliving with Hoosier for nearly two months. She wanted the chance to make more.
And sweet Lord, she wanted to hear him again tell her he loved her.
The next morning, she refueled with coffee, and Demon took charge of the kids so Faith could drive her to the hospital. They rode most of the way in silence. When Faith pulled off the freeway and stopped at the bottom of the ramp, Bibi reached out and laid her hand on Faith’s arm.
“Turn right, honey.”
“What?”
“I want to see your mama first.”
Faith blanched. “Bibi, no. You know I need to get my head straight before I see her. I can’t today.” Margot almost never remembered anymore that she had two daughters. In some ways, that was a blessing for her and Faith both. But Faith still hurt over so much. Bibi understood how difficult it was.
“I know. I just need to sit with my friend for a minute before I go back to the hospital. Drop me, and I’ll call a cab when I’m ready to go.”
Faith turned right and headed to the San Gabriel Center. “Connor would kill me if I just ‘dropped you.’ I’ll hang out in the lobby and wait for you. It’ll give me a few minutes to myself, anyway.
“Thank you.”
Faith reached over and gave her hand a squeeze.
~oOo~
“Oh, my God, Beebs! What happened to you? Oh, honey, you’re hurt!”
Margot was having a good day, which meant that she was living in the late Eighties/early Nineties, when they were young and beautiful, and their friendship was new. She rarely remembered any later than the early Nineties any longer, but she increasingly lived in the world of her childhood and didn’t remember Bibi at all. More and more, Margot was just a confused little girl.
When she remembered Bibi, she always expressed shock at her appearance. Bibi was in her sixties. Margot remembered her in her twenties. “I’m just tired, Margie.” She brushed her hand over the burn scars on her arm and up to her neck. They could have been much worse—Hoosier’s were much worse—but the skin had come back discolored, looking like the scars they were. “And this ain’t nothin’. Don’t hurt at all.” She sat down next to the dearest friend she’d ever had. “What you been up to?”
“Oh, you know. Getting the house in order. And Blue’s taking me to San Diego this weekend.”
“Is he now?” Bibi held Margot’s hand and sat back to listen to her story and remember the days when it would have been true.
~oOo~
“Leave it to Blue to get serious with a porn star.” Bibi capped her eyeliner and got up from the antique vanity Hoosier had brought home one day. He was always dragging home oddball gifts like that. This one had been an abomination, covered in about thirty coats of chipped paint, but she’d stripped it and stained it, and now she loved it. It was like something Joan Crawford would have sat at to do her makeup.
As she adjusted the laces on her red leather bustier and then settled her tits to their peak advantage, Hoosier walked up behind her and kissed her bare shoulder. “This is beautiful. But wear a jacket. And be nice. He’s gone for this girl.”
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