“Hey, you! Let me run and change really quick, I spilled OJ on myself.” Remi ran into the living room to pull out one of the books I kept in a basket for her, and Steph went to sit on the couch with Wyatt. Scanning around outside briefly before I closed and locked the front door didn’t make me feel any better.
I changed quickly into some yoga pants and a tank top and headed back out to join my friend. Since coming home, none of my pants wanted to fit comfortably. Go figure. Time to go shopping, it would appear. Yeah, not looking forward to that.
As I settled in to the couch and held my arms out to a drooling, grinning Wyatt, Steph sat frowning at me. Wyatt was slapping my face and pulling my hair as I looked at her and questioned, “What?” His little chubby knee caught my ribs, and I winced at the brief sharp pain. Damn, were they ever going to heal?
“Your door was locked. Becca, your door is never locked. Hollywood said you also haven’t been sleeping well.” Steph’s expression wavered between concern and confusion as she sat with her arms crossed, impatiently waiting for my response. I had been able to put off anyone visiting since I came home by saying I was still so tired, but it was really because I just wasn’t ready to talk to anyone. It was bad enough I had to tell some of the club members everything I remembered about my abduction.
“Yeah, well, he talks too much. Besides, I now have reason to ensure my home is secure. Complacency is what got me abducted in the first place. I’m just being careful.” I tried desperately to maintain a tone of practicality. I didn’t want to admit to Steph that I was scared shitless to leave my home or to be home alone.
“Becca, do you forget who my husband is? Do you forget who your man is? Do you think Hollywood can’t spot how you’re feeling? Maybe you need to talk to him. You can’t stay holed up in here forever.”
There wasn’t anything wrong with me other than I was a little more nervous than usual. It was pissing me off that it seemed everyone was making more out of this than there really was. I was understandably upset, that was all there was to it. Time was all I needed to just get over it all.
“It’s only been a few days since I came home, but okay, Steph. No problem. I’ll talk to him tonight, if it makes you feel better, okay?” A subject change was in order. “So… we’re having a boy.” I couldn’t hold back my smile. I had wanted to wait to share the news with everyone until I was able to talk with my parents, but I really needed to tell someone, besides Steph was my best friend. Not to mention, I hadn’t had the courage to call my parents and tell them. The way my mom acted about Steph marrying Reaper, I knew she was going to flip a lid when she found out I was pregnant with a “biker’s” baby.
Top it off with us not being married, and that was a recipe for a disastrous conversation with my mother. I also hadn’t wanted to call after what had happened to me because it made me feel like they would just know, and I didn’t want to talk about it. With anyone. Not even Mason, even though I had just promised Steph I would. And especially with a counselor like Mason, Reaper, and Steph thought I needed to.
“What? Oh my gosh! I wanted to be in there, but I knew it was a time for the two of you. I’m so happy for you! Oh! I can save Wyatt’s things for you! Unless, of course, you want to get all new. I mean, it is your first child, so I would totally understand if you don’t want to use hand-me-downs.” At the mention of his name, little Wyatt leaning toward his mom, so I handed him back into her waiting arms. He proceeded to snuggle into her shoulder and chew on his hand, drool running across his fist and down his arm.
“Jesus, Steph… I wasn’t raised to be a snob. I’m not above accepting hand-me-downs for this little guy.” I grabbed a tissue from the side table and wiped up Wyatt’s drool. My hand palmed my belly where my little peanut was safely nestled. Right at that moment, the wiggly goldfish feeling fluttered through me. My laughter bubbled out as my eyes met Steph’s.
“He’s moving?” Steph looked at me with her puppy-dog, yearning eyes and I knew she was remembering this feeling.
“Yeah, he is. I can’t wait until I can feel him kicking from the outside. I want to be able to share it with Mason. We’ve talked a little about what happened that night before… well, you know… and I believe he wasn’t doing anything, but I’m still upset that he didn’t just tell me what was going on so I didn’t feel the need to follow him. Our relationship’s a little precarious, at best, right now. It feels like we have pretty much called a truce for the baby’s sake. I want so bad to believe he loves me and wants a life with me, but he seems content to just let things roll along like they are. It’s so frustrating.” Dang, it was good to have my best friend here to discuss all the crap that had been rolling around in my head since coming home from the hospital. Despite feeling I just needed time, and maybe I did, it was nice to unload a little.
“Good God almighty, that man is insanely crazy for you. I honestly never thought I would see him settle down with one woman, but I’m happy to see he has, and I’m ecstatic that it’s with my best friend, especially considering how close he and Reaper are. It makes it feel like we are truly family now. For a while, I was really getting worried that he would die of some rare venereal disease before he ever settled down!”
Wow. She got my best “did you really just fucking say that?” expression.
“Ummm, well, you know what I mean.” Steph’s face went beet red at the realization of her comments. “But for real, Bec, he loves you. A man doesn’t buy a house like this and move his girl in without having some deep feelings. Not to mention, he never left your side the whole time you were in the hospital.”
“I know, and I keep trying to tell myself all that. He has told me over and over how much he loves me, and I know he was there in the hospital, but what if it’s all just guilt?” Self-doubt was eating me up. The hundreds of what-ifs that bombarded me were tearing at my confidence in our relationship.
“There’s no way that it’s just guilt. No. Way. You need to stop worrying about all this so much. It’s not good for the baby, honey. What do you say we take these two monsters and grab a nice relaxing lunch? Well, as relaxing as it can be with a toddler and a baby. We can go to the Oasis and have something from my new lunch menu…” Steph had bought the Oasis from one of the old ladies in the MC when her husband entered into “retired” status with the MC and they decided to do some traveling. After Wyatt, Steph had hired a manager to take on the brunt of the work, leaving her to have more time with the children. She still created the menus and even cooked some days when the itch to be a chef again struck her.
“Actually, I’m really tired and thought I would take a nap. Maybe next time. Raincheck?” The thought of going out in public had my heart racing, and I grabbed my hair, pulling it into a ponytail to hide the shaking of my hands. “Little Mason must be pushing on my bladder because I really need to pee too. I’m sorry, hon.”
Steph looked crestfallen that I didn’t want to go with her, and I felt bad, but the thought of leaving the safety of my home was worse.
“Then I’ll just stay here and make us all lunch! You can nap afterward. After all, you need to feed that little guy.” Steph popped up from the couch after pointing at my tiny baby bump and placed Wyatt on a blanket on the floor. She set up a little mobile play thing to keep him occupied and stimulated and went to rummage through my pantry and cupboards in search of her latest culinary masterpiece. Of course, the woman could make an award-winning dish with cardboard and bread, so I wasn’t too worried about if I had everything she needed.
“I’ll be right back.” Hastily, I made my exit to the bathroom as I felt my anxiety level increasing, and I was afraid it would develop into a full-blown panic attack in front of Steph and the babies. My back slammed into the back of my bathroom door as I closed it, and I covered my mouth and nose with my cupped hands in an attempt to calm my breathing before I hyperventilated. Tears formed in my eyes, and it felt like I was going to literally fall apart. My body shook from head to toe, and I wondered how I was going to main
tain in front of everyone for much longer.
“HEY, REAPER, BRO, DO you have a minute?” Things with Becca had been tense since she came home from the hospital. I was doing my best to remain calm and act like life was normal, but deep inside I knew things were unraveling with her, and if she didn’t get some help, it was going to cripple our relationship. I couldn’t help but think of how Reaper and I handled shit at first, and I didn’t want to see Becca fall into that same rut, especially with our baby growing in her. She was already barely holding everything together, and I knew it was a matter of time before she couldn’t keep everything buried. Of course, every time I mentioned her talking to someone, she got pissed at me.
“Yeah, bro, what’s up?” Reaper wiped his hands on a shop rag and walked toward the cooler for a bottle of water. I grabbed a bottle of water as well and cracked open the lid, taking a long chug of the ice-cold liquid. Leaning against the tool bench along the wall, he drank his water and waited for me to talk.
“Shit, Reaper, I’m really worried about Becca. She’s not dealing well, but she keeps trying to act like there’s nothing wrong, like I can’t spot that shit. We both know she’s not okay, but she refuses to talk to anyone. She’s carrying my baby, bro, and I know this can’t be good for him. Besides how much she means to me, if anything happened to that baby, I don’t know what the fuck I would do. How does a baby I haven’t even seen yet have me so protective and overwhelmed with love for it? It’s got me feeling like an emotional wreck, like I’m growing a fucking vagina, for fuck’s sake!” Setting the bottle down on the bench, I ran my hands through my short hair in frustration.
“Hollywood, bro, trust me, those little munchkins weave a spell around you as soon as you know they’re coming. I don’t know how or why, but they sure as hell do. Has she talked to her family yet? Maybe talking to them will help her work through some of this. If nothing else, planning for the baby with them may help preoccupy her mind. And whoa, hold up! Did you say ‘him’? Did y’all find out it was a boy and you didn’t tell me? Hell, Wyatt and your little guy running around this town together? It may not survive them! Shit, we may not survive the two of them together!”
I couldn’t help but laugh at the visual of our two boys as teenagers.
“Yeah, they’ll be hell on wheels, and no, she refuses to call her mom or dad yet, because she doesn’t want them to know about the kidnapping and assault. You know I get that, but I don’t think it’s healthy either, bro. Not only that, but I feel like she doesn’t want them to know about us, like she’s ashamed of us.” That last was what cut the deepest, and saying it out loud hurt even more. My feelings had never been so deep for another woman in my entire life. Honestly, I didn’t want that before Becca, which was part of the reason I was a love ’em and leave ’em kind of guy. The doubt wasn’t in whether she loved me back, but whether she was proud to love me. Yeah, serious vagina growth going on here. Fuck.
“Hey, fucker, don’t say shit like that. I highly doubt she’s ashamed of you, but you have to admit, she has faced a lot of crazy shit since she got here. I can see why she wouldn’t want to tell her parents everything and risk having them think she made a bad choice in coming up here, but I don’t think that involves the choice she made with you. That woman is crazy about you, bro. Trust me. All I fuckin’ hear from Steph is how Becca ‘gushes’ over you.” I couldn’t help but laugh at seeing Reaper roll his eyes and make the quote signs with his fingers as he said the word “gushes.”
My humor was short-lived, however, because reality crashed down on me, and I still couldn’t help but feel like she was ashamed of me. Part of me, with the heart of stone, said fuck her if she was ashamed of me. The other part of me ached at the thought that maybe I really wasn’t good enough for her. No matter how I tried to be the happy-go-lucky guy everyone thought I was, I knew I was still broken inside. Sometimes, I was still seriously fucked up in my head—I was just good at keeping it buried deep.
“She was supposed to go back to work this Monday, but she called her boss and told him that she was taking an unpaid leave of absence due to ‘issues with her pregnancy.’ She couldn’t understand why that pissed me off. That’s like inviting bad juju and shit, for one. For the other, I know how much she loves her students, and I think it would have been good for her to be around them again.” I finished off the last of my bottle of water, which had started to grow warm. As I pushed off from leaning on the tool bench, I crushed the water bottle, screwed the lid back on, and tossed it into the nearby recycle bin.
“Steph said she was heading over to y’all’s house today to drag Becca out for lunch. Hopefully, she was able to talk to her. When Steph went through her shit, her counselor was great. Maybe she can get Becca to make an appointment with her.”
Steph had been stalked, kidnapped, and tortured by her ex-boyfriend before Reaper had been able to rescue her. It was a tough time for them, but she had made it through with the love, help, and support of Reaper and her family.
“Maybe you could ask her to bring it up if she wasn’t able to today. Anyway, thanks for listening to me bitch, Reaper. I think I’m going to clean up my area and call it a day. I’m going to go home and talk to Becca. Maybe I can get somewhere with her. If nothing else, I can make sure she knows I’m here for her.” I wasn’t going to lose her. No fucking way. The problem was, I could feel her slipping away from me little by little.
Hacker entered the garage, making a beeline for us. My chin tipped up in acknowledgement.
“What’s up, bro?” Reaper greeted him.
“You got a minute, Hollywood?” The grim expression on his face had me curious, and my senses were pinging.
“Yeah, sure. Talk to me while I clean up?” At his affirmative nod, I began to put my tools and supplies away.
“Remember when you asked me to look into those pictures and shit that were posted on Becca’s school back in Council Bluffs?” I nodded. “Well, I figured out where it all originated.”
That had me stopped in my tracks. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. It was her piece-of-shit ex. He e-mailed the pics on her laptop to himself, and even though he deleted the e-mails from her computer, he didn’t count on me. He’s pretty good at hacking into simple stuff like social media sites, but he’s got nothing on me. The dumb shit left a trail a mile long leading right to his digital door.” That had him grinning. “Found e-mails he had with another computer geek about how he was sure it would make her go running back to him.”
“Oh really? So maybe we need to return the favor to him? Just don’t ruin him too bad—after all, his actions brought her to me. And you’re a computer geek your damn self!” I laughed.
“No. I prefer computer genius. Do I look like a geek to you?” He held his tatted arms out to his sides, and I had to admit he was a buff motherfucker and about the furthest thing from a geek as there was. Laughing again, I shook my head at him and pitched a cleaning rag his way.
“You definitely don’t fit the stereotype, bro,” I agreed. My grin lasted until he gave me a mock salute and headed back toward his room.
That piece-of-shit asshole, Trevor, pissed me off because he hurt Becca, and for that I wanted to dot his eye, but I couldn’t hate him because he unwittingly chased her into my arms instead of his. Between the number he pulled on her and the shit she had gone through thanks to the fucking Demon Runners, my baby was broken. Maybe I couldn’t completely fix myself, but I would do everything in my power to fix her.
“Daddy!” My heart gave the same familiar lurch when Reaper’s little girl, Remi, came running in with pigtails flying. Her little red converse shoes patted on the floor as she barreled into him. He scooped her up and spun her giggling bunch of preciousness in circles before plating a big kiss on her cheek. Her little arms wrapped tight around his neck as he stood next to me watching Steph approach him holding their stout little chunker, Wyatt. He had her blonde hair clenched tight in both chubby fists trying to shove it in his mouth despite Steph working diligently t
o get it loose of his grip.
God, I wanted that someday. Now it would seem it was becoming a reality. That was if I could get Bec through all this shit. Fuck, I was worried about her.
“Hey, beautiful. You see Becca today?” I kissed her on the cheek, earning a growl from Reaper. Laughing, I took Wyatt from her arms. I loved fucking with Reaper’s possessive ass, especially since we both knew it was in fun and there were no worries.
“Yeah, hon. The kiddos and I had lunch with her. She seems to be doing okay, but she still seems a little… off. I tried to convince her to talk with my therapist, but I don’t know how successful I was. Maybe mention it to her when you get home.” Nodding, I kissed little Wyatt on his cheek and handed him back to his momma. Lastly, I patted Reaper on the shoulder, and he gave me a hug.
“Thanks, babe. I gotta finish cleaning up so I can get out of here. Talk to you guys later.”
After everything was in its place, I walked out to my bike. Tossing a wave to Reaper, Steph, and some of the other guys who were heading out or into the back toward the clubhouse, I shrugged on my cut, straddled my ride, and started her up. Her rumble briefly soothed my soul, and I closed my eyes for a second to just simply feel before I revved the throttle, nodded my chin to the guys, and peeled out of the lot.
The ride home was short, but hell if I didn’t still enjoy it. I shut off my stereo and let the wind, the hum of the tires on the asphalt, and the throaty rumble of my pipes all converge into my perfect form of meditation. The phrase “wind therapy” was not an incorrect rationalization for the feeling riding gave me.
As I pulled into the driveway, I stopped at the entrance for a moment to absorb the view of the house I had bought for Becca, our home. The love I felt for her rushed over me, and I knew I needed to get her to agree to seeking help so we could move forward for our baby boy.
After taking a fortifying breath, I glided up in front of the garage and came to a stop, pushed the kickstand down, turned the front wheel, and shut my bike off. The ticking of the motor followed me as I walked up the porch steps.
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