by Paula Cox
I step over Trent’s bloodied body and head down the corridor, praying that I wasn’t too late.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Allison
I stare up at Mom and Dad, who for some reason are dressed in long black robes and holding scythes, and they gaze down at me. Their faces are shadowed beneath their heavy, hanging hoods. “We told you,” they say, speaking in complete unison. “We tried to tell you, didn’t we? We tried to tell you to stay at home, be a good girl; get a good job and marry a good man. You could have worked at your father’s accounting company. We are sure he could have secured a position for you there. But no, you wanted a life of adventure, a life spent with dangerous people, trying to help them. Well, this is your reward. Your child is dead. Do you understand? You sweet child is dead. So weep, you pathetic girl, because you have killed your child with your irresponsible behavior.”
“No,” I respond, but now I am falling into a pit and Mom and Dad are growing smaller and smaller above me. I fall for what feels like a long time, and then I roll over and look down: I am falling into a valley, a valley filled with skulls, too-small skulls, skulls and death and pain and—
I wake with a gasp, heart pounding like crazy, and then a strong hand rests against my chest. “It’s okay,” he says, stroking my damp skin. I am in a thin, papery gown, on my back in a clinical-smelling bed. The window to my left is night-black, the fluorescent light causing my head to ache terribly. But there’s something inside of me, some chemical, stopping it from aching too bad. In the reflection of the window, I see us: Rust with his arm in a sling, stiches all over his face, and me in bed, a bandage swaddled over my head.
“Rust,” I say, my voice hoarse. “I—water.”
He nods, goes into the hallway, and returns with a plastic cup of water. He helps me drink it down, and the liquid is like magic, cooling my throat, moistening my lips. “The baby,” I mutter, trying to crane my head to look down, to see if Bump is still there. But I cannot crane my head; it is too painful, and I am too tired. “What happened to the baby?”
“We’re waiting on the results of the scan,” Rust mutters, glancing away from me. “I don’t know …”
At his words, tears begin to slide down my cheeks. Rust pulls up a chair next to me and holds my hand. He doesn’t cry, but I can see in his dark eyes that he is as terrified as me. He clutches my hand tightly with his unharmed hand; the other lies limply. His face is a mass of cuts and bruises, but the swelling has begun to go down. His nose is crooked now, but it gives him character. It’s probably not the first time his nose has been broken, anyway.
I continue to cry for the next few minutes, feeling more powerless than I ever have in my life, even more powerless than I felt when I was tied to the chair. At least then, I could tell myself I had a chance of escape; I could tell myself I could trick him to get out alive. I had some agency. Now, all I can do is lie here and cry. I search my body for aches and pains, but whatever the doctors have given me has made me numb but for the pale throbbing in my head.
“What happened?” I ask after a while, my voice twisted with sobs. “With Trent, I mean.”
“Dead,” Rust says, glancing at the closed door to make sure nobody enters. “The place is being swept clean. Zeke caught a couple of bullets, but he’ll be alright. But yeah, Trent is dead.” He nods down at his hands. His knuckles are bloody, swollen and grazed. “Strange as it is, I don’t feel good about it: Trent’s death, I mean. I feel sick. I feel sick at the whole damn thing. Look at you…and our baby. If I was a mechanic or some shit, this never would’ve happened.”
I shrug, or do the best imitation of a shrug my numb body will allow. I don’t know what to say.
After a while, I say: “The doctor’s taking a long time, isn’t he?”
“It’s only been around forty-five minutes since you were scanned,” Rust says softly. “I know it seems longer.”
“Rust, what if—”
He takes his hand from my hand and places his forefinger against my lips. “Don’t,” he says. “Don’t think on it. Don’t borrow pain from what might happen. It ain’t worth it.”
“You saved me,” I say, kissing his finger.
“Of course I saved you,” Rust replies. “I love you.”
I gasp at the words, and for about ten minutes they just hang there. I look at this man, with his messy hair and his tangled beard, his bloodied knuckles and his black eyes. I remember who he was when we met: a cocky, arrogant, nonchalant biker who stuffed his hands in his pockets and swaggered away from me like I meant nothing. And who he is now…how did this happen? I wonder at the question for a long time, and then it comes to me. Love, family: they are the only things that can turn a man like Rust into a man who gives a damn. I stare at his face, a face that will be scarred once the cuts have healed, and I know that I love him, too. I love him more than I thought I could love.
I tell him as much, and he offers me his old cocky smile, only now it’s hidden within a tangle of beard.
“Oh, I know,” he says.
We share a smile, and then a knock comes at the door. “Doctor,” a man says.
“Come in!” Rust calls.
The doctor is a stern, professional-looking man wearing horn-rimmed glasses with a pinkie ring on the hand which holds the clipboard. His lips are pursed, his eyebrows furrowed. I tell myself he is just a doctor. That is why he looks so stern. I tell myself it has nothing to do with my baby. He comes and stands beside the bed, asking me a few mundane questions, which I answer with mundane responses. And then he says: “The results.”
I hear Rust sit up beside me, and I feel my insides tense.
“I won’t keep you in suspense,” he says, but that seems to me to be exactly what he is doing. He lets out a sigh, and then flicks to another page in the clipboard. I want to scream at him to hurry up, convinced that he is delaying because he has bad news to give me. I once again try and look down at my belly, by my head is in too much pain. I grit my teeth.
Finally, Rust says: “Doctor.”
The doctor shakes his head. “Sorry, sorry,” he murmurs. “I’ve been working for eighteen hours straight. It has nothing to do with you…no, no, on the contrary, the test results are very positive.”
Rust and I both deflate, as though all the pain and anger leaves through our mouths at the same instant. At once, I feel tired.
“Your placenta did detach slightly from the heavy blow sustained in the …” The doctor clears his throat, and then goes on: “… in the car accident, but you were very lucky, and with ample bedrest, I have every belief that you will make a full recovery. Of course, you will have to remain here for observation. But the outlook is positive. When you do finally return home, I would suggest that you have your partner wait on you hand and foot .”
“Oh, I think he can manage that,” I say.
Rust grunts playfully.
The doctor lingers, and then glances at Rust, and then down at me. “It is not my place, but you seem like people who care a great deal about that child. If you want my advice, try and avoid any car accidents from now on.”
With that, he turns and leaves, closing the door behind him.
I watch Rust’s face, and he watches mine. We stay like this for a long time, until Rust brings his face to mine and kisses me on cheek, his lips warm, his beard tickling me. “Our child is safe,” he says, and his voice is wrought with more emotion than I have ever heard in him. “Our child is safe,” he repeats. “I want to promise you somethin’, Allison. I’m never going to put you in this position again. I’m done with the club; I’m done with the life.”
“No,” I whisper in response. “You don’t need to be done with the club. Don’t you have mechanics in The Damned?”
Rust grunts out a laugh. “Yeah, we have some garages.”
“Maybe that…but it’s your choice, Rust. I just want my family. Nothing else matters.”
“That,” Rust says, stroking my cheek with his rough hand, “is something we can a
gree on.”
I let my head fall back, my eyelids feeling heavy. “I am afraid to sleep,” I admit after a minute or so of silence.
“Why?” Rust says from the chair, his hand laid over mine. “You don’t need to be afraid.”
“What if I go to sleep, and when I wake up this was a dream—what if Bump is really gone and I am dreaming all of this?”
“This ain’t a dream,” Rust says. “We’re in too much pain for this to be a dream. This isn’t one of your romances, Allison. This is life, with agony and fear and love and all that confusing shit.”
I smile, and despite my fear of sleep, my eyelids begin to fall closed. “I thought you were a brute,” I whisper. “It seems so long ago now.”
“I’m still a brute,” Rust says, his voice drifting away from me. “I’m just a brute with a woman and a kid, now. A brute with a heart, I’d guess you could say.”
I giggle. “A brute with a heart,” I repeat, and then sleep takes me.
Epilogue
Rust
I sit at the head of the circle, the convicts ranged all around me. When Allison first suggested I do this, I thought it was funny, but now I’m starting to get a taste for it. It’s been a year, after all, a year since I sat in that hospital not knowing if Carmine was going to be safe—if Carmine was alive. A year, and now I’m a greasy-monkey in one of The Damned’ garages. That’s pretty goddamn absurd, too: me, a mechanic. But still, I can’t live the fightin’ life anymore. Ever since the factory and the possibility of losing my family, the thought makes me sick.
“Listen,” I say, leaning forward. “I know what it’s like to wear the patch, or to think about wearing the patch. I know what it’s like to think that your only chance to be somebody comes from the life. I know that, and I ain’t here to tell you what to do. You’re men, and men have to make their own decisions. But all I will say is this. Once upon a time, I thought that the only family I could have was the club. I used to say it all the time. I never got close to anybody. I never thought there was much else to this life. I used to say to my friend, Zeke: ‘Catch feelings, catch a bullet.’ I was a big, violent, scary bastard. And now…well, I’m still big and scary.” That gets a laugh. “But I’ve left the violence behind. ’Cause yeah, I caught feelings, and I caught a bullet, but this family of mine is sweeter than any club life could ever be. This family of mine has made me feel things I never thought a man like me could. The life of the club is blood and pain and fear; the family life is love and closeness and contentment. But you’ve gotta make your own mind up on that.”
After the talk, I get on my bike thinking about Carmine and Allison, waiting for me in our three-bedroom on the outskirts of town. Allison often jokes to me: “My parents wanted me in suburbia, and here I am.” But she’s still in the thick of it, still helping people, even if it is part-time now Carmine is here.
I don’t go straight home, though. I have a stop to make. I have something I need to handle. ’Cause I don’t reckon there’s any reason for Allison not to be able to call herself my wife. Nah, no reason at all. So before I go home, I stop off at a jewelry store.
When I walk through the door, having to duck my head as usual, I feel like a new man. Rust the Enforcer, Rust the Killer, Rust the Gunman, Rust the Club Man…Rust the Lover, Rust the Father, Rust the Husband…
Allison
I’m sitting on the couch, a romance novel in my hand, when Rust walks in. He rolls his eyes when he sees the book . “Got the real thing, and yet you still like those fantasy men.”
“Some of these have very good stories, actually,” I respond, placing the book on the coffee table. "You’re late,” I point out, pouting at him in mock anger.
Rust holds his hands up, laughing. “Don’t start with all that nagging stuff, Allison, or you’ll make me take for the open road. Just me, my bike, and the city in the background, getting smaller and smaller…”
He chuckles when I leap to my feet and shove him in the chest. He catches my wrist, pulls me close, and we kiss hard, my lips somehow finding his through his beard. “Where’s Carmine?” he asks, as I lean back in the embrace.
“She’s run away from her awful father,” I say, kissing him on the cheek, and then giving his lip a bite.
“You’re evil,” he says.
He takes my hand and leads me down the hallway, through our house, to Carmine’s bedroom. Everything is pale blue, a natural color, because the day Carmine was born I promised myself I would let her be whatever she wanted to be. I would never pressure her like my parents pressured me. Rust moves me so that I am in front of him, and then wraps his arms around me. The two of us watch our daughter for a long time, as she snores sweetly. Rust always said he wanted a son, but when Carmine was born, he didn’t care; he told me he was the happiest man alive, and the way he’s acted this past year, I believe him.
He takes his hands from me and says. “I’ve been saving a year for this. I used my enforcing money for this place, so I had to save my mechanic money, and it turns out fixing cars don’t pay as much as breaking noses. So I guess we’ll have to save for a honeymoon.”
“What are you talking about?” I say, turning to face him.
He’s so tall that even kneeling I don’t have to look down very far to see his wicked smile.
“Allison Lee,” he says, opening the ring box, “love of my life and mother of my child, will you—”
“Of course I will!” I squeal, and then lower my voice so Carmine does not wake. “Of course I will!”
Rust rises to his feet, grinning. “You didn’t let me finish,” he says, taking my hand and sliding the ring onto my finger: an elegant band finished with a glinting diamond. “I had a whole speech planned, and then you go and interrupt me. What sort of cruel woman are you, eh?”
“Shut up and kiss me,” I say, breathing heavily.
Rust plants his hand on my lower back and presses himself into me, pressing our bodies together, and then kisses me so passionately that for a second I feel as though I am floating.
THE END
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More Books by Paula Cox
THIS WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN.
A forbidden tryst. An unexpected surprise.
A boy and a girl who were never meant to be together.
WHO IS HE?
A biker. An inked rebel. A playboy with a million notches on his belt.
A.k.a., the last man on earth I should ever be with.
But also, the only man I’ve ever loved.
WHAT DOES HE WANT?
My body. My heart. My soul.
And - *gulp* - his baby in my belly.
WHAT’S ABOUT TO HAPPEN?
He’s going to take me, or say he says.
He whispers in my ear that I’ll never forget his hands on me.
Bending me over.
Pushing me down.
Teasing me to my peak – over and over again.
But being with him is strictly forbidden.
There are rules in our little corner of the world.
And the punishment for breaking them is too severe to even imagine.
But that doesn’t stop me from dreaming of him. Night after night after night.
HOW’S IT ALL GOING TO END?
With tears and heartbreak. That much is guaranteed.
A man like Jax can never stick around.
Especially not with a diehard motorcycle club demanding his utter loyalty.
He won’t be with me. He can’t be.
But then my belly starts to grow.
And everything starts to change along with it.
***
The biker’s thickness gave me morning sickness.
I thought I could rescue him from a life of crime.
But the bad boy biker didn’t want anything I had to offer.
Instead, he wanted to give me something of his own:
The
baby I’m carrying in my belly.
It was my job to talk him out of his way of life.
But Rust was playing me all along.
He didn’t want my help.
He just wanted my body.
Now, he’s dragging me into an underworld that I’ll never survive.
But I can’t say no to him.
His touch, his scent, his power…
It’s all too much to resist.
I’m a good girl librarian, not a rebel biker chick.
But when I’m on the back of Rust’s bike, I feel like the whole world is ours.
I’ll be whoever he wants me to be.
His ride or die.
His old lady.
And the mother of his children.