Raine Falling (Hells Saints Motorcycle Club)

by Marinaro, Paula

  Or not.

  I took a deep breath and I forced myself back.

  And being back meant that I would not fall apart in front of him.

  Oh no, I wouldn’t. Not me. Not this time. Not now. Not in front of him. I would not give him that.

  I caught my breath and pulled away from the door. I drew myself up to my full height. Instinctively putting my hands across a baby bump that was not there yet, I found the strength to go on.

  “Now let me be clear. After tonight, you saying the things you said, and you throwing those words at me not once, not twice but over and over again . . . you backing me up against a wall, raising your fist and punching a hole in it just inches above my head two minutes after I tell you I am carrying your baby . . . those things, those words . . . I will never ever forgive you for them. Ever. You ever regret them, you crippled, you blind, you in a damn fucking old folks’ home and you think about the kid you threw away, you never, ever, ever come knocking on our door. As of right now and for the rest of my life. No matter what. No matter what. You do not exist for me. So put your mind at ease, Diego, about this baby, about me, and about anything that has to do with us.

  “Now get the fuck out of my house!” I walked to the door and threw it open.

  He looked at me for a full minute. Eyes burning, nostrils flared.

  “GET OUT,” I screamed. “GET OUT. GET OUT. GET OUT!”

  Diego turned from me then. He punched another hole through another wall. Then he got out.

  Just as Diego was walking out, Claire and Glory walked in.

  Claire rushed over to me, and Glory took a long hard, look at the massive holes in the walls.

  “Well, I see that went well.” Glory had her hands on her hips.

  “Fucker.” Claire took my hand in hers.

  “Motherfucker,” Glory agreed and flanked me on the other side.

  “Motherfucking sonofabitch,” I added, not to be outdone.

  I almost started to cry. Almost. But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. As horrible and unexpected and as heartbreaking that scene with Diego had been, I didn’t want to cry.

  Because after years of watching for secrets, I had a secret of my own. And that secret came from a good place. That secret came from the best place of all. That secret was nestled within me, under my heart and deep in my core.

  I was going to have a baby.

  CHAPTER 57

  Prosper woke to the sound of someone banging hard on his front door. He rolled away from Pinky and reached for the piece that he kept loaded on the bedside stand. Pinky got up quietly, threw on her robe, and stood beside her man.

  Prosper had the gun out as a precaution. If someone had meant them harm they would not have come banging at the door. They would have shot out windows or crept in. Prosper would have woken up with a knife at his throat or not woken up at all.

  No, this had to be a brother. It had happened before. Prosper’s house was off-limits. He had made that clear long ago. Pinky’s rule and he stood by it. Pinky had wanted Prosper to have a sanctuary. She had worked hard to make a home for him away from the brothers. In Pinky’s eyes, the clubhouse was a Sodom and Gomorrah. A place of unrepentant sin.

  She was not wrong.

  Anything went and no one gave a shit. The drinking, the whores, the drugs, the guns, the sex, the bare-knuckled fights between brothers just for the hell of it. It was part of the life her man chose and a part of the life they led. But not all of it and not all the time.

  So the house was out of bounds. Off-limits. Except for the most serious of shit storms, no one came to the house. That house sat on the side of a line that was not to be crossed. Crossing that line, knocking at that door, meant involvement. Heavy involvement in some deep personal shit. Knocking on that door meant that you were so up in your personal, that it was going to affect the club and you needed someone to know it. You needed help with that shit before it went to the table. Before it hit the brothers.

  Knocking at that door any time of day meant counsel. That meant discussion, deliberation, advice, and help.

  Knocking at that door in the middle of the night. That meant trouble.

  Prosper moved to the door and pulled aside the curtain with the tip of his nine. Whoever was out there would see that he was holding. He was hoping with all his heart that it wouldn’t be Diego at that door. Diego being at that door could not be good for Raine. Prosper had really been hoping that the happy the two of them seemed to be knee-deep in would last a while. God knew they both deserved it.

  He sighed and placed his piece on the sideboard. He turned to Pinky, but she was already headed towards the kitchen to make a strong pot of coffee.

  Diego stood under the glare of the porch light, leaning heavily on the cedar shingles. A light drizzle had begun to fall and the white tee shirt he was wearing was sticking to his skin in the places that weren’t covered by his cut.

  His cut.

  With its worn leather patina, large broken-winged angel, and the rockers that circled it, the cut was Diego’s talisman. The symbol of a brotherhood of men. The crest of his family. The family who had pulled a twelve-gauge out of Diego’s mouth and knocked the fucking shit out of him for trying to blow his brains out.

  These brothers were not them. Nevada had been Diego’s home then. Twenty years ago when he was just nineteen and had been patched into the band of brothers.

  A year later he had been married with a baby on the way.

  He had buried them together. His beautiful young wife, the love of his life, and the child they had made together, forever in eternity. The tiny boy lying on his mother’s chest. He had seen to all the arrangements. He had picked out the casket and the flowers. He had designed the headstone. The only thing that had been left was for him to join them. The day after he laid them to rest, he leaned against the gravestone of his wife and infant son with a shotgun shoved hard to the roof of his mouth. His finger on the trigger.

  Her name had been Janey and Diego had loved her since they were both fourteen years old. Janey, who lived on the outskirts of the shit ghost town he grew up in and who was the one person Diego would turn to when things got bad. Janey, who never ever refused him, had opened her legs and her heart to him and had never asked for a damn thing in return except for him to love her back. Janey, who had left a rich bastard of a father to run off with him when they were both eighteen. Janey, who understood why he needed the club and stood by him when he made the decision to patch in. Janey, who never looked at him as anything less than a God-given gift to her. God how he had loved her.

  For him, it had always been Janey.

  And for Janey, it had always been him.

  The day Diego married her was the happiest day of both their lives. They were young, but they were ready and excited to start their lives together. When she got pregnant a month later, that was cool, too. They were madly in love. Finally free to be together, to live the life they had planned. Diego was patched in and deep into the club by then. Janey liked being an old lady and fit right in. Life was good.

  The pregnancy had gone well. Right up to the very end, things were great. Until Janey was six days past her due date. During the ultrasound, they couldn’t find a heartbeat. When they induced her, they found out that the baby, Diego’s son, had died in her womb. Janey had been forced to give birth to a stillborn baby.

  Five hours later, Diego’s wife stopped breathing. Her heart stopped beating and she died.

  Janey, his beautiful wife and the mother of his baby boy, was nineteen years old and dead.

  The doctors told him that she had died of a rare condition called amniotic fluid embolism. Something had caused the fluid from the baby to travel into her lungs and trigger a heart attack.

  But Diego had known the truth. After holding their tiny dead baby in her arms, their perfect eight-pound boy, Janey had died of a broken heart. An
d Diego had wanted to follow. He hadn’t even tried to live without them.

  Prosper knew about Janey. But he was the only one in Crownsmount who did. The club had very strict rules about members trying to “off themselves.”

  Having to worry about the mental health of a brother was not on the laundry list of things outlaw bikers wanted to do with their time. There were too many business opportunities happening at any given moment. Stressful, unlawful, seriously criminal activity that could cost a brother a lot of years away should a member of the crew unravel.

  But the brothers had loved Janey. Everyone had. They felt for Diego. He had lost so much. They couldn’t deny him the relief of taking his own life and then make him patch out. Diego made the decision for them and went nomad for a while after that. Then some years ago he had asked Prosper if he could patch in to the East Coast division. The vote had been taken, the deed done. Diego had been a member of the Crownsmount MC ever since.

  And Prosper had never been sorry. Never been sorry that he had supported Diego getting patched in.

  Diego hoped—he really hoped—that what he had come for in the middle of the night was not going to change that. He really fucking hoped not.

  CHAPTER 58

  Diego sat at the table with his brothers. He was leaning forward with his elbows on the scarred wood. His hands tightly wrapped around each other in a fist. He talked to them. He told them everything. Janey, the baby, the suicide attempt. The years he spent going rogue and what brought him back in. It had been a long time ago. Diego had earned the respect of the brothers and more. Fuck, most of the guys at the table hadn’t been in the brotherhood even half the time D had. But the shit had to come clean. Prosper had ordered it, and D knew it was the right thing to do.

  Because Prosper claimed Raine as his family, and Diego had claimed Raine as his old lady, this was club shit. Too much emotion. Too much history. Too much that could make a man or a woman lose their loyalty and decide to act on some of the hurt they were feeling. The club could not risk that.

  Prosper hadn’t been happy when Diego told him what went down with Raine.

  And Diego had told him everything.

  He hadn’t left anything out. He hadn’t wanted to. It had been twelve hours after the blowup with Raine when D had knocked on Prosper’s door. In that time, Diego had a chance to think. The panic had passed and regret hung like a noose around his neck in its place. But even so, he couldn’t go back to that place. That place of dead fucking wives and tiny blue sons. He could not even conceive of taking a chance of going back there. And when Raine told him she was pregnant, that’s all he saw. Just that. Nothing else.

  It was because he loved her. So fucking much. Diego loved Raine with everything he had left to give. He loved her with everything left that he was. And he had fucking knocked her up. Risked her life. Pinky had tried to tell him that it had been a lot of years since that shit had happened with Janey and that medicine had come a long way since then. But Prosper had put his hand gently on his wife’s shoulder and she had stopped talking.

  Because Prosper knew. Because Prosper had loved Maggie the way Diego had loved Janey, he knew. And Prosper knew that if there was a chance, even the slimmest of chances, that he would lose Pinky because of something he did, because of something that had come about as a result of the love he felt for her, he’d put a bullet in his head.

  But first, God help him, he’d leave her. Because Prosper knew that he didn’t have it in him to watch another woman who he loved die.

  He would leave her.

  But not forever and not for long. Prosper would never ever leave his woman to face whatever may come without him by her side. Because he was a flawed and reckless, rough, selfish sonofabitch, he would need a minute.

  Prosper knew Diego would do right by Raine.

  Eventually.

  But in the meantime, the brothers needed to know what the fuck was going on when they saw D’s baby growing inside of Raine and D acting like he didn’t give a shit.

  Complicated. Well, he had tried to warn him.

  They didn’t have much to say. The brothers just pretty much let D get it out. They had known Diego for years. None of those years together had been spent being choirboys. They considered this his personal business. No one was looking to put anyone to ground, no one was facing time, and no one was talking to the feds. So they considered this personal business.

  The members knew Raine and they liked her. But she wasn’t a brother, and that shit went deep with them. Were they all good with watching Raine grow big with Diego’s baby inside of her and him not wanting any part of that? Most of them honestly didn’t give a shit. As long as she kept her disappointment in her baby daddy reined in and did not threaten the club because of that disappointment, they were good. For most of them, it was domestic bullshit.

  For most of them.

  When Diego was done spilling his guts, he grabbed a bottle of tequila and went to stoke the fire in the pit.

  “You gonna drink that all by yourself, Brother?” Diego turned to find Crow standing next to him throwing a couple more logs on the fire.

  Diego handed the bottle over to Crow, who took a long pull of it.

  “Sorry about that going down with your wife and your son, D.” Crow sat back on one of the low wooden chairs and lit a joint. After a long toke, he handed it to Diego.

  “Happened a long time ago, Brother.” Diego took the joint between two fingers and inhaled deeply.

  “Time don’t matter the way it usually does when something that heavy goes down.” Crow shot back a deep swallow of tequila.

  “So this is you coming out here to hand me a fucking Hallmark?” Diego took the bottle Crow offered him.

  “Nah, man. This is me coming out here to tell you that I’m sorry for that shit with Raine before. I saw an in and I took it. It was a dick move and I shouldn’t a done it.” Crow meant what he said. He had been wanting to man up for a while.

  Diego squinted at him with one eye as he took another toke off the joint.

  “S’okay, Brother. I should’ve been minding the store. Woman like that. Woman like Raine don’t come around too often. Shit, situation reversed, I would’ve gone there myself.” He handed the joint back to Crow and took another hit off the bottle.

  “Yeah?” Crow asked.

  “Fuck, yeah.” Diego nodded.

  “Guess you’re right,” Crow said around the mouth of the bottle.

  Diego got up to throw another log on the fire. “Don’t have to fucking guess, man. Best thing that could happen to a man is to find a woman like her.”

  “Yeah, she sweet and all, but a woman’s a woman. All got tits. All got pussy. No disrespect, but after a while it’s all the same shit. Day after day, same everyday crap.” Crow was lighting another joint.

  “Nah, man. Ain’t true. Maybe true some of the time,” he conceded. “Club band-aids like fucking Ellie and the rest. But a woman like Raine, Brother. Men like us, life we lead, the way the good citizens fucking cross the street when they see us coming, we don’t get the chance at good women. Not too often anyway. And there’s nothing sweeter in this world than being inside a good woman who really fucking and truly loves you.” Diego was looking at the fire and continued.

  “I was lucky to get that twice. First Janey, then Raine. A sorry no-good bastard like me. Lucky enough to have had two good women.” Diego took the joint from Crow and inhaled deeply.

  Crow moved towards him. He put his hand on Diego’s shoulder and squeezed. “My point, Brother.”

  Diego didn’t say anything for a while. They both sat there in silence, drinking and getting high.

  “Sonofabitch. I fucked it all up, didn’t I?” Diego passed the last of the tequila to Crow.

  “Big time, my Brother.” Then he put his arm around his friend, and they both staggered inside.

  CHAPTER 59

/>   Three months later, I hadn’t seen him. Not once. I knew he was at the club. A lot. A lot more than he ever used to be. A lot more than he had to be, as far as I was concerned. I hated him being around. I hated it because that meant I could not go to the kitchen house and eat Jules’s kickass French toast. I really wanted some of that French toast too.

  The baby liked it. The first time that I had felt the flutter of the new life growing inside of me, I was eating that French toast. I smiled when I thought of it and put my hand on my growing baby belly. When I had told Diego, when all my hopes for a happily-ever-after were shattered once and for all, the little life inside me had barely begun. At eighteen weeks pregnant, I was beginning to feel the baby move.

  I loved being pregnant. I loved it. I loved every single minute of it. I hadn’t even minded the absolutely awful morning sickness. I just learned to avoid smells and kept crackers by my bedside to eat in the mornings before I put even one foot out of bed.

  I was excited today for a few reasons. One was that I would be hearing the sound of my baby’s heartbeat on my next doctor’s visit. I couldn’t stop thinking about that.

  The other reason was that my girl posse and I had just come back from my first shopping trip for maternity clothes. My waist was getting thick and my breasts were getting bigger and heavier. I could no longer button my pants and my shirts were stretching across my chest. The first three months I had been so sick I had actually lost weight but that hadn’t stopped my body from ripening in all those places. My belly was hard to the touch and I could see a slight bump when I stood naked in front of the mirror.

  I had a small frame so I was able to still buy my favorite tee shirts. I bought lots of them in pretty, soft pastel colors. V-necks, scoop necks, capped-sleeved and long-sleeved in increasingly larger sizes. The jeans were maternity with thick, soft elastic waistbands that had me sighing as they stretched over my belly. Then because they were all so pretty and I couldn’t resist, I got myself five sundresses. One matched the exact color of my eyes. I couldn’t wait to wear it. I bought a couple of pairs of shoes that I could slip on rather than tie. Because I couldn’t help myself, I bought a new pair of cowboy boots.