by Nicole Fox
“I hadn’t intended to stay.” I avoided looking at Trip; I’d never admitted that to him—that this hadn’t meant to be permanent until I realized that I couldn’t leave him again.
“Well … they found where you were. Whoever ends up bringing you back is basically set with Rigger as far as any of them are concerned.”
“So I have to leave.”
“Basically—”
“Wait a second.” Trip stepped forward, between me and Jared. “No one is fucking leaving—”
“You think that Rigger’s gonna give up his favorite club girl—”
Before anyone could stop him, Trip’s fist connected with Jared’s face, giving a sickening, crunching sound. Blood spurted everywhere from Jared’s nose, and he cried out, deeply in pain.
“Oh, shit, what the hell—”
“Misha. With me. Now.”
I didn’t have it in me to protest. I looked back at Jared, who was fairly on his own in taking care of his face. None of the boys were looking to get him anything, and it was unlikely that they were going to. I followed Trip back to his office, where he snapped the door closed.
“Trip—”
“What happened the night the Jackals took you?”
I tugged at my ear.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean—shit—what the hell do you think I mean, Misha? What happened that? What actually happened?”
I stared at him. I felt my chest tightened.
“Jared told you.”
“And now you’re gonna tell me.”
I drew in a breath.
“Trip … I was scared, okay? I found out that I was pregnant, and I looked at our life and how we were living it, and it scared me. All the partying and the fights and the shit—you don’t think about it when you’re a stupid teenager, but then there’s a baby growing in you—”
“So you turned to the Jackals to help you get out. You didn’t trust me to do the right thing. You—”
“You need to let me finish, Trip, if you want to know what happened.”
I saw the muscle in his jaw twitch, but he stopped talking. Instead, he paced, hand going through his hair.
“I was scared. I started looking up all sorts of ways to get rid of it, but I—I couldn’t. Everything always made me sick and I always thought about, well, it’s not the baby’s fault it’s there. It’s yours. Now what are you gonna do about it? I hadn’t even intended to go to the Jackals, but … I met Jared. He was in town for a funeral. I was sitting at Mama’s grave talking to her and he just came up to me. Said I was looking sad. Asked if I needed to talk. I let out everything, I didn’t know who the fuck he was until I mentioned the Pride and he freaked out. That’s when I found out. It didn’t really register with me, I didn’t think, I just knew that he didn’t wanna get caught up in Pride territory alone with your girl. Jared’s always been a scared kind of man.”
“I could tell.”
“Anyway … I told him if he helped me with the situation, I would never tell anyone he was walking around Pride territory when things were getting so tense between the two. He was willing to. He felt bad for me and he didn’t want to get his ass kicked.”
“It’d have definitely gotten kicked.”
“Trip.”
He grunted, but let me continue.
“Jared is only a year older than me, so … Our plan was kind of stupid.” I shook my head. “Looking back after everything happened, I realized it was just too much and too dumb. I wanted to make it look like some sort of home invasion or something. It couldn’t look like I had just left, but it couldn’t look like anyone specific had done it, either.”
“We assumed it was the Jackals either way.”
“Yeah, well. In hindsight I should have realized you would. I had this … brilliant idea that as long as some of the blood was mine, the DNA would show it on the off chance the police were involved. The thing about the pig blood, that was true; Jared actually does a decent bit of hunting despite being incapable of shooting an actual person. So, we spattered some of that, too, and headed out.”
“How’d you end up with Holland, then? If Jared was supposed to ride you out into the sunset?”
“It wasn’t like that, Trip. And we only got caught because Jared didn’t realize that Holland had put one of the boys on him to make sure he didn’t get into trouble. They’d been watching us the whole time, had followed me, seen me with you guys. They flanked us and rode us across the border. I knew Jared would get in trouble if it came out he was actually helping me; I nudged him in the direction of spinning some kind of tale that we fell for each other.” I rolled my eyes. “Jared was barely a Prospect. Nothing belongs to Prospects, especially not women. Holland gave him a beating for stepping out of line and told him that he could have me when he’d earned me. When I told him I was pregnant, it made him stop from passing me around in case the baby would get hurt, and over nine months I guess I grew on him. So after Rose was born, he still kept people off me. No one ever knew the real reason behind Jared trying to smuggle me out, and I’ve been with them for five years because when you’re a dumb little girl making dumb choices, you do what seems like it’s gonna save you.”
Trip was silent when I was done. When it was all out, from my mouth. It was silence that was the worst. I wanted him to say something.
“Trip—”
“Why didn’t you just try?” he asked. “Why didn’t you just try to stay here with me? We were dumb, but Misha—”
“Do you honestly think we could have raised a little girl the way things used to be, Trip?”
“Was raising her with Jackals better?”
“It wasn’t what I wanted to have happen!” I yelled. “I was going to go off, shack up with some family in the East. They didn’t talk to Daddy much, but they’re the sort that would never turn away a pregnant girl. But it would have been away from all of this! I was scared, and pregnant and was trying to do the right thing! You don’t understand, because you weren’t the one looking at five pregnancy tests after nights of parties and watching you fight people twice your size, and hearing about gun fights on the border with Jackals! You wouldn’t have understood then, just like you fucking don’t now!”
I didn’t know where such anger had come from. Did I blame him, for the things that had happened? For not being what I needed him to be when I found out I was pregnant with Rose? Maybe I did a little. If he—if we—had both been the people we needed to be, none of this would have happened. It had been a joint effort.
“Why didn’t you tell me all of this when you came back? Why did I have to hear all this shit coming from a Jackal’s mouth before I heard it coming from yours?”
I looked at him, shaking my head.“Would you have taken it well then, knowing what happened?”
“I’m not taking it well, now.”
“You would have taken it less well then.”
“That doesn’t make it any better.”
“I know.”
We stood there, quiet for a time. I had known that this would come up eventually. I merely wished that I had been the one to bring it to him.
“Back there. You said that you hadn’t intended to stay. Was that … Was that still the intention, even after you moved in?”
I looked to him, hurt.
“I wouldn’t have asked if I hadn’t wanted to make this permanent, Trip. Do you think I’m that cruel?”
“I don’t know what to think.”
“If I didn’t want to stay here now, I would still be living out of that back room. I wouldn’t have gotten Rose’s hopes up and enrolled her in a school. I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t have let you touch me and love me again, Trip. I’ve made bad choices, but that never would have been one of them.”
I walked over to him. I didn’t know how to ease the hurt. I knew that I had made the choice that I thought was right back then. I just—
“I never did anything to hurt you, Trip,” I said softly, placing my hands on the sides of his face.
“Nothing that I ever did or ever will do was ever done just to make you suffer. I love you far too much for that.”
It took him a while before his eyes met mine again. I leaned up, knowing there weren’t words in the universe to convey any of that to him. So I kissed him, putting all my love for him into it. I pressed to him, letting my mouth move against his until he was reciprocating, until his arms circled back around behind me. It didn’t go further than that. It was the first time that it didn’t go further than kisses. It was just us feeling each other out, trying to get on some sort of common ground with each other.
“I love you, Trip,” I breathed against his lips. “I’m sorry for lying, even when I thought it was what I had to do.”
“I know … I know …” He pressed his forehead to mine, and I looked into those blues of his. “I love you more than my own damn life, Misha. You know that, right? I always have. I’m always going to. Holland, or Rigger, or that limp fuck out there, isn’t going to change that, not in the damned slightest, you understand? I wish you wouldn’t have left. I wish none of this would have happened.” He laughed. “Can’t change the past, can we? But I meant what I said, Misha. I told you, I am gonna protect you and Rose, and I fucking meant it. You’re never gonna have to run away again. Ever. You hear me? It was my own damn fault for all of this—”
“Trip, no, it wasn’t—”
“It was,” he said. “It was. You were my girl, and you didn’t feel like I could do what needed to get done. Not this time, Misha. This time, I set things right.”
Chapter Thirteen
Trip
Before my father died and Bobby took me in, he told me that no man that couldn’t take care of and protect his own could claim to call himself a man. I learned that I hadn’t yet earned that right when I learned about what really happened with Misha.
Things returned to normal, somewhat, after the warning brought to us by Jared. He didn’t stick around long, good fucking riddance. He was getting the hell out of Dodge before the Jackals could realize he’d skipped out on them, and he wasn’t welcome here, either. Misha accepted it, if only for the fact that she knew he’d never be safe here, Rigger out of the picture or not. Jackals didn’t take well to traitors; Jared was a good one.
We kept this shit from Rose. Misha and I agreed that this wasn’t what we wanted her being aware of, nor something that we wanted her worrying about. She’d dealt with enough already.
I kept one of the boys watching the diner when Misha worked, and the house when I wasn’t around. Travis even drove by the school during recess if I or Misha couldn’t run by, just to make sure that nothing questionable happened. It wasn’t ideal, but it was something.
The days went by, and then about a week. We weren’t tailed by anyone, and we didn’t catch a peep of the Jackals. Either they were waiting to see what was going to happen, or they were spooked by the fact Jared had taken off. Whatever the case, when week two came, I had other big things to worry about.
Our first parent-teacher conference.
“You should stop fidgeting.”
We sat together outside of Rose’s classroom. Inside was another pair of parents, chatting it up with Ms. Bedroom Eyes. I had forgotten about her in the aftermath of Rose’s first day, but I didn’t know at this point if I had the patience to deal with her. Hell—I didn’t know if Misha had the patience to deal with her.
“I don’t know how to do this parent-teacher stuff,” I muttered back. “Doesn’t help I’m in this shit.” This shit being a suit. It was Misha’s idea. I had been regretting this entire affair from the moment that I sat down.
“I think it makes you look handsome,” Misha said. “Very attractive.”
I looked down at her. “You think?”
“Mmhm. I want to rip it off you, it’s so hot.”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay, now I know that you’re just playing with me.”
She laughed.“Maybe a little, but you do look really, really hot in that—”
“Misha Daven and Anthony Collins?”
I groaned.“Haven’t been called that in years,” I muttered, standing up with Misha. The teacher’s eyes fell on us, and they widened a little.
“Oh, Trip,” she said, smiling at me without giving much of a look Misha’s way. “I didn’t realize that was you.” Misha cleared her throat, making the woman stop her staring long enough to cast her eyes to Misha. She didn’t seem too particularly impressed, and less so when her eyes trailed down between us, seeing that I was holding on to Misha’s hand. I smiled at her.
“Shall we?”
The teacher—who I saw when I finally paid attention was Ms. Bradson—sat behind her desk as Misha and I took our places across from her. At least these were larger seats, more suited for adult bodies, as opposed to the tiny seats we’d used while waiting. I was too damn big for that shit.
“It’s nice to meet the both of you,” Ms. Bradson said. “Together in person, finally. You’re Rose’s parents?”
“Yes. Mother and father,” Misha answered. If I didn’t know any better—hell what was I thinking, I knew exactly what was going on—I would have said that Misha scooted closer to me then. Which she did. I let her, too.
Ms. Bradson smiled, though I could tell that it wasn’t particularly genuine.
“Yes … Well, the good news is, there isn’t a lot to report on, as far as Rose is concerned. She’s incredibly bright for her age, loves asking questions as much as she does answering them, and participates in all of the group activities extremely well, despite voicing the fact that she’s never really been around other children.”
“Yeah, she’s an only child,” Misha said. “Before we moved here, there weren’t a lot of children for Rose to play with, really. None were around her age.”
“How unfortunate; she makes friends fairly well. There is one issue, however.”
“An issue?” I interjected. Rose hadn’t said anything about there being problems at school at all. “What kind of issue?”
“Well.” Ms. Bradson reached into a drawer on her desk and pulled out a little folder. Inside were a few drawings—damn good ones. A lot of ones with bikes, one outside the bar, a couple others that I didn’t recognize, but it might have been shit from when she was with the Jackals. Misha looked over them too, lingering on the ones that looked like they had to do with the Jackals, and looked to Ms. Bradson.
“What’s so wrong with these drawings?” she asked. “They’re very good.”
“The issue isn’t the quality, more the content, and the fact that Rose seems very … knowledgeable on adult topics and freely talks about them in front of the other children. There have been several parents asking why their children are coming home asking about coke—and not the soda kind—as well as talking about biker terminology and Jackals—”
“Our daughter has a vivid imagination and an interest in bikes. It’s something her father does, so she likes it.”
Ms. Bradson smiled. “Yes, well. There’s that, as well. She never refers to Mr. Collin here as her father. It’s always Mr. Trip. I had assumed that he was merely a boyfriend of the mother, since Trip was clearly not a name on any of the forms, but it’s obvious that the family structure is skewed a little—”
“Are you implying that there’s something wrong with my family?” Misha asked tersely.
Ms. Bradson’s smile widened, though it was still far from being friendly. “I’m implying no such thing. I’m merely saying that perhaps with the unconventional arrangement of your family, certain things have become normalized for Rose that aren’t normalized for other children. I’ve spoken with her about certain things not being appropriate for the classroom, but it doesn’t seem to connect with her like it would with other normal children—”
“Rose is perfectly normal,” I cut in. “She’s just … experienced different things from other students.”
“I’m sure that’s true,” Ms. Bradson said. “However, as her teacher I only have her best interests at heart—”
“I’m sure you do,” Misha said tersely. “Is this all?”
Ms. Bradson nodded. “For now, yes.”
Misha and I stood. I didn’t spare another look for Ms. Bradson, even though I felt her eyes on me. Creepy. I had my arm around Misha as we left, and when we were out of the classroom, I let out a sigh.
“Well, that’s over now, at least.”
“Mmhm.”
“It could have gone worse.”
“Mmhm.”