Slam (The Brazen Bulls MC #3)

by Susan Fanetti

  “D, you know I won’t talk.”

  The president sat beside him at the table. “I know. I just want you to know that we got your back like you got ours. Jenny’s taken care of. Anything she needs.”

  “The DA’s not getting shit, but what’s she after?”

  “The Russians. She got a lead that we’re connected to the Volkovs, and she got a lady boner.”

  The Russians were penny-ante shit for the Bulls. They did a couple of runs a year for them. But it was interstate, and that could bring the Feds into the mix. ATF. “Jesus Christ.” He turned to Percy. “I’m no rat. What’m I looking at now?”

  “She’ll recommend the max. Five years, five hundred dollars.”

  Five years? Their little girl would be ready to start kindergarten. He’d miss her first everything. And Jenny—Jesus, what would she do? She wanted to stay home and be a full-time mom, and he’d promised to take care of his family, so she’d quit her job. They’d only just started looking for a house. He hadn’t made a good home for her and their kid yet. He couldn’t go away for five fucking years.

  But he couldn’t rat. Delaney didn’t need to be sitting at his side for that to be true.

  “What’s Jenny know?”

  Delaney answered. “She’s here, waiting outside the courtroom. Mo got her to come. We told her you had a deal for short time, and you’d be staying close by. She knows something is wrong now, but not what. She’s a mess, Mav. I won’t sugarcoat that. But we got hold of her, and we won’t let her go.”

  “We could go to trial,” Percy offered. “The vic is stable now, so I can probably get you bail, get you outside until the trial is over. That way you can be there when the baby comes, at least.”

  Delaney stared hard at him but didn’t speak. Maverick knew he was letting him work out the problems with that plan for himself: a trial would bring their business up. The Russians would come up, and anything else they did that wasn’t in bounds. He couldn’t go to trial. Besides, there was a witness, unimpeachable, and Maverick wouldn’t let the club nullify the old guy who lived next door to Jenny’s old man. That guy had been good to Jenny.

  He was going to do time. Real time. In the pen. If he had to do it, he’d better do it so he did the least amount of damage to the people he cared about. Get in, do his time, get out. Head down, shoulder to the day.

  “No trial.” He met Delaney’s eyes and held fast. “You’ll take care of her?”

  “You know we will.”

  “Send her my take of everything that comes in. All of it.”

  Delaney shook his head. “I’ll send her half of it, and I’ll keep the rest back for emergencies—yours or hers.”

  “She’s having my kid, D. She’s gonna need the money.”

  “And she’ll have everything she needs. But I’m not gonna leave you with nothing when you get out.”

  “I’ll have her and the baby.” She wouldn’t be a baby anymore by then.

  Delaney laid his hand over Maverick’s arm. “Think about it like a savings account, son. Trust me. We’ll take care of your family.”

  Maverick’s heart pounded, and his stomach rolled and twisted, but he nodded at Delaney and turned back to the lawyer. “Let’s just get it over with. I need to see Jenny first.”

  ~oOo~

  She’d lost weight—a noticeable amount in just a couple of weeks. Dark shadows hung beneath her eyes. It couldn’t be good to lose weight at eight months pregnant.

  She came in just through the threshold and stopped. When the guard closed and locked the door, her back was almost against it.

  He walked to her, meaning to hold her and kiss her, but she shrank back, so he only took her hands. “Babe. I missed you so much.”

  All she did was blink at him. Her eyes blurred with tears, but she didn’t cry.

  “You’re not eating. You need to eat. For you and the little pixie both.”

  “You don’t get to tell me what to do. Never again.” She pulled her hands from his.

  He’d wanted this meeting, when he’d first asked Percy to set it up, to talk her into patience, to cheer her into believing it wouldn’t be long that they’d be apart, and to keep her in the bosom of the club while he was away, so she wouldn’t be alone. She didn’t like the club much. She’d never been comfortable with his family. Not obviously uncomfortable, either. Just always on alert—for what, he’d never figured out.

  But now, he had news that might break her, and he didn’t know how to deliver it. With her standing before him, nearly weepy and clearly angry, he was actually afraid to tell her.

  He didn’t have a choice. Or time to dither.

  “I need to tell you something, Jen. It’s not easy, and it’s not good. But if you love me, we’ll get through it. I swear we will. The Bulls will be there when I can’t be. The club’ll have your back. You won’t be alone.”

  She blinked and didn’t speak, but a more focused fear sharpened her eyes. He swallowed and went on.

  “I didn’t get the deal. The DA is recommending the max. It’s five years, Jen.”

  At first, nothing happened. Then her knees gave, and Maverick caught her as she overbalanced forward. She pushed him away as soon as she had her legs under her again.

  “No.” The word had hardly any sound.

  “What?”

  “No. No club. That’s not the family you promised me. That’s not the way things are supposed to be.” Her voice reclaimed its power with every syllable.

  “They’re my family, Jen. They’ll step in for me until I can be with you again.”

  “No.”

  “Jenny, I can’t have you out there on your own with our little girl. You need the help. You need to listen and do what’s right for you and her.”

  A harsh, furious laugh burst from her lips. “Fuck you, Maverick. Who are you to tell me to listen? You did this. All of it. To yourself. To me. To our baby. You did this. I don’t want your fucking club checking up on me. I don’t want anything you have to offer, because all you offer is lies. My little girl and I will figure this out on our own. We don’t need the Bulls, and we don’t need you.”

  She turned and pounded on the door. Maverick had reached out for her, but he dropped his hand as the guard’s face came into view, and Jenny waddled from the room as fast as she could.

  She never looked back.

  When he was finally before the judge, he and his to-that-point clean record got three years in the penitentiary. Three, not five. By then, three years seemed a relief, maybe even some hope—with good behavior, Percy assured him, he could be out in half that. He turned and scanned the gallery. He saw Delaney and Mo, Rad, Gunner, Dane, Becker. But no Jenny. He didn’t know where she was or who was with her.

  ~oOo~

  Four months after his intake at McAlester, he got a Polaroid of a swaddled baby in a beanie, and he learned his daughter’s name and date of birth. No other words than that. And that was the best information he’d gotten that his woman and his child were okay. She’d refused all contact with anyone associated with him.

  Jenny had slammed the door between them and locked him in the cold.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Jenny got the aura while they were still within sight of the zoo entrance behind them—a dead spot in her vision, a hole into which the thing she tried to focus on fell. It meant she had forty-five minutes before the pain set in.

  And here she was, at the Tulsa Zoo on a sunny, late-August afternoon, with two four-year-olds and one anxiety-inducing ex-boyfriend.

  More than ex-boyfriend. Ex-old man. She brushed her hand over the left side of her chest, where her only tattoo was, near her shoulder.

  She’d gotten her first migraine when she was fourteen, a few days before her first period. She’d thought for sure she was dying and had run to her father for help. He’d taken her to the emergency room, and they’d done a bunch of painful tests and decided it was ‘just’ migraine. They’d given her a morphine shot for the pain, and they’d sent her home when it
wore off.

  Her father had been angry that he’d ‘wasted’ most of his day off over nothing but a headache.

  Since then, she got them once a month or so. Doctors said it was hormonal, but it didn’t seem as connected to her period as that first one had suggested. Then again, while she was pregnant, she’d had them two or three times a month, which would indicate that wacky hormones brought them on.

  Still, Jenny herself thought it was stress that triggered them. So she shouldn’t have been surprised at this aura—and she wasn’t, not really. Scared and angry about it, but not surprised. After fifteen years, she’d gotten about as used to headaches so bad she wanted to kill herself as it was possible to get. With Kelsey to care for and a life to manage, she’d even coped well enough to live around most of them—driving, working, parenting, all while half blind and three-quarters crazy with pain.

  The aura would last about five minutes, and then she’d be okay until the pain. After that, it could be a couple of hours, or it could be days. Considering that she was stuck at the zoo and unable even to get away from the sun, this one would likely be a long one.

  She could cancel. Turn around right here and now and go back home before the pain came. Carlena was on vacation and her father’s fill-in nurse wouldn’t watch Kelsey, but Mrs. Turner would keep her for the afternoon. She’d gotten migraines, too, as a young woman, and she understood.

  But it was Kelsey’s birthday, and she was happy and excited, swinging arms with Maisie, chattering up at Maverick, telling him all about the giraffes as they walked in their chain deeper into the park. She couldn’t cancel this day.

  Okay, then. Suck it up, buttercup. She and her migraine were just going to have to coexist today.

  Jenny glued her smile on. Head down, shoulder to the day.

  ~oOo~

  “You okay?” Maverick brushed his hand down her bare arm.

  “Yeah. Fine.”

  No, she wasn’t. The pain had just arrived, like an air drop of anvils behind her right eye. They’d gotten through the giraffes and the bears, they’d stopped at a cart for Bomb Pops, and now Kelsey and Maisie were playing in the little playground. Jenny found a shaded bench and sat down.

  Maverick sat next to her. Without asking, he took her sunglasses off and squinted at her. “Migraine. Right?”

  She snatched her glasses from his fingers and shoved them back into place. “I’m fine.”

  “Babe, I know what you look like when one hits. We need to go.”

  Jenny wished he’d stop calling her babe. Every time he said it, she felt it like a touch, like a caress. Everything about him was so confusing.

  Actually, it wasn’t. Nothing about Maverick was confusing. Everything he wanted was laid out for her to see: he wanted to pick up the life he’d destroyed. He wanted her to move into the house he’d bought, to bring her daughter there and be the family that they’d meant to be.

  As if that were possible.

  What was confusing was how she felt about it all. She still loved him—she thought she loved him as much as she ever had. She still craved his touch and felt safe in his arms. Maybe even more now, after four years alone. She hadn’t told him to stop calling her babe because it felt so good to hear it. No one had loved her since Maverick. Maybe no one had loved her but Maverick. She’d been more than alone these last four years; she’d been lonely. She had Kelsey, and that would always be the most important relationship in her life, but it was different from having a partner.

  She wanted what he wanted, as much as he wanted it, but, unlike him, she understood that it was impossible. She wasn’t the person she’d been, and he was. He was, so obviously, the same domineering man. Before, she hadn’t understood how controlling he’d been and how much she’d deferred to him. Now, after his willful disregard of her had turned everything to rubble, she’d changed. She couldn’t live like that, always deferring her will to his. No matter how much she loved him, or how much she wanted the life they’d planned.

  And her head hurt far too much to deal with these confusing, frustrating thoughts.

  “Go if you want. It’s Kelsey’s birthday, and I’m not ruining it.” She turned from him and smiled at the playing girls.

  “You sure? You can gut it out?”

  At Maverick’s question, Jenny remembered that, before Kelsey, she’d always been incapacitated by her migraines. She’d taken to her bed with every one. That was the Jenny he remembered: weak.

  “You think I’ve had a choice for the last four years? Who was going to take care of her if I didn’t ‘gut it out’?”

  She hadn’t shifted her attention from the girls as she’d spoken, but she felt him flinch at her side. Good. He needed to remember that he hadn’t been the only one living a fucked-up life since he’d gone away.

  As if he heard her thought, he muttered, “I know I fucked us up, Jenny. I know I let you down. That’s not news to me. But I wasn’t away on vacation. You understand that, right? Prison almost killed me. The shit that happened to me was fucked up, but it was knowing you weren’t waiting that made it hell.”

  The hammer came down on the anvil in her brain, again and again. Her heart pounded with the stress of this day, this talk. She felt ill and knew she’d be puking here at the zoo fairly soon. She hoped she’d at least make it to the restroom to do it.

  The little train tooted its horn, and Kelsey stood up to look for it. “Mommy! Can we ride the train?”

  Jenny took a slow, deep breath and got her game face back on. “Sure, pixie!”

  As she moved to stand, Maverick grabbed her arm. “You call her pixie. And you keep count.”

  She nodded; she’d seen his shock earlier when Kelsey had said ‘That’s two.’ Until she’d seen his reaction, she hadn’t thought about its impact on him—and she’d been surprised to discover that it hurt him. She’d started calling Kelsey pixie because she’d been calling her pixie for months before her birth. She’d started keeping count with her because it was a happy memory at a time when she’d needed one. And because she wanted Kelsey always to know that she heard those words every day.

  “I’m part of that, Jen. Those were our things. I’ve been in your life all this time.”

  Her head hurt too much for this. “I can’t do this now. I can’t.”

  Concern softened his expression, and his hand eased around her arm and became a caress. “Sorry. Okay. Let’s get you through the zoo in one piece, then.”

  When she stood, the change in position made the pain surge to a new high point, and she reeled like it had literally hit her. Maverick’s arm came around her waist and steadied her. She leaned on him.

  “I’m okay.”

  “I know. And I’m right here.”

  ~oOo~

  Three hours at the zoo. Long, painful hours. Half an hour in a loud, crowded food court. Two trips to ladies’ rooms, where she bent over public toilets and hurled, then leaned against the stall wall, crying silently and trying to pull herself together.

  Puking made the pain worse. Crying made the pain worse. The greatest torment of migraine wasn’t the excruciating pain but all the things it made you do that made the pain worse.

  But she got through it and, with Maverick’s help, managed to keep the girls from knowing. Kelsey had the birthday trip she’d wanted. They even did the gift shop, where they got big clear balloons with little balloon animals inside, and Maverick bought them each a new toy. Maisie got an articulated wooden snake, and Kelsey got a big stuffed giraffe.

  At her car, Maverick helped her get the girls into their car seats. She watched him fasten Kelsey in and was surprised to see that he knew what he was doing.

  When she opened the driver’s door, he caught it and stepped in her way. “I know you can do it. I’ve seen how you can deal with the pain. But I see that you’re hurting. Let me take you home. Let me drive, Jen.”

  She’d decided to ask him to join them for cake and presents. Having him here today had helped a lot, and the thought of driving made
her want to cry again—driving with a migraine was a special level of hell. But if he drove her car, how would he get back to his? How long would he stay? How would it all play out?

  Her screaming head wouldn’t entertain these questions. But she did manage to ask, “What about your car?”

  “I need to run over right now to get something out of it, but I’ll just leave it here and get it when I can.”

  “They tow after hours.”

  He smiled. “I know. Delaney’s has the contract. So that’s not a problem. So I’ll drive, then?”

  Her brain wouldn’t think. She wanted to be home in a dark room with a cool washcloth over her eyes.

  “Jen, please.”

  She wanted somebody to take care of her.

  “Okay, yeah. Thank you.”

  He bent his head and kissed her, right in front of Kelsey, and she’d been thinking and moving too slowly to see it coming. It was just a gentle kiss, barely more than a peck, but Jenny felt it all around and through her. When he stepped back to lead her around to the passenger side, she saw their daughter watching, her eyes wide. Blue eyes, just like her father’s.

  Her head hurt too much to hold all this confusion.

  ~oOo~

  She made it through the squeaking balloons in the back seat on the drive home. She made it through ice cream cake and even sang ‘Happy Birthday,’ with her hands clenched behind her back. She made it through Kelsey’s squeals of delight at her gifts: a Dentist Barbie from Maisie, some books and a Barbie Dream House from Jenny, some clothes ‘from Granddaddy,’ and a big art kit from Maverick, with pastels, colored pencils, watercolors on a palette, sketchpads, an apron, and a little easel.

  There was a lot of delighted squealing. Kelsey was so happy that, every now and then, Jenny almost forgot that she was enduring the worst migraine she’d had in years.

  Maverick took the girls back to Kelsey’s room to help her set up the Dream House while Jenny cleaned up the kitchen. She’d bagged up the gift trash and had her hands in soapy dish water before it occurred to her that she’d let him go back without a second thought.

  He was loose in her house, and her father was sleeping in his room. His fill-in nurse sat in the living room, watching television. An innocent bystander.