by Jessie Cooke
“He’s mine?” Cody whispered, hugging the baby even tighter so that Ian protested. He wanted to whoop and holler but something like empathy tugged at him when he looked at Kyle’s sad, green eyes and he thought about all the nights Kyle was at work and Harley had been with him, making a baby. Suddenly, as happy as he was that the baby was biologically his, he felt something over what he’d done to the man standing in front of him. “I’m sorry, Kyle.” Kyle looked at him with a doubtful look on his face and Cody said, “Not that it means anything, but for what it’s worth I am sorry that Harley and I hurt you and I’m sorry you got your hopes up about the baby. And I’m sorry that I’ve been such an arrogant ass.” Kyle didn’t say anything, but he gave Cody a small nod. Cody looked at Harley. He loved her more than life itself, and he trusted her despite how they had come to be together. His roots had been tangled up with Harley’s since they were kids. She wasn’t going anywhere. “I’m going to take Ian inside so you two can talk.”
Harley gave him a grateful smile. As he stepped into the clubhouse he saw her put her hand on Kyle’s arm gently, and he knew from experience that whatever she was saying was probably the smartest thing Kyle had heard all day.
34
Zack walked into the courthouse just before nine. It was filled with people – men, women, and children alike. Everyone was due at nine a.m., and the judge would go through each case one by one as the other families sat and watched. Zack thought it was odd. He didn’t believe in families sharing their dirty laundry for all to see…but that had everything to do with how he grew up. He took a seat near the back and his eyes sought out Nicole. She hadn’t brought the baby with her; he was home, safe and warm, with Stacey. He smiled when he found her – she looked beautiful in a light tan suit jacket and pencil skirt and a white blouse. Her hair was pulled back from her face in a twist and she wore a single strand of pearls around her neck. The only thing wrong with the picture was how nervous she looked as she gripped her hands together and twisted them, listening to whatever her attorney was telling her.
Zack looked at the lawyer and wondered what kind of monochromatic world the man had come from. His skin wasn’t just pale; it was ashy, as if he’d not only been out of the sun for years but he’d also never heard of lotion or moisturizer. His glasses were thick with black rims and his eyes looked almost colorless from where Zack sat. His head was balding and the hair that was left was gray, but a dull, lifeless gray that looked like it might have never had any color even when he was young. He was talking to Nicole in hushed tones but there was absolutely no expression on his face as he did. That worried Zack. He’d rather see someone that looked impassioned there to fight for Nicole and Liam, someone that felt as strongly for them as he did.
With a sigh, he continued to search the room until he located Spider, or Michael Lee Johnson III. It took him a while to locate him because Spider looked nothing like himself. He was wearing a tailored suit with a white shirt, and the starched collar and sleeves showed underneath the jacket. Gold cufflinks glittered underneath the fluorescent lights and a gold tie complemented the light brown of the suit. He looked like a grown-up choirboy. His blond hair was pulled back from his face and fastened in a tight bun at the nape of his neck, and he didn’t have a sign of stubble on his face. The only thing that gave him away for what he was were the colorful tattoos that swirled out of his shirt and climbed up his neck and the ones that adorned his hands. Spider had an alter ego, and that was the man that had come to court to fight today.
Next to spider an older woman sat. She was probably in her fifties and so severe-looking that Zack might have mistaken her for his attorney, if not for the fact that they had an almost identical profile. She wasn’t a big woman, but she wasn’t small either. She was sitting down, but Zack could see from her face and arms that she was relatively thin…yet she had the shoulders of a linebacker. Her blonde hair was pulled back as tightly as her son's with the only difference being her bun was much larger. Her face was long and it looked tight, like she’d never expressed an emotion, or she’d overdosed on Botox. It made her look harsh and unsympathetic to what was going on around her. Wire-framed glasses sat perched on the end of her nose and she looked over rather than through them at the man talking to her and her son at that moment. Zack looked at him and recognized him as an attorney he’d seen many times before. He was the highly paid attorney that the Defenders had on retainer, but he had an office in Nashville and Zack had used him a time or two himself in the past. That wasn’t encouraging, since he could remember the guy being somewhat callous about everything except winning and getting paid. He was a shark, and poor Nicole looked like she’d come armed with a minnow.
The judge called the hearing to order and had the bailiff read off the rules of the court. Then he started calling people up, families in trouble, and the longer Zack sat and watched and listened, the more depressed he became. It wasn’t always obvious to him, while he listened to at least six cases, which way the judge would swing. Zack was sure the intelligent-looking older man had much more information in front of him than was being shared in the court, but when he granted unsupervised visitation to a father that had served more than one sentence for domestic abuse, Zack began to worry. He didn’t know anything about custody or family court, but he would think that between a mother without a violent history and a father with one, the mother would be granted custody and if the father got visitation at all, it should be supervised.
It was almost eleven when the judge called a half an hour’s recess. Nicole and her attorney were talking, so Zack went out to the coffee cart in the lobby and bought two cups of coffee and a banana muffin, just in case she hadn’t eaten. He waited near the door, and when Spider and his mother came through, the piece of shit smiled at him and leaned down to whisper something in his mother’s ear. The older woman looked at him over the rims of her glasses with dark blue eyes, the color of the ocean. She let her eyes run from his hair, which he had pulled back again, down over his green cotton button-down shirt, black jeans, and black boots and back up to his face. At that moment, she managed an expression. It was one that told whoever she was looking at that they were about as significant as gum on the bottom of her five-hundred-dollar shoes. She tugged on Spider’s arm and led him away before Nicole came out the door. “Hi, baby. How are you doing?”
She smiled weakly and nodded. “It’s just so hard waiting, and listening to the rest of this stuff. And Spider’s mother keeps glaring at me. I only met the woman three times. Once, when Spider and I first moved in together and she acted like she didn’t think I was good enough for him. The second time was when I was six months pregnant and she told me I should see a nutritionist for all the weight that was going straight to my ass. And the last time I saw her was when she came to see Liam a week after he was born. Do you know what she had the nerve to say that day?” He shook his head and she said, “She looked at Liam, didn’t ask to hold him or anything about his birth, and then she looked at Spider and said, ‘It’s funny, he hardly looks like you at all.’ The bitch was insinuating that Liam wasn’t his. We got in a big fight after she left. I was a week postpartum and he…he just wasn’t nice.” Zack felt a shudder of anger pass through him. He knew what she wasn’t saying was that he probably put his hands on her and hurt her. “So, we got one of those DNA kits from the pharmacy and he was a dick to me the whole six weeks that we waited for it to come back. When it did and it proved that Liam was his, he didn’t even apologize, and his mother never came to see him again. It makes me so angry that they actually believe they have any rights to that baby after all of that.”
Zack slid an arm around her and led her over to a bench, guiding her to sit down. “I wish I could fix this for you,” he told her.
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to go on and on. I’m just anxious.”
“I know. Did you eat? I bought a muffin.”
She smiled and put her hand over her stomach. “I’m too nervous to eat. I’m afraid I might throw up.”
“Court is coming back into session,” the bailiff stepped out and announced. Zack gave Nicole one last hug and she took one last sip of her coffee before tossing it into the trash and hurrying inside. Spider and his mother strolled in after her and Spider kept one eye on Zack as he did. The son of a bitch was still smiling, and for the first time in his life Zack realized how annoying it could be. It was a wonder he didn’t get his ass whipped a lot more.
He waited until everyone was inside to go in and take his seat. The judge came back in and after everyone stood up and then were told to be seated he told the bailiff to call the next case.
“The court calls Michael Lee Johnson III and Nicole Swafford in the case for custody of the minor child, Liam Michael Johnson.”
Nicole got up and Zack saw her glance over her shoulder and wipe her palms on her skirt before following her attorney to the table on the right. Spider and his mother and attorney took the one on the left. “Mr. Johnson, you are the biological father of this child?”
Spider stood up. “Yes, your honor. He is my son. His mother and I lived together at the time of his conception and birth.”
“And your complaint says that in the…six months the two of you have been separated, you haven’t been allowed any type of visitation?” Zack wondered if kidnapping counted.
“That’s correct, your honor.”
The judge looked at Nicole. She was pale and Zack worried she might pass out. “Why is that?” he asked her.
She looked at her attorney, who nodded, but still didn’t change the expression on his face. In a shaky voice, she said, “Because I didn’t feel like my son would be safe with his father unsupervised.”
“And why is that?”
She twisted her fingers together as she said, “He has a history of domestic abuse…”
“Nothing on record, your honor,” Spider’s attorney stated.
“This isn’t a trial,” the judge said. “Save it for your turn.” Zack thought that was a good sign. The judge turned back to Nicole and said, “Go on, please.”
“He’s in a motorcycle gang, he drinks a lot, and he uses drugs, your honor. I don’t want to deny my son a father, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable sending him to a motorcycle clubhouse with the things that go on there, alone, to see his father.”
“And you’re not comfortable with the father visiting him while he’s in your care either.”
She glanced nervously at Spider. He and his mother were staring at her. Zack felt sick to his stomach for her. “Like I said, your honor, there’s a history of domestic abuse. I currently have a restraining order against him.” The judge questioned her about where she lived and with whom and about her education, job, and family. She mentioned her parents, but she didn’t elaborate about their relationship. She didn’t mention Zack, but he didn’t blame her for that.
When it was Spider’s turn, he spoke with enunciation and finesse that sounded foreign to Zack. He would have never guessed the man had any finesse in his entire body. He denied the domestic abuse, stating that it had never been documented by the law or witnessed by anyone and that Nicole had never gone to the hospital. He admitted to belonging to a motorcycle “club,” but claimed to work for his father full-time at the motorcycle shop and spend most of his nights at their “mansion” on the outskirts of Clarksville. He sounded choked up when he talked about how much he “loved” and “missed” his son. But the worst of it came when his attorney asked to speak. Spider sat down and his attorney said:
“Your honor, since Miss Swafford brought up the ‘motorcycle gang’ and claims that Mr. Johnson dabbles in drugs, we feel it only fair to point out to this court that she is currently in a relationship with a man that belongs to the Nashville chapter of the Invaders. It is listed as one of Tennessee’s one percent clubs and I’m sure you know what that means. But, as Mr. Johnson has admitted an association with a club himself, that is not what is most worrisome to us. What is worrisome is the fact that only two days ago, Miss Swafford’s boyfriend, who spends most of his nights at her home, with her and her son, was arrested in possession of both a firearm and a pound of methamphetamines with a street value of over ten thousand dollars.” The audience hadn’t seemed to be listening up to that point but as soon as the attorney finished speaking there was a collective gasp. Nicole turned to look at Zack. Her eyes were wide and he wanted to take her into his arms. Spider was looking at him too, and smiling. The judge was banging his gavel and Zack suddenly felt like his world was falling apart.
35
“Hash, man…I need to see her.” Zack was nursing his second glass of whiskey as they sat at the bar in the club. He was set to go back to court on the drug charges in two days. The club was working overtime trying to find a cop that might be willing to make the evidence disappear, or a someone in the D.A.’s office that might be able to get it thrown out altogether. He should have already been back on the road weeks ago, but as long as he was out on bail, he was stuck. He didn’t admit it to anyone other than Hash, but as much as he hated being grounded, he was almost glad this time. It was hard enough not seeing Nicole and Liam as it was. If he was hundreds or thousands of miles away, he might just lose his mind. He already felt like he was losing it, and it had only been a month since he’d seen them, at least up close, anyways.
Hash shrugged and downed the last of what was in the glass in front of him. He motioned at the club girl behind the bar and after she had refilled his glass, he looked at his friend and said, “I guess you have to ask yourself if it will do more harm than good.”
“Spider has Liam this weekend. They’ve been at his mother’s place in Clarksville since last night.” Zack hadn’t meant to say that out loud, and the look he got from his friend when he did said it all.
Hashtag sat the glass he hadn’t taken a drink of down and said, “Jesus, that’s why you look like you haven’t slept in a fucking week or more? I thought you’d just been drinking and picking fights again. You’re really stalking them.”
“I’m not stalking them, and the drinking and fighting only happened once.”
“Twice. The first time was the day of the hearing and you were so drunk by the time I hauled your bloodied ass out of that bar, you didn’t remember shit the next day. You’re lucky that bartender called me and not Skid or Stone. Then, the other night when you beat that preppy kid to a pulp for calling his own girl a whore, we passed the cops less than a mile away on our way out. You’re not clear of the charges you’re going to court on in two days yet, man. You’re making this shit worse. They’re going to lock your ass up and then you won’t even be able to stalk them.”
“It’s not fucking stalking. I’m just making sure that the baby is taken care of and Nicole is safe.”
“You were supposed to stay away, completely away. That was the deal. The judge only gave them fifty-fifty custody based on his promise not to have the kid at the clubhouse, and Nicole’s that she wouldn’t let you around Liam. You not only made a promise to the court, but to this club. You know I’m not a stickler for rules, man…hell, I break them daily…but in this case, all I can see in your future right now is that turning out all bad.”
Zack only heard the part of Hashtag’s words that his brain wanted to focus on and it gave him an idea. “She hasn’t seen me, none of them have. But you just gave me an idea. The provision was that Liam couldn’t be around when I saw her, not that she couldn’t see me at all, right?”
“Dude, she’s scared to death of losing her kid. You told me yourself that you promised her you wouldn’t come around…at all. With all of Spider’s money and family connections, I wouldn’t doubt he has someone stalking her too. They get one photograph of you going in that apartment and manipulate it so that a judge thinks Liam was there when you did…you’re so fucked.”
“I’m already fucked without her,” Zack said after downing his drink. “But, you’re right, going to her is too risky. That’s why I’ll need you to bring her to me.”
The glass
was at Hashtag’s lips again. He didn’t take a drink, but instead sat it down on the bar so hard that the amber liquid splashed out all over his hand. “The fuck you say?”
“You have the hots for her roommate, right? Invite her here for the party tonight and when you pick her up, pick up Nicole too. They might be watching her apartment and work, but they don’t have the balls to send anyone up in here.”
“And what do I say when Stone and Skid ask what the fuck I’m doing inviting her up in here? No fucking way, man. You know I’ll do just about anything for you, but I’m up for the next sergeant at arms spot and that shit will put an end to that in a heartbeat.”