by Sy Walker
“Look. You don't have to keep it. You don't even have to tell him. It's your body, he doesn't have to know anything about it.”
This was the exact opposite of what Joy wanted to hear right now. She had expected her sister to be more supportive, although she was being supportive how she had expected Joy wanted her to be supportive. She'd always sworn she didn't want children, that her life would be over if she had kids, how she didn't want tied down to any man or child. She had worried that Kayla quietly judged her, but in reality, Kayla was just afraid that it was Joy who was judging the way she lived her life. Maybe she had invited her sister to live with them so that she could see what it was to really have a family, how it wasn't an obligation so much as it was a joy and a comfort.
“I'm not going to lie to him!”
“He's a criminal,” Kayla said patiently, as if she were talking to Penny.
“He's a good man,” Joy said firmly.
And with that she stood and the conversation was over. She was going to find Zak and tell him the news. She should have done that in the first place. She glared at Kayla as she left, speeding away toward the motorcycle club where Zak hung out; the one place she had never been and never had any intention of going. Until now.
Chapter 9
The motorcycle club was located on the outskirts of town, a couple miles east of the diner. She drove there quickly, parking next to a line of bikes in a dirt and gravel paved makeshift parking lot. There were more than she'd expected – there had to be at least twenty of them there. One in particular caught her eye, something was familiar about the red leather seat but she couldn't quite place it.
The building was an old bar named O'Riley's, and she sat in her car for a few minutes, breathing heavily. Was she really going to do this? It seemed so reckless. Dangerous. Everything Kayla said was true. But it was Zak. Zak who loved her. With his sensual eyes and carefree smile, the spirit that would defend an old woman he didn't know to the death.
She sighed and got out of the car, clicking the door closed quietly behind her. She knew her car would be conspicuous. They might have seen her coming from a mile away. Maybe she should have parked further down the road so she would blend in better.
When she walked into the bar, it took her eyes a few seconds to adjust. It was dim, no, dark. And loud. People were shouting, glass was breaking, and suddenly, shots were being fired. She ducked behind the bar, her eyes wide, though finally able to see. She squinted into the darkness and saw Gordon bound and gagged on the floor with a few of his buddies. They'd ridden over, she realized. That's why there were so many bikes. And the one that she recognized with the red seat had been his. The one he refused to let her anywhere near unless he told her to pose half naked in front of it for his camera. She'd only done it once, when she thought he was harmless.
Suddenly, Zak was there. His gorgeous, rugged body was crouched over Gordon, whose muffled screams were held back by the gag in his mouth. His eyes were wide and Joy couldn't help but think he looked ugly when he was pleading. No wonder the villains hated whiners so much. Suddenly, a huge buck knife was in Zak's hand and he was gripping Gordon by the hair, pulling his chin off the floor. He sliced a long red line in Gordon's neck and the man's strangled screams began to gurgle until finally he was dead on the floor.
The men in the motorcycle club hollered and whooped victoriously, high fiving each other and slapping Zak on the back. Zak didn't look very celebratory however, he just stared down at the corpse on the floor, contemplating it and frowning deeply. And then suddenly, he saw her, the fear on her face, and the confusion in her eyes. And she was running and crying, somehow by her car, now being enfolded in Zak's arms, shushed and rocked, cradled and kissed all over. She wanted to let her feel the comfort he offered, but he had been the one who had done it, he had killed a man right in front of her.
“I'm pregnant,” she finally said between gulping sobs. “But I can't let our child be part of something like that.”
Zak looked at her, his eyes wide with shock. He opened and closed his mouth.
“You're sure?”
“I went to the doctor's, they confirmed everything. But Zak, this can't be our life. She can't see you if this is your life.”
She was already sure she would have a daughter. Somehow it just slipped out and felt right.
She pulled herself out of Zak's embrace and got into the car, gripping the steering wheel with her hands shaking.
“You shouldn't drive like that, it's not safe,” he said, his voice faraway through the window glass. “Let me take you.”
Like hell. She tore out of the parking lot and headed home, as far away from him as she could possibly get.
Chapter 10
The next few months were hell. Kayla and Penny did the best they could to help her feel better. Kayla had assumed the baby was Gordon's, which was why she had reacted the way she did. Joy wasn't sure she wanted to tell the truth, but ultimately did anyway. Kayla was quiet for a moment, and then exhaled softly. She had nothing to say about it though, which Joy was grateful for.
She wished for nothing more than to share the experience of her pregnancy with the man she loved, but she couldn't get the images of him killing Gordon out of her head. That was something she hadn't told anybody about, especially not Kayla. But one night they were watching a mobster movie and Joy started crying uncontrollably, begging her to turn it off. She couldn't stop thinking about how Zak was a cold-blooded killer. It was too much to bear. And now he would be a father. What kind of world was it?
Finally she spilled the whole story to Kayla after making sure she swore not to tell. After she told her, she got an unexpected reaction. Kayla smiled, shaking her head. “That little bastard,” was all she said.
When Joy pushed her to elaborate, Kayla sighed, the smile still on her lips.
“It's just that...if I could have gotten away with it, I would have liked to do it myself.”
“What, kill Gordon?”
“Call it the Mama Bear in me. I protect me and mine. I guess Zak's the same way. But more macho. Because men are just like that.”
Joy stared at her sister, feeling as if something inside of her had started to thaw out and melt. She began to cry again, but for a totally different reason. Kayla smiled and stroked her gently, muttering something about how bad pregnancy hormones could be, and then sent her off to bed with a glass of tea.
She laid in bed, touching the bump where her child was growing. She loved it more than she had ever loved anything, even though they hadn't officially met yet. She sighed, crying softly as she thought about just how much she missed Zak. She had always missed him, right from the moment she left. But he couldn't come with her. He had to take care of his grandmother. He'd had it rough, it was no wonder he'd turned out to be such a hardass. But he acted from a place of care and love, and although he was rough, he had a good reason for everything he did. She couldn't think of anyone more suitable to look after her child as fiercely as she intended to. With a dad like Zak around, no harm would come to that baby.
The next morning when she woke up, she knew what she would have to do. She showered and dressed, then hopped into her car. She didn't even stop to have breakfast with Kayla and Penny. All that was on her mind was Zak.
Chapter 11
She drove quickly, parking her car in the same spot. The bikes that Gordon's gang members had were still there, at least parts of them. They'd smashed up some and salvaged the pieces. She was sure she'd find plenty at the body shop. She ducked into the motorcycle club, waiting a moment for her eyes to adjust. All activity in the room paused, and finally she could see several figures around her, each of them eyeing her curiously.
None of them seemed to recognize her, but they knew her car, and they knew that Zak told them not to mess with her if she came in again. They were supposed to get him immediately. It took about five minutes before Zak was standing in front of her. He led her past the bar, fumes of alcohol and cigarettes lingering in the air, and
led her up to the apartment above the bar, where he lived.
It had the husky scent of a male bachelor, spicy and intoxicating, and surprisingly clean. If he smoked he smoked downstairs, and kept the apartment immaculate. Still, there were signs of his deviance all over the place. A pin up girl calendar on the wall, bike parts scattered here and there, weapons of several types placed proudly on the wall. She looked away from them and into his eyes.
“Are you okay? I'm glad you're here. How is the baby?”
“I'm fine,” she said, although in truth she felt like throwing up. It was a feeling she had gotten used to though, and swallowed it with finesse. “The baby is fine too. She's growing strong.”
“She,” he said, and his face glowed. She suddenly felt very ashamed of herself for keeping him out of the loop for so long. She had been afraid, yes, but having him there with her along the way would have been so much better.
“I haven't named her yet,” she said carefully. “I thought we could do that together.”
He stared at her, the meaning of the words hitting him hard. For the first time in ten years, she saw Zak weep. The first time was when she had left him in that town all alone, with nobody left to love him. Her heart went out to him now, and she touched his leathery cheek, wiping tears away and allowing him to embrace her. She almost groaned out loud, the feeling of him so near to her was powerful and perfect – everything she had been needing was right there all along.
“I couldn't fucking handle it if you left again,” he said softly. “You're all I had for so long. And then you were just gone. I think something in me snapped then. I figure if there's no love left for me, I've got no love left for anything else.”
“I know,” Joy whispered.
“But I love you,” he was saying, lifting her up gently, kissing her from the forehead to the baby bump, holding and caressing it as if it were the most sacred object on the earth. “And I love her. More than I've loved anything.”
“Me too,” she said. “And I love you. I never should have left. You're the only man I ever loved.”
And then they were kissing.
She let her hands slide up and down his body, dipping her fingers into the power over him that she knew her body had. He writhed pleasantly under her touch, grabbing her hands to kiss the fingertips and her palms, sending shivers as his soft kisses penetrated the thin, sensitive skin on her wrists. She tugged them away from him, her heart racing, and held him tightly, her palms roaming his thighs, resting over the rock-hard bulge between them, slipping in to hold it, bring it to her lips, and taste him.
And then he was on top of her, and they made love, not like the teenagers they were when they parted, but like the adults that had been through everything possible and not been broken. Their hearts were merged and their bodies knew it, elevating every sensation until they closed their eyes and came together, falling into bed and clinging tightly to the other's body, making damn sure that they would never be so far apart again.
Epilogue
“Mommy! Ella's walking!”
Penny summoned Kayla quickly, who ran into the living room. Zak and Joy were kneeling on the floor, Ella in between them. She was taking her first tentative steps toward Zak. As soon as she lost her balance, he was there, cushioning the space between Ella and the ground. He lifted her in the air, tossing her gently.
“Good job baby!” he exclaimed, kissing her on the nose. The baby laughed and clapped, and Joy grinned from ear to ear. Life had its ups and downs, but the one thing she knew for sure was that without her family, she would have nothing. But with them, she had everything.
She gazed lovingly at her sister, who had allowed herself to warm up to Zak once again and opened her home up to her sister and her family. Penny adored her Uncle Zak, and loved Ella even more. And although life was chaotic and crazy at the MC, there was nowhere to go but up. They would do what it took to protect Ella and keep the town a safe place for her to grow. That's all there was to it.
THE END
MC ROMANCE: Valentine Biker
“That’s right,” Summer Jones intoned as she watched him leave. “Go crawling back to your high school- aged skank. See if something lasting comes out of that.” She slammed the door, not bothering to look as her now ex-husband Tom drove away from her in his red pick-up truck. She swiftly removed her wedding ring and her engagement ring from her finger, and slammed them down on the table before crumpling up into one of the chairs.
She finally allowed herself to cry. Her husband of five years had left her. She’d suspected that he’d been cheating on her, and he informed her that he had. “She’s twenty-five, and she can provide something for me that you can’t,” he’d told Summer shortly before ditching her and the life they’d made together.
This was an insult to Summer for a number of reasons. She was twenty-nine; she wasn’t exactly old yet by any stretch of the word. The ‘something’ he’d mentioned was children. Summer had been told by at least three separate doctors that she was not going to be able to conceive. Her body just did not release enough eggs. Some crap like that. She had gotten past it somehow, but apparently Tom had not.
Sobbing in her kitchen, Summer didn’t know what to do. At last, she called up her best friend Rose. She cried into the phone and could barely get any words out, but finally she was able to say, “He left me.”
“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry,” her friend said. “Did he say why?”
Thinking about his reasoning didn’t exactly help. “He said he wanted to be with someone who could have his kids. As if anyone would want to have kids with him!”
The truth was that she had wanted that.
She could hear Rose sigh. “Do you want to do something tonight? I’ll buy you a milkshake at the Shake Shack…”
Summer shook her head even though Rose couldn’t see that through the phone. “No, thanks, though. I’ve got work.”
“Work?” Rose asked, surprised. “No, no no. You cannot go to work. It’s Valentine’s Day and your husband is an asshole. You should not make your day worse by serving customers. No.”
Despite how much pain she was in, Summer laughed a little at that. “I have to go to work,” she said. “I’m not going to be able to pay for myself if I don’t keep working for myself.”
She told herself that Valentine’s Day didn’t mean anything to her. It was just some dumb holiday invented by both the greeting card and the candy companies. It didn’t hold any significance at all for her. Nope.
When she arrived at her place of work – a restaurant that also served as a small music-slash-poetry venue, and also housed a bookstore – Summer groaned when she saw the decorations that had been strung up, laid out and stuck to nearly every surface in the place that wasn’t going to be used for cooking. Pink, red and white were everywhere. She had never noticed before how evil the concept of Cupid was.
“Happy Valentine’s Day!” her manager Megan greeted her, giving her an uncharacteristic big hug. She was tall with wavy brown hair and blond highlights. She was about forty years old, and that was part of why Summer was both confused and chagrined at her boss’s enthusiasm for the holiday.
“I didn’t know you were so into Valentine’s Day,” Summer said, shrugging away from the hug as soon as possible. Maybe Rose had been right.
Megan let out a laugh. “I didn’t used to be, but now I’m engaged!” she practically shouted. She showed off the large, diamond ring on her finger, grinning from ear to ear.
Okay, now it seemed as though the world was playing a cruel trick on Summer. “Yay,” she said softly.
“Yay,” Megan agreed. “Okay, so, there are appropriate shirts for the evening for you to pick out and put on in the back. There’s a Valentine’s Day concert scheduled for seven-thirty. I’m going to have you start in the bookstore and then move on to being a waitress during the show. Does that sound good?”
None of it sounded particularly good to Summer, but she didn’t want to be alone on Valentine’s Day, thinking abou
t the husband she had lost and feeling sorry for herself. The past five years hadn’t all been wonderful, especially not the last year of it, when Tom had been cheating on her and not even trying so hard to hide it.
With a slight nod, she went to the back and chose a red shirt. Red could be taken for something other than romantic. Red was the color of blood, of fire, of anger. Only when she put it on did she realize that it had a pink heart on it, right over where her body’s actual heart belonged.
She could deal with it, though. At least it didn’t have any words on it. As she looked at her reflection, she marveled at the fact that, aside from looking a little tired, it was hard to tell that her heart was actually broken. Her short, reddish-brown hair still curled up on one side and curled under on the other side, making her look lopsided in a way that she liked. She still had a solar system of freckles on her face and neck. She seemed no worse for wear. She was still Summer Jones, and she could pretend to be completely unscathed. Her blue eyes with flecks of gold looked sad, but their sadness could easily be mistaken for fatigue.
“The bookstore won’t be so bad,” she told herself under her breath. “It’s not like everyone is going to buy books about romance today. We have a lot of different kinds of books…”
After telling herself that, Summer gave her reflection a nod and went out to the sales floor again, ready to go ahead and stand at the check-out podium, pretending to be enthusiastic about the selection at Cabbages and Kings. It was a tourist sort of place, but it paid the bills and it kept her out of Mopeville.