Plus, she was trying to get pregnant, and she thought maybe she was. So drinking and E was not her thing right now even if she weren’t afraid of what would happen.
The real truth was that all that craziness—the vodka, the partying, being the woo-hoo girl who was up for anything—all that had been covering up a lot of dark shit, and not covering it up well at all. But that shit was behind her. Yeah, it was Caleb. With him, she had everything she wanted, and she didn’t need to be swimming in vodka and flashing lights to see it.
“I’m just not into it anymore, Clark. But I miss you guys. You know what—when we get the house finished, we’ll have everybody over for dinner.”
He laughed and stood up. “A dinner party? Jesus, when did we get old?”
“Not old, Clark. Grown up.”
“Ugh. I think that’s worse.”
Cecily didn’t agree at all.
~oOo~
Caleb’s bike was in the driveway when she pulled up, and Cecily jumped out of her Trans Am and hurried up the walk and in the front door. He was lying prone on the murder room floor, nose to nose with Lloyd, their new bearded dragon.
When she came in, they both turned and smiled at her. No lie—Lloyd smiled. It was the cutest thing ever in the world.
“Hey! You’re home. I thought you wouldn’t be back until tomorrow.” He’d been on a run to West Texas.
A lot had changed quickly in the Bulls, club and family both. Uncle Brian had stepped away; he and Aunt Mo were planning a big trip, driving around the country in a big, flashy RV they were currently shopping for. Now Becker was president, Simon was VP, and Maverick had taken over as Secretary and Treasurer. Their long runs were different, too. Cecily had the sense that that should have been a good thing—her father had hated the Galveston run, and they weren’t doing that anymore—but Caleb was more tense when he left town these days than he’d been before.
“Nobody was in the mood to spend the night in a motel, so we rode all day to get back.”
“You didn’t call. Everything okay?”
“Yeah. Normal.” He picked Lloyd up and set him on his shoulder, then stood and came to her for a kiss. “How are you? Did you get it?”
Her period—it had been due yesterday. She hadn’t been feeling any symptoms, but this morning, her breasts had been tender. She’d figured it meant her period was just a day late, but now the day was over, and nothing yet. “Nope.” She grinned and gave Lloyd a little kiss. “I got a kit. Should I use it now, or should I wait a day or two?”
“Why the fuck would you wait?”
“Good question. Okay, I’m going to pee on a stick.”
“You want company?”
“To pee? Uh, no. But thanks for the offer?”
“But I want to see the stick.”
Lloyd was munching on Caleb’s hair. Cecily grinned and pulled the dark strands free. “I’ll be right back. I think Lloyd’s hungry.”
~oOo~
Fifteen minutes later, they stood in the middle of the third bedroom, surrounded by paneled walls and threadbare brown carpet, and a mishmash of boxes and other crap they hadn’t figured out what to do with yet. Cecily’s mother had used the opportunity of this house to unload a lot of crap from the storage shed—stuff Cecily had always wanted, handed down from her grandparents or great-grandparents, but maybe wasn’t suiting her and Caleb’s taste now.
It looked like they’d have to figure out what to do with it in the next eight months or so.
Cecily opened a box and folded back the packing paper. She pulled up a pale green Depression glass plate. The full set had been her great-grandmother’s. Her mother had thought it too old-fashioned, and it was very obviously old, but maybe they could use it. Would it be bad to use seventy-year-old dishes for everyday? Or was that better than leaving it in a box for another twenty years?
“What would you think about using these for our dishes? The green might look fun with the yellow walls in the kitchen. It’s a full set, servingware, too. Or we could sell it. It’s probably worth a lot of money.”
Caleb came to her side and took the plate from her hands. “I don’t care much about plates, but this isn’t bad. Not too fussy. It was your grandma’s?”
“Great-grandma. She died when I was really little. But I think I remember her being nice.”
“Great-grandma, that’s three generations back. Would you want to sell something that’s been in your family for so long?”
No, she wouldn’t. That felt odd and disloyal, and she’d always loved this stuff. When she was little, she’d go into the shed and open the boxes and lay it all out to play tea time. It drove her mother nuts.
She shrugged and pulled a bowl from the box. “Better than leaving it in a box forever.”
He set the bowl back in the box. “Then let’s use it. Let’s use everything you want. Like the rugs and beadings I brought down from home. We need some of our history in our house. Our kid should know who he is.”
“You’re sure about this? The things you were worried about—you’re not worried now?”
Taking the bowl from her and setting it aside, Caleb drew her into his arms. “I’m still worried. I’ll always be worried. But you and me, we’re solid. Our families are solid. We brought three worlds together under our feet. So our kids, they’ll grow up knowing they’re part of all those worlds. They will be strong enough to rise above any challenge they face.” He chuckled and brushed his lips over hers. “Also, I’ll kill anybody who even looks at them wrong.”
She laughed and hugged him. “Another prosaic statement at the end of a pretty speech.”
“Threatening murder is prosaic?”
“In our world, totally.”
~oOo~
Cecily couldn’t sleep. Caleb lay beside her, on his belly, totally out. She’d hogged the covers trying to get comfortable, and his beautiful smooth back was exposed. How could he sleep? She was pregnant! Why wasn’t he awake with her, fretting about the future?
What if she was a terrible mother? What if she didn’t bond with the kid? What if her temper got the best of her? What if Caleb was wrong now, and had been right before, and being half-Osage was harder than being all Osage?
His grandfather and brother accepted her now, or at least paid lip service to the idea. They’d even come to the clubhouse for a few minutes for the party after their courthouse wedding. But Levi still looked at her like he was ready for her to stab Caleb in the back or something. Would he look at their kid like that?
No. Caleb wouldn’t allow it. She wouldn’t allow it.
If she was a good mother.
She’d have help, right? She wouldn’t be alone. She’d have Caleb. And her mother. And Willa and Jenny. And all the Bulls’ old ladies. And all the Bulls. Their kids would grow up like she had—and she’d had a good life, a happy childhood.
Right up to the violence that had taken her father away.
Would it take Caleb away, too?
It might—he’d almost died once. They did dangerous work with dangerous people. Even when they tried to stay out of trouble, they were up to their knees in it. Caleb could be killed. She could be killed. Deb and Leah had been hurt in the same club shit that had killed her father.
Oh, shit. What had they done? What had they been thinking?
Cecily shoved the covers away and got out of bed. She yanked her panties on and grabbed Caleb’s hoodie, dragging it over her head as she left the bedroom and went to her office.
As always, she drew up short and smiled as she went into the room. She loved this space. This amazing thing Caleb had done for her quieted her turbulent mind at once. More than the lovely gesture in the work he’d done was the quiet, unassuming love that he showed with everything he’d bought. He’d been paying attention. The desk she’d loved and thought too expensive to splurge on. The comfy chair. The full wall of bookshelves—just plain, build-it-yourself shelves, but they filled the whole wall and went higher than her head. She would be filling them with books for
years.
Even the old Royal typewriter, a heavy cast-iron thing she’d never seen before. It wasn’t something he’d seen her admire. He’d simply known she would.
Their kid was lucky to have a man like Caleb for a dad. Maybe it would balance out having a trash fire for a mom.
Shuddering that feeling away, she went to her wonderful desk and took her journal from the drawer. She made herself comfortable in the big chair and pulled a fluffy throw over her bare legs. Under the light of the vintage brass floor lamp, Cecily opened her journal and did the thing that made her brain drive straight: she turned her thoughts into words that made pictures.
He is
Man Who Stands Alone
Brazen Bull
Calm and honor and trust.
He is
Indigenous.
I am
Fire in His Hand
Mountain Lion
Claws and teeth and howls.
I am
Inscrutable.
You will be
We Two Made One
Bull and lion
…
“Hey. You okay?”
Cecily looked up from the page. She hadn’t closed the door, and Caleb leaned against the frame, still naked, blinking at the floor lamp.
“Yeah, I’m okay. Couldn’t sleep.”
He came in and sat on the rug at her feet, pulling the throw down to cover his legs, too. “Brain buzz?”
“Yeah, I’m freaking out a little. Just trying to put my thoughts in a straight line.”
“Anything you want to share?”
The words were still crap, nothing but wet clay, but she didn’t mind sharing them with him—this thing that was happening, a baby, a new person, they were in it together. So she read him the lines.
“They’re just jottings, whatever words came to me. It’s not anything interesting yet.” That was the kind of babble she’d have shut down in workshop, but here in her office, her home, with her new husband, the father of the teeny embryo inside her, she felt safe to be vulnerable and need to babble.
“It’s interesting. I love it.” As a critic, Caleb kind of sucked, but that was okay. “You’re wrong, though, iňloňka. About yourself.”
“I’m not a mountain lion? That’s what iňloňka means, right?”
“You’re not inscrutable. I can read you like a book.”
She combed her fingers through his beautiful hair. That wasn’t quite the idea she’d been trying to get out. “I think I mean more that who I am is inscrutable, not that I am inscrutable.”
“Ah. I get it. It’s like the green dishes.”
“What?”
“They’re part of your history. Heirlooms. You were made by people who used those dishes, and by people who packed them away, and you have to try to understand if you’re someone who’ll use them, or pack them away, or sell them. What you decide will be part of the history of our kids. It’s like me, too. I was raised in Osage Nation, but Osage Nation and Osage County are the same place. But they’re not. One is indigenous and the other is white, in the same space, like two planes shifting back and forth. I had to decide where my life was. My whole life, I thought I had to choose one or the other, and it nearly pulled me apart. But our kids will be part of both. They’ll decide what that means.” He tapped her journal. “They’ll be ‘we two made one’.”
Cecily closed her journal and capped her pen. “Let’s go to bed.”
She could sleep now; her mind was at peace.
Smiling, Caleb stood and offered her his hand.
EPILOGUE
Caleb sat cross-legged on the bed and set his guitar on his lap. Stretched out beside him, Cecily doodled in her journal. He tried not to pay too much attention, but he could see that she was drawing and writing, back and forth. She did that sometimes, stopped writing to sketch something out. It was like words and images were the same things in her mind.
He plucked a few notes, nothing that was a song or a real piece of music, just a riff he’d picked out a few days before and liked. He stopped and reached over to pull up her shirt, so the barely-there curve of her pale belly showed, and her perfectly round, almost flat belly button. Eleven weeks pregnant. They’d heard a heartbeat at the last OB appointment. There was an actual human being growing in there.
When he moved her shirt, she looked away from her journal and smiled at him.
“You know, it’s a tradition with my people to tell a newborn our story of the beginning of everything.”
“A creation myth?”
He nodded. “I was thinking I’d try to put it to music for the nugget, like a lullaby, but I don’t know how to write a song. What do you think about doing it together?” The question felt weird in his chest. The one time they’d ever ‘collaborated’ before, if it could be called that, was when he’d set her poem to music without telling her. That had almost been the end of them.
She’d forgiven him, but she’d also told him she never wanted her poems made into music. They were her own words, her own mind. Only hers, to share the way she wanted, when she wanted.
Even suggesting that they write a song together had the spiky edges of that bad memory around it, but he really wanted to do it. A song for their child. Another way of showing their worlds were joined.
“Something you wrote just for that,” he added. “Like when you write a poem to submit. Something made for somebody else to know. For our kid.”
Cecily closed her journal and smiled. “I like that idea a lot. But I don’t know the Osage creation myth.”
“You want me to tell it to you?”
“Yeah.”
He set aside his guitar. On a whim, he turned and lay down at her side, setting his head on her legs and his hand on her belly, so he could tell the story to his child as well.
“The Little Ones looked down from the sky and saw the earth below. They decided that they would like to live there. So they went to the god of night, and of day, and the father star, and the mother star, and asked all four how to become a people. When they had their answer, they went to the golden eagle, Hoń-ga A-hiu-ton, to lead them from the sky…”
~oOo~
Later, Caleb lay and watched the play of shadows on the ceiling as a March storm churned through Tulsa and turned the mostly bare branches of all their trees to grasping, clawing hands. It made him think of that infamous poem, the one he still loved so much and had memorized.
The girl walks.
The road is flat and black,
winding through flat grey dirt.
And black trees stretch out
black arms like claws searching
through the flat grey sky.
“Where are you going, girl?”
The voice is dark thunder, and shakes
the flat road. It cracks and gaps beneath
the hard soles of her weary feet.
The girl stops in her path and turns.
She looks deep into the face of nothing,
and replies.
“Nowhere.”
“Nowhere?” laughs the Shadow Man,
showing pointed colorless teeth
and a mouth that swirls down and down.
“Well then, girl, you are here.”
The Shadow Man spreads out his clawed arms,
draped in shade and abyss,
hung with the ice of a thousand longings.
The girl searches deep and finds nothing.
“Is anyone there?” she calls.
Her timorous words bounce down and down,
into shade and abyss, beyond icy longing.
They are answered only by themselves.
The Shadow Man laughs again, sending blades
of black humor to slice the grey sky.
“I am full of no one, girl. I hold all the nothings.
I am Nowhere, and I am where you are.”
He beckons with branchy claws,
The girls spreads wide empty arms.
She walks forward, into shadow and sh
ade,
into longing and nothing,
to Nowhere.
With a sigh and a swallow, he welcomes her into himself.
He’d fallen in love with her when he’d first read that poem. The sad woman, full of fierce fire and blinding light and seeing nothing but grey and black. Shade and abyss.
Now, he understood what she was feeling when she’d been in that nowhere place. She’d been caught in limbo, lost in the space between her worlds—the world she’d known, her history, her memories, her father, the Brazen Bulls as her family, making her safe, and the world that lay ahead of her, without a father, without the bliss of believing she was safe.
Stand (The Brazen Bulls MC Book 7) Page 36