Getting away, she’d quickly run to find Knox. She didn’t expect to find an argument.
“Roxanne, if all you’re going to do is stand there and stare at me, I will take my leave. I have nothing more to say to you, until you tell me what I want to hear.”
“What about what I want to hear, Knox?” she snapped, frustrated by his attitude, He took offense at everything the boys did.
“And what might that be?” he sneered. “Maybe, how I’m fed up with Mortician’s interference? Or, maybe, that I’m sick of hearing you tell me why you have to keep a purple fucking Navigator? It has ignorant trash written all over it. Just like Outlaw is.”
“Wait a goddamn minute, Knox. Don’t bring Outlaw into this when he’s not here to defend himself. As for Mortician, what the fuck did you say or do to make him even think of this stupid shit?”
Knox reddened, the flush creeping from his neck and into his face spreading like a poison ivy rash.
“Confess now, motherfucker, or forever hold your peace,” she demanded.
He huffed out a breath. “Fine. I didn’t want to propose to you! They forced me to do it. Why pay for something that I was getting for free? I regret asking for your hand, given your allegiance to them and not to me.”
Roxanne listened to Knox’s bitter words and let them sink in. He must’ve been some kind of a motherfucker in his refusal to marry her if Mortician had gone through the trouble of making sure they lived apart until after the wedding. “What kind of a motherfucker let another motherfucker force them to do shit they don’t want to do?” she snarled. “Cuz, motherfucker, if your fucking ass didn’t want to marry me, all you had to do was say so. Instead, you propose to me out of what? Fear? Pity? Just why the fuck did your ass propose, Knox?”
“Oh, so I’m Knox again and not motherfucker, huh?”
“Answer the goddamn question!” she ordered. “As far as I’m fucking concerned you can be Santa Claus.”
“Yeah, exactly,” Knox shot back. “That’s what I am to you. Santa Claus. You saw me and you saw money. You saw a younger man you wanted to lead around by his dick and force your degenerate friends on, thinking I’d just jump to your wishes. I’m sure it comes as a surprise to you, Cougar, that this cub has a brain of his own. I fucking resent having to follow another man’s wishes and that’s all I’ve been doing for weeks where you’re concerned. Well, it stops now. Either you’re doing this my way or I’m out. You can live the rest of your life in wretched loneliness, without me or my money.”
As Knox’s tirade ended, Roxy saw light beginning to filter through the trees. That meant, if she saw him, he saw her. Her devastation. Her humiliation.
Her tears.
Try as she might, she couldn’t withstand the onslaught of Knox’s venom. What little self-worth she had after Duke had finished with her, the man in front of her, the man she loved so completely, destroyed what was left.
He narrowed his eyes. “My way,” he started, “includes you signing a prenup. Another issue Mortician had, as if it is any of his business. He wouldn’t know what to do with wealth. He’d squander it on you and Bailey.”
Roxy blinked and swiped at the tears sliding down her face. She’d lick her wounds later. At the moment, she had to put a motherfucker in his place.
“First of fucking all, fuck you. I wouldn’t fucking marry you if my goddamn life depended on it. Second, it’s nobody’s fault but your dumb ass that you didn’t have the fucking nuts to tell Mortician you wouldn’t marry me.”
“How could I when that psychopath was there, threatening my life in tandem with the rest of those criminals?” He stepped closer to her. “It was a fucking conspiracy. You knew I’d never marry you as long as you stooped low enough to drive the car Outlaw gifted to you, so you got to them and had them threaten me, bully me, into marrying you.”
“Back the fuck off me, Knox,” she told him, refusing to budge. He’d invaded her space.
He stood taller. “And what’s going to happen if I don’t?” he sneered. “You’re going to call one of your guard dogs? Hmmm? Or what? Cry louder since your silent tears aren’t working? Get down on your knees and beg me to move?”
“The day I beg you, motherfucker, is the day Satan rises from hell and shoves his pitchfork up your fucking dick. I don’t have to call one motherfucker to protect me because I’m perfectly capable of protecting myself.” She threw him a look, then yanked the engagement ring he’d given to her off her finger. “As to all that other shit you think you know, I’m not bothering to educate you. I have a good fifty years of living left and I don’t intend to spend it schooling you on shit you know nothing of. Besides, it would be a waste of my breath like your goddamn brain is a waste of your head space.” She held the ring out to him. It took everything in her not to release a heartbroken sob. “Take it, Knox.” Her voice wobbled, so she paused and cleared her throat. “I don’t want to marry you. As a matter of fact, I never want to lay eyes on your uppity ass again.”
He stared at her as if he’d never seen her. Suddenly, his beautiful amber eyes widened and the color dropped from his face.
“Roxanne,” he started, holding his hands up. “I didn’t mean—”
“Stop, Knox. Just stop. You meant every fucking word you said, otherwise you wouldn’t have said it.”
“No,” he protested, shaking his head. “No. I’m just…I’m just…I love you. I miss you.”
“Either you’re a fucking fool or you think I am,” Roxy spat, dropping her hand since Knox refused to take the ring. “I get enough of that bullshit from Duke. I don’t need it from you, too.”
“I’ve never called you ignorant.”
“A fucking oversight on your part, since you implied it by talking about my ride. You did call me a gold-digging, lonely, criminally-minded, old bitch.”
“Roxanne—”
“Shut the fuck up, Knox. I’m not interested in hearing anything you have to say ever again. Even if you hadn’t called me those names—”
“I didn’t call you anything of the kind.”
She glared at him and huffed out a breath. “Excuse me. Even if you hadn’t implied those things about me, I wouldn’t marry you because I would never sign a fucking prenup. So anyway it goes, take your fucking ring and shove it.”
Instead of holding it out to him again, she shoved it in his shirt pocket, turned on her heel, and marched away.
“Roxanne, wait!” Knox called. “Please. I’m begging you.”
Flipping him off, she walked on, and vowed to forget the day she’d ever met Knox Harrington.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Bitter cold threatened to swallow him up and freeze his body just as his heart had frozen. Blackness surrounded him, except for one, pristine white glimmer. The shine gleamed through the darkness of the black décor—walls, floors, seat covers, even clothing.
It struck Christopher then. Other people were there, sitting in the pews, faces grief-stricken and silent. He saw them in monotone vignettes, as if the edges of the scene refused to fully crystallize.
As if the reality of the situation was too unbearable.
Nothing made sense. Not the vicious temperature that seemed only to touch him. Wasn’t his boy in black shorts, sandals, and a summer T-shirt? Didn’t Rebel have on a summer dress?
Didn’t Meg…Christopher squinted. Where was she? He didn’t see her anywhere. Everyone else was there, but not his Megan. Frantic, he glanced all around. He wanted to move, wanted to run through the aisles, go from pew-to-pew, until he found her. She must be playing hide-and-seek with one of their kids.
His legs wouldn’t work. His attention kept straying to that white glimmer. Now, when he looked at it again, a bloody handprint marred the perfection.
“Megan!” he yelled. “Megan, baby, where you at?”
His voice sounded horrible, a combination of hoarseness, fear, and anguish.
“’Law, I want MegAnn,” CJ said around sniffles.
“Megan!” he called a
gain, spying Mortician. “Mort, where she at? Where my woman?”
“Prez, fuck,” Mort murmured, his tone filled with the same pity so clear in his eyes.
Panic filled Christopher. “MEGAN!” he boomed, wild desperation creeping into him. He raised his hands. Blood coated them, dripped from his fingertips, ran down his arms. “No, no, no! Megan, baby, please?” he begged. “Come to me, please. I need you. You my everything. Where you at?”
“Her there, ‘Law,” CJ cried, pointing to the white sheen that became horrifyingly clear.
A coffin. Megan was in a coffin?
He shook his head in denial. Finally—finally—his legs allowed him to move. He didn’t feel so heavy and rooted to his spot. His hands trembled, but he had to show his boy that their MegAnn wasn’t in a casket. She was somewhere in the church, alive and well and vibrant. And loving him as no one else ever had or ever would.
He lifted the lid. No! No! No! No!
She was there. Still. Lifeless. Pale. Dressed entirely in white, like a little princess from one of the original Grimm’s Fairytales.
Forever young.
“Megan!” he cried, falling to his knees. “Megan, baby, wake-up.”
Through his tears, he saw a big, blond man, position himself in front of Megan. He glared at Christopher.
“My baby girl is with me now. You lost her. You failed her. Mystic took her from you. How could you let that happen? You never deserved her.”
Big Joe’s vision morphed into Mystic’s, the president of the Imperials. The one who’d taken Megan and hid her from Christopher, until it was too late. When Christopher finally found her, she was dead, her mouth frozen open as if she’d tried to gasp for breath but hadn’t been able to receive the life-giving oxygen she’d needed.
Mystic grinned at him. “Wasn’t me, Caldwell. You did this to her. You!”
With a furious growl, Christopher lunged at him, but Mystic disappeared. Instead, Christopher landed right next to Megan’s coffin. His bloody handprints laid against each of her cheeks, and marched down her white dress, ending at the bump in her belly.
Not only was Megan lost to him...Mystic had been right. Christopher was the reason she was dead.
Megan had been pregnant.
Christopher screamed.
“’Law, stop!”
“Christopher, you’re fine. I’m fine.”
Her soothing little voice hit him in the center of his chest and he trembled.
“No, baby,” he sobbed, screaming again because he didn’t know what else to do. “You gone. I lost you.”
Small hands touched his shoulder and shook him. “’Law, wake up, please!”
“No! She gone…”
“MegAnn, right here, ‘Law!”
Christopher resisted CJ’s impatient voice, still screaming, still seeing Megan in the coffin, pregnant, bloody, and snuffed from him. Sudden weight settled onto his chest, threatening to squeeze the life from him.
Her soft mouth brushed his cheek. “I’m here,” she swore. “Just open your eyes. You’ll see.”
“Wake up, ‘Law,” CJ demanded. “Stop being a bitch-ass baby.”
“Do not cuss, potato,” Megan chastised.
Bitch-ass baby. Potato. A mother’s loving sternness.
None of that would be in such a horrific scene as the one he’d been…Cautiously, Christopher opened one eye. CJ sat on his chest, staring down into his face. He scrunched his nose as Christopher opened his other eye.
“You all sweaty, ‘Law.” CJ glanced to the side of him. “He gotta take a shower, MegAnn. Tell him.”
The scent of cherry blossoms filled Christopher’s brain. Megan.
Just as suddenly as it had descended, the weight lifted as Megan removed their boy from Christopher’s chest.
CJ squealed. “Put me down, Mommie!” he said around giggles. “I’m a big boy.”
Megan kissed Christopher’s cheek again. “We’ll wait for you downstairs,” she said softly.
She knew him so well. She knew when to wrap him in her pussy to comfort him and when to leave him alone so he could collect himself.
She waited until he sat up before she offered him another gentle smile, still holding their raucous boy in her arms.
“I love you,” she told him.
Christopher rubbed the back of his neck. “I love you, too, baby,” he mumbled.
“You okay, ‘Law?” His boy stopped squirming against his Ma long enough to ask him.
“Yeah, boy.”
They both smiled at him, as the full weight of that dream hit him and he scowled.
Setting CJ on his feet and grabbing his hand, Megan blew Christopher a kiss, then guided their boy out the door.
Alone, Christopher growled and jumped to his feet. His cock twitched with a slight pain, but he ignored it. This shit was absolutely un-fucking-acceptable. He’d gone the fuck ahead and had a dick-snip-flip, thinking he had the solution to his nightmares, when the motherfuckers decided to fuck with him even more and lead him to believe the cause of Megan’s death was pregnancy.
He had lost his goddamn, motherfucking mind.
Pacing, he thought of the nightmare he’d just had, and shivered.
What if it had been real? What if Christopher hadn’t found her in time after Mystic had taken her?
What if the pregnancy part was an omen?
He had to get control of himself. He was more fucking traumatized than Megan. What the fuck was fucking wrong with him? No matter what the fuck he did, his girl’s kidnapping haunted him. And he yelled. And cried. And screamed. And trembled.
His boy had done right to call him a bitch-ass-fucking-baby. He was a baby-ass-fucking-bitch.
Disgusted with himself, he kicked at one of Megan’s stilettos. It was white.
It fucking figured. Snarling like a rabid dog, he picked up the unkicked motherfucker, then went to the kicked motherfucker and got that one too, before slamming both into the waste basket.
Every piece of white clothing Megan owned, he’d fucking burn to fucking smithereens. No, he’d blow those motherfuckers the fuck up. He never wanted to see her in white again.
White walls in the house had to fucking go. White décor. Bedding. Plates…but most especially those white fucking clothes.
He stomped to her closet, found a fucking white leather dress, and grabbed it with all the fury in him. Without thinking this through, he took it to the bathroom, and threw it into the tub. Once he found rubbing alcohol, he poured it on the leather, lit a match he’d also brought with him, and threw it onto the dress.
Flames overtook it almost immediately, and he grinned, wishing pieces of Mystic was in the conflagration. His fucking hands for taking Megan. His fucking brain for thinking of the plot in the first fucking place.
“Boy, what the fuck are you doing?” Roxanne’s voice broke through his madness. “Turn that fucking water on before you burn down this goddamn house. Fuck! I’ll be right back.”
Obediently, he did as instructed. Roxanne returned before she was even missed, holding a fire extinguisher and quickly doing the work that the water seemed to be failing at—containing the flames.
He looked at her. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he saw her swollen red eyes, her pain…but before it fully registered, she gave him a gentle smile.
“Oh, sugar. Your woman is fine. Nobody is taking her away from you.”
She held out her arms.
Christopher hesitated. He looked at Megan’s ruined dress. The motherfucker had been new. Now, it was fucking burnt pieces and smoking embers. She was going to have his fucking ass.
At least she was alive to do so.
Sucking in a breath, he looked at the ceiling, and couldn’t stop the tears sliding down his face. He hated himself for being a weak bitch, and he hated Megan for making him a weak bitch.
But he loved her so fucking much.
“Roxanne, Megan can’t never leave me,” he said in a broken whisper, blinking. “But one day we gotta leave e
ach other. We all gotta die. All I want is for me to be fuckin’ first. I can’t fuckin’ make it without her.” He drew in a sob. “And I fucking hate her for it.”
“Come here, baby,” Roxanne responded.
His nostrils flared, but he gave into the temptation of the comfort she offered and stepped into her arms, leaning down to rest his head on her shoulder. She tightened them around him, and he relished her motherly embrace. His mother had hugged him in such a manner on rare occasions, and he’d missed this since her death.
“I’m a grown-ass motherfucker, Roxanne, actin’ like a weak-ass bitch.”
Roxanne sniffled. “No, baby, you acting like a human motherfucker.”
She sounded so very sad. Suddenly, the devastation that he’d noticed in her face fully registered and he stiffened. An image of Knox fucking Harrington rose in his head, giving him something else to focus on.
Maybe, even, a motherfucker to make bleed.
Roxy had arrived at the house, just as Meggie was complaining about something burning. She was going to head upstairs and investigate since everything downstairs seemed to be fine. But CJ wouldn’t let her out of his sight, so Roxy told Meggie to stay downstairs while she investigated.
This being a Saturday, all the Caldwell kids and Rory were there, so Roxy wasn’t sure if they all would’ve followed Meggie.
Roxy had come to talk to Outlaw. After running away from Knox a couple of hours ago, and going to her quarters to cry her eyes out, she’d realized she had to do one last thing on his behalf. She didn’t want the boys to kill him. Motherfucker that he was, he really didn’t deserve to die. Maybe, have his ass beat. By her. But even that wasn’t worth it. She was just too hurt to muster up the strength to kick his cock in.
As she’d rushed upstairs, Meggie had yelled to her, “Christopher had another nightmare.”
Death Dwellers Motorcycle Club:: Fifteen Bad Boy Biker Books Page 482