I didn’t give much thought to her odd response as I was too focused on what Copper could possibly need. For him to pull me away from the safe house, it had to be something serious. At that thought, I twisted the throttle and hauled ass to the clubhouse.
When I pulled into the parking lot, nothing seemed out of place, but deep down inside, I could feel it. Something was off. My suspicions were confirmed when the front door opened, and Copper stepped outside with a glass of whiskey in his hand. Holding it out to me, he said, “Drink it.”
My stomach dropped as I reached for the glass, and my hand began to shake. Copper squeezed my shoulder, and I forced the liquid down my throat, refusing to acknowledge what was happening.
I looked down at the empty glass and wished for more, or anything, to dull the pain that was about to be inflicted on me. Copper shook his head. “Only one, brother. Let’s go.”
I took one step inside the door and stopped dead in my tracks. My dad was standing in front of the bar.
“Dad?” I asked in case I was hallucinating.
“Yeah, Son, it’s me.”
“Holy shit,” I breathed and barreled toward him.
He wrapped me up in a huge bear hug, and I did the same with him. “How?” I croaked.
“That’d be me.” I whipped my head around to see Tatum standing by the front door giving a little wave to the room.
I glanced between her, my dad, and Copper with a look of utter shock on my face. “You did this?”
She shrugged. “Maybe.”
Dad chuckled. “Don’t just stand there, boy. Introduce me to your woman.”
Tatum made her way over to where we were standing and sidled up next to me. With one arm still around my dad, I wrapped the other around her. “Dad, this is Tatum Cross. Tatum, this is my dad, Jace Wild.”
Dad extended his hand to her. “Pleased to meet ya. You can call me Bear.”
Tatum shook his hand and smiled. “Nice to meet you, too, Bear.”
Leigh appeared carrying a plate with a freshly cooked steak and baked potato. “Come on over here and have some real food, Bear.”
“Well, you don’t have to tell me twice,” Dad said and made a beeline for the food.
I chuckled and followed him to the table, tugging Tatum along with me. “I can’t believe you’re really here,” I said in disbelief.
“Me either, to be honest, but I’m not complaining,” he said and shoved a bite of food in his mouth. He groaned loudly and swallowed. “Damn, Leigh, I missed your cooking. You got any of your cookies back there?”
“Hey! Those are mine,” Bronze shouted.
Dad laughed and wiped his mouth. “Some things never change.”
“Seriously, how did you do this?” I asked. I couldn’t believe we were sitting at a table having dinner with my dad.
Tatum cleared her throat and look down at her hands. “I don’t want to tell you.”
“Why?” I asked, immediately becoming defensive.
“Because she knows how you feel about lying, and that’s exactly what she did to get me out.”
“What?” I asked, not sure if it was directed at Tatum or Dad.
“Luke knows how I got the information that ultimately led us to Simon and Nolan, but it wasn’t something we could include in the official reports. Since we were going to have to lie anyway, I thought at least some good could come out of it. So, we said your dad was helping us from the inside in exchange for a reduction in his sentence.”
I grabbed her neck and pulled her to me so I could kiss the ever-loving shit out of her. “Thank you,” I whispered against her lips.
Tatum stayed for an hour or two before she had to get back to the safe house, but I spent the rest of the afternoon at the clubhouse with my dad, shooting the shit with the rest of the brothers.
Suddenly, the clubhouse doors flew open and Ranger stepped inside. “Well, holy fucking shit. They said you were out, but I had to see that shit for myself,” he blurted and started for my dad. They met halfway and engulfed each other in a huge hug, taking turns lifting the other off the ground while they slapped one another on the back. “Damn good to see ya, Bear.”
“You too, brother. How you liking it in Croftridge?”
They moved over to where the pool tables were set up and started a game as they continued to chat.
“You better find a way to keep that woman,” Copper said from my side.
“I’m going to give it my best shot,” I vowed.
* * *
It was well after midnight when I finally left the clubhouse. I would have stayed longer, but Dad threatened to kick my ass in front of everyone if I didn’t let his old ass get some sleep.
When I opened the door and stepped into the kitchen, I was surprised to find Tatum sitting at the table with a steaming mug in front of her.
“What’s that?”
She smiled. “I’ve always called it angel milk. It’s just warm milk, some sugar, and a little bit of vanilla. My mom used to make it for me when I was younger and couldn’t sleep.”
“You having trouble falling asleep?”
She nodded and looked down at her cup, and it was obvious something was troubling her.
“You want to talk about it?”
She cleared her throat and met my eyes. “I made a decision today. I should’ve talked to you about it, but I didn’t, and what’s done is done.”
My muscles tensed, but I forced myself to remain calm. “What decision did you make?”
“I accepted the new job Luke offered me.”
I pushed back from the table and got to my feet. “You did what?” I bellowed. “What new job?”
She crossed her arms over her chest and smirked at me. “Overseeing the new division of the program that helps people who have been in protective custody transition into a new life. Your dad is going to be working with me too, as part of his ‘re-entry’ program.”
“Cut the shit, Tatum. What are you saying?” I growled.
“I’m going to be running the bookstore and this house—”
I was on her before she could finish, smothering her lips with mine. I pulled back long enough to demand, “Say it. Tell me you’re staying here.”
“I’m staying here.”
“You’re going to marry me and be my Old Lady,” I declared as I scooped her into my arms and carried her upstairs.
“Only if you put a ring on it,” she laughed, followed by a yelp when I slapped her ass.
32
Riding down the road with my Dad on his bike beside me should have been one of the happiest moments of my life. But it wasn’t. Because of where we were going.
I pulled into a driveway I’d only been in one other time in the last thirteen years. And it was just as heart-wrenching and nausea-inducing as it was the last time.
“Dad,” I croaked. “I don’t think I can do this.”
He turned around and studied me for a few seconds before he walked back down the front steps and engulfed me in a bear hug. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. If you don’t want to come inside, that’s okay. But I do want to go in there. Your mother and I made lots of good memories inside those walls, and I want to go inside and recall as many of them as I can.”
I swallowed thickly. “Go on in. I’m going to stay out here for a few more minutes.” With a reassuring squeeze to my shoulder, he walked through the front door and left me standing in the yard.
I started to pace. It was just a house. Why couldn’t I go inside? Logically, I knew the pain of losing Mom wouldn’t change based on my physical location. But something held me back.
I don’t know how long I had been pacing the length of the front yard when the sound of a vehicle pulling into the driveway caught my attention. I looked up to see Tatum hopping out of her truck.
“What’re you doing here?”
She didn’t say anything as she approached with something cradled in her arms. When she got closer, she held out a stuffed pig to me. “This
is Mr. Piggles’s girlfriend Petunia.” She wiggled her hand. “Take her.”
I took the pig from her outstretched hand and studied it. The fur was faded and probably in need of a washing, but you could clearly tell Petunia had seen a lot of love in her life.
“When my mother realized how attached I’d become to Mr. Piggles, she went out and bought another one to have on hand in case anything happened to him. After four or five years of hiding it in her closet, Mom finally told me what she’d done and let me have the replacement pig. I immediately named her Petunia and deemed her Mr. Piggles’s girlfriend.”
“Okay…”
She stared at the stuffed pig in my hands with a fondness in her eyes. “While I loved Petunia the moment she was given to me, she wasn’t Mr. Piggles, even though by all accounts, she is the same.”
It wasn’t like Tatum to beat around the bush or wax on poetically. “What’re you getting at?”
“You’re afraid to walk into that house because you think it’ll be the same as it was when you used to walk through the door. And, technically, it is the same house, but it’s not the same home. Go inside with your dad. Miss your mom with him. Help him make it a home again.”
I looked down at my feet and rubbed the toe of my boot in the dirt. “Fuck,” I sniffed.
Her hands landed on my cheeks and she tilted my head enough so she could see my eyes. “I love you. And I’ll be waiting for you at our home.” With that, she turned and went back to her truck.
Once she was gone, I squeezed the pig to my chest. “All right, Petunia, let’s do this.”
Epilogue
Three Months Later
“Are you sure about this?” I asked Adrianna.
She smiled and nodded. “One-hundred-percent.”
“You know you’ll always have a place here with us if you ever need it,” I told her for the hundredth time.
She pulled me in for a tight hug. “I know. And that means more to me than you’ll ever know.”
I exhaled slowly and tried to fight back the tears. The investigation was complete. Even though her father and his partners were still awaiting trial, we determined she was no longer in danger when Sheldon finally admitted that he only took her to get back at her and Cristofano and never actually had a buyer for her organs. So, she was leaving, going back to the life she had before all this began. And I was going to miss her like crazy.
“I wish you would at least let me drive you.”
She squeezed me even tighter. “It’s not that I don’t want you to, but I need to do this on my own.”
“I know,” I whispered. Inhaling deeply, I let her go and stepped back. Josie sidled up next to me and slid her arm around my waist. Together, we watched as the hired car drove away with Adrianna.
“Fuck,” I sniffed and wiped an errant tear from my cheek. “Will it always be this hard?”
Josie rested her head on my shoulder. “It probably won’t be easy to let the others go, but Adrianna was special.”
“Yeah, she was,” I said solemnly and sniffed again.
“Come on, Tay-Tay, she’s not that far away. We’ll still get to see her,” Josie said, trying to cheer me up.
I smiled and turned to face my younger sister. “At least you’re not leaving me.” After completely overhauling the entire safe house, Josie decided that interior decorating wasn’t how she wanted to spend the rest of her life and asked if she could stay and help with the house and the bookstore. It took some finagling, and me being a complete pain in the ass, but Luke finally agreed to hire Josie after she completed the training he deemed required for the job—which she had just done.
“All right, that’s it,” Josie said firmly. “I wasn’t going to do this, but you’ve left me no choice.” Then, she took off for the back porch and pulled a Nerf Blaster from behind a flowerpot.
“Don’t you dare!” I yelled.
“Or what?” she shouted back and stuck out her tongue. Then, she proceeded to blast me with dart after dart while cackling like a loon.
I shielded myself with my hand and took off after her. “You better run!”
Taking the steps two at a time, I was headed for the door when Trey stepped in front of me. “Move, big man!”
“Oh, my bad. I thought you might want this,” he said casually and pulled another blaster from behind his back.
“I’ll fuck you for this later,” I promised and snatched the blaster from his hands.
Before long, Trey, along with Grant and Coal, had joined the fun with their own blasters. The house quickly turned into an all-out war zone. At least, until I ran out of ammo.
Tossing my gun to the side, I snuck up on Trey and took his blaster from him, firing shots at him over my shoulder as I ran as fast as I could. I glanced back one time and was surprised to see he wasn’t chasing after me.
When I turned back around, he was in front of me. “No!” I screamed and quickly pivoted to run the other way. But, I wasn’t fast enough. He wrapped his arms around me and gripped the blaster, trying to pry it from my hands as I continued moving forward.
Suddenly, we both went down. I fell forward into the coffee table with Trey coming down on top of me. Somehow, the blaster ended slamming crosswise into my neck while I felt and heard a snap in my hand.
“Shit, baby, are you okay?” Trey asked as he quickly moved off of me.
I wanted to answer him, to tell him that I wasn’t sure, but I was focused on trying to breathe correctly. I couldn’t breathe, in or out, and it was starting to really freak me out. With my head on the floor and my hands gripping my neck, I started to kick my feet in frustration.
Trey got down on the floor and put his face right beside mine. “Calm down,” he said firmly. “Try to swallow, then inhale through your nose.”
I shook my head frantically, already knowing I couldn’t swallow. “Don’t think about it. Just do it,” he barked.
I swallowed.
And then I inhaled a lungful of much needed air.
“That’s it. Do it again,” he said softly.
“Fuck,” I rasped. “Throat-punching is no joke.”
Then, I used my hands to push myself off the floor and promptly screamed in pain. I looked down and almost threw up. “Look at my fucking finger!”
“Oh, shit,” Trey blurted and jumped up. “Now, remember, pain is temporary.”
“Oh, shut up!”
“Come on, sugar tits. We need to go to the hospital.”
“No!” I shouted.
“What’s going on?” Josie asked as she rounded the corner.
“Your sister broke her finger and is refusing to go to the hospital.”
Josie gasped and came over to see for herself. “Eww!” she screeched. “You have to get that fixed!”
“No, I’m not going to the hospital for a broken finger.”
“That’s your trigger finger,” Trey pointed out.
“Motherfucking son of a bitch! Fine! Let’s go.”
Thirty minutes later, we were sitting in an exam room when my favorite nurse entered the room.
“Hi, I’m Kennedy and I’ll be—”
“You have got to be kidding me,” I groaned.
“Tatum,” Josie scolded and directed her attention to Kennedy. “Please ignore her. She’s in a lot of pain.”
Kennedy blinked at my sister and then glanced at me. Then back to my sister. “Oh, um, uh…”
“Any chance River is here?” I gritted out.
“Y-yes, she is. I’ll just get her for you,” Kennedy stammered and quickly left the room.
“Would it kill you to be nice to her?” Trey asked.
“No, but it might kill you,” I snapped.
“Knock, knock,” River said and entered the room. “What’s going on?”
“The big, bad Batta broke my finger,” I said and held it up for her to see.
River’s nose scrunched as she studied my finger. “He sure did. Let’s go ahead and get that x-rayed. Follow me.”
“
I didn’t break it!” Trey shouted after us. “Don’t you put that in her chart.”
River laughed. “Whatever you say, Bratta.”
“Bratta,” I repeated. “That’s a good one.”
After the x-ray confirmed what we already knew, my finger was put in what I called a baby cast and I was sent home.
“You know I’m going to milk this for all I can, right?” I asked once we were in the car.
“I would expect nothing less,” Trey said with a wink.
“At least it’s not my ring finger,” I mused and studied my hands.
“Yeah, that would’ve sucked if they had to cut your ring off,” Josie pointed out.
I glanced down at the ring on my hand. It really would have sucked to cut it off. I wasn’t much of a girly girl. I didn’t wear much makeup, usually had my hair up in a ponytail or bun, and rarely wore jewelry. But Trey gave me the most beautiful diamond ring when he proposed. It was big, sparkly and super girly, and I loved it. From the moment he slipped it on my finger, I had never taken it off, and I hoped I would never have to.
Bonus Scene
“Why are we doing this at Leigh’s house?” I asked my sister.
“Because she offered to host.”
“But we own a bookstore. It would make more sense to have a book discussion at a bookstore,” I insisted.
“Well, we’re not, so shut up about it,” Josie snapped.
I stuck my tongue out at her but kept my mouth shut until we arrived at River’s house to pick up her and Avery.
Avery climbed into the back seat and quickly buckled her seat belt. “Please tell me you remembered the wine.”
I snorted. “Of course I did.”
“Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”
“Everything okay?”
“I have a few hours without the kids. I plan to enjoy it to the fullest.”
Twenty minutes later, we pulled up to Leigh’s house. “Josie, will you grab my book while I get the wine?” I asked and picked up the bags of wine assuming she’d agree.
Batta: Blackwings MC - Devil Springs - Book Four Page 19