Let the fucking cloud of hope out.
“I’m gonna motherfucking live!” he bellowed to the ceiling, giving full vent to everything that was blasting inside.
His laughter rang out in the room. “I ain’t goddamn dying!”
Christ!
Seriously? He could yell loud enough even in his weakened state that the large window shook in its frame?
From the ‘shh-ing’ sounds that came from beyond his opened door though, Bishop knew he needed to keep a lid on it. “I ain’t dying.”
There was still a life to be led, a son to be claimed and a second chance at finding happiness.
Dropping his head back onto the pillow on his canted mattress, Bishop made a vow. “I’ll make the most of it. I will.”
Smiling so hard his cheeks hurt, he closed his eyes in order to add emphasis to his words, his vow. “I absolutely fucking promise.”
Chapter Twelve
I levered myself on one elbow and I again turned in my bed, shuffling the covers as I tried to see the clock on the TV. Dropping back into the mattress, I groaned in knowing it was only three-thirty in the morning.
And that my kid was already up playing video games even though I couldn’t hear him. Which only told me he was wearing his headset, talking with his virtual ‘teammates’ as they conquered another set of people within their pretend, nebulous battle. But he’d slept most of the time we’d been waiting at the hospital. Something that made sense of why my kid was still awake in the middle of the night.
I pushed back the bedclothes with a sigh.
I was tired but couldn’t sleep.
Couldn’t sleep because I was…what?
Overjoyed that Stan didn’t have cancer? That my boy hadn’t lost his father before I’d even had the chance to tell him who had helped create him?
Or was it that I hadn’t yet found the bravery to even confess to my kid even as I held his father’s admission so close, enfolding myself in what he’d confided?
As my body again tensed, I realized it was the latter.
That it was time.
I blinked, staring up at the sharp bars of light on the ceiling from the beams that came through the mini-blinds from the parking lot, beyond the curtains that covered the one window in my room.
It really was time.
Time to tell my little man the truth.
I stood up and reached for my robe while wondering if I should brush my teeth, comb my hair. A mother should look good when admitting her perfidy, right? Especially when I’d had thirteen years to either give away my secrets or at the very least be prepared to tell them.
But the delay in performing even those daily tasks might’ve found me losing my nerve, one which was draining away from me with every second that passed.
Pulling the robe-tie at my waist tightly, I dropped my chin and stepped firmly to the door that separated me from my boy. Rapping lightly, in knocks not too loud and of not too many, I waited for J.R. to give me the approval to enter.
And waited.
Still waited, only to receive no response.
I knocked again, harder that time.
And again received nothing, not even a break in the flashing lights I could see from beneath the connecting door.
It occurred to me that he couldn’t hear my tapping because of his headphones. Headphones I’d provided the Christmas before so that he could play his games without me and the rest of the neighborhood having to experience it all right along with him.
So I went back to the nightstand and texted him instead.
‘I need to talk to you, JR,’ I typed. ‘Can I come in?’
‘1 sec,’ came the brief reply as I again waited, impatient to get the whole of it over and done with. Nervous as hell to get it behind me.
“Hey, Mom. What’s up? I thought you were sleeping. Did I wake you?” my beautiful boy asked as he strode into my room, bare-chested, wearing only his board shorts that I knew he liked to sleep in.
Wait…what?
We were supposed to have that particular talk in his room, his space so I didn’t have to face the fragrance of his disapproval that was sure to color the air in the morning.
But I was nothing if not a flexible, go-with-the-flow, mom.
Or so I told myself as I invited J.R. in, only realizing I was running a nervous hand over my short locks when my fingers gripped the tips at my crown. And pulled to the point that the hard clench made my eyes water.
“C’mon in, baby,” I offered, feeling much like the eight-legged beastie in the old spider and fly story. “We need to talk.”
Watching as he settled himself lengthwise on my mattress, I copied his pose of head on hand, elbow to mattress as I lay down in front of him. “You know how you’ve always wondered about your dad?” I murmured haltingly. It wasn’t the best of openings but it was the best I had at that moment, at o-dark-thirty in the morning.
“Sure. You mean, the man I thought was dead but actually isn’t?” he shot back in a deadpanned voice. As if I couldn’t surmise his attitude from the closed look his face held.
I took in a deep breath, praying for courage before I let go of the real I’d never told my son. “The fact of the matter is…well. Stan is your dad. I married him at the county courthouse the day after I graduated high school.”
There was no change in J.R.’s expression.
So, I continued.
“We were married for five years and then I…ah, left.”
J.R.’s eyebrows moved but only to press together in a frown as he stared at the ceiling.
I hurried to explain. “I didn’t know I was pregnant when I…ah, went away. But once I knew you were coming, I was determined to make the best life I could for and with you.”
Oh boy, that piece of news wasn’t welcome, not if what I saw in J.R.’s scrunched face was correct. So I just shut my mouth, giving him the time and the space to process it, hoping that his reaction wouldn’t be the same as the expression I was seeing.
“So you’re telling me that Stan is my dad, right? And I’m guessing you named me after him.”
“Yes, baby. I did.”
“So you and he were married for five years but you only discovered you were pregnant after you walked away from him?”
I swallowed as my kid’s voice rose in both volume and pitch at the end of his question. “Ah…yeah, that’s true.”
J.R. rolled himself onto his back and stared at the ceiling directly for a time before asking, “Does he know?”
“I told him earlier.”
J.R.’s head made a slithering sound as it turned on the comforter so he could look at me. A gaze I wasn’t brave enough to face. “Before the ambulance came?”
I closed my eyes, firmly reminding myself not to lie. “Yes.”
“So who the freak is Bishop?”
Of all the questions my kid could’ve asked me at that moment, the one he uttered sent me into the world of the confused. “What?”
“Who is Bishop, Mom?”
“Bishop is Stan’s Hellion name,” I replied softly, as quiet as my voice allowed. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“So Stan is a Hellion. A motorcycle club member. A biker, right?” God, could my little boy sound more grown up? “And you never told him, just like you never told me.”
I again swallowed deeply. I didn’t know what conclusions J.R. was drawing, but I knew with everything within me, it wasn’t good. “Yes.”
His chin went back to the ceiling and it got quiet again as my little boy-man thought. “That’s fucked up, Mom.”
For the first time, I didn’t warn him about his language, knowing in my heart of hearts what he’d announced was more than deserved.
“All these years, I’ve felt like an outcast, like some sort of alien because I like things that you hate. That our sense of humor is different and how you don’t get my jokes.” I watched my boy’s Adams-apple move as he swallowed. “But now you’re telling me that after all this time, I’ve had
a dad. A guy who is into bikes and who likes to laugh. Who treats me like I’m someone special, a person he’d like to be around.”
I wanted to gather J.R. up against me, to stroke his back as I used to do when he was younger and I could soothe away the hurt of the moment. But I was very aware that my mothering in that instance, wouldn’t be welcome.
“I needed to know I had a father, Mom. I asked you over and over again about him. And for you to lie…to make me think that he…” J.R.’s voice stopped but I saw his fists were tightly gripping the comforter on either side of his hips.
There wasn’t anything I could say, no way to defend myself.
“Someone exactly like Bishop who could accept me, appreciate me for myself.” I could hear the tears behind my kid’s whisper and my heart broke at the sound. “But you kept him from me.”
He turned his head and I read the same devastation on his youthful face just as I’d read it on Stan’s earlier in the day. “Why, Mom? Why would you do that?” His thin frame almost shuddered when he swallowed. “Why would you do that to all of us?”
I realized then exactly what my leaving so many years ago had cost me.
But also knew I had no further words in which to answer my child’s questions.
Or my own.
*.*.*.*.*
Christ, it had been a long morning and it wasn’t even nine o’clock, the time when visiting hours started. First had been the lab-tech, or ‘Dracula’ as Bishop called him, with his tray of needles and vials that needed a few samples of blood. Then they’d given him a sedation pill prior to wheeling him down to where they were going to do the camera test thingy, but Bishop had been out of it before the elevator doors had even reopened.
And when he’d finally came to, he’d been back in his room with a pretty little Filipino nurse changing out his IV and doing the whole fix-the-patient’s-bed shit. But even after all the fussing and tests, Bishop was ready to go, to get fucking gone from the whole hospital experience.
He’d had enough of that shit in his life in the doings of his early years with both his dad and grandpa.
Then Dr. Levin came in, re-describing the procedure in vivid detail (and without enough medico-speak that Bishop could understand him), telling him he was lucky none of the severe ulcers he’d sported had eroded into a perforation.
Goody for him.
The hospital dietician soon followed leaving a shit-load of booklets that had to do with what he’d be able to eat and not eat going forward. A woman so full of herself that she’d talked for almost a full fifteen minutes almost without taking a fucking breath or giving him even a glance.
So it was no wonder that when Dare, Huff and Trey piled into his room, their loud voices lifted in greeting, that Bishop finally found some peace.
“You don’t look sick to me, shithead,” Huff groused as his eyes moved over all the medical paraphernalia that Bishop was connected to. “Get your hairy, lazy ass out of bed and back to your office!”
“Yeah, fucker,” Dare added with a laugh. “Our goddamn busiest time of year and here you are just fuckin’ lounging in your motherfuckin’ jammies, getting all your meals brought to you and wondering which pretty nurse will be the lucky winner in giving Bishop his beddy-bye hand job.”
Bishop couldn’t hold back his own laugh at his brother’s teasing and shot back, “I prefer a blowjob but a hand job will do in a pinch. That is if she knows what she’s doing.”
“Don’t they teach ‘em that shit in nursing school?” Huff asked with a totally straight face as his gaze moved to the Hellions standing next to him. “Hard cocks 101 or some such?”
As their laughter wound down, Trey was the first to broach the subject, the one thing that had been playing in Bishop’s mind since he’d first heard it.
“So…J.R., huh?” And at the big man’s speech, all the humor in the room left.
“I have a kid,” Bishop said on a swallow and realized that just uttering the words didn’t seem to make the idea any more real. But there were the remaining streams of hope that still held in the borders of his mind.
“Yep, you sure as fuck do,” Dare agreed. “A really cool fuckin’ kid who’s more than into our kind of machines.”
“God, you’ve got that right!” Huff’s grin was spread from ear-to-ear. “Thought the little fucker was gonna cream himself when he saw the Hellion inventory. Do you know he not only knows the different Harley models, but the motherfucking year of them as well?”
“He told me he was into them,” Bishop admitted. “But we really didn’t get a chance to talk much.”
“Because of Dory.” Trey’s summation of only three words was accompanied by a fierce glower, punctuated with crossed arms.
“That bitch,” Huff breathed, copying his president’s move, shifting his thick arms until they were crossed on his massive chest as well. “She oughtta be fucking hung, drawn and goddamn quartered for keeping your kid from you.”
A quiet descended over the group, each man frowning at the thought of a child born to a Hellion parent but raised without the protection and influence of their club.
“It was me,” Dare started, looking down at his big boots before his face, wiped free of all humor, came back up to Bishop’s. “I fuckin’ threatened to tell both you and the boy if she didn’t step the hell up and confess.”
“But how’d you know?” Bishop was more that baffled by how everyone else had figured out that J.R. was his before he did. Up to and including the beautiful Stella.
“You’re fucking joking, amigo, yeah?” The surprise on Trey’s face was hard to miss.
“A goddamn Xerox copy, dude,” Huff explained. “Shit, you don’t see it?”
Dare just looked amused at the fact Bishop hadn’t recognized his own face was stamped on his son. “So what the fuck are you gonna do about it, bro?”
“What do you mean?” Bishop hadn’t gone the next step, trying as he had been to process the info that he was some kid’s dad. At the boy that he’d made with Dory.
“I’m thinking that you need to get the legal shit started AS-fucking-AP,” Trey’s voice was firm, brooking no argument. “We need to contact Stephenson since he’s a fucking good attorney and is one the Hellions have used before for family issues. He can helluv resolve this shit in no time.”
“You need to get custody, motherfucker,” Dare pronounced loudly, causing Bishop’s eyes to shift to younger man. “If nothing else, joint fuckin’ custody. One where you have the kid for part of the year and then the lying bitch has him for the other.”
Bishop felt a glow begin inside him as the idea grew.
“Do you fucking know if she named you as dad on his birth certificate?” Huff question held merit but Bishop couldn’t answer other than with a shrug while he thought.
“I tried doing an internet search but came up with shit.”
“What’s his full fucking name, amigo? I’ll contact Pagan and have him start on it since you’re fucking, you know, on vacay,” Trey was grinning, exposing his dimples when he offered up the services of the Hellion that was the IT manager at Hellion Construction-Billings.
“I…I don’t know. I mean, I’m not sure since Dory just calls him J.R.,” Bishop stuttered, his mind spinning and not just from the drugs of earlier.
Huff harrumphed loudly. “Ain’t that a fucking abbreviation for ‘junior’?”
“Christ! You mean she’d actually stuck her own kid with a suck-ass name like Stanley Robert?” Dare offered on a derisive laugh. “Jay-sus, I’d fuckin’ call him J.R. too!”
Manly chortles rang around the room, lightening the mood of the four men.
By the time their mirth had dissipated, Bishop had made up his mind. “Yeah. That’s what I want. Goddamn custody! J.R. needs to know me and I’m hella fiendin’ to get to know him.” He raised his eyes to Trey. “Call Pagan and get me a motherfucking appointment with Stephenson as soon as he can take the meet. I want those papers filed as soon as fucking possible, dig?”
&
nbsp; Glancing at the three men who surrounded his bed, the determination that was filling his chest was clear when Bishop finally said, “I have a son. A boy who should know of his heritage and maybe his fucking future as a Hellion. And he needs his goddamn old man to point the motherfucking way.”
“Damn straight,” Huff agreed, holding out his fist towards Bishop and who grinned as the hospitalized man’s knuckles met his brawny hand.
“On it,” Trey announced, rounding the corner of the hospital bed to clap Bishop on his shoulder.
Dare, true to his smart-ass nature, sang a different tune, though. “So…do I get to call you fuckin’ ‘Papa’ or does a simple ‘Daddy-o’ work for you?”
Words that earned the youngest council member a one-fingered salute of the middle kind.
*.*.*.*.*
I felt the heavy concealer in the creases underneath my eyes, squinting against the bright lights of the hospital’s corridors as J.R. and I made our way to Stan’s room. Having watched the small conclave of bikes leave the hospital’s lot as I was parking, I felt safe enough to visit Stan.
Although I wasn’t sure of my reception.
It had been a bad night, especially onerous after J.R. had gone silently back to his room, allowing only the spears of his accusatory eyes to convey his thoughts on our heart-to-heart convo. The one where I’d admitted that Stan was his father. One that had caused his sharp gaze, that’d pointed a finger at me, one that had more than announced that I was to blame in the whole of what had gone down.
And I couldn’t disagree with J.R.’s indictment.
But I still needed to check on Stan. To understand what had happened.
To determine if what he’d told me was true or just something my mind had conjured up in the excitement of last afternoon’s moment.
I stopped short of my ex-husband’s hospital room, unexpectedly unsure, hesitant. Placing a hand on J.R.’s arm, I turned to him. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”
But J.R. obviously didn’t hold the same sense of dread and after giving me a long look, he shook off my hand before plowing through the opened door. “Hi,” my boy greeted, his voice so bright and sunny, delight shining forth from the one syllable.
Checkmate With Bishop: A Hellions MC Novel Page 12