OUR UNLIKELY BABY

by Paula Cox

  “Pussy ass move!” Jax said. “Let’s see you fight like a man.” Pushing Mitch away, Jax lifted his fists and watched him shake his attack off as he tried to assume a fighting stance.

  “Little bitch,” Mitch said in a slurred voice. “I’ll take you out any day of the---”

  He stared to barrel forward, his limp fist desperate to stick a landing. But Jax was quick enough on his feet to dart away from the impending blow, letting Mitch crash into the wall. As soon as he saw him stunned, Jax took more of the upper head and turned the redhead around to face him.

  “You’ll do what I say,” Jax hissed. “And I said that the man’s marker is mine!”

  Ready to knock him out cold, Jax’s fist hovered in mid-air when Eric finally stood and clapped his hands together. “Okay, okay,” he said. “I get the picture.”

  Feeling triumphant, Jax dropped Mitch to the ground, and he couldn’t resist kicking his shins.

  “How you like me now?” Jax said with a smirk.

  Mitch growled as Artie sprang back into view to get his friend off the ground before grabbing Mitch by the back of his neck. “Leave it alone,” he cautioned. “Let’s get another drink.”

  Even as Mitch glowered, the chance to wet his whistle enticed him to a place where he was able to nod at Artie even as he shot Jax a final glare. “One day you’ll add it all up,” Mitch threatened. “And then… then…you’ll wonder why---”

  “Take him out, Artie,” Eric ordered. “I need to talk to the boy.”

  Artie obliged with a nod, but Jax stayed tense even after they were gone.

  “Rough morning, huh?”

  At the feel of Eric’s hand on his back, Jax looked over his shoulders. Eric’s dark eyes still sent something of a shiver of his spine. He’d felt it on that first night when his mother came home on the back of the man’s bike and swore that his father’s, his true father’s, club was destined to stay intact under fresh leadership. And one day, his mom just up and left. She had to so as much to save her own skin. But she left her son, her child, behind. A hard thing to forgive, and Jax let Eric lead him back to his desk and sit him down.

  “You need this,” Eric said.

  Pouring out two tumblers of scotch, Jax’s desperation to grow numb took over, and he downed the drink in a single swig. As Eric just sipped, Jax asked for another.

  And his stepfather obliged.

  “So…” Eric started. “Any truth to what he has to say?”

  Jax drank again before he spoke. “Like it’s gonna do me any good to lie to you,” he said.

  “No good at all,” Eric advised. “You took old Sully’s debt on your shoulders?”

  Nodding slowly, Jax looked into his stepfather’s eyes and searched his face for some hint of whatever he might do next. Would he dole out his own special brand of punishment for Jax’s transgression? He could take it; maybe he even deserved it. But for Lena, he would do it again.

  “Oh, Jax,” Eric moaned. “You know, sometimes I wonder about you.” Sitting on the edge of his desk, he curled his glass between his fingers and managed a smile. “You’re not suddenly soft on Sully, are you?” he asked. “Man’s always had his problems with the club.”

  He knew that firsthand; he knew that from Lena. More times than he could count, she railed against her uncle for betting odds that he did not have on horses that would never place. One time she cried. And, in that moment, Jax could not resist the urge to touch her arms and turn her eyes to his. It’ll be okay, Lena. I’ve always got your back.

  “So what?” Jax scoffed as he finished his drink and reached for the bottle again. “She’s my friend.”

  “But is she, Jax?”

  He stopped mid-sip and glared at Eric as his stepfather held his ground, the corners of his lips curling into a smile. “I mean…I could see that you were always kind of sweet on her,” Eric continued. “But she…didn’t she take off at the first chance.”

  “No,” Jax said as he spun out of his seat and drained his glass. “It wasn’t like that.”

  What was it like?

  One day, without any warning, Lena still accepted his protection as he walked her from one classroom to another. They still shared lunch, but they took their meals in silence. Lena told him she could make her way home on her own. But Jax still followed, watching her like a hawk until she disappeared behind her uncle’s door. Some days, bleeding into nights, he waited on the stoop across the street, and he didn’t make a move until he saw the light dim in her window. Something had shifted, and when he tried to press her, Lena always turned to ice and told him she was just fine. But he knew that was a lie. When she finally told him to stop sniffing around her if he knew what was good for him, Jax honored her cruel request. But he still watched her from afar, saw her graduate even as he was sentenced to summer school sessions that he had no intention of ever attending. And he kept his gaze on her for an entire summer until she slipped away, sitting on the back of a bus. Of course she should go. She had more promise than he could ever hope to know. But why had she turned so cold so fast? Had he done something wrong? As hard as he searched his mind, Jax could not come up with a reason, and he had no choice but to let her go and be left to wonder why.

  “Jax?” Eric asked. “Didn’t she get too big for her britches when she got herself that fancy scholarship?”

  He could do nothing but nod. Maybe that’s what had changed her. She hadn’t been home in over a year, not even during the last summer. So she had to have forgotten. But Jax was a man of his word. “So what?” he muttered. “If I can’t look out for her, I’ll look out for her people.”

  “Person,” Eric said. “Not like she’s got a whole clan holding you back.”

  “Holding…holding me…?”

  “Enough, Jax!” Eric assumed a threatening tone as he pounded his fist to the desk and glowered. “That little girl used you,” he started. “And as soon as she saw another way out, she tossed you away like some snot she just wiped off with the back of her lying hands.”

  Jax blinked back tears as he shook his head. “I…no. You don’t know…”

  He had never even kissed her, but when they sat beside the creek and gazed into each other’s eyes, it was something more. Eric gave him a painted whore on his sixteenth birthday, and they kept coming after that. But no moment with any of them rivaled the moments when he simply sat at Lena’s side and just dared to touch her hand. It was real…it had to have been…

  “Eric?”

  “Yeah, Jax?”

  He crumbled in his chair and couldn’t meet the older man’s eyes as he spoke softly. “I…I think I loved her,” Jax whispered. “Thought she loved me, too.”

  Eric sighed and tousled his hair. “Women,” he said. “No hope of ever understanding them.”

  Their eyes met, and Jax nodded. His own mother left them both. Sure, he had heard the rumors that there was something deeper when it came to her departure, but maybe everything was as simple as Eric said. The female of the species was a fickle beast, and Jax started to tremble with rage as he flung his glass to the floor and let it shatter to the floor.

  “Want me to go back?” Jax asked. “I can do it now. I---”

  “Maybe you should sit this one out,” Eric said. “I can send Mitch to---”

  “No way,” Jax shot back. “I’m doing this. I’m up to the task.”

  He started from his chair and promptly fell to the ground. Forming fists, Jax swore he could make it work as Eric forced a cup of black coffee down his throat. The second the caffeine hit his brain, he felt his body starting to sober up, and he met Eric’s eyes, drawing strength from the force of his stare.

  “Go get ‘em, boy,” Eric offered. “Take you balls back and then some.”

  Nodding and gripping his stepfather’s arm, Jax took off with only one thought flashing across his brain: justice for his people, for the club.

  Chapter Four

  Lena sat her uncle at the kitchen table and poured water into a cracked basin. Wiping h
is face down, she waited until the blood started to dry to apply pressure to his face. “You said that you would stop,” she reminded him. “What happened to that?”

  Sully shuffled his feet and sat on his hands as he tried to turn his eyes from hers.

  “Look at me,” Lena asked. “I am right here. And I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Sure you are,” he said sadly. “Took you all this time to…” His voice caught in his throat, and Lena’s lips started to quiver when he finally met her eyes again. “And…and as well you should,” he said sadly. “But you know…”

  “No I don’t,” she challenged. “Why do you keep taking chances?”

  As she watched his lips and waited for an answer, she expected the customary excuse. Call it a sickness. He just couldn’t control himself. But when his eyes finally locked on hers again, the explanation was far sadder.

  “Just one clean haul, Lena, and I’ll amount to something, finally give you a closet full of pretty new clothes.

  “Jesus,” she muttered. “I…I’m doing okay now. You didn’t have to….”

  “Lena.” Taking her cheeks in his hands, he kissed her brow and honed in on her eyes.

  “But I still want to,” he whispered. “Is that so wrong?”

  Wrong? Maybe not. How could she truly be cross when his heart was in a kind place? But, then again, how many times did a man need to be kicked in the teeth before he stayed down or at least got up and shifted his stance?

  “Just…just hold still,” she whispered. “Let me patch you up.”

  Sully did as he was told as she cut a piece of slim gauze and started to tape it to his cheek. She hesitated for all of a second. Should she make him bite the bullet and head for the hospital? Even though her uncle detested doctors, stitches might be in order…

  “I see what you’re thinking,” he accused in a gentle voice. “Just plaster me up, and I’ll be as good as new in no time.”

  Suddenly too tired to fight with him and knowing it would do little to no good, Lena fixed him up as best she could and moved to the sink to get him a glass of water.

  “No, little girl,” he said. “Gonna need something a hell of a lot stronger than that.”

  Lena glared at him over her shoulder. “At this hour?” she challenged. “It’s barely lunch--”

  “This counts,” he said. “Nothing wrong with a liquid lunch.”

  Sighing heavily, Lena pulled a dusty glass from the cupboard and quickly rinsed it out. Sitting on the counter was a half-empty bottle of scotch. She grabbed a handful of ice cubes from the freezer, and splashed the golden liquor on top. Sully eagerly outstretched his hand. As Lena started to hand the drink over, she held it close to her chest and arched her eyebrow. “You only get if you promise to give up the other stuff,” she said in the firmest voice that she could muster.

  “Lena, come on. I only want to---”

  “Stop chasing a ship that’s never going to come in,” she continued. “And don’t insult me by saying that you’re doing it for me.”

  A stern look crossed his face, and Sully pounded a weak fist to the table as he hung his head. “Like I never did anything for you,” he said. “Kept a roof over your head, didn’t I?”

  Lena took a step forward and gently slipped to her knees. “Of course you did,” she whispered. “And I’d like to see you under it the next time that I come back.”

  “Will there even be a next time?” he asked as a tear glinted in the corner of his eye.

  “Don’t be like that,” Lena said. “You know I missed you.”

  “Same here, little girl.”

  She set the glass aside and expected him to snatch it up in one second flat. But to her surprise, he pulled her into her arms and held her close. The greasy smell of his hair took her back to days when he sat at her bedside and brought his head to hers as he spun stories of the girl, her twin who lived in the space of her mirror. Dwelling on a parallel terrain, the reflection was a being that possessed magical powers. All she had to do was walk across a freshly cut lawn to change it into fields of mint. Pick a rose, and it became a cone overloaded with strawberry ice cream. She could turn back time with a wish. And because she was so special, because she used her magic to share with all the other little boys and girls in the other Deerfield, she had more friends than she could count, and everyone loved her. Sometimes Lena tried to bring the story to the real world, offering to split a soggy sandwich or burnt brownies from her lunch box. But that only resulted in upturned noses and cruel remarks. And yet, more often than not, her lunch was still stolen anyway. That changed when Jax made a point of always sitting at her side.

  “Okay,” Lena said as she pushed away and pulled a chair closer to his side. “Here.”

  She handed him the glass, and Sully was about to take a quick swig when he suddenly held back and tilted his head.

  “So why the endless days with no house call?” he asked. “I mean…if you really are glad to see me.”

  “It’s…there were other reasons.” Vague as her words were, she prayed he would simply let it drop and ask her about her classes, or if she finally had friends she could trust – anything but the rest of the story.

  “Thought so,” Sully said. Lena felt as if her heart came to a stop, and she clutched the edge of the table as she watched him drink and wipe his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “You said no more lying,” he started. “You really gonna sit there with a straight face and tell me that this don’t have something to do with the Munroe boy?”

  Lena’s heart came back to life at a rapid fire pace, and her eyes darted around the room as she swallowed hard. “Jax?” she muttered, unable to say or think anything but his name.

  “He was always sort of sweet on you,” Sully said. “And you, little girl, you practically lit up every time he came around to call.”

  She recalled the sensation of her head spinning and her skin quivering whenever he pulled up to her door to take her to school or just hang. If it were that easy for her uncle to connect the dots, then she had to have been far less subtle than she ever imagined. But why had Jax never noticed? A boy like him would have made the first move if he wanted to be more than her attack dog, forever lying in wait. Maybe she should have been bolder. But that was before. Before she was damaged goods in every sense of the words.

  “I don’t know,” she started. “Guess we just grew apart or whatever. I’m sure he doesn’t even think about me anymore.”

  “Not the read I got on him this morning.”

  “What…what did he do?” she asked. Her gaze moved back to the bandage attached to Sully’s cheek, and a shiver ran up her spine at the thought that he might have wielded the blade. At the end of the day, the Black Legion was his family, and without her there, if she truly meant nothing to him…

  “Not like he was leading the charge or anything,” Sully said.

  Lena’s stomach started to churn, and she stepped away from the table on shaky legs. Knowing that any shift to the dark side was partially her fault, her fault for running when she could have come clean, she had to balance her body on the edge of the sink as she sucked in several ragged breaths through her chattering teeth.

  “But did he…was he one of the ones that hurt you?” she asked.

  “Far from it,” Sully said.

  Clinging to those words like a slick rock in a raging river, Lena flung her head over her shoulder to face him and hugged herself close. “Then what did he do?” she asked.

  “Actually, he’s the reason I’m still in one piece. Even gave me a week to make good on my debt.”

  That was the Jax she knew, the man who stuck to his own code even if it contradicted the blood oath into which he was born. Her lips curled into a small smile as she managed to move back to her abandoned chair, her hand light against Sully’s shoulder as she spoke. “Same old Jax then,” she said.

  “No accounting for bloodlines,” he said. “With that fuck Sti
les for a father.”

  “Stepfather,” Lena corrected him.

  “Same difference,” Sully said as he drained his glass. “And that mother of his was no better.”

  “But he stood up for you,” she said.

  “And he said that he wasn’t doing it for me.”

  Hope started to flood her veins that her absence might have had the reverse effect of everything she ever imagined. They hadn’t parted as friends; after all that they had shared, they barely spoke. And even as Lena assumed a new life and told herself that the past was better off forgotten and buried, a small part of her always wondered if there might be a way back. Night after night, she dreamed of finding him beside the creek and finally savoring the feel of his lips on her neck as she melted into his strong, hard arms. Given the chance, she might even be able to give herself to him and feel like it was…