by Jessie Cooke
Chopper looked at the backpack. The idea of putting this scum’s face, and whatever else, up on that big screen behind him and showing all of his followers exactly who and what he was, tempted him like crazy. But he would also be outing Chelsea’s past and he would never do that to her. The idea alone that these tapes existed worried him. If her sister ever got wind of it, Chelsea might never see her son again.
“Before you answer that question, Chop, can I have a word?”
Chopper turned and looked at Cody. He was usually content to let Dax call the shots, so Chopper was curious. Dax looked curious too when Cody waved him over. “Sure,” Chopper told him, going over to where Cody stood. In a low tone, once Dax and Chopper were both within earshot Cody said:
“When I was in prison, I met a guy. He was originally from Hollywood and one of the best cameramen in the business. He got into some trouble, drugs and whatnot, and he was picked up here trying to smuggle some things on a plane while they were on location for a shoot…but that’s all beside the point. He did his time and last I talked to him, he was clean and working again. I’d be willing to see what he could do with those tapes…you know, to make sure Mr. Walton gets top billing.” And Chelsea’s face or any distinguishing marks didn’t, was what Chopper heard. It was brilliant. Chopper looked at Dax, who nodded.
“Thanks, Cody, yeah…let’s do that.” He looked back at Dax and said, “And then what? Do we let him walk free in the meantime?”
“Is that what you want?” Dax asked him.
“I want him to think he won,” Chopper said, surprising himself. The thoughts were coming to him as he spoke almost. “I want him to feel safe, and then I want him brought to his knees in front of the entire world. When’s the election?”
“Not until September,” Dax said. Two months…fuck, that was a long time to wait. But in the meantime, if the old asshole thought he was safe, he’d back off Chelsea and she could concentrate on getting custody of her boy and getting on with her life. In the meantime, she didn’t have to know the tapes even existed. He could fill her in on all of that afterwards, when her life was in order.
“Election night,” Chopper said. “Is that too much?”
“Nah,” Dax said. “He’s got that other fifteen grand that the assassin won’t be needing.” Chopper looked at Garrett. The quiet mountain of a man stood almost demurely up on the altar. He wondered if the sniper had even seen it coming. “I’d consider that more than enough compensation to keep a few guys on him for a couple of months, just in case he tried anything stupid.”
Chopper looked back up at the pig on the stage. He wanted a piece of him so badly, but this was better. Physical pain wouldn’t last forever. This kind of pain would. As he turned to walk out he heard Dax telling the guys to cut them loose and shoot anyone that made a move. He knew Dax was savvy enough to make Walton believe he was paying them for their silence, and he hoped two months would give the scumbag enough time to feel safe and confident again. And he hoped the time would fly by, because patience was not one of his own greater virtues.
28
Six Weeks Later
Chelsea sat at the dining room table in her parents’ home with a sealed envelope in her hands. She wasn’t even curious what the letter inside said. She was sure that it was going to say that Wayne wasn’t Reed’s father. She believed what Wayne told Chopper, that he was sterile, and he just hadn’t told her. He’d been way too eager to cash in on the fact that the evangelist might have been Reed’s father; he must have believed that Reed really wasn’t his. Chopper said Dax had already sent in a sample of the evangelist’s DNA, but the results weren’t back yet. As far as her safety went, Chopper seemed to have relaxed, quite a bit. She got the feeling that there was a lot going on behind the scenes that she didn’t know about. A small part of her wanted to demand that Chopper tell her, but a much bigger part of her not only trusted him but was relieved to have someone else to share her burdens with.
“You going to open it?” her dad asked her, looking at the envelope like it was a snake and he was afraid it might bite her. Over the past month, Chelsea had slowly begun to open up to her parents about things in her past that she had never told them. The shame of admitting to your parents that you were basically a prostitute was almost more than she could bear. But Celia had suddenly gone off the deep end, and Chelsea found out that she’d been meeting with Wayne’s attorney. She had to wonder how much Wayne told him and he what he shared with her sister. She couldn’t bear the thought of her parents’ hearing all of that aloud in open court for the first time. As bad as it was, it was better that they heard it from her. As far as paternity went, they knew Wayne was saying he wasn’t the father, but she had fibbed slightly and told them if that was the case, she had no idea who was. That was hard enough. Telling them what she and her friends suspected, and that the man had tried to have her killed, was too much. She couldn’t worry them that way, and she couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t go to the police, in which case her past indiscretions might all go public.
“We know what it’s going to say,” she told him, at last. “Or at least we’re pretty sure, right? Wayne doesn’t really have reason to lie and then request his own DNA test if he wasn’t pretty convinced.” She could see the vein in her dad’s temple pulsing and it tugged at her heart. Her parents had stuck by her even after she told them everything. They had even tried talking Celia into dropping the custody battle, but her sister was convinced she was doing the right thing. She turned against their parents too at that point, telling them they had always favored Chelsea and that was why she’d gotten into so much trouble. Chelsea knew that wasn’t true. They were good parents to both girls. Chelsea had just made bad choices that she was trying like hell to make up for now. Finally, unable to take the look of anticipation on her father’s face any longer, she ripped open the envelope and unfolded the letter inside. When she read what it said, the blood drained out of her head and the room swam slightly.
“Chelsea? Your face is as white as a sheet, honey, what does it say?”
She looked up at her dad. “Wayne is his father.”
“What? But I thought…”
“He said he was sterile,” Chelsea finished for him.
“Why would he say that, if he’s not?”
Chelsea chuckled. “He probably believed it was true.”
“So now what?”
She smiled, slowly. “It’s one less thing that Celia can use against me in court. She was going to go after me for not knowing who the father was. Now, bringing up what Wayne was doing…what I was doing,” she said, trying not to notice how her father cringed, “…it will all just be hearsay, and I doubt that the judge will allow it. Wayne’s already sent me the petition to terminate rights. All he cares about is money. I’ll sign the papers and when he does get out of prison, we won’t have to worry that he’ll want to claim any rights to Reed. This is actually good news.”
Her dad was nodding. He didn’t look happy, but she knew that none of this was anything to be happy about. The hearing with her sister was in two weeks, and Chelsea had done all she could to show the courts she was ready to take care of her boy. She had signed up for the online college courses. She’d picked up more shifts at the coffee house and over the past month she’d actually been able to save enough money to put a deposit down on a two-bedroom apartment. By the time the court date arrived, she’d have enough to finish paying the move-in costs and Reed would have his own room. But no matter who won, somebody would lose as far as her parents were concerned. They were in the middle, and Chelsea felt so badly about that.
But she had decided a while back to concentrate on the positive, and this was one of those. She thought about Chopper. He was a big part of her new attitude. Things seemed to somehow just work out for him, and after she knew him for a while, she decided that it was because of his positive attitude. He rolled with the punches so that he never really seemed to take a direct hit. She was letting him teach her how to balance her life
. She worked hard, she took care of her responsibilities, and when she had the time, she enjoyed her life and she was learning how to do that without feeling guilty. Her only regret at this point was not being able to introduce him to her parents. She hadn’t exactly hidden the relationship from them. She told them she was “dating” him and every chance she got, she told them something good about him. Her parents didn’t approve, but she only knew that from the looks they gave each other when she talked about him. They had kept their opinions about him to themselves and for that, she was grateful. Nothing anyone said was going to change her mind anyway.
Chelsea knew her parents’ concerns were not without merit. They worried about her sobriety first, and second, they worried that Celia would use her “friendship” with Chopper, and his connection to the Skulls, against her in court. Chelsea was banking on two things herself. The first was that Chopper and all of the people she’d met on the ranch, so far, respected her sobriety and did nothing to indicate that they’d ever threaten it. Sure, they drank and smoked, but a lot of people did, and Chelsea looked at it as a chance to get stronger. The second thing she was banking on was that as hard as Celia had tried to get the hearing moved out of Boston, it was scheduled in the county she lived in…in a courtroom in Dorchester, under a judge that had placed more than a handful of teenagers at the teen center Dax and Angel ran at the ranch. Her own mother had attended fundraisers for that center, and Chelsea heard her speak highly of Angel and even mention the good that she believed Dax was doing for the kids and the community. But she was a mother and a grandmother and since she didn’t know any of them on a personal level, she still worried.
“Your mom and Reed should be back by now,” her dad said, changing the subject. “Did she tell you they were going anywhere except the grocery store?”
Chelsea looked at the time on her phone. She thought her dad was just trying to change the subject, but she realized that he was right; they had been gone for quite a while. “No, she didn’t. I’ll call her.” She pressed in her mother’s number and on the second ring, a man’s voice came on the line.
“Hello?”
“Who is this?” She heard the panic in her own voice and her father must have as well because suddenly he sat up straight and was looking at her with questions in his eyes.
“This is Officer Dale Brooks with the Needham Police Department, who am I speaking with?”
“My name is Chelsea Roberts. This is my mother’s number. Where is she? Where is the little boy that was with her…my son, Reed?”
“Your mother and son were in an accident…”
“Oh my god!” She stood up, rocking the table in front of her. Her father stood up too.
“Chelsea, what’s going on?”
“Mom and Reed were in an accident…”
“Miss, they’re both going to be okay. They were taken to University Hospital, but they’re both stable.” Chelsea handed the phone to her father and ran for the door. She wasn’t thinking clearly, she just knew she had to see them. She had to see her son and see for herself that he was okay. As she was pulling open the door of her car, her father was already there too and pulling open the passenger side. He was still on the phone and seemed to be listening as he handed her a set of keys. She tried to breathe normally and stop her hands from shaking as she slipped the key in the ignition.
“Okay, thank you very much,” her dad finally said into the phone. As soon as he ended the call, Chelsea said, “I’m sorry, Dad. I just freaked out…”
“It’s okay,” he said, softly. “Don’t drive crazy and get us in an accident too, though, okay?” She was speeding toward the main road and when her father said that, she backed off the accelerator. “Honey, the officer said they are both okay.”
“Did he say what happened to them?”
“He says that a car blew a stop sign and broadsided them. The airbag deployed, and he says that’s what did the most damage to your mother. It broke her glasses, cut her face, and she might have a broken rib. Reed was in the back in his car seat and he wasn’t injured at all, just scared.”
“Thank God,” Chelsea said as she pulled onto the main road. “My poor baby.”
“Yeah,” her dad said. “The other driver reeked of alcohol, they were doing a sobriety test now, but the officer is sure he won’t pass. He tried to leave the scene.”
“Bastard! I’m glad the police stopped him.”
“Well, they didn’t, actually. It seems that a few of the Southside Skulls were passing by when the accident happened. They’re the ones that called 911. A couple of them stayed with your mom and Reed, and one of them chased down the guy that hit them and brought him back.”
The drive to the hospital seemed to take forever. Chelsea’s dad white-knuckled his seat and the dash in front of him, but he didn’t say anything about how fast she was driving again. When they got there, she left the car with the valet and ran into the hospital, taking the first right toward the ER and running up to the information desk. “I’m Chelsea Roberts, my mom and my son were brought in here. They were in an accident…”
The girl at the desk smiled at her and softly said:
“Can I have their names please?” Chelsea gave her their names and after typing into the computer in front of her she said, “Mrs. Roberts is in 3A and Reed is in 6B.”
“Oh my god! He’s alone? He must be scared to death.” Her father and the girl at the desk were talking to her, but Chelsea ignored them and pushed through the buzzing door that led to the back. She ran down the hallway, past 3A, and found the hallway where the rooms were numbered five and six. She found 6B and as soon as she pushed through the curtain, she stopped dead in her tracks.
Chopper was looking at her with his finger to his lips and her little boy was asleep in his arms. “Reed!” she said in a loud whisper. Chopper stood up and with a gentle smile he put her baby into her arms. She cuddled him to her chest and inspected his face and arms, every part of him she could see. She had to know for sure he was okay. Finally, she looked up at Chopper and said, “He’s really okay?”
He nodded. “Yeah, he was awake and asking for you and his grandma. Your mother had to be sedated because she was yelling so loudly about wanting to see him. I finally convinced the nurse to let me come back and see if I could help. Reed was a little scared of me at first, but I think his exhaustion won out.”
“Thank you! But…how…what are you doing here?”
“Tigger, Zack, and I were on our way back from town. We were following this little white SUV. I had no idea it was your mother and Reed until after the accident and your mom told the EMT their names. But anyways, she stopped at the stop sign and then started to go through. The guy headed west to east, didn’t stop at his. He was doing at least sixty in that forty-mile-per-hour zone and he barreled right into her, pushing her car into a tree across the road. We stopped and we all started to get off the bikes to make sure everyone was okay, and the son of a bitch that hit her didn’t even get out of his car. It had died and once he got it restarted, he took off. I chased him while Zack and Tigger called 911 and tended to your mom and Reed.”
“It was you that caught him?”
“Yeah, I stopped him about six miles up the road and convinced him it was in his best interests to come back.” She was about to ask how he “convinced” him, but she saw Chopper rub the knuckles on his right hand. She almost smiled at the thought of what the drunk must look like now, and she was glad—he deserved it. She looked down at Reed. His long eyelashes brushed against his chubby cheeks as he breathed in and out, and his red lips were pursed and blowing bubbles. She brushed her lips across the spray of freckles on his nose. She loved this boy so much that it physically hurt sometimes.
“Thank you,” she whispered to Chopper. He leaned over and kissed her softly.
“You’re welcome, but I didn’t do anything that any other good Samaritan wouldn’t have done.”
She nodded. “I know. And you proved my point…the point I’m going t
o make to my parents as soon as Mom is doing better. Nobody is perfect, not even my sister. All we can do is be the best people that we can be, and you do that, consistently. It doesn’t matter what colors you wear or who you ride with. You’re a good person and I want you in my life and Reed’s life, if you still want to be in ours. I’m not sure what kind of restrictions they’ll put on me if I win custody, but if you’re willing to wait for us…”
“Forever,” he said.
She smiled through the tears in her eyes and said, “I was just going to say for a little while.”
He nodded. “I know. But I want you to know how long I’ll wait if necessary. I will wait for you and your son, forever, Chelsea. Maybe I’ll have to go out on the road for a while and you won’t be able to go…that’s okay. I have brothers that do that all the time, and their relationships are sound. If I leave I will always come back, to you. And, when I’m here I want us to be together…all three of us.”
“I love you so much.”
“I love you too,” he said.
“Mama?” Chelsea looked down into the sleepy brown eyes of her son.
“Mama’s here, baby boy. I’m right here.” She lifted him up onto her shoulder and he laid his head down. She rocked him back and forth for several seconds and then she felt him shift slightly. She glanced over after a few seconds and her heart was once again huge and overwhelmed with emotion. Reed had taken hold of Chopper’s finger and was holding onto it, tightly. She closed her eyes for a second and just let the beauty of that sink in.
29