by Deja Voss
There’s a possibility that child inside her isn’t Driller’s. There’s a possibility she’s carrying my man’s baby.
I could forgive her for everything leading up to this, but I don’t know if I am strong enough to let this slide. I don’t know why these guys are too stupid to realize what could be happening here.
“I’m not feeling so hot,” I say. “Sorry, this day has been a lot. I need to go lay down.”
“You want me to come with you?” Ransom asks.
“No, it’s fine. This was good. Everything’s good. See ya later,” I say, my words coming out all stupid and garbled. Just when I think things are moving forward, everything starts moving apart.
Just when I think Pearl and I are even, everything gets messy again. The hardest part of all is knowing that this is exactly what I signed up for. This is the life of an old lady. This is what happens when you put yourself out there and join a community… one little revelation can make you feel so suddenly alone and tiny and if I don’t just go with the flow, I could lose everything.
I wrap myself in a blanket and flop down on the couch, staring off into space, growing angrier by the second as I listen to their laughter coming from outside.
32
Ransom:
“You want to go for a ride or something?” I ask. Ever since Pearl and Driller left Annabella hasn’t left the couch. I’m sure it probably sucked a lot out of her, meeting her sister for the first time and planning a murder, but it seems like there’s a lot more to it than that. It seems like she’s on another planet, covered in a pile of blankets just staring off at some random infomercial for timeshares.
She doesn’t answer me. Maybe she can’t hear me.
I sit down at the end of the couch and grab her feet, massaging her cold toes in my hands. She doesn’t so much as move, let alone
“You having second thoughts? It’s okay, Bella. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” I say. “You know I’ll take care of it for you, babe. You’ve been through enough lately. It’s all gonna be over soon and we can just be happy and normal.” I bring her toe to my lip and kiss it and that usually makes her crack up, but instead she pulls away and rolls over on the couch.
“Bella, what is wrong?” I ask. “You can’t just freeze me out, love. Shit don’t work that way around here.”
When she rolls over on the couch, her eyes are red and wet. “Pearl’s pregnant,” she says.
“Yeah, I mean good for them. Driller’s always wanted to be dad.”
“So did you,” she says.
“Babe, all you have to do is say the word and I’ll do whatever I can to knock your sexy ass up. I’m perfectly content with just practicing for now.”
“You don’t get it do you?” She jumps up from the couch and wraps herself up in the blanket. “When was it that you slept with my sister?”
I know it hasn’t been long since Annabella and I got together, but I feel like I’ve known her a lifetime. Still, I pull out my fingers and start counting weeks.
“Wait a minute,” I shout after her as she runs down the hallway. “We used protection. There’s absolutely no way in hell.” I’ve been doing this for a long time now. Condoms, pills, pull and pray, I never once actually knocked a girl up. There is no way in hell that one night with Pearl and Driller was the night shit actually failed on me.
“How can you be a hundred percent certain?” she asks.
I try to fathom any possibly logical explanation in my mind. Obviously it was only once, so the odds aren’t that great. We used a condom. It isn’t all that easy to actually get somebody pregnant. The timing has to be perfect. Unfortunately, none of these reasons are enough to built an absolutely solid case.
“I’m sure it’s not mine,” I say. “And even if it is, why are you mad?”
I regret it the instant I say it. She goes into the spare bedroom and slams the door behind her.
I tug on the doorknob but she has it locked. I pound and pound but all I hear is her weeping from the other side.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” I say. “What I mean is, who are you mad at? There’s no way in hell I could’ve expected this to happen. It’s not like we planned it. You can be mad if you want, but you can’t be mad at me.”
I hate the way she’s crying, like she’s in pain, and I know I’m the one who made her that way. Not on purpose.
“Babe, you have to trust me. We’ll get a paternity test if it’ll make you feel better. We’ll do whatever we have to do.”
“Just leave me alone,” she bellows. “I can’t talk to you about this right now.”
It feels worse than a punch to the gut. I don’t even know where to begin making things right, but I’ve never been in a position like this before. I just feel sad and lonely, and there’s nothing in the world that would make me feel better except her.
I go out in the garage and crack open a beer. I throw some darts at the dartboard. I play with my phone. I pull out an engine I’ve been neglecting, one that I want to put on my custom Harley, and start clunking around, but I can’t keep focused long enough to make any progress. It’s scary because Bella’s fear isn’t completely irrational. Once again, our stupid ass club traditions are coming back to bite me in the ass, and this time I could lose more than I’m willing to give up.
After awhile the door swings open, and first Juniper runs to my side, jumping up on my lap and licking at my face. At least somebody’s happy to see me.
I can hear her voice in the hallway. I walk over to the doorway, and she’s standing in the hallway talking on the phone, her eyes sunk in. She forces a laugh to whoever she’s talking to. As soon as she sees I’m watching her, she stares me right in the eye and bursts into tears.
She hangs up the phone and hangs her head.
“You ready to talk?”
“I’m gonna go stay with Riley for a few days.” Her words are wavering, and she can barely spit them out through the crying she’s doing.
“No, you’re not,” I say. “This is your home, Annabella. This is where you belong.”
“I don’t feel like I belong anywhere right now, Ransom. I just need some time to think. This isn’t about you. It’s about me.”
I grab her by the shoulders, hugging her tightly, but she just starts bawling even harder, going limp in my arms. The more I squeeze her the harder she cries. The more I try to comfort her, the more I feel like I’m losing her. It feels like shit.
“No matter how much you try, Ransom, I will always be an outsider. You can dress me up. You can pretend like your men have forgiven me for what I’ve done. I can hear it in Driller’s voice he is upset about Stoney. I can see in the way Pearl looks at you everything would be a lot easier if I didn’t exist. I feel so far away from you right now, and I don’t think I’ll ever know how to bridge that gap. I’m not like everybody else.”
“We can leave again. You know that,” I say, reaching for her hand as she walks towards the bedroom. I follow behind her as she stuffs a couple days worth of clothes into a bag.
“That was stupid. That was the most selfish thing I ever agreed to in my life. Please just let me go stay with Riley while I gather my thoughts.”
“No,” I say. “Absolutely not. You can fucking gather your thoughts here. I’ll make myself so scarce you won’t even know I’m here.”
“This is your home, Ransom. You aren’t going to do that.”
“What if I don’t give you a choice,” I say, grabbing her wrists in my hand. I stare down at her, hoping maybe I can snap her out of whatever this is. I tuck her hair behind her ear and lick my lips as I go to kiss her neck. She doesn’t even react. It’s like she’s checked out, far away, and it doesn’t matter what I say or do, she’s not gonna listen. It makes me feel gross.
“Fine, Annabella,” I say, letting go of her wrists. “You want to throw whatever we have away over a hypothetical situation? You want to run to Riley of all damn people because of something I did before I even knew who you wer
e? You want to act like all these people who should rightly hate you but have gone way out of their way to make right with what you did and help cover up your crimes are the enemy?”
She storms down the hallway, not even looking back over her shoulder.
“Exactly,” she says. “Nobody here should have to do any of that. I’m sorry I inconvenienced you for so long.”
I chase after her, furious at myself, angry at her, pissed off at life in general.
Riley’s range rover comes barreling down the driveway, and I’m sure that shady bitch is more than happy to pick Annabella up and try and squeeze as much gossip as possible out of her.
“We don’t live in a bubble, Ransom. Every day it’s more obvious. I appreciate your hospitality. I love you. I just need a time out.”
“You do whatever you have to do,” I say, but it comes off as mean and aggressive. I don’t care. She’s hurting me so bad right now by not trusting me or believing me or letting me comfort her, I want to make her hurt as much as I can before she gets in that car. “Just run away Annabella. Go hide like you always do. Nobody’s gonna come and save you this time, though.”
She blinks up at me with her dark eyes and gets in the car, slamming the door behind her. I go back inside the house before Riley even starts backing out of the driveway.
She needs to hurt, too. If she wants to pretend like I don’t care, I’ll give her that luxury, as much as it fucking kills me. If she can’t see how much she changed me, how much she changed the very fabric of this club, she’ll never understand how much I fucking love her.
Juniper stands in the kitchen, staring up at the counter, wagging her tail, and while I’m slightly relieved she left the dog, knowing she could probably walk away from me forever, but she’d never leave that mutt forever, just looking at this lanky weird fluffy thing makes me sad.
I go to the fridge and grab a beer, cracking it open and swigging it down. Juniper paws at my leg, like she needs to be drunk to cope with this, too. I pet her head and she keeps on pawing at me until I pour a little out for her on the floor and grab myself another. This is what I’m reduced to now. Getting drunk with her dog because she can’t stand to be near me. With every beer I crack open I hate myself a little more.
My phone rings, it’s Romeo, and I’m barely sober enough to know that I’m probably too drunk to have any sort of logical conversation with him, but I’m lonely. I’m angry. I feel like I need a pep talk from somebody who’s lived through it all.
“How’d today go?” he asks. “Did she like the clothes? Did the girls hit it off? Am I interrupting something?”
I hear the music from the clubhouse blaring in the background, the drunken laughter and sound of pool balls breaking across a table and for the first time in a long time, I want to be there just getting sloppy hammered with my brothers.
“Can you come get me?” I ask.
“Where you at?”
“I’m at home. I fucked up, Romeo. We all fucked up. Me and Pearl and Driller. Annabella isn’t taking that shit good at all. She thinks I’m a fucking scumbag. She thinks I probably knocked Pearl up. She ran off to Riley’s house and she ain’t speaking to me.” I feel like such a loser, like a little kid tattling on the other kids on the playground for being mean.
Romeo is laughing. “Well you are a dirty motherfucker,” he says. “Shit, men have gotten their dicks cut off for doing stuff like that before.”
“I didn’t even know her when it happened. I was just doing what we always do.”
“You think there’s any chance whatsoever you could be the father to that baby?”
“I don’t fucking know,” I mutter. I grab another beer out of the fridge. “I wrapped my shit up, I think. I thought she was on the pill. I don’t fucking know.”
You can tell he’s trying not to laugh anymore, but it’s not going so well for him. “You just stay put. It’s gonna be alright, Ran. I see the way she looks at you. That bitch loves you more than anything. Sometimes they just forget we don’t spend our lives waiting around for them to show up. What you do in the past don’t define the man you are today, unless you keep doing that shit over and over.”
“Like you, and your harem of baby mommas,” I say.
Now he’s really laughing.
“I’m gonna take care of it, Ransom,” he says. “She might not be able to stand the sight of you right now, but she definitely doesn’t need to be anywhere near Riley. That bitch is bad fucking news.”
“What are you gonna do?” I ask. “You gonna go get her and bring her home?”
“Nah, but I’m gonna make sure she knows just how important she is to us. And you’re gonna get yourself sober because you have a long day of groveling ahead of you tomorrow.”
He hangs up the phone and I lean up against the fridge. Juniper puts her head in my lap and I hang my head as I pet her. This will be my first night without Annabella since the day I met her, and I feel like she took a part of me with her when she walked out the door. I feel like I’m mourning the death of something I never knew existed until this instant.
I feel like shit.
I know one thing, I will do whatever it takes to never be in this situation ever again.
33
Annabella:
“I have a confession to make. Please don’t be mad at me. I wanted to call you and tell you sooner but I wasn’t sure how all this was going to shake out…” Riley says nervously, drumming at the steering wheel.
The second I got in the car, I knew this was a bad idea. The sticky sweet smell of her perfume turned my stomach, and as soon as she opened her mouth and started talking, the bullshit started flowing, and I remembered why I was so eager to get away from her in the first place. Everything about her makes me feel unsafe. Nothing about her is real, honest, or even sincere. Still, I had to get out of that house, and I knew she was my safest bet.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“It’s about your dog,” she says. She pulls out a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of her leather vest and offers me one. I try to hide my smile as I take one, knowing damn well Juniper is safe and sound up at Ransom’s house. “I left her alone in the yard for three minutes and she escaped. Me and the children looked for days and days. We called all the shelters. Henry even put all his officers on alert. I’m sorry, Bella.”
I light up the smoke and look over at her and shrug. Do I truly believe she did all that stuff? Not even kind of.
“So you and Ransom, huh? What’s that like? I bet it’s super hot given the circumstances. I bet he’s a straight up alpha in the bedroom.”
This can’t get any worse, can it? “I really don’t want to talk about it. That’s why I called you. I figured you could help me get my mind off some stuff for a little while. I just needed some space.”
“Did he hit you?” she asks, her eyes wide. She’s basically salivating at the idea of some juicy gossip, and I am regretting every minute of my decision.
“Never. Not once. Ransom is not that kind of man, and I don’t ever want to hear that out of your mouth again,” I say. I know he’d never lay a hand on me unless I specifically asked for it. I know at his core he’s a good guy. I’m just really really struggling with this whole hooking up with my sister thing, even though I know in my heart, at the time he wasn’t doing anything wrong.
I’m really struggling with this MC lifestyle as a whole. The constant people up in your business. The loyalty. The togetherness. Part of me craves all of it. Part of me is so optimistic and wants to believe it’s all true. Part of me rejoices in the idea that I finally found my place in this world.
But then there’s that part of me that knows my mother was in this position herself years ago. I don’t think she assumed my father was working with traffickers. I don’t think she imagined in a million years Stoney would sell her off to pay his debt. Underneath all the family and goodness, there seems to be a dark side. I worry the whole Pearl situation is just the tip of the iceberg for me.
I
don’t want to worry, but that’s the kind of person my past has made me into.
“Well I’m flattered you called me, Annabella. I miss you. Kid hasn’t been able to call as much, and Pearl’s been pretty busy ever since she got the shop opened back up again. All I have are my boys… and Henry…” she says making a gagging sound. “What do you say we go hit up some bars before we go home? I could go for some dancing.”
“I’m definitely not dressed for that,” I say. “Besides, I don’t have my ID on me.”
She laughs out loud. “Honey you are about ten years past the point of anybody ever carding you ever again.” I throw her a middle finger and she blows me a kiss.
“I’m not exactly the most fun person today, Riley. Can we just watch a movie or something? I just want to eat snacks and cry,” I say.
Her eyes light up. “Like a girls night in?”
“Sure,” I say.
“Oh, this is gonna be so much fun. I can’t remember the last time I got to do this. You’re a blessing Annabella.”
I feel guilty because I plan on being passed out before the opening credits are over. I know Riley is a really lonely person, and I know a lot of that is her own doing, and I also know I’m probably the worst possible person to be her emotional support friend right now, but I don’t have any options.
Trying to work things out with Ransom is sounding better and better by the minute.
She pulls into the liquor store parking lot. I go in with her, and she takes her time reading labels and touching everything on the shelves, asking the clerk questions about botanicals and garnishes, while I grab a bottle of spiced rum from the bottom shelf and carry it up to the counter.
“Well okay,” she says with a giggle. “Guess we can pretend like we’re a couple of broke college kids.” She slides her card and we walk over to the pizza shop next door and order some food to take home with us. Every minute that goes by, I start feeling a little bit more regret for running out on Ransom, but he needs to understand there are some things I can’t just overlook. He needs to understand that sometimes people get mad for good reasons, and you can’t just fuck it out and get over it.