by Deja Voss
The way he looks at me like I’m perfect and whole.
The way he looks at me like I’m the most beautiful thing in the world.
It makes my heart race.
“This wasn’t what I had planned for tonight,” he says as he rolls over next to me, lying flat on his back on the bed. “This wasn’t why I came over here.”
“Well, in that case, I apologize,” I giggle. “I just can’t keep my hands off you, Driller.”
He rolls me over in his arms and spoons me tight against his muscular chest. “I’m sorry I can’t leave you alone.”
“I don’t want to be left alone,” I whisper.
He slides out from under me and goes for his jeans and I look over at him with a pout. I’m sure he needs to get back to whatever it is that’s going on downstairs. I really wished we would’ve had some more time together, but I’ll take whatever I can get.
To my surprise, he pulls out a black felt box and rests it on my chest.
“I want you to marry me someday, Pearl.”
If I dislodged my jaw any further it’d probably hit the floor.
“I don’t want to propose to you right now because of all the shit going down. I don’t want right now to be the way you remember everything happening. I don’t want it to be about your dad, or the club, or your sister, or whatever this bullshit is. I know you’re mine, I know you’re gonna marry me someday, and that’s all that matters to me. I wanted to get you something, though.”
“I want to marry you someday, too,” I whisper, reaching for his face. It sounds so natural. Feels so natural. “I’m going to.”
“I know,” he says with a nod. He picks up the box and hands it to me. “So, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but this is not me proposing to you. This is me saying no matter where you go or what you do, I’m always thinking about you.”
I pop open the box and inside is a delicate silver necklace with a little pearl encased in a heart. “I never pegged you as a romantic, but you just keep proving me wrong,” I say, pressing my head to his chest. He puts it on me and I know I’m never going to take it off again.
“I actually have something for you,” I say. “A part of me you can wear everywhere you go, too.”
“Please tell me it’s not a cock ring,” he says. I give him a sideways look as he hides his naked junk behind his hands. “I mean, if that’s your thing, I’m down… but…”
“No.” I shake my head and he breathes a sigh of relief. I reach for my sketch book and flip it open to the page with the design I drew for him this afternoon.
“Pearl, this is amazing.”
“It’s going to be my masterpiece. I finally found my muse. All this time I’d been chasing my tail trying to find the perfect shop, the perfect place, somewhere I fit in and belonged so I could do my best work. That’s not what I needed, though.”
“Oh yeah? What did you need?”
“Someone to screw a little sense into me. A Drill-er, maybe?”
“You’re fucking silly, woman,” he says, taking my hand in his.
“I needed someone to show me that it doesn’t matter what’s going on around me; as long as I have love in my heart, I have everything I could possibly need. That love is you.”
“Obviously,” he teases. He picks me up and rolls me over onto his lap and I giggle in delight.
“Y'all better get downstairs!” Red Eye throws the bedroom door open. “Oh holy fuck,” he mumbles, covering his eyes as he quickly backs out. “You couldn’t keep your clothes on for twenty minutes? I swear I didn’t see anything.”
I throw my head back and laugh.
He pulls the door nearly all the way closed and stands behind it while we both crack up. “Seriously, though, we’re gonna need you downstairs. Vegas might have gotten into your tattoo shit and Decker’s bleeding a lot.”
“Fuck,” I mutter, tossing on my clothes. “Who’s Vegas?”
“When the fuck did Vegas get here?” Driller throws the door open and stands there ass naked while Red Eye still has his hands slapped over his eyes.
“Apparently somebody told him about Stoney. He caught a flight in earlier today and Ransom sent him over here.”
“This is turning into the best fucking day,” Driller says, scooping me up in my arms and swinging me around. “This changes everything.” I peck him on the forehead and hand him his pants. “If we can talk Vegas into sticking around, we’ll get the popular vote back. We won’t have to worry about anything anymore.”
“I’m sure Pearl can probably help persuade him. She’s right up his alley.”
“Oh hell no,” he says, slapping my ass. “You’re not going anywhere near him.”
I hop on his back and we head down the steps. As we stand at the bottom of the stairway, I can’t help but feel this optimistic joy washing over everything. Maybe getting away from the clubhouse for the weekend was exactly what we needed. Not just us girls, but everyone.
There’s laughter and loud music. Drinking, and as Red Eye warned us, bleeding. For the first time since I met her, Anita looks like she’s genuinely smiling, and Ashley is walking around with her arm over her boob, showing off my newest masterpiece, while her dad tries to stand in front of her.
I kiss the top of his head before he lets me down to the ground. I place my hand in his and we disappear in the crowd, this time, together. There’s nothing that’s ever going to separate us again.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Epilogue:
Driller
“I don’t know if you understand what I’m saying. I don’t even know if you can hear me, Stoney. I just need to talk to you, Uncle.”
I don’t know why I keep doing this to myself. Keep doing this to him. Seeing him in this nursing home is a real kick in the nuts. He has no idea what’s going on. He can’t even piss on his own. Doctors have said there’s a chance he could come back, but there’s a much better chance he’ll be trapped in his own head forever. It’s really fucking sad.
My dad barely leaves this place. Spends most of his time sitting with his brother, watching baseball on TV and chattering on about whatever pops in his brain, hoping he’ll say the right thing and trigger a response. I think he holds a lot of guilt in him about how the last few years have gone down. I think we all feel a little personally responsible for what happened to Stoney. The ways that we failed him by trying to protect him.
I made a promise to myself that I would never do this to Pearl. I’d never keep secrets from her. Never let my ego get in the way of being able to be a good man to her. A good husband, and soon a good father.
“Kid’s actually coming up for parole here quick. Lawyers found out they weren’t making sure he kept up with his meds. They’re saying he was completely out of his mind when he stabbed that guard. Anita’s pretty happy. She doesn’t like being alone all the time.”
Still nothing. Nothing but the beep of his monitor and the sigh of his oxygen. The warbling of the baseball game on the TV. My dad sitting on the other side of him completely tuned out. I don’t think there’s anything I can say to snap him back to normal, so I’m just going to say whatever comes to mind.
“Pearl’s starting to show, Stoney. She’s so fucking beautiful all knocked up. I never knew what you meant when you said Anita was at her sexiest when she was pregnant, but now I get it. She’s still running the shop with an iron fist, but it makes me fucking insane the way men are looking at her.” I chuckle at my own stupidity. I know any man would be more than lucky to have Pearl, but I claimed her first. She’ll always be mine. There ain’t nothing she could do to make me think otherwise, especially now that she’s growing our baby inside her.
“She’ll be here soon. She and Anita went shopping for maternity clothes today. Seems like the two of them are getting on pretty good.”
My dad grunts and turns off the TV.
“The fuck are we doing with ourselves here?” he asks. His face looks so old and gray and tired. I think that’s the longest sent
ence he’s said in a month. “You really think Stoney would want us sitting around talking to a shell?”
“I don’t know, pops. I figure it’s easier to tell him this stuff than it is to tell you. You’ve kinda checked out yourself.”
“I’m sorry,” he mutters. He stands up with a groan and walks over to my chair. “It’s hard to see the good right now. I’m trying. Always knew this day was gonna come, and now that it’s here I don’t know what the fuck to do.”
“You know exactly what to do, Dad. You gotta take care of the MC. You gotta keep forging ahead, old man. Nobody really knows what’s going on just yet, but once word gets out, we’re gonna be in a really vulnerable position.”
“Well, I don’t want my nephew being born into some sort of war,” he grumbles.
“Nephew, huh? Pearl promised me she wasn’t gonna say anything.”
My dad grins from ear to ear, a smile so big, for a minute he doesn’t look like the gray old man he’s quickly become. “We’re getting a boy?”
“I’m not saying either way.”
“Hello, Stoney,” a woman’s voice says from the doorway. It’s remotely familiar but not quite right. That’s pretty much Annabella in a nutshell. She looks familiar, sounds familiar, acts kind of familiar, but everything about the girl is off. We still haven’t figured out what the hell to do with her, but we’ve decided it’s better to keep her close. Maybe it’d be easier to make her disappear, but that’s not our call to make. It’s Pearl’s call. The two really haven’t spoken yet, even after all these months, but sometimes I’ll catch Pearl in the kitchen chattering to herself, begging for answers from a woman she only just found out existed.
For now, Annabella’s paying her debt off to the club day by day. As enforcer, Ransom’s taken full responsibility of her. As part of her weekly punishment, he brings her to the home to sit with Stoney face-to-face.
“I see you have company already. I’ll be going,” she says.
“I don’t think so, princess. Pull up a chair, and let’s have a chat with the man you tried to murder.” Ransom is smiling like a fool. I know he gets off on this “bossing bitches around” shit. He might act like his job is hard, but I’m pretty sure he’s enjoying it a little more than he likes to let on.
She hangs her head and shuffles into the room, dragging a chair from the nearby desk over to the bed. She bows her head between her hands and begins to pray softly, and Ransom just stands behind her with his hands in his pockets, nodding over at me like he was proud of whatever it was he’d accomplished with her over the last few months.
I still can’t trust her as far as I can throw her. None of us can. I don’t even know what she’s praying for. If she knew anything about my uncle she sure as shit wouldn’t be praying him back to health, because if he ever wakes from his state I’m pretty sure her days are severely numbered.
We all watch in fascination anyway. She finishes her prayer and looks up at Ransom. “Can I have my backpack?”
He laughs at her mockingly. “Last time you reached in your backpack you pulled out a shank.”
“Well, can you at least grab his book out of there?”
He pulls out an old weathered copy of the Monkey Wrench Gang.
“Aunt Anita told me this was his favorite,” she says. “It’s about a bunch of misfits who sabotage government agencies and blow shit up. I kind of like it, too.”
“You would, princess,” Ransom says, nodding in approval.
“Aunt Anita?” I ask, raising my eyebrow. Oh Lord, if he’s catching feelings, things are about to get really fucking messy. He’s always had an affinity for putting his dick in crazy, though.
She begins to read out loud from the dusty old book, and my dad just kind of sinks back in his chair, closing his eyes and smiling.
Uncle Stoney remains unresponsive, but for whatever reason, I think he’s here with us, enjoying this simple moment, enjoying the calm before whatever storm might be coming our way.
The smell of Pearl’s perfume fills the air, and I leap out of my seat as soon as I know she’s there, ready to whisk her down the hallway. Her eyes grow dark and thin, and my heart sinks down into my stomach, worrying about how stressful this has to be for her.
Everyone stops and stares over at her. Annabella goes silent, slamming the book shut.
“We can go,” I say to Pearl.
“No,” she says, taking me by the hand. “Go on, Annabella. Doctor says it’s good for us to read out loud to baby.”
I sit down on the chair next to the bed and pull my beautiful wife-to-be down onto my lap, cradling my hands on her stomach. Annabella starts back up again, her voice a nervous warble as she reads about Seldom Seen Smith’s attack on deserted bulldozers and trains.
She nuzzles her head up against my cheek, and I feel the life inside of her start to stir, our little life we created, and feel completely confident that no matter what happens with the MC, this baby is going to be loved more than any child that’s come before him, and it’s all because of Pearl. For who she’s made me and how she’s changed me. For everything she’s sacrificed and the ways she’s grown. For the storms we’ve weathered and the way things have changed. She is my queen.
38
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