by Blair Grey
“I’ll be just inside the house if you need me,” she said. “If you need anything at all.”
“Thanks,” I said again. “I’d like to chat with Nathan for a moment.”
“I’d like to talk, too,” he said. “It’s been a while.”
“A few years,” I replied. I glanced after Khloe, suddenly feeling vulnerable now that she was out of the picture. Part of me wanted her to come back, but there was another part of me that knew I had to handle this one my own. I didn’t want an audience when I told him, but then, I wasn’t sure if I was ready to tell him.
He was still hot. Tall, muscular, built. But his arm was missing. The sight of it made me feel both sad and respectful of him. I wanted to tell him I was sorry, but I wasn’t sure if I should bring it up at all. I knew I had to focus on what really mattered right now, but it seemed so much easier to focus on his arm rather than our daughter.
“You look good,” he tried as he sat down on the blanket. I picked up Allegra and pulled her onto my lap, still breaking off bits of the sandwich and feeding them to her. I was glad she was too young to engage with Nathan right now. I didn’t know what she’d say.
“Thanks, so do you,” I said.
“Different from the last time you saw me,” he replied.
I didn’t know what to say, so I merely nodded. “Same here.”
“I can see that.” He wasn’t looking at me, however, he was looking at Allegra. There was no denying she was my daughter. She had the same red hair – but her eyes were clearly his. At least, it was clear to me. I felt uncomfortable with him looking at her, despite the fact he was actually her father.
He didn’t know it, but he was.
“She’s?” he asked after a moment of silence. My tongue swelled and caught in my throat, and I wasn’t sure what to say. I felt like I was going to be sick, or burst into tears, or both. I knew I should say something, but all I could do was nod.
There was another moment of silence between us, and there was a part of me that was frantically praying that he wasn’t going to put two and two together. Of course, I had to tell him the truth, but this wasn’t how I thought it would happen. This didn’t feel right. I had to be the one to go to him, it couldn’t be some chanced meeting like this.
Finally, he spoke, and I knew I was trapped.
“How old?” he asked.
That was it. That was the question that would tell him what he needed to know. I couldn’t lie about it, even if it would make my life easier to do so. I swallowed hard.
“She’s two,” I said.
There was another agonizing moment of silence, and I stole a glance toward him. The expression on his face let me know he knew, and he merely gave a nod, as though that was just what he needed to hear.
“Were you ever going to tell me?” He didn’t give me the chance to answer. He merely rose and walked away. I wanted to call after him, to tell him that it wasn’t like that, but nothing would come out. The words were stuck in my throat, and I felt ashamed of myself.
What else could he do? I had kept the biggest secret in the world from him, and he’d found out the hard way. What did he think of me now? What did he think of her?
What was I supposed to do now?
7
Nathan
“Fuck, shit! Goddamn it! Fuck!” I cussed every deity I knew on my way back to my bike. My mind was spinning, and I was having a tough time even wrapping my head around the fact that she – Jenna – was here. I had come here to see her, but I didn’t think I would find her that way.
What did I think? I wondered. Maybe that I’d find her in her apartment or something. Maybe that I would have to go back to the same basement where we’d fucked so long ago. Maybe I’d have to track her down at her job or something. Either way, the last thing I’d thought I’d have to do would be to find her sitting with a little girl on her lap eating a grilled cheese sandwich.
Not just any girl. My little girl.
That child over there was my daughter. I wanted to deny it. I wanted to think that she had to belong to someone else, perhaps even some guy Jenna was now with, but I couldn’t. She had my eyes and my sidelong smile.
Everything about her screamed the fact she was related to me, and I knew I had to figure something out.
I got on the back of my bike and shook my head, still furious with Jenna for not trying to reach out to me. I justified it in my own mind with the fact that she didn’t really have any way to get a hold of me, but then, she didn’t even try.
Or did she? Fuck. If she had, you probably would have heard about it at some point. Vanessa rode right into our town when she was looking for Zach. I didn’t ever hear of a girl looking for me.
Then again, if she knew she was pregnant with my kid, she probably didn’t want to ask. She’s not one of us, after all.
Not one of us.
I looked back over my shoulder at the sandwich shop. From where I’d parked my bike, I could see the people gathered on the lawn, but I couldn’t see Jenna herself. There was a heaviness in my heart as I tried to put my key in the ignition and speed off, then I realized I couldn’t do it.
Jenna might not technically be one of us. Hell, she might be an actual Enemy. But, that didn’t change the fact that the girl on her lap was. She was mine. She was just as much part of me as anything could possibly be. I didn’t know if that meant that she was an Enemy, since she was Jenna’s daughter. But then, I didn’t know if that made her a Flag, either.
With a sigh, I pulled the key back out of the ignition and headed back to the lawn. Jenna was seated where I’d left her, and there was still no sign of her friend. I was glad. I didn’t want to deal with someone else on top of the rest of the shit I’d just had dumped on me.
Jenna looked up at me with red eyes. There were tears threatening to fall down her cheeks, and I had a feeling it wouldn’t take much to reduce her to tears. But, I didn’t want that. I grabbed the phone off the table and put my number in the contact list before texting myself.
“There,” I said as I set the phone back down. She looked at me with wide eyes, though she didn’t say anything. “Now we can get a hold of each other. I’ll send you a text in a while. But right now, I need time to think.”
I didn’t know what I thought she’d say. Hell, I didn’t know if I wanted her to say anything. With another glance at the girl – my daughter – I turned on my heel and headed back toward my bike. Though I still felt sick to my stomach over the fact that I had a child with a woman I didn’t know, I felt better.
I could go home now and figure out the next step…though I had no idea what my options even were. Carl was going to kill me when he found out. Hell, Zach was going to kill me. The one thing he told me to do when I came down here was to be smart and respectful, he didn’t say a word about what I’d do it I found out I had a kid.
And now, I wondered what he’d say.
It was a bit of a drive to get back to my house, but I was glad for the time on the road. With what Spencer had done to my handlebars, I was able to ride faster and easier than ever, flying over the highway at a breakneck speed.
My bike ate the miles as I sped back to my apartment, and I had barely shut off the engine before I hopped off the back and headed inside. I had one thing on my mind and one thing only: there was a bottle of whiskey in my freezer, and I had every intention to drain the entire thing.
Getting drunk wasn’t the solution many people found to be helpful, but it certainly worked for me. At least, in the moment. There were so many questions swirling through my mind, I was going to need some sort of mental lube to work through them all.
And to get up the nerve to text Jenna.
I drained half the bottle as I stood by the freezer, then I turned and headed for my couch, fighting to keep it down. My stomach was used to the abuse I put it through, and before long, the rush of the relief ran through my body.
I flopped back on the couch and took my phone, ignoring the sensible side of me and only rollin
g with the impulsiveness that came with drinking.
What’s her name?
I hit send before I could add anything else. I wanted to keep communication short and right to the point for now.
Allegra.
Clearly, Jenna felt the same. I was struck by the beauty of the name, and was surprised at the smile it brought to my face. It was perfect. It suited her. Jenna and Allegra. Fuck, what was I thinking? Just Allegra.
The alcohol was really starting to take over my brain, and I felt a wave of nausea rush through my stomach. I grabbed the bottle of whiskey to take more of the edge off before I unstrapped my prosthetic arm and dropped it to the floor. I didn’t even want to look at it.
If I were to have any sort of relationship with that girl, what was she going to think about my arm? How would she feel knowing that her father only had one arm, one hand? It made me sick to think about it. Would she be bullied? Would she think that it was gross?
Maybe she’d even be afraid of it. That thought was enough to make me almost finish the bottle.
Pull yourself together. Call Isaac. If you’re going to get through this, you’re going to have to bring in someone smarter than you. You can’t just sit here and drink yourself into a coma and worry about this. You’re going to have to act.
I picked up my phone again and called Isaac, asking him to come over. He might not have been the best person to bring in for a situation like this, but he was a lot more level-headed than I was when it came to life-changing surprises. If anyone would be able to at least give me some advice, it would be him.
It only took twenty minutes for him to show, and when he did, I was really drunk.
“What the fuck happened?” he asked when I opened the door. I stumbled back to the couch and motioned for him to follow.
“Come in and I’ll explain,” I said.
“Did you find the girl?” he asked.
I nodded.
“How’d it go?” he pressed. “I’m guessing not as well as you hoped since you’re drunk as a skunk. How the hell are you going to make it to work?”
“She’s got a kid,” I slurred. “My kid.”
“Fuck, man, are you sure it’s yours?” Isaac leapt from his seat on the couch and stared at me as though he was seeing a ghost. “Did she tell you that it was? What makes you think so?”
“She’s mine,” I croaked. “She looks so much like me. I should have seen it when I saw her in the photo from the charity ride. She’s mine.”
I shook my head and almost finished the whiskey, but Isaac took the bottle from me and drained it himself. He dragged his hand across his mouth and walked over to the freezer, checking to see if there was another bottle he could open. Having to satisfy himself with vodka, he then returned to the couch.
“We’re going to figure this out. Does she want anything from you? Did she ask for money or anything?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I’m more pissed that she didn’t tell me in the first place. She didn’t even try to tell me. I mean, I know things were complicated, but it’s my kid, man, my kid!”
“I know,” Isaac replied. “I’m pissed because this is going to cause more problems than you need right now.
“Zach’s going to kill me,” I sighed. “He’s going to fucking kill me.”
“Or Carl. Or both,” Isaac said. “But that doesn’t mean we can handle this on our own.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, dreading to know the answer.
He took another drag off the bottle before calling Zach. I had a feeling that’s who he was calling when he ignored me and put the phone to his ear, but when he quickly explained to Zach that we needed him at my place, I knew what he was doing.
“How the fuck could you? We were just talking about how much trouble I was going to be in!” I groaned. “Do you want me to figure something out before I have to face the music, or are you just happy to throw me to the wolves right now?”
“Look, we both know Carl is going to be pissed when he finds out. We don’t have a prayer of standing up to him on our own, so if we’re going to make it through this without fucking getting ourselves thrown out of the MC we’re going to need someone on our side,” Isaac insisted.
“What part of ‘Zach’s going to kill me’ didn’t you understand?” I repeated.
“Sit down and shut up. He’s on his way, and you’re going to talk to him,” Isaac replied. “Clearly, you aren’t going to be able to handle this yourself.”
He held up the empty bottle of whiskey and gave me a look, refusing to hand me the bottle of vodka when I motioned for it. “You don’t need this shit. You need to pull your head out of your ass and figure out how the fuck you’re going to explain this to Carl.”
“More like, how the fuck I’m going to be a parent,” I muttered. I lay back on the couch and draped my arm over my face, blocking out the searing light of the room. Everything was starting to spin around me, and my heart raced. I knew a panic attack threatened to take hold, and I fought it with all that I had in me.
My PTSD was threatening to send me reeling into depression, and if that happened, I knew there wasn’t any way for me to deal with this issue. Isaac was right. If I had any chance of pushing through this and actually making this work, I was going to have to bring in the big guns.
Zach had been through this kind of situation himself not too long before, so if there was anyone out there who really could help me, it was him.
I just hoped he’d do it.
8
Jenna
I paced back and forth in my kitchen, trying to think. This wasn’t how things were supposed to happen. This wasn’t how I expected it to happen. Through the years, there had always been a part of me that felt that I should tell Nathan the truth. I had to find him and tell him that he had a daughter.
But then, there was another part of me that told me it was silly to think so. It was one weekend – very much a one-night stand in my book – that brought Allegra into my life. While I didn’t think that meant that he couldn’t also be part of her life, I did feel as though she was my daughter.
I often thought of her as my daughter only. I’d wonder what Nathan would think if he were to find out about her, and there were times when I did resent the fact that I was the one who raised her practically on my own for those years, but again, he didn’t know.
Now, I worried about what was going to happen now that he knew. I was at a complete loss over the next steps to take, and I needed advice.
After he had left, Khloe and I finished up our lunch and headed home. We only talked briefly about the fact that it was strange Nathan had come back into the picture after so long, we’d not really mentioned what this would mean for Allegra.
I didn’t want to talk about it. I was shocked that I ran into him again in the first place, I didn’t really want to talk about how it was going to change my life with Allegra.
But now, now that he had texted me and had her name, I felt that I had to make some decisions. I had to take the next step and figure out what this would mean not only for me and my daughter, but what it would mean for Nathan, too. How could I tell him that he had a little girl, then drop off the face of the Earth?
Khloe was on her way. Allegra was down for a nap, and I was thinking about breaking into the bottle of vodka I had in the freezer. I drank about half of it the night before, taken so strongly aback by the fact he was in my life once again, I wasn’t able to cope with my sober mind.
Of course, I waited until Allegra was in bed before I started, but I didn’t stop until I was overly drunk. I didn’t mean to drink that much, and I was now paying for it with my hangover.
I didn’t want to get drunk again. Shit, that was a lie. I wanted to get hammered and stay that way until all this disappeared. But, I knew that I couldn’t get drunk again. I had to stay as sober as I could manage throughout all this and focus on how I was going to make this work. Unable to control myself completely, however, I opened the freezer and took two more drags off t
he bottle. It would be enough to take the edge off, anyway.
He’s still every bit as hot as he was the night you met him at that party. Hell, even without the arm, he’s hotter than any other man you’ve been with. Just incredible.
What are you thinking? You have no idea what’s going on with him these days. For all you know, that could have been some sort of a chanced meeting. Maybe he was just in town for some other reason when he saw you, and he was going to come say hello after all this time.
Maybe he has a girl somewhere else, and now that he knows he has a kid, he’s got to get it figured out. That would explain why he’s not said another word to you besides asking for her name.
Shit. How could I be so fucking stupid? I should have found some way to let him know that he had a kid. I don’t want anything from him, I never did, but now… Now, I’ve got to figure out how to explain that and why I never told him in the first place.
I don’t want to even think about all the ways this could possibly go wrong.
It was true. I knew there were things Nathan could do that would make my life harder, and I didn’t want to dwell on them. I wanted to think about how good looking he was. He was hotter now than he was then, in my opinion, and I wouldn’t be afraid to tell him so, either.
At the same time, I didn’t know anything about his situation. He had been riding on a bike, despite the fact he only had one arm, and I assumed that meant that he had to still be part of the MC. I’d never told him the truth about my own involvement, and I knew that wasn’t going to go over well, either.
There were so many doubts and fears running through my mind, I wanted to just disappear. I wanted to pack my bags, take my daughter, and vanish.
But I could only run for so long, and there were other people in my life who wouldn’t let me go. I knew Blaze would come looking for me, and Khloe, too. Not to mention, life on the run – life on the road, even – wasn’t what I wanted for my daughter.
If I was perfectly honest, it wasn’t the life I wanted for myself, either.
There was a light knock at the door, and I quickly went to answer.