I leave the party with Quinn. She offered to take me back to her and Roman’s place a few miles back, and I accept. I don’t feel like being at the party where I knew that they’d be plotting on how to kill a mother and her two small children. It made my blood boil and my stomach churn. I knew some things were necessary, but was that?
The answer was no. There is never a reason to take an innocent’s life, and certainly not those two little girls.
“What do you have running around in that windmill of yours?” Quinn asks me, bringing me back a glass of water. She sits down next to me on the couch, with Damon, her son bouncing away on her lap.
“Nothing important,” I lie as I stare into the dark chocolate eyes of the baby boy sitting on his momma’s lap. Right now, I wonder if my son would have my brown eyes, or green eyes like his father. He might inherit my dusty brown hair, or his father’s black as night locks. I didn’t know much about pregnancy, or about being a mother, but what I did know was that my son would be so loved by me. He’d be my greatest accomplishment.
Quinn catches me staring at Damon. His smile radiatea through the room, and I couldn’t help but grin as I look at him. Babies are such a joy, even though they drool, vomit, and poop on everything around them. That is the part I was least looking forward to – all the gross stuff. “In a few months, you’re going to have one of your own to look after.”
“I know,” I say to Quinn, smiling and reaching my hands out to Damon. He reaches back, and Quinn helps him get settled over onto my lap. He gives me a toothless smile, drool spilling out over his lips, giggling up at me.
“You’re going to be great at it, being a mom, I mean. I know I don’t say this kind of stuff all the time. Let’s face it, I can be a heartless bitch.”
“That you can,” I agree, interrupting her.
“Hey!” Quinn tosses a throw pillow at me, making Damon squeal out in excitement and then horror as the tears crash out over his cheeks.
I bounce Damon on my lap until he startes to settle down. Quinn watches us both the entire time. “You have a way with kids, I knew that from the first day I met you. I’m a little upset though, why couldn’t this little nugget be a girl? I could see it, Damon and Kathryn.” Kathryn was the name I would have used if my nugget was a girl, but he was most definitely not.
“It would’ve been cute, that’s for sure,” I agree, smiling down to the little man on my lap and thinking of the little one inside of my belly.
“Did you decide on a name yet?”
“Aaron.” I say the name with such pride. Aaron meant a lot to me. It was my father’s name. The best man in my entire world.
He was killed right after we moved. It was an accident on the army base. No one could have seen it coming. There was no indication that the bomb would have went off. That’s what they told me. I think it was to make me feel better, but I was a sixteen-year-old girl who’d just lost her father. Whose father just came back from overseas – from serving his country. If anything was supposed to happen, it wasn’t supposed to be back here in the States. It was supposed to be on enemy grounds, in foreign territory.
I’d lost my father at such a young age, an age where I needed his advice more than anything in this world. Maybe if he wasn’t killed, things would have turned out a lot different for me. It was stupid to think about the maybes now, though.
Rage and Tex were both there for me right after my dad died. They offered me a place to stay – a roof over my head, food, clothes. They gave me everything that I needed. That was a time when Rage stood by me, for anything that I needed, from a shoulder to cry on, to money for my high school prom.
“He would’ve loved that.”
I silently agree with Quinn, trying not to let my tears fall. These pregnancy hormones are no joke.
“Who would’ve loved what?” I hear Rage’s voice right behind me, when I turn, I see him. He looks at me and then to Damon on my lap, spitting bubbles and laughing. Damon was lucky, he didn’t know the terror that was in the room with us. Quinn and I though, were a different story.
“My dad would’ve loved if I’d gone to college like he’d have wanted me. Quinn and I were just talking about him.” I shut my eyes for a moment, careful to not let my emotions get the best of me. It was no matter, a tear slid down my face, and I was reminded of how much I missed him. He was the closest family I had. I had two half-brothers who I hadn’t seen in years. Lloyd and George always made it a point that if I needed them they’d be right there. I was their baby sister, their pride and joy, they always made sure that I knew that. I just hadn’t needed them enough yet, I guessed.
“Your pops is dead, it doesn’t really fucking matter what he wanted for you. I wasn’t gonna pay thousands of dollars for you to go to school when you needed to be at home. What were you gonna do anyway, be a damn school teacher?”
No. A nurse. I wanted to snap my answer back out to him. I wanted to help people, to make a difference in someone’s life. The anger boils up inside me, I was so close to bursting, but the motherly instinct inside of me told me to stay quiet, to not do anything that would anger him any further than I already did tonight, and I listened. I shut my mouth, knowing very well that I was already treading on thin ice.
“Get up and put that little shit down. We’ve gotta go.” I hand Damon off to Quinn who holds Damon close to her as she stares at Rage. He begins to walk to Quinn and Roman’s front door, and I follow closely behind him, down their front porch until we are both on the stone path that leads to their gravel driveway. Rage didn’t mutter a sound, and neither did I. Both of us were walking in silence until we reached his Harley. He positions himself over the seat and waits for me to sit behind him. I wrap my arms snugly around his waist as he turns the ignition on, barely allowing the engine to start before we were on the way back to the club.
The drive was short, and bumpy, but in no time, we were back. Rage and I had a house that wasn’t too far from there. I was wondering why he even drove us back. We could be staying at his room in the club tonight, it wouldn’t shock me if we did – we do this every once in a while, especially when visitors are in town.
“Get off and stand by the fucking door.” Rage points to the club. I use his shoulders to help steady myself as I walk towards the door of the clubhouse. I didn’t have to know that something was wrong to know that I was in deep shit. Like that nervous feeling you get right before something bad is about to happen, you just know. And I knew that something very bad was about to happen.
I hear his footsteps before I see him. When I turn to face Rage, my face collided with something cold and hard. I crash to the ground below me, my body hitting it like dead weight. I feel everything, yet I feel nothing. I was in some sort of limbo, maybe even an out of body experience. My hands push against the cement below me, trying to pull myself up. I flex my hands, opening and closing, as I watch them, I notice how slow they were moving, even as my mind was telling them to move faster.
I position my elbow on the cement and push up, my head pounding as I try to regain ground. No matter how I moved my elbow, my arms, even my hands, getting up wasn’t going to happen. Everything around me was spinning on a constant loop, and when he begins to speak, I was hearing echoes.