Roderick

by Gadziala, Jessica

  I didn't like the idea of her being in a situation like that again. And I couldn't be there. I couldn't help her. I might not even know what happened for hours, for days even.

  The idea of that made a fist of worry lodge in my stomach.

  It was something I would have to adjust to, come to terms with. For the time being.

  "I should get going," Liv said, but made no move to do so. "It's going to be weird not having you to sleep with."

  She was worried she'd slip back, that she would travel the bed, toss and turn with no rest. She'd been better with me. Once in a while, she would lay awake on my chest for an hour or two, but I found that a good orgasm or two knocked her out cold.

  "You never know. You might just be back in the swing of things. You could sleep fine." To that, she snorted as she moved to stand.

  "We know better," she shot back. "But it will make me look forward to the weekend all the more. You ready?" she asked, reaching for her bag, wanting to get the goodbyes over with. She hated the hard talks, the stuff that might make her emotional. She wanted to get in her car where she could work through it in her head for a bit.

  We were just walking into the common area when we heard the front door open.

  "Moooooom!" Astrid's voice called, making us both stop mid-stride. "I'm hooooome!" she added, making us both turn to see her standing there with a pile of luggage at her feet. And Cam just a foot behind her.

  "Astrid!" Liv hissed, eyes huge at seeing her standing there in The Henchmen compound. "What are you doing here?"

  "So... did you know our lease is up next month?" Astrid asked, shrugging off the bags on her shoulders, then moved forward, making a beeline for Virgin who was leaning against the bar, eyes light with mischief. I hadn't seen the power play flirting thing Liv had told me about with Astrid in person. But if I could guess, that was exactly what this was as she got a little too close to a complete stranger she knew to be an outlaw biker. "Who are you?" she asked, head cocked coyly to the side.

  "Astrid, down," Liv called, making the woman turn her head over her shoulder, giving her friend a smirk.

  "But it would be so much fun," she insisted.

  "She's off limits," I told Virgin who gave Astrid one last look before walking away.

  "Got it," he told me as he disappeared down the hallway.

  "Boo," Astrid said, small-eyeing me for a short second.

  "Don't worry," Liv assured her. "You can't walk down the street in this town without brushing shoulders with some hot, cocky guy. You know... the type you like so much. But back to the matter at hand. Yes, I know the lease is up. But that still doesn't explain anything."

  "Doesn't it, though?" she asked, shrugging. "'Cause Cam and I think it does. Otherwise, us putting a first, last, and security down on an apartment here would be really odd."

  "You didn't."

  "We did," she agreed, looking past Liv at me. "You're welcome," she told me with a genuine smile. "We had a talk. Well, I did a lot of talking. And we kind of decided that we weren't exactly attached to the loft. I mean... we never even decorated the place. So what is the difference from one loft to another, y'know? So we got another one. We are going to need your buddies to help us move the boom-things," she told me, meaning guns. "We have movers coming for all the other stuff. But we figure you would all be more trustworthy with those. Since that is what you do for a living. Liv, smile," she told her. "I just fixed everything. Yes, you are very welcome. Now show me a dimple."

  Liv looked frozen in place for a long moment, disbelieving then processing things.

  All of a sudden, her hand ripped from mine and she flew at her friend, throwing her arms around her, hugging her so tight that Astrid looked a little red.

  "I love you," she told her, voice thick with emotion. "And you," she added, looking over at Cam.

  And I couldn't help but feel a small twinge of jealousy, wondering when I would get to hear those words. Knowing that was where we were heading. If I were being completely honest, I felt it already, but knew she couldn't handle that yet.

  "What about you?" Astrid asked when Liv let her go to go give Cam a hug. "Do you love me?" she asked, trying for that flirty tone she had worked on Virgin, but I saw beneath it, I saw the little girl needing love there.

  And, fuck yeah, I loved her.

  "Of course I love you, cariña," I told her, pulling her in for a hug.

  "Hey, Roderick?" she said as I gave her a tight squeeze.

  "Yeah?"

  "You need to buy me a housewarming gift."

  And I knew exactly what I needed to get her.

  While Liv caught up with her friends, I needed to go take a trip to the local pet store.

  Livianna - 3 months

  "Stop shaking me," I demanded, but I was smiling at Astrid's enthusiasm.

  She was like taking a five-year-old to Hershey Park or Disneyland.

  This place on a hill, this was her theme park.

  It had taken me awhile to get Lo to agree. Not because she didn't trust me - or us - just because I had dragged my feet in asking, worrying it was too soon, that Lo might find the request suspect. Even though Lo and I had several long conversations over the time I had been in Navesink Bank.

  It turned out that I could barely get the question out before she was demanding me and Astrid come up the next day.

  "Oh, look at the puppies!" Astrid cooed at the dozen or so guard dogs trolling the premises behind the giant gates with barbed wire that I would bet good money on being electrified.

  "Don't touch them without asking first," I reminded her like a mom at a park.

  "I'm not stupid," she shot back, rolling her eyes much like the kid being told not to touch a dog at the park.

  We waited to be let in the gates, both of us trying not to seem like complete rubes by ogling the sprawling shipping container compound with solar panels, gardens, a greenhouse.

  "I don't know how they don't get claustrophobic," I murmured, shaking my head at the lack of windows.

  "I dunno. I like it. No one can get in. Super safe," Astrid said as we climbed out, waiting for Lo. "Oh, look at that rage," she went on, jerking her chin over toward where two women were sparring in the field - one older, one young, still a teenager. Chris. And she was going hard. "That looks familiar," Astrid added, moving off toward the girl.

  From what I heard about the girl - Chris, Lo and Cash's adopted daughter - Astrid wasn't wrong. The two had some things in common, the same anger at the world.

  "Do you know how many times I gave Chris that exact same correction," Lo said at my side, coming out of nowhere. "And she never listened to me."

  But she listened to Astrid.

  And after the two talked for a minute, Astrid made her way back, eager for the tour she was promised.

  An hour later, we were all in the, I didn't even know what to call it, a command center? It was full of people on computers, others looking over files, pinning things up on walls.

  "Your pocket is moving," a voice said, calm, unaffected, belonging to a guy with dark features and the kind of confidence that screamed he was good at what he did and he knew it.

  "Narc!" Astrid hissed at him as she reached into her pocket to pull out her goddamn hamster, Ben.

  "Hamsters are ridiculous pets," the man commented in that same tone.

  "Play nice, L," Lo demanded.

  "And what animal does make a good pet?" Astrid challenged, pulling some pelleted food out of her other pocket for Ben.

  "Chickens," L declared.

  "Chickens aren't pets."

  "Sure they are."

  "They live outside."

  Lo was watching the two as they walked away with drawn together brows. "What?" I asked.

  "Nothing. Just L doesn't usually want to have conversations with anyone."

  I stood back and watched as Astrid moved from section to section of the building, realizing even if she didn't yet that she had found a place she belonged.

  I wondered if Lo had a pets
-allowed policy.

  Roderick - 10 months

  "Mijo," my mother called, something in her voice making me stiffen a little as I followed her into the kitchen.

  "Qué pasa?" I asked as I saw her leaning against the counter, giving me what I could only call a disapproving frown. It wasn't one she often gave me, but it was a look a kid remembered when their parent had shot it in their direction.

  "Ten months, mijo. Ten months."

  "Ten months what?"

  "You don't know how long you've been with her?" she asked, voice raising at the idea.

  "Oh, Liv?" I asked, shaking my head, not understanding her mood. "Yeah, it's been ten months."

  "And there is no ring on her finger because..."

  Ahhhh.

  Okay.

  The 'when are you getting married and having babies' talk. She'd been oddly lax about it since Liv started coming by for dinners with my family. I figured she realized that things were new between us, that pressure was not something new relationships needed.

  Ten months.

  It was time for the guilt trip.

  "You think she doesn't want you to ask? She wants you to ask."

  "You don't know that. Liv is a bit... complicated when it comes to these kinds of things."

  Complicated was maybe an understatement.

  Two months before, we'd finally all sat down - me, Liv, Cam, and Reign - about the future of both of our organizations. With Astrid off at Hailstorm, they had been struggling to keep up, to do all the computer shit along with the drops. And Reign had this firm policy about me not helping out. Things had been getting tense. The conversation had been long overdue.

  Liv had been tense, silent, unwilling to engage in the conversation. She had needed time to sit on it, think it through.

  That time was ten days.

  Ten. Days.

  But in the end, she had agreed to the deal.

  She'd talk to her contacts, tell them that she was handing them off to us - The Henchmen. In return, she'd get a cut of any deal that came from her contacts. For doing no work. It was fair. More than fair.

  And she, well, essentially, she was retired. But you couldn't say that to her. She didn't like hearing that.

  I knew, eventually, she would have a house, have babies to take care of, that she would no longer be retired at all; in fact, she'd be busier than ever.

  But I didn't want to scare her with that.

  And as for Cam, well, he had a prospect badge on his chest since he refused to retire even for a short period of time and Liv would never accept him leaving town and joining a new organization.

  "Complicated? She loves you. I've heard her say it."

  She did say it.

  It took her two months after I started saying it to feel like she could as well, even though I knew she had felt it when I first started feeling it.

  "Yes, Ma. She loves me."

  "And you love her."

  "Yes."

  "So? What is the problem?"

  "I'm gonna ask, Ma. When the time is right. What's the rush?" There was an odd look in her eyes I didn't understand, wouldn't understand until I finally did ask Liv a month later and she insisted on a quick wedding on The Henchmen compound.

  Apparently, I was going to be a father.

  Livianna - 15 months

  "This is all your fault," I told him, needing to vent my fear and uncertainty somewhere.

  "I mean, technically, mami, this is all on you."

  "So what if my egg split? Your sperm is the reason we are here at all. Otherwise, they would have just split and disappeared like always. But, oh, no. You had to have strong swimmers."

  The prospect of being a mother hadn't scared me as much as I thought it might when I had first found out. Which was when Grace had told me I was pregnant.

  I've been there six times, mija, I know.

  But the idea of being a mother to twins, yeah, that was actually pretty terrifying.

  "They will outnumber me," I told him, looking down at the sonogram that really just looked like nothing to me even though I had maybe lied and said I saw them out of pure guilt.

  "There are two of us, Livvy," he reminded me, lips twitching, trying to hold back the smile he knew I wouldn't appreciate right then. "And I have five sisters. And a mother who is dying for grand babies. And you have the whole girls club and Astrid too for help."

  "Right. If I let Astrid take them, they will come back with fifteen pets each. And piercings."

  To that, he snorted, shaking his head. "She's gonna make a great aunt. Even if we will have to build a chicken coop."

  Yeah, so Astrid had a thing for chickens now. Meaning she kept a coop of thirty of them up at Hailstorm, something she had managed to talk Lo into because it meant endless fresh eggs and natural pest control so that she didn't have to worry about all the guard dogs getting ticks all the time.

  "We are not getting chickens," I insisted.

  But, apparently, I didn't know what I was talking about at the time.

  My baby shower present was a box full of chicks.

  Fluffy chicks.

  And my body flooding with hormones, I hadn't been able to say no to the tiny, needy little things.

  Roderick - 6 years

  "Stop stealing your brother's truck," Liv demanded of Rune, the elder of our twin boys, with Croft being younger by four minutes, something his brother never let him forget.

  They looked like us.

  The same skin, the same dark eyes, the same dimples. Rune had two like me, Croft one like his mother.

  Their little sister, Aviela, though, she was one-hundred-percent Livvy, right down to her hatred of banana chips.

  The one in Livvy's arms was too little to know who it may look like. He'd been named Vas. In honor of a man who sent her on the path she eventually took. If not for him, I may never have met her, we may never have created what we had.

  It was interesting when you really sat down and thought about things, how one small change, one step in a different direction would have made it so Livvy and I might never have even crossed paths. If either of us had been given decent fathers, if we hadn't crossed the border into the States, if she hadn't worked at a diner and met a Russian importer, if Cam hadn't been there that day in Camden to pull out that bullet and save her, if I hadn't heard about the party at The Henchmen MC compound, if the dog hadn't mauled me, distracted me, if Reign would have handled the situation himself.

  So many little - and giant - things had needed to happen to bring us together. That realization was enough to really make you take stock of your life, understand that literally everything that had happened - both good and bad - had happened for a reason.

  To bring us together.

  Maybe that was sappy and romantic of me.

  But standing there in our living room with her, looking at our children, there was no possible other conclusion to come to.

  We'd bought the house on a lark when the people next to Maze and Repo moved out. It had been fine to live at the loft once we all did a switch - Astrid heading up to Hailstorm, Camden to the clubhouse, us to the loft - when the babies were little. But as soon as they became mobile, we knew we needed a yard, a fence, a place to keep the chickens that wasn't the roof or balcony.

  It was interesting to watch Liv nest, this woman who had lived in her old loft for years without ever so much as putting an accent carpet down on the cold cement floors of her bedroom.

  Once we had a place of our own though, she had the guys from the club slaving day and night like they were all prospecting again, ripping up old carpets, laying hardwood floor with accent rugs over it, painting the walls, putting up shutters, changing out light fixtures. Within a month of moving in, you couldn't even tell it was the same house.

  There were things that never changed. The couch - and bed - were always covered in too many pillows, too many blankets. Camden came by every Sunday with a box of donuts. Astrid showed up at least once a week to whisper in the kids' ears about
other animals we could potentially own now that we had a half acre of property.

  But other things had.

  There was art on the walls - both from Ana and the kids who, well, had no such talent, bless their unskilled little fingers. And Christmas - which was at our place at Liv's insistence because of a deal she'd made with Astrid so many years ago - was a much bigger affair with my mother and all my sisters - and their eventual men - around.

  Camden slowly came around, not to become some great conversationalist, but willing to speak every now and again.

  Astrid, thanks to a lot of support, a lot of understanding people up at Hailstorm, had learned to curb her unhealthy impulses with men, to learn to trust them. Enough to even let one into her life.

  "You sure you got this?" Livvy asked, smirk pulling at her lips as she gestured to the wall near the front door. "This is what happened last time you watched them alone," she added, meaning the very large mural in permanent marker that Rune had blessed us with while I had been patching up Croft's knee from the two of them getting into a fight. I had to admit, it wasn't one of my best dad moments. And I hadn't even told her that while I patched up Croft and Rune wrecked our wall, Aviela had managed to get into a box of her makeup and smear it all over her bedroom.

  Some things were kept from mommies so daddies were still allowed to co-parent.

  It all washed out anyway.

  Well, except for a few pillowcases.

  But whoever noticed missing pillowcases anyway? They were like socks and tupperware - you somehow expected and blindly accepted it when suddenly they weren't there anymore.

  "Ana is coming to watch Vas. And then we're going to the beach today," I reminded her, making her eyes go a bit worried. Three kids and a big, dangerous ocean. I got it. "With Aunt Mia and Aunt Zoe," I added. "I won't be outnumbered. And the house won't get wrecked," I assured her.