He'd made a decision.
About me.
About us.
About our future.
He wasn't going to change his mind.
He was in this.
Forever.
My heart swelled in my chest at his certainty, at his belief in what we had, in the life we could have together.
To my absolute shock and horror, my eyes started to burn. I didn't know much about crying since I never did it, but I suspected tears were forming just a second before I felt one of them well up and spill down my cheek.
"Yeah?" he asked, eyes soft as he reached out with his free hand to swipe the tear away.
"Yeah," I agreed, throwing myself at him, hearing the ring clink down on the floor. It wasn't about the ring. As nice as it had been. Ostentatious, almost. It was about him. About us. About what we could have together.
Thayer - 2 years
It took a while to get her stubborn ass down the aisle.
But I finally managed it.
On a Tuesday afternoon - because it was the least romantic day of the week - with her wearing cut-offs, a tee, and Chucks, the rest of us in our usual daily clothes, cuts, riding our bikes to the courthouse.
It wasn't grand and romantic.
But it was very us.
Which is what a wedding is supposed to be.
Our reception was Chinese food and drinks at the clubhouse with our friends, our family.
"Alright, my turn for a gift!" Bea declared, bouncing off the chair she was sitting in to rush to her room, coming back with a small box.
"High roller like you, and all you give us fits in this box?" I teased, reaching for the box as Sera watched from my side.
"Just open it, you jackass," Bea insisted, rolling her eyes, bouncing around on her feet. Excited.
Nestled inside the deep blue box was some of that jewelry box foam.
And a key.
There was a tag on top with the address.
"Bee," I said, shaking my head. "No."
It was our old childhood home.
"Thayer... yes," she mocked. "I made the decision back when you two got engaged. I don't need all that space. You guys will soon. It's the perfect place to raise a family. All the extra rooms. The yard is fenced. All those big, old trees that would be great to build tree houses. And seeing as kids are nowhere near in my immediate future, I want you guys to take it."
"Why do you keep talking about kids like it is right around the corner?" I asked, brows furrowing.
Then I noticed the look.
The one Bea was sharing with Joey who was sharing it with Sera.
My head whipped over toward my wife. Wife. Christ. That was so strange to think, yet right at the same time. My eyes moved over her, examining the flat stomach I had seen that very morning.
"Yeah?" I asked, feeling my stomach drop.
"Yeah," she agreed, giving me an unsure smile. "I mean... I'm not that late."
"How late is not that late?"
"Three weeks."
"Three weeks for someone you can set your watch by is late," I reminded her, allowing the hope, the possibilities rise up inside me. "You take a test?"
"She took nine," Bea informed me with a giant smile. "They all say the same thing. You're gonna be a daddy."
I had always wanted to be a father. I knew I wanted a litter like my father had. I wanted my kids to grow up with someone else to get into trouble with. That said, I hadn't ever asked Sera what her feelings were on the matter. I had kind of assumed that, since she knew I wanted them, she did too. But that didn't mean she had been ready for it now. Right away.
Things were happening fast.
"You good with this?" I asked, voice low, hopefully low enough so everyone else didn't hear us.
"No," she said, making my stomach twist. "I'm thrilled with this," she corrected.
"Christ, babe, were you trying to give me a stroke?"
"It's payback for your little April Fool's joke," she told me.
So I had maybe told her the day before her new ink shop was opening that there was a problem with the license, that we weren't going to be able to open after all.
I had a feeling I would be paying for that one for years to come.
"So, we're having a baby."
"And raising it in your childhood home," she added with a firm nod as a slow smile spread across her face.
She did a lot of that now.
Smiling.
She didn't before. Back when life had been beating her down.
But now? Now she always seemed to be able to find a reason to smile.
And me? I couldn't get enough of it.
I wasn't sure how I felt about wishy-washy ideas like fate.
But I knew one thing.
If Doug hadn't been disloyal, gotten me locked up, took over my club, if he hadn't set his sights on Joey, gotten Sera involved in the club, well, none of this shit would have happened.
There was a healthy heaping of bad with the good. Especially right there in the beginning. And I hated that the people I loved had needed to suffer, but all of that had led us to fates we otherwise never would have had.
For all of us.
Sera and me.
Hatcher. Calloway. Roux. Bea. And, yes, Joey.
She'd been finding her own reasons to smile more lately too. But that was a story for another time.
Right now was for Sera and me. And whoever was growing right there in her belly.
"Don't even think about it," Sera snapped, giving me one of her warning looks.
"Think about what?"
"Putting your hand on my stomach. It's not even round yet. So don't go rubbing on it like it's a magic lamp."
"I'm glad to see money hasn't softened you," Hatcher quipped, making her shoot him a sly smile.
"Thank you for the house, Bea," Sera said, voice thick with emotion, though she was clearly trying to force it back. "That is amazingly generous of you."
"Joey helped me put some of the finishing touches on it."
"Oh yeah?" Sera asked, eyes brightening. "Like what?"
"Blackberry bushes," Joey supplied with a warm smile. "A whole patch of them. And a thousand yellow daffodil bulbs for next spring."
I love you a thousand yellow daffodils.
That was what Joey said to Sera all the time.
To which Sera always responded, No, a million.
"Well, I guess a million of them was too much to ask for," Sera told her, jumping up off the couch to throw her arms around her sister. "You're going to have to help me decorate the nursery," she told her. "Or, you know me, it will end up with like giant snake and skull murals. Traumatizing our kid for life."
"They'll have to get used to skulls," I reminded her, pointing out the cut I - and my brothers - had on. After everyone had seen the tattoo she'd done on my back, we'd all sat down and decided to get rid of our old club emblems. The club was reborn, after all, and that seemed to call for a change. Sera's artwork was on our backs at all times. When we had our cuts on. And when we didn't. Hatcher, Calloway, and Roux had been her first clients when she opened her new shop, all of us permanently marking our loyalty on our skin.
"Yeah, I mean... I highly doubt any offspring of yours is going to be normal anyway," Hatcher told us.
"It's going to be bossy," Calloway told Sera with a smirk.
"And stubborn as fuck," Roux agreed.
"And really, really loved," Joey concluded.
There was no doubt about it.
Any child born into this group of people was going to be loved like it never could have even hoped for.
Sera - 3 years
"Melons," Hatcher burst out.
"Hey now, not everyone gets melons," Bea insisted.
"Yeah, nothing wrong with Plums," Roux agreed with a smile.
"You could expand out to male ones too," Calloway suggested. "Grapes."
"Big Bananas," Thayer threw in, making everyone chuckle.
As just about everyone ex
pected - and absolutely no one was surprised by - Bea had finally decided to expand. If she could make a strip club as successful as she had so far in rural Pennsylvania, then the sky was the limit for more populated areas. The only surprise for any of us was the fact that she had waited so damn long to get around to it. She'd certainly had the money for a long while.
But this was Bea we were talking about.
While maybe - in her personal life - she was known for being spontaneous, unpredictable, in her business life, she was as careful and calculated as a person could be.
Sometimes, we would all be hanging about in the common area bullshitting or watching some movie, and I would constantly catch her hand moving on the ever-present notepad she had propped on her leg. Little math equations. Calculations for some unknown problem.
I wondered sometimes if her father had known what he was doing. Leaving the business in Bea's name. Not just for the reasons he told everyone - in case the men got locked up - even though that made a lot of sense too. But I couldn't help but think that maybe he had seen something in his youngest, in his only girl, that he hadn't seen in his sons.
A hunger.
Thayer had some of it too, of course, but it was different.
Thayer craved his control, his solid foundations, his brotherhood, his legacy.
Bea craved success.
She didn't want to settle for one strip club, for one stream of income.
It wasn't the money, though.
She had more than enough.
It was something else. Maybe this bone-deep desire to have an identity outside of the club. Maybe some inferiority leftover from childhood for being the only girl in a boys club, for knowing she could never have an important role like her brothers would, some knowledge that she couldn't truly be a part of the legacy like they could.
So he left her the only other thing he had, knowing she could use that to form her own legacy, to create her own life, but also be very connected with her family still.
"I can not name a club Big Bananas," Bea insisted, shaking her head.
"I am never going to be able to look at fruit the same after this conversation," Joey added, shaking her head a little solemnly, like she truly would not be able to look at a melon without thinking about tits again.
"So, you're just going to stick with Peaches?" Thayer asked, reaching to sling an arm around my shoulders so he could stroke the head of our son who was nestled in my arm.
"I have a list of ideas," she informed us, tapping a hand on her notebook. "But a part of me kind of wants to keep the name. You know, for Pops."
"You're acting like he gave the name a lot of thought, Bee," Thayer said, lips twitching. "When, really, he came up with it one day when he was debating opening it up and Ma bent down in front of him. He said she had the best peach in the fucking world. And that he wanted to share asses like that with all the men in the club. There was nothing profound about it. Just a man admiring his woman's ass."
Full of sonnets, bikers often were not, but I still somehow thought they were all a bit romantic in their own ways.
I mean, Thayer was not the kind of man to compare my eyes to stars in the sky or all that sappy crap, but he never failed to make me feel beautiful, desired. Even in the roundest part of my pregnancy when my body no longer felt like my own, when everything hurt and each touch pissed me off. It was no small feat, but he never once made me doubt that - should I find a comfortable way to lie down - he would fuck me senseless.
He made me coffee and brought it to me when he was up first.
He let me order dinner when I was in a crappy mood.
He would take the three a.m. feeding because he knew I was useless if I didn't get at least four hours of sleep put together at a time.
Maybe to other women - chocolates and flowers women with blown glass hearts, so thin and breakable when not handled with the utmost of care - these things were no big deal.
But to women like me - with barbed wire hearts - who only admitted they loved someone for the first time because it burst out during a world-altering orgasm, it was a lot. It was everything. It was more than I could have ever expected.
I had spent so much of my life taking care of Joey, having dreams for Joey, wanting nothing but the best for her, that I had put my own self-care, my dreams, my hopes for a better life for myself on hold. I honestly didn't even think I was sacrificing that much. Since women like me didn't get love words and good men and happily-ever-afters.
Then there was Thayer, the unlikeliest of heroes, the kind of guy every woman knows is bad news, and he offered to show me a different kind of life.
He uncovered parts of me that I hadn't even known existed. Softer bits, sweeter bits, joyful bits.
He showed me how to dream of a better future while enjoying my present. He taught me that wanting good things for myself wasn't selfish, that it didn't mean I wanted less for Joey. He gave me permission to shrug the weight of responsibility away when it got too heavy because I knew he was strong enough to take it on for me when it was necessary.
He gave me freedom from being who I thought I had to be to face the ugly of the world, to handle the cold reality I had known all my life.
I mean, sure, love wasn't a miracle.
It wasn't some magic elixir that you drank, and suddenly you got to be the best version of yourself all the time.
I still snapped at him when he was being stubborn.
I still nearly chewed his head off when he looked at me wrong when I had cramps.
I still fought him on who was going to pay for takeout.
Even though we had joint bank accounts.
I was still me.
The amazing thing about love was that - when it was good, when it was healthy - it let you somehow still have all your old flaws while simultaneously allowing you to be a slightly better version of yourself. It stole some of your selfishness. It taught you how to compromise. It helped soften your rough edges so the one closest to you didn't get cut when he got too close.
But if you were a bitch, you were still a bitch. Whether someone loved you or not.
Luckily for me, Thayer loved bitches.
Sera - 12 years
The clouds were tufts of cotton candy in the sky.
They sat there in their various shapes.
Chubby guy with a big nose, dog with a ball in his mouth, butterfly, three-legged horse, firetruck.
The sun was high, big, warding off the late spring morning chill, warming our skin, settling deep inside, chasing away the remnants of a long, cold winter, promising more warmth in the coming months.
Really, it was still long-sleeve weather. Which probably made me a terrible mother since the kids were all wearing short sleeves, short pants. Luckily for me, I never really gave a damn if anyone else thought I was a bad mother.
I knew better.
Besides, no one was here to judge me.
Whereas, when we were kids ourselves, Joey and I had needed to head down to the park to escape the ugly brick buildings, the cracked sidewalks, the lack of any greenery whatsoever, my kids had a park in their own backyard.
Everyone had added touches over the years.
Thayer had put up the little basketball court in the driveway, then had extended said driveway to have a giant loop so that the kids had an area to ride their bikes. Though a part of me was still waiting for his brothers and him to show up with a trailer loaded down with Go Karts to make use of it themselves.
Roux, the outdoorsiest of us all, had done all the planning for the playground toward the back right corner of our four acres. They had a giant swing set like the parks had so they - and some friends - could all swing at once. There was a slide with a fort on top, a rock wall, monkey bars, a half moon climber, teeter-totter, a trampoline, and a merry-go-round like the ones we had all played on to nearly throwing up as kids. He insisted that kids needed to be outside playing, getting out their energy, learning how to play together - or alone - instead of inside with their faces s
tuck to screens.
We'd agreed, which was why we had let him build the playground that rivaled any commercial one we had ever been to.
Sure, our kids did still watch TV, play on tablets, but mostly only when they had worn their little bodies out on the playground, coming inside to wear their heads out a bit too.
There was a pool Hatcher had insisted on, kidney-shaped, with a waterfall feature and a slide instead of a diving board.
Calloway had built the tree houses. There was even one that spanned two trees with a bridge between them. It made me antsy, but our daredevil children didn't even think twice about running across it, screaming and laughing.
Raising kids was nothing new to me.
I had raised Joey when I had been a kid myself.
The difference was community, support, never having to worry about not being able to fill their ever-empty bellies. There was no fight for general survival, just enjoyment of the process.
I wouldn't say it was easy. In fact, it got all the harder when we had let them start outnumbering us.
But what can I say, we liked having sex. Sex had consequences of the tiny human variety.
Besides, I think a big part of me wanted more little Thayers in the world.
We'd had three of them.
He'd told me we would.
Every single time a stick turned blue, he told me it was a boy.
I thought he was just being a little wishy-washy, thinking he would have the same number of sons as his father had.
But he was right.
When my belly ballooned for the fourth time, he had placed a hand on it, ignoring the growl he got from me, and informed me that This is our little girl.
Then there had been an ultrasound to back him up.
Then there had been a pink-walled nursery where I painted a thousand yellow daffodils. There had been stuffed animals and dolls and light and soft things that I remembered Joey loving as a little girl.
As it turned out, though, our little girl liked Tonka trucks and Legos and military men and mud and bugs, not the cute, sweet, girly things I had expected.
By age three, she informed me that she hated pink. Which was her way of telling me that she wanted me to paint over her bedroom walls. It hurt my soul a bit to paint over the flowers, but the next day, I had come home to a giant -positively massive - blank canvas waiting for me in the living room.
Revenge - Reckless Renegades 1 Page 20
