by Jessie Cooke
The judge looked impressed. Doc didn’t blame him. Dallas had that ability…she impressed everyone she met. She was the one that was like a breath of fresh air, and the idea of her being in New Jersey had made him feel like he was suffocating…and she wasn’t even gone yet. To hear her talk about him, and the club, that way gave him hope. It was probably misplaced, but he was going to hold onto it anyway.
“I’ll read through the entire file and all of the reports and I’ll make my decision by the end of the day. In the meantime, is all your foster care paperwork complete?”
“Yes, sir,” Dallas told him. He looked at Doc. Dallas had done his as well and he had just signed it. No matter how much the police liked to call him a criminal, he’d never once been arrested, which was one of the main questions they had.
“Mine is too,” Doc said.
“Okay then,” the judge said, “you’ll hear from me soon.”
As Doc and Dallas walked out of the courtroom, he tried to reach for her hand. She took a step away and it made his chest hurt. They got as far as his bike and she stopped and looked up at him and said, “I will stay as long as I need to for those boys, and I meant everything I said about you and the club in there. But I need to make sure you understand that me staying is not permanent.”
Doc swallowed the lump in his throat and nodded. “I understand.” He did, but he still refused to let go of that sliver of hope he was clutching onto. Once again, he wished that he could turn back time. For a man that people said was a genius, he could be an idiot sometimes.
It was three weeks to the day that the judge granted temporary custody of the boys to Doc and Dallas. Dallas had gone into town to do some shopping and Doc and Dax were watching the babies. Doc had just stepped into the living room where Dax was sitting on the floor building a house out of blocks with Keller. Cody was draped over his lap. The baby was barely two months old and maybe 14 pounds, but Dax carried him around like he was a stuffed animal most of the time. At first Doc and Dallas both worried he’d hurt him, but the baby seemed to like it. So much in fact that poor Dax hardly got any rest, because no one else could calm the baby down when he got upset.
“Hey, buddy. You want me to take the rug rat off your hands for a while?” Doc asked him. Dax looked down at the baby. Cody had his pacifier in his mouth and was staring up at Dax with his wide blue eyes.
“Nah, he’s okay. Hey, Dad…you think Mom’s going to change her mind now, about moving?”
Doc had been waiting for that question from Dax. He thought he was prepared, but he wasn’t. He sat in the chair next to where the boys were playing. Keller smiled up at him with drool rolling down his chin and something that looked like applesauce caked on his cheek. Doc smiled back at the boy and reached down and ruffled his hair. Cody didn’t look like Badger, but Keller did. It was strange to see Badger’s face on something so innocent sometimes. “Dax, your mom did a good thing, staying here for these boys when they needed us…”
“That’s your way of saying no, right?”
“I did something bad. I hurt your mother and she didn’t deserve that. She’s the best woman I’ve ever met…besides my own mother. You’re so lucky to have her, and I hope you realize that someday.”
“But why can’t she stay here? She could get her own house here and then I could still see you every day…and everybody else.”
“It’s hard to explain, buddy. Sometimes grownups just need a fresh start, and I’m sorry you’re getting caught in the middle of all of this.”
“What did you do?”
Shit. “It’s something…something that I can’t really explain to you, yet. One of these days, I will.”
“Did you…you know, with another lady?”
“Dax Marshall!”
“I’m not a little kid, Dad.”
And he’s growing up in an MC. He was far too advanced for his years. “Yes, Dax. That’s what I did.”
“If Mom’s so great, why did you do it?”
“I guess because I’m not as great as your mom. She would have never done that to me.”
“Maybe because she couldn’t find anyone better than you.”
“Son…I really don’t think this is something we should be talking about. But I’ll tell you one more thing and please, don’t ever forget this. There is no one on this earth better than your mother. You’ll hear people talk all day long around here about how smart your old man is. That’s partly because I am smart,” Doc said with a grin and a wink. Dax grinned back. He turned serious again and said, “But mostly because I’m their boss. The truth is, being smart about business is completely different than being smart about love. I love your mother, but I screwed up…and there are always consequences for our actions, even for me.”
“And for me,” Dax said, looking down at the baby in his lap. He ran his little fingers across Cody’s soft hair and said, “And him and Keller, even though we didn’t screw up. When I grow up, I’m gonna help all the kids…the ones whose parents screw up. It’s not fair that kids have to pay for that.”
The lump in Doc’s throat nearly choked him. “I believe you will, son. You know why?” Dax looked back up at him. “Because you’re smarter than your old man.”
Molly was sentenced to a year in county jail, but the sentence was suspended as long as she agreed to go into a rehab facility for three months. Badger was sentenced to ninety days for beating Molly up. He was in custody the entire time he was in the hospital, and with time served granted, he was out in a month. It was another three months before DCS gave custody of the boys back to him and Molly. Dallas cried when they came to pick them up, and Dax hid in his room and refused to come out. Doc still had to deal with Badger and his status in the club. Hawk had suggested stripping him of his SA patch and letting him stay in, but that would have to be a decision for the entire club. Some things Doc took upon himself, but never removing a brother’s patch, either for demotion or expulsion. He had called church to discuss it for the day after Badger got custody of his kids back. He knew that was putting a lot on the man all at once, but like he told his own son…everyone has consequences to face.
“Doc.” Dallas found him sitting on the front steps of the house, thinking about all of that. What he was trying even harder to do was not think about her leaving. He looked up at her and she smiled. Fuck, she was beautiful. He wished he could kick his own ass. Sleeping in the same house with her for the past four months and not being allowed to touch her had been torture. He had tapped one of the club girls once, a girl named Amy, but it honestly hadn’t made him feel any better. It wasn’t the sex he was desperate for, it was Dallas. She sat down next to him and wrapped her arms around her knees. “I just talked to Sandy. She has a new job in Newark and she could really use me as soon as possible.”
“So, you’re leaving?”
“Doc, you’ve known I was leaving this entire time. I asked you not to misinterpret my staying.”
He felt the rage seeping through his veins. He wasn’t mad at her, he was mad at himself, because up until that exact moment, he had held onto the hope he felt that day in court while he listened to her tell the judge what a good man he was. “When?” he said, through his teeth.
“This weekend.”
It was Thursday. That meant she was leaving and taking his boy in two days. Suddenly he wanted to kill something. He stood up and Dallas glanced up at him, nervously. “Have you talked to Dax?” he asked.
“Not yet. I was hoping you could talk to him with me.”
“No. You want to take him away. You tell him,” he snapped. Dallas raised an eyebrow. Doc knew he was taking a huge step back. They’d been getting along so well, and he’d been acting like an adult. But suddenly he didn’t feel like an adult. He wished that he was Dax’s age so that he could have a fit and get away with it. He watched Dallas stand up and turn toward the door. She was reaching for the handle and he said, “I still love you.”
Without looking at him she whispered, “I still love you too.”
But that didn’t stop her. She opened the door and went inside, and Doc headed for his bike. He needed some wind therapy before he killed something.
37
Two Years Later
“You can’t marry him!” Dax punched the kitchen wall as he said it. He was already half a foot taller than Dallas and probably outweighed her by fifty pounds. She’d gotten better at handling him, though, for the most part. She wasn’t going to be intimidated by her own son.
“Can we sit down and talk about it, and not beat up my kitchen walls?”
“No! I don’t want to talk about it. He’s an asshole.”
Dallas had met Chris on the pot farm where she worked most of her days. Occasionally, she’d help Sandy design the tunnels for other farms, but spent most of her time caring for and cultivating the plants that Sandy grew and sold legally with permits from the federal government. Their pot was sold to a pharmaceutical company that used it to make medicinal products like Marinol, a powder that was mixed with the food or drinks of cancer patients to increase their appetites. Dallas loved the breakthroughs they had made in cannabis research over the past several years. Her grandfather had always been convinced that someday their plants would be used to treat pain and other chronic illnesses. She hoped he was smiling down on her now.
Chris reminded her of her grandfather, a lot. Not in the way he looked. Chris was young, not quite thirty years old, and he was hot. He had light brown hair and hazel eyes and he played a lot of sports, especially baseball, so his body was also in great shape. He didn’t have that same charismatic appeal as Doc, so it had taken Dallas a little longer to come around to accepting a date from him than it did for her to jump in bed with Doc. But she thought maybe that was a good thing. If there was less passion there, there might be less chance that they’d want to kill each other every time they argued. Dax was wrong about him being an asshole. Dallas had been with him for a year and in that entire time she’d seen him be nothing but kind to those around him. He had a son of his own too. Colt was seven years old, and he was a good kid. His mother lived close by and Chris got to have him on the weekends, and sometimes they’d pick him up during the week. Dallas had hoped Dax would like having another child around the house. He talked about Keller and Cody all the time when he came back from his visits with Doc. He was so good with them. But Colt was a different story. Dax acted jealous of him, and he was just downright mean to him sometimes.
“I love him, Dax.”
Dax hadn’t sat down. He kicked the chair in front of him and knocked it over. Dallas stood up. “That’s it. I’m not going to talk to you while you’re like this. I think you are going to have to go see someone about that anger. We can’t keep doing this.”
“Go see someone? You mean like a shrink or something? Fuck that!”
Dallas gasped. “Dax Marshall! Don’t you ever let me hear you talk like that again.”
“Or what?” he said, taking a step toward her. She held her ground. He wasn’t going to intimidate her.
“Or you’ll be grounded for a month.”
“Who cares? You don’t scare me. You’ve already ruined my life. You’ve already taken me away from my home, my father, my real brothers…”
“Dax…”
“No! I don’t want to listen to you anymore. I’m not living with Chris and his little pussy of a son. Fuck that! Fuck you!” Dallas was speechless as her son slammed out the back door but the sound of him starting up his dirt bike snapped her out of it.
“Dax!” She ran out the back door just as he took off around the side of the house. He wasn’t wearing his helmet and he was headed for the main road, which he knew he wasn’t supposed to take the bike out on. She screamed at him again, but he kept going. She went back inside with tears of frustration running down her cheeks. She had just picked up the phone when Chris came in the front door.
“Was that Dax I just passed? He was driving that bike on the road like a bat out of hell.” Dallas nodded, and Chris moved over and wrapped her up in a hug. “Hey, what happened, baby? What did he do?”
She shook her head. “It was…I told him about our engagement.”
“Oh. Well, we talked about this. We knew he wasn’t going to be happy.”
“He isn’t just unhappy, Chris. He’s…defiant and angry and saying horrible things to me. I thought we had finally got past all of that. Those first six months after we left, it was bad…but he mellowed out until…”
Chris took her by her shoulders and held her back so that he could look at her face. “Until I came into the picture?” She nodded, feeling guilty, like she was blaming him.
“He’s just having a hard time adjusting to seeing you with anyone other than his father. Baby, it happens all the time when two families blend. He’ll get over it. Twelve is just a hard age. Tweens don’t like change much.”
“Sometimes I worry that he’s going to hate me forever. Sometimes I wonder if I was a bad mother, for taking him away.”
Chris pulled her back into his chest and ran his hand down her back. “No, baby. You did the right thing.” He didn’t say anything else. They didn’t fight often, but the one time they’d had a knock-down-drag-out fight, it had been about Doc. Chris read something in the paper about a group of Skulls getting arrested for a string of car thefts in Boston and he told Dallas that maybe she shouldn’t let Dax see his father. Dallas didn’t understand her own reaction that day, but it had made her furious when Chris put Doc down. She’d gone off on him, calling him jealous and petty…and later that night she had to go in search of him. When she found him sitting on a stool in a bar in his neighborhood she had apologized. Chris was already drunk. It was the one and only time she’d seen him that way. He had looked at her with those sexy hazel eyes of his and said, “You’re always going to love him, aren’t you?”
Dallas hadn’t answered him, and he didn’t seem to mind. It was a rhetorical question that they both knew the answer to. Chris seemed to get past it and understand that she could still love Doc as the father of her child…and have enough love left over for him. He was a good man and sometimes she wasn’t sure she deserved him. “If Dax isn’t back soon, I’ll go look for him, okay?”
Dallas nodded again and leaned back so that she could look up at his face. “Why do you put up with us?”
Chris smiled. “Because I love you…both of you.”
“I love you too. I’m going to wash my face and start dinner, okay?”
“Sure, baby.” Dallas went down the hallway to the bathroom. She heard the phone ring while she was in there. When she came back out and saw Chris’s face, her heart nearly stopped beating.
“Oh my God! Did he crash that bike? Is he okay?”
“He’s okay, baby. But he’s been arrested, for shoplifting.”
Dax was arrested for stealing a Boston Celtics jersey. He’d left the house that day, gone to the sporting goods store, and he’d just taken it and walked out. When security followed him and told him to stop, he didn’t. He tried to run, but ended up getting tackled and held down by two big men until the police got there. It all sounded like a cry for attention to Doc. He knew Dax still hated it in New Jersey, and he told Doc he hated Dallas’s boyfriend. Doc had only met the boyfriend once, but he didn’t like him either. Of course, probably for a different reason than Dax.
Dallas called him when it happened. Doc had sent money for bail. He wasn’t going to make it for the arraignment, but he told Dallas to hire the best attorney she could find and he’d be there soon. On his way out from Boston she had called him again. He had his own cellular phone now, which made it much easier to travel, and to keep in touch with Dallas and Dax. She told him that juvenile probation was offering Dax a deal. If he’d plead guilty, he wouldn’t have to serve any jail time. His attorney was recommending he take it, so Doc told her to tell Dax to listen to what the attorney said.
He did his best to get out of Boston on time to make it for the hearing. The traffic was thick and by the time he arrived at the court
house in Newark, he only had five minutes to spare. After searching for a place to park, he fed the parking meter and then ran up the steps of the courthouse and inside. He had to go through the metal detector and take everything out of his pockets once he got there, and that took another five full minutes. He was frustrated, but he kept it in check and once they were finished, he asked for directions to juvenile court. By the time he rushed into the courtroom, the judge was already looking at Dax and his lawyer and talking. He stopped and looked at Doc instead. Suddenly all eyes in the courtroom were on him, and Dax was the only one smiling.
“Sorry, your honor. I drove in from Boston this morning and traffic was bad.”
“And you are?”
“Doc Marshall. I’m Dax’s father.” Doc wasn’t sure, but he thought the judge might have rolled his eyes. That pissed him off, but he kept it in check. It wouldn’t do to piss off the judge in charge of whether or not his son went to jail.
