Some and the Flame

by Michelle, Christine

  “Hey baby, I came by to pick up Brant. We talked about me taking care of him yesterday, remember.”

  “What the fuck kinds of drugs are you on? I told you my woman would be the one caring for Brant when you asked.”

  I watched as her head moved back and forth in a negative way as she smiled at me, eyes glazed over in a way I almost never saw from her when we were together. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it looked like she was in love with me, but that was ridiculous because I’d left her in Pittsburgh without any hesitation after finding out about her betrayal, and what it had been costing me with my brother.

  “Why are you here?” I snarled the words at her this time and watched as the hazy lovelorn look in her eyes finally started to clear.

  “You told me I would be taking care of him.”

  “I fuckin’ said my woman would be taking care of him.” I threw my hand out, my forefinger pointing directly at my woman. “Poppy being that woman.” I moved my hand back and forth between us, indicating who exactly I meant. “You and I haven’t been together in six months. Why in the hell would you be the one caring for him?”

  “You and Poppy?” She almost whispered in disbelief as she glanced between me and the woman she was just starting to understand meant something to me. “You’re with her?”

  “Yeah, like I told you yesterday.” The fact that I was even having this conversation wasn’t sitting well with me. Julie should have never been there at my sister’s funeral to begin with. She knew she wasn’t welcome around my siblings since she fucked with my relationship with Kent for years. I couldn’t fathom how she walked away from our conversation there thinking that I had somehow changed my mind.

  “I thought you just meant you had brought her with you to the cemetery, because she was caring for Brant temporarily. How is it possible you moved on so quickly?” Her voice took on that thick tone as if she were about to cry, but I couldn’t find it in me to care that she was hurting, because right now she was starting shit with the woman I planned to spend the rest of my life with. If she ruined this for me with her antics, I wouldn’t hesitate to put her in the fuckin’ ground, and that wasn’t something I took lightly.

  “Julie, I told you when it was over that I meant it. Hell, you knew I’d been with other women since.” I wasn’t stupid. We had a former club whore, turned old lady, who still hung around on occasion and she had remained friends with Julie. I was sure she was passing information back to her whenever she saw me with anyone over the past six months.

  “I thought Jewel was just telling me those things to make me jealous. I thought you just needed to get some things out of your system, because you were mad at me. You were supposed to come back to me. She said she’d help make sure you came back,” Julie cried out, and I didn’t miss the desperation in her voice. “Yesterday, I thought you were talking about…”

  “How the hell did you know where to find Brant?” Chief was apparently just as tired of this shit as I was, and decided to move things along for us by asking one of the questions I had neglected to get at.

  “I followed you here yesterday. At first, I thought you got a new house, but then I saw the car she got into yesterday too, and figured it was your babysitter’s house.” She spoke to me as if Chief hadn’t asked, and I had. I didn’t know if this part of her delusion, or if she just couldn’t take her focus off of me. Either way, it had moved beyond creepy as fuck.

  “Not my babysitter. She’s my woman. You hear me? You are nothing to me. We are history, and it’s a lesson I don’t miss. You need to get that through your head and move the hell on. I catch you near Poppy, Brantley, my work, home, the club, or anywhere else, I will be forced to take action. The club will take action, you feel what I’m telling you?”

  She was in the middle of a full-blown tear fest as I spoke the words in a scathing tone to her. “I’m s-sorry. I really thought, um…”

  “If I wanted you here, I would have fuckin told you where to go. I didn’t. You followed me like a stalker to get that information, and that’s concerning as hell.”

  She jerked back, wide-eyed, like I’d just slapped her with my hands instead of my words. “No! I’m not, I wasn’t. I just… I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.” She turned then, and damn near ran for the Mustang that was parked out by the road. I snapped a picture of it with my phone so that I had evidence of her being there, and what car she was driving now. None of her ordeal phased me, not her tears, watching her run away, or seeing her peel her high heels off of her feet after she tripped while running. I simply didn’t give a shit about her. At least, I didn’t until I turned back to see Poppy’s eyes dart from where Julie had finally made it inside her car and back to me. Then she glared at her brother too.

  “That was not okay.” Poppy turned and went back inside, slamming the door behind her as she did so. I turned to Smoke as the bastard began to chuckle and I growled out my response to him.

  “What the fuck am I supposed to do about that?” I hissed low so my voice wouldn’t carry as I pointed to the door that had just been slammed on the both of us.

  Chief being Chief moved over to his bike and grabbed two plastic grocery bags full of food out of the saddlebags. He held them up triumphantly. “Maybe food will be the way to her heart. I just happened to bring some with me. As if on cue, by the time he got back to the door, it opened. It only opened a sliver though so I couldn’t even get a look at Poppy on the other side.

  “You brought food?” She asked Chief.

  “You going to invite me in to eat with you guys or slam the door in my face again?” The door opened wider to admit him into the house. Just as I was stepping up to the stoop it slammed closed again. She slammed the damn door in my face. I couldn’t believe it. Stunned, I glanced back out to the street where the Mustang was now missing, and I shook my head. I could believe it. I’d be pissed as all hell if the situation were reversed and her ex-husband – husband actually – came walking up to the house making demands. Even if I knew it wasn’t her fault, it would still take me a while to process that fact. I sat on the stoop and decided to wait. I knew I still had club business to attend to with Ghost, and a call to make to Angel Girl about Shep’s family, but right now, my woman was going to be my priority.

  It took a few minutes for the door to open again. When it did, I stood immediately and looked her in the eyes as I spoke. “You’re right to be mad. My shit hit your doorstep, and that is not okay. You have to understand that I agree with you. It is abso-fuckin-lutely not okay. I will deal with Julie to make sure this never happens again.”

  “I think you already did that,” she told me, and then just stood there for a few minutes watching me. Finally, I attempted to clear my throat so I could get out a better apology for shit I had absolutely no control over, but she beat me to it. “I’m sorry. I know you couldn’t help the fact that she just showed up with all of her assumptions. That doesn’t mean I don’t feel the things I do. I needed a moment to get myself together.”

  “I know,” I agreed. “I promise, we’ll get everything figured out and this won’t be an issue moving forward, ever. If someone comes to your doorstep claiming I sent them, I’m a phone call away or you call someone from the club immediately, okay?”

  She nodded her head in agreement, and when she didn’t say anything else, I figured I had to get the rest out of the way. “I don’t have long. I came running when Chief texted, but I’m still in the middle of shit.” I hated that I had to walk away again when what we really need to do was talk things out. At the same time, I had other people’s lives in my hands. I needed to let Shep know what was going on with his family and give him the option of stepping up and becoming part of the club now that he was knee deep in the worst of the shit we ever faced anyway.

  “Go, get back to what you’re doing. I’ve got Brant, and neither of us is going anywhere.” I didn’t even have anything good to say to that. I wanted to stay there with them, not walk away to handle other people’s shit. Then aga
in, it wasn’t just other people’s shit anymore. The moment those Russian bastards killed my family, it became my problem completely.

  I leaned in and kissed her, melding her lips with my own in an embrace that promised more where that came from. I felt her in that kiss. Not just her lips, but the promise of having all of her for myself one day. She was the dream, and damn if I wasn’t going to work my ass off to make sure that dream came true.

  “We’re finishing this later, Poppy, and I’m not just talking about where that kiss was going.”

  I was just leaving Shep’s place when I got a text from Chief.

  Chief: Meet me at your place.

  Me: On the way

  No sooner did I have my leg lifting over the bike to get off, than I heard Chief’s voice call out to me from a couple feet away. He had clearly been waiting for me in the parking lot instead of upstairs at the apartment.

  “You need to pull your head out of your ass, brother.” He spat the last word like it was something dirty in his mouth. “If you’re using my sister as some sort of convenience, part-time fuck and babysitter for your nephew, you need to knock that shit off right the fuck now!”

  “What the fuck did you just say to me?” I yelled and didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, I launched myself at Chief and knocked his ass directly to the ground. I managed to get a punch in on his ribs before he used the momentum of my punch to flip me over. He quickly assaulted me with three rapid jabs to my right side and then one hard-core punch to my right that damn near knocked the wind out of me. I felt something snap in there, but knew it wasn’t going to be anything more than a hairline fracture. I’d broken my ribs before. It would heal, but I was going to make the motherfucker pay for the pain he just heaped on me.

  “She’s it for me, you stupid fuck!” I yelled at him as I gave as good as I got.

  “She’s not a fucking toy!” He snarled as he pounded on me some more, trying to get the drop on the rib he knew he already cracked. I kept it protected and nailed him in the eye hard enough that his head was spinning and I was able to flip him over and gain control again.

  “She is the fucking love of my life and you ever disrespect her by talking that way about her again, and this will look like a walk in the fuckin’ park, you hear me?”

  Chief started chuckling then, despite the hurt I was putting on him. “That’s all I needed to hear,” he declared and then brushed me off of him like I was nothing and stood up to offer his hand to help me up too. I declined his help and stood on my own two feet. I will admit, I winced a bit as the movement jarred my throbbing rib.

  “Feel better now? Get all that aggression that’s been riding you so hard out of your system for a while?” Chief asked me.

  I nodded at him, acknowledging what I knew he was trying to convey. It wasn’t so much the work I was putting into finding my sister’s killer that was eating at me and keeping me from finding my way home to Poppy and Brant so many times now. It was the need to feel control over it all. To break something because I was fucking devastated at losing my sister. I needed the vengeance because all of it was sealed up tight like a powder keg waiting to explode.

  “Good, now go home and love my sister the right way.” He thought better of it then. “Actually, come back to the clubhouse first. I’ll wrap those ribs up, so she doesn’t see you gimping around and favoring them like a baby. Knowing Poppy, she’ll point the finger my way first and ask questions later.”

  I laughed at the man, knowing he was afraid of his sister’s reaction to getting into a physical altercation with me. I’d have to remember that, because it was sure to be used to my advantage at a later date.

  Chapter 11

  The last thing I expected to walk into when I finally pulled my head out of my ass after the row I’d had with Chief was Poppy and Walker going at it in the clubhouse in front of everyone gathered like it was nothing.

  “What exactly do you want, Walker? Did you bring signed divorce papers?”

  “What? No, Poppy, I don’t want the damn divorce. I understand you were mad, but you’ve had time to cool off and realize how hard things were on me. Yeah, I should have handled things differently, but I was under a lot of stress and you…” Poppy turned to walk away from him, but must have been filled with rage because she didn’t seem to see anything, least of all me standing in the doorway, shocked as shit that this was going down. How the fuck was this asshole here and no one in the Georgia Chapter thought to give us a head’s up that he was coming. They better not have given someone a head’s up and they didn’t pass that information on to me.

  “Wait, where are you going? We’re in the middle of talking,” he shouted at her. I nearly came undone and flew after him then, but Surfer’s hand came out and caught hold of my arm.

  “You might want to wait on that and see how this place out first, brother.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

  “Not what you’re thinking. She won’t think too kindly of you butting in right now though, trust me.”

  When I glanced back over, Poppy was facing the asshole again. “You have the audacity to come here, demand to see me, and then tell me about how hard your life was and how the stress you were under caused you to fall dick first into every whore at the clubhouse, never check on your wife, or do any goddamn thing for her either? You had it so hard because you couldn’t do simple tasks the doctors asked you to do in order to get your sperm count up like wear different underwear. Yeah, I can see how that demand made you run straight to other pussy to prove what a man you are. Don’t you dare stand here and try to trivialize this shit. You are a grown ass man, who made dumbass decisions and now, as a result, the woman who once loved you with everything she had doesn’t want you anymore. Guess what? It’s time to suck it up, and reap what you’ve sown, because I’m done. I’ve been done, and I don’t ever want to go backwards.”

  “Poppy, I know you were mad. I get it. I fucked up. I know I did, but I’m here now. I pulled my head out of my ass, and…”

  “Stop right there. Even if you had managed to pull your head out of your ass – which I highly doubt considering the first thing I saw when I walked in here was some other woman touching you and you doing nothing to stop it – you’re still forgetting the part where I said I’m done.”

  “You don’t have to be done. We can work through this. We still love one another. I’ll find a way to give you the baby you want, I swear it!”

  Poppy growled out her frustrations so loudly the entire place went silent. I’ve never understood a room being so quiet you could hear a pin drop before, but in that moment, I got it. Everyone tuned in to what was going on now. “I do not still love you. I love someone else. I already have my own baby on the way, and it’s not yours!” She yelled out, stunning the shit out of me. She had what? I glanced over at Surfer to see if he heard the same thing I did. He simply nodded and smiled at me. “You gonna raise another man’s baby?” She laughed a sickeningly, humorless laugh. “Never mind, that’s a moot point, because even if you were man enough to agree to that, I don’t want you to. I can’t count on you to be there for me during a goddamn storm, I sure as hell couldn’t count on you to be there for sleepless nights, teething, vomiting, and any other thing that might inconvenience your life. I am happy here. I am in love with someone, and that someone isn’t you. He’s the father of my baby. Now, do you understand? There’s nothing left of us. It’s all gone, and what little bit had been left before I moved here, you trashed and threw away with your actions.”

  I wasn’t waiting by the doorway any longer. My woman didn’t need this shit, especially if what she’d just admitted was true. The last thing she needed while pregnant was this asshole adding to the stress she was already under with taking care of my nephew, me being gone so much, and all the shit brewing with the club on top of being in a place that was still new to her and trying to establish work clientele to help pay her bills. I moved right up behind her and watched as the asshole gave me a funny
look before returning his attention to Poppy.

  “You’re pregnant?” He asked her for clarification.

  “We’ll talk about that revelation later at home, but honey, I need you to know, I love you too.” I whispered into her ear before placing a sweet kiss there to follow my words as I reached around her and cupped low on her belly holding the baby I’d somehow managed to put there. Walker didn’t miss any of that, and I could see his anger building as his face took on a beet red tone, his chest heaved, and his shoulders puffed up as his fists clenched at his sides.

  “You’re my brother!” He yelled out. “You knocked my wife up?”

  “Ex-wife,” I taunted.

  “Those papers aren’t signed yet,” Walker tried to argue.

  I made a tisking noise in my throat that I knew he could hear as I rolled my eyes at the man. “She just told you all the ways you screwed up, all the reasons she didn’t want you back, and that she was happy, finally. She signed the papers already. In her eyes, in her mind, you two aren’t together. She’s just waiting for you and the law to catch up with everything.”

  “Club first,” Walker called out, glancing around the clubhouse briefly, as if looking for the rest of our brothers to back his claim over mine. That shit would not happen in this clubhouse. First of all, Poppy’s sister was a brother here, and he didn’t want her anywhere near Walker. Secondly, our club president loved Poppy and would see to whatever made her happy. Third, these were my brothers. We may have been from the same club, but this was my clubhouse – and wrong or not – they would stand by me. As predicted, no one came to his defense.

  “Yeah, we all know you put the club first, every aspect of it, including catering to the whores. That seemed to be your problem. I don’t regret making Poppy mine, or anything that resulted from that decision. Best damn woman I’ve ever met, and I’d be a fool to let her go. You didn’t hang on to a good thing, and now you’re seeing that, but it’s too late. I suggest you get gone back to Georgia, and do something for someone other than yourself for a change, and sign those damn papers.”