by Brook Wilder
I took one of my hands and ran it through his hair as he turned his head and rested it on my belly. He looked almost like he was listening for the baby, but he was also staring up at me with that same look in his eyes, that same sparkle. I smiled, and he kissed my stomach again, lying back down next to me on the bed. He took me in his arms and held me, kissing the top of my head every so often as I buried my face in his firm, strong chest.
I closed my eyes and breathed him in. I didn’t want to admit it to anyone, but I was right where I was supposed to be, I felt. Finally. At least, that was how I felt in that moment. My moods and emotions were already starting to feel the pressure pregnancy was putting on my body and mind. Who knew how I would feel in the morning, or in a few short hours?
Who cared how I would feel later? I knew I felt right then, and that was how I wanted to feel. I kissed his warm skin and let him hold me as I drifted off to sleep in his arms.
CHAPTER TEN
Dax
“I didn’t mean to wake you.”
Fawn looked up from where she was sitting on the middle of her couch in her mostly dark living room. There was a little bit of soft light spilling in from the bulb above the stove. She looked small sitting there in the dark, small and frail. She looked like she was hiding from something, or waiting for something to happen.
I had woken up to find her side of the bed empty, and I had done the only sensible thing. Instead of rolling over and going back to sleep, I climbed out of bed and stumbled downstairs. It had become a theme, it seemed – finding her, having to search for her. Fawn seemed to have a knack for not being where I expected her to be, and I wasn’t really all that sure how I felt about it. Especially in the middle of the night, with her sitting alone in a dark room, staring at the wall.
“Is everything okay?” Without turning on a light, I trudged into the living room to sit next to her on the couch.
As I put a hand on her leg, I realized she’d gotten dressed. She wore a thin black tank top and pajama pants. I hadn’t even managed to put on boxers, staggering around the condo half-asleep and butt-ass-naked. If I hadn’t found her the way she was, I would have laughed at the realization, but I did know when humor wasn’t appropriate. Sometimes.
“Yeah,” she started to say, but she stopped herself quickly and shook her head, changing her mind. “No, it’s not okay.” She looked at me, but her eyes saw straight through me, focusing on something just behind me or right over my shoulder.
“What’s wrong, baby?” I ran a hand down her long brown hair, somewhere between petting her and trying to soothe her.
A smile flickered across her face, a brief reaction to the word I’d used. She fidgeted with her fingers in her lap, staring down at her hands, before answering. When she’d found the words, she took a deep breath and looked at me.
“I can’t help but wonder if I’ve done everything all wrong,” she said, shaking her head.
“What do you mean?” I put one arm across her back and took both of her hands in my other hand.
“I mean with us, with the baby. What if all of this is a bad decision? What if, two, three years from now, I end up regretting the whole thing, and we’ve got a kid we’ve been raising together? What if, you know? What if it all goes wrong?” She started to cry. The tears spilled over her onto her cheeks and rolled slowly down. She pulled a hand up and wiped a few of them away quickly, like she was trying to hide them from me, like she was still trying to play tough.
“Shhh.” I pulled her closer to me. “It’s going to be okay. I’ve got a lot of the same questions, you know? What if this situation makes an even bigger target out of you? I mean, you’re already the president’s daughter, but now you’re carrying the VP’s kid as well.” I put my hand lightly on her stomach.
“What do we do? I mean, do we take these chances? Dax, I don’t know if I can deal with another Frank, you know, even if I end up being the one who walks away for whatever reason. I don’t want to risk it.”
“Hey, I get it.” I put a hand under her chin and lifted her face to mine. “I do. I can’t handle another Lilian, which is one reason why I’ve been a little distant. It’s also why this baby deal has completely thrown me for a loop. I don’t want to put the two of you in danger, but even if I wasn’t the father, even if it was Frank,” I said, getting a laugh out of her, “you would both be in danger anyway. True?”
She nodded and wiped her eyes again. She looked like she wanted to say something else, but she pressed her lips together and took my hand in hers, pulling it down from her chin. She watched our hands as she laced our fingers together.
“As for walking out on you, that’s not going to happen. There’s going to be a certain measure of risk in the two of us being together, but that’s who we are, Fawn. That’s who we’ve both always been. We can’t avoid that. But it’s not a mistake.”
She looked back at me, her eyes searching my face. More tears were welling up, but she managed to hold them at bay while she waited for what I was going to say next.
“I’m going to be there for you and for our baby. Fawn, I care deeply about you, and I have for a long, long time, long enough to know that this isn’t a mistake or a bad idea. This is exactly as it should be, and I’m not leaving your side. Either of you.”
“Thank you.” More tears started to flow and she put her arms around my neck. She held me close and tight, squeezing me hard. Her shoulders shook as she cried into my neck.
“Hey, it’s going to be alright. You’ll see. Everything will work out,” I told her.
She kissed me. Our lips pressed together in a slow, passionate kiss. Just as I thought she was going to pull back and break the embrace, her lips parted, pulling mine open as they did. I put my arms around her and pulled her to me as our kiss deepened.
I realized that I had been avoiding real happiness since I lost Lilian. I hadn’t allowed myself to feel anything for anybody, running women off before I could grow attached. I had known, deep down, that the day was going to come, eventually, when I would no longer be able to run.
That day had arrived. I’d never stood a chance against Fawn, and I knew that from the moment I was told she was coming home. I couldn’t have resisted her if I had even actually wanted to. The truth was, she’d taken most of my heart with her when she went off to college and left me back in Charleston with the MC. I had only given a portion of it to my girlfriend at the time, all that Fawn had left with me.
It was that portion that had been lost when I lost Lilian, but in my arms, at that very moment, I held the rest of my heart. It had returned, brought back by the woman who had grown from the girl who took it. Things had come full circle.
“What are you thinking about?” Fawn smoothed my hair back as she asked the question in her deep whisper.
“This. Us.”
She smiled and kissed me again, giving me a quick peck on my lips.
“What about us?” she asked.
“How I’m done running. I’ve run and run and run for the last couple of years. I may have even started running when my father passed away. I’m not sure, but I may have already had half a foot out the door before anything else happened. But I’m done. There’s nowhere to run now, and no reason to run. I have you here with me.” I stroked her hair and kissed her forehead.
“You better not run. I know where you live. And I’ll tell my daddy.” She looked up at me with her puppy dog eyes and pouty lips.
“Nah, we’re good. I don’t want your dad after me.” I laughed and hugged her close again.
We sat there on the couch, in the dark, silent room, and held each other. There was no rush to get up and run back to bed. All we would have done in the bed was exactly what we were doing in the living room.
“I should have known it would never have worked out with anyone else,” she mused.
“What do you mean?” I couldn’t resist the smile on my face, or the swelling sensation in my chest, as our conversation switched to what was good about us, away from wh
at might have gone wrong down the road.
“No one has ever been able to make me laugh the way you do. You always know exactly what to say to get a laugh or a giggle out of me, and you never fail to brighten my mood. It seems so simple, Dax, but no one else can do it.”
“Oh, I doubt that. I’m sure someone else in the MC can do it.”
“Yeah, therein lies the problem. The only other people can make me laugh are practically an extension of you.” She pushed herself up from my side, sitting upright again. She wiped her eyes and smiled at me. “I never stood a chance, Dax. There was no way I was ever going to get away from you.”
“Well, you almost did, and if you had, I still would have been here.”
“Yeah, with someone else.”
“But you know where my heart would have been, the same place it always was.”
“Where?” She grinned as she answered her own question, pointing down between my legs.
I laughed. “No, for a long time it was in Cincinnati,” I said thoughtfully.
“Did it like it there?”
I shook my head. “Apparently not. Things worked out for a while, but it eventually came home. I guess it decided Charleston was better.”
She slid her arms around me again and leaned forward. She looked up at me and wrinkled her nose before kissing me again.
“Sounds like your heart might have found what it was looking for the whole time.”
“You think so?”
Her smile broadened. “Maybe.”
“Well, come on, heart of mine. Let’s get you back in bed. You’re doing everything for two now, including sleeping.”
“I can already feel the little one rebelling against you,” she said as we stood from the couch.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not sleepy. I’m wide awake.” She stretched and yawned. “Okay, maybe baby’s wide awake and not letting me sleep.”
“Well, we’ll have to see about that. Come on, I’m putting you both to bed.” I playfully poked her stomach, touching my fingertip to her but not pressing in. I was going to have to be careful about the way we played from here on out, it seemed, and that was strange. Fawn, though she had always been one hundred percent girl and now woman, had never seemed like much of a girl to me. She’d always been one of the guys, but with tits and an ass that could bring any man to his knees.
“Don’t do that.” She swatted my hand away. “I don’t know if it’s good or bad for the baby, but we don’t need to encourage any bad habits yet. Wait until we have the little one with us first.”
“Upstairs.” I pointed up toward the bedroom.
“Geez, are we already in trouble?” she asked as she walked past me, looking back over her shoulder with a devious smile on her face.
I smacked her ass. “You keep dragging your feet, you’re going to be in trouble.”
“You keep teasing, baby won’t be the only one wide awake.”
I laughed. “Get upstairs. It’s too damn late for all that. You need your sleep.”
“Yes, sir.” She raised her hand in a mock salute before turning and heading into the bedroom.
She’d been right. It had been ludicrous for us to have ever looked anywhere else besides to each other for love. I’d never been able to have as much fun with anyone as I did with her. Every little thing seemed to turn into a joke with us, no matter how serious it was. We were even playing as we went back up to bed after having a serious talk about our insecurities and trying to overcome them.
I had loved her for years, but I had played it off as a little schoolboy crush. She had obviously pretended not to want to have anything to do with bikers, probably for the same reason. We’d probably both been afraid of falling for each other our whole lives. We knew what could go wrong in our world, surrounded by the MC, by the dirt our parents did, and by the consequences we watched get doled out again and again on other members and people close to the club.
As she climbed into bed and pulled the sheet up to her shoulders, I stared at her and wondered if I was doing the right thing by her by getting involved. Sure, I cared about her, and I was going to devote my life to protecting her, and our beautiful child. But were love and devotion enough to protect them?
Of course, we were living proof, really, that love and devotion could help raise and protect children from within the Carolina Devils. We were a huge family, and we all took care of each other. Fawn and I were the results of the care of that family.
“Hey, tell the voice in your head it’s time for bed,” she barked, facing away from me.
“Yes, ma’am.”
I climbed into bed, sliding between the sheets next to her, completely naked, my body pressed against her pajamas. As her warmth touched me, and I felt the softness of her against my skin, my mind started to quiet down, which had become quite a feat. Soon, I was going to have to take a nightly ride as well, to clear my head before bed every night.
She rolled over and put a hand on the side of my face. Her eyes stared into mine, and she didn’t have to say anything. I heard her thoughts.
Shhhh.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Fawn
“Um, I don’t want to seem like a complete and total coward, but are you sure about this? I mean really, really sure? Because once we go in there, there’s no going back.”
“Ha!” Dax laughed easily, the look on his face making it seems as if he didn’t have a care in the world, “You make it sound like we’re about to walk into the Overlook Hotel or something.”
“The Overlook what? Dax, what on earth are you talking about?”
“The Overlook? You know, the big, creepy hotel from the book the Shining?”
I looked at him with what I was sure was a completely blank expression, nervous as all hell and waiting for him to get to the point, already. He laughed again, rolled his eyes, and reached out and took me by one of my hands. I flinched, fighting my immediate instinct, which was to yank my hand away and put it back safely in my own lap where it belonged. Dax, who was far too perceptive not to see and feel my hesitation frowned, letting my hand go without me having to do much of anything at all.
“Hey, babe? I don’t know if anyone has ever told you this, but most guys don’t love it when their girl shrinks back in disgust at their touch. Just, you know, a little tip for the future.”
“It’s not you, Dax,” I answered softly, doing my best to reassure him while simultaneously struggling to keep myself from totally freaking out, “I swear to God, it’s not.”
“Then what is it? Because that didn’t exactly feel normal.”
"It's just - it's weird, okay? It feels super weird to be holding hands right outside of the clubhouse." I felt like an idiot saying it like I was back in middle school and trying to deal with a guy holding my hand for the first time, but I couldn't help it. I was pretty sure that most girls, even after growing up into women, had to contend with some over protectiveness on the part of their dads. For me, it was about a thousand times worse. I not only had my dad, the president of the Carolina Devils but all of the rest of the old timer members as well. It was a lot to contend with, and it was making me more than a little sick to my stomach.
"Babe, we're about to walk in there and talk to your dad about us, about the baby, about everything. Don't you think it's a little late to worry about being caught doing things like holding hands?"
“Okay, sure, if you put it that way. I didn’t realize you were going to get all logical on me.”
“Well one of us has to do it, right? Every now and then it’s bound to be me.”
“I was kind of hoping it would just always be me. I could be the brains, and you could be the muscle. That kind of thing."
“Yeah, well, get used to it, baby. I’m more than just a pretty face.” He shot me a lofty, mock-hurt look with the delivery of that line, one that sent me into a fit of giggles I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to get a handle on. That was the thing about Dax. Just when I started to feel like everything
was hopeless and so messed up it could never be set right again, he would find a way to make me laugh like there was nothing wrong with the world. He’d had that ability since we were little and in all of these years, despite everything that had happened to both of us, it was something he had never lost.
“There, that’s better. You shouldn’t stress yourself out like that. I realize you’re the nurse, not me, but stressing so hard can’t be good for the baby.”
“You’re worrying about the baby now?”
“Of course I am,” he answered quietly, his tone becoming instantly serious, “I have been since the morning I found out you were pregnant. I’ll keep on worrying about him, too, until the day I die.”
