Making me slightly lose it.
But only slightly.
I lost it fully an hour later when I found out that Harleigh had a minor concussion, a broken foot, and a broken pinky finger that she sustained when she hit Charles in the nose with a closed fist.
“It was worth it,” she muttered darkly. “Totally and utterly worth it.”
If she said so.
Chapter 19
Listen, am I the most attractive girl out there? Well, no. But do I have a good personality? Also no. But I do wake up every day and think that I might try to be the best person I can be…sometimes.
-Harleigh to Slate
Slate
I couldn’t say that I was surprised to find Max on my doorstep the next morning after we’d arrived home.
Last night, I’d called him to tell him what had happened once we’d once again gotten settled in our room.
Harleigh had been sleeping on the couch for a solid hour before I decided to get a workout in.
But I’d quickly dismissed that idea. The idea of doing nothing but sitting my ass on my couch for the next forty-eight hours sounded much more exciting.
I’d literally just sat down with a cup of coffee and the remote when a series of knocks had sounded from the front door.
Groaning as I got up, I made my way to the door and nearly rolled my eyes when I saw who it was through the opaque glass.
Opening the door wide, I let him in.
His nostrils flared when he saw her lying on the couch in her underwear and one of my t-shirts.
If I’d thought before I’d opened the door, I would’ve realized that maybe I should cover her up before her dad saw how comfortable she was around me when we were alone.
Shit.
“You better marry her,” he said. “And swear to Christ, if you ever hurt her…”
“I’ll give you the gun myself and stand still,” I finished for him. “Trust me when I say, that’s the last thing in the world I’ll ever do.”
He sighed and unfisted his hands. “I thought for sure with the way y’all fought that nothing would happen. Guess I was wrong.”
My lips twitched. “Yeah, you were wrong.”
He rolled his eyes and then pulled out a sheaf of papers out of his back pocket.
“This is a list of all the shit I’ve dug into since the phone call last night,” he murmured. “Looks like the family he had was hired. There’s a couple of grand deposit the day before he left. His credit cards are maxed out on tickets, hotel rooms, and shit from Disney—something in which he likely couldn’t afford.”
I felt my stomach clench.
“Are they going to bring him back to Texas?” I asked.
With the majority of his crimes being committed in Texas, I knew that it was most likely, but shit was definitely crazy when it came to attempted murder.
“As of right now, no.” Max shook his head. “But they’ll tack on his charges here over there. He won’t get off without the max penalty he can be served with.”
“Try murder,” Harleigh muttered darkly when she sat up. “You caught that part, right?”
Max walked over to the couch and sat down, pulling his daughter into a tight embrace that showed that we’d likely scared the shit out of him last night.
I’m honestly surprised they didn’t meet us at the airport.
“Yeah,” Max said as he finally let her go. “We definitely caught that part. And I know that you made sure to tell the arresting officer that. And the detective. Who was amused when he informed me of that when I talked to him.”
“You talked to him?” I asked as I closed the door and walked to the fridge. “You want a beer?”
“Sure,” Max said. “But you may want to hold off on anything to eat. Payton dropped me off but went to grab some food and Dax who flew into the county airport. He wasn’t happy about what happened to Harleigh and had to come see for himself that she was okay.”
“Ohhh, yay.” Harleigh sighed and leaned her head against her father’s shoulder. “Daddy, did I tell you I broke my foot because some woman ran over it with her stroller?”
There was a long pause and then, “I assumed it was broken during your altercation with the bad guy. Which, I might add, was very stupid of you. I told you to run away from danger, and only fight back if you had no other choice.”
She snickered. “I did have no other choice.”
“Being pissed off that your boyfriend went to prison for no reason and throwing yourself at a murderer with a knife isn’t using your best judgment. Nor did you have no other choice.”
She sighed at her father’s words. We then spent the next twenty minutes talking about nothing consequential as we waited for Payton to arrive with Dax.
Dax who was extremely pissed off and let me know it when he saw how comfy and unclothed Harleigh was when he walked in the door.
After making sure that she was okay, he gave me one look and said, “Would you please follow me outside?”
“Dax,” Harleigh warned.
I got up, knowing this had to be handled now or it wouldn’t be handled at all.
“Sure thing,” I said. “Hey, Payton. I have plates and forks and shit in my cabinets. Why don’t you go find all that and get Harleigh some food? She has to eat before she can take another pain pill, the doctor said.”
Payton got up to do just that, and before Harleigh could lift herself up off the couch and follow us, I leaned over the couch and into her space.
“It’ll be fine,” I said softly as I placed my lips onto hers. “Plus, I might as well get it over with now.”
“Get what over with?” she asked, sounding resigned.
“The asking for your hand in marriage thing,” I said. “Because we’re going to be married before our kid comes.”
“What?” she breathed.
“What?” Max almost shouted.
Dax growled behind us.
Payton started to laugh.
“Oh, Maxie Poo, you totally deserve everything you’re about to have headed your way,” Payton teased as she walked into the kitchen.
I winked at Harleigh’s startled face, then backed away and walked out the door without another word.
I wasn’t surprised when both men followed me out.
Nor was I surprised when Max immediately said, “She’s pregnant?”
I shook my head. “Not yet…but she will be. Soon.”
Dax started forward, but Max caught him by the shoulder. “Don’t. I like that he’s being honest, even if I want to kick his ass for doing it.”
Some movement caught my eye, and I turned to stare at the man that was loading another U-Haul with boxes.
“Be right back,” I muttered distractedly.
I looked at Craig, remembering what Charles had said last night. Knowing there was yet another thing I had to take care of.
Craig looked up before I’d even gotten across the street and stiffened, then looked away before we could make eye contact.
“You remember him, don’t you?” I asked curiously.
Craig’s head whipped around, and he stared at me as if I’d just done the unthinkable.
“What? Um, no!” he stammered.
“Yeah, you do,” I muttered. “Why don’t you want him to know that you know? Why hide it? It’s obvious to everyone that he loves you and you love him.”
“Sometimes, Slate, you have to move past the fear, or you’ll never live again. Sometimes, you have to ride that fear and hope it doesn’t kill you the next time death sneaks up on you.”
I’d been uttered those words by Rome just yesterday in regards to a certain little woman that was quickly burrowing her way into my cold, dead heart. Going so deep that I’d never be able to dig her free.
The words seemed perfect here, though.
As if I should say them.
But something stopped me.
“Why aren’t you telling them?” I asked.
Craig swallowed hard.
“I…I
have really bad parents,” he admitted. “Ones that love that I’m a doctor. What they don’t love, however, is Dre. They hate the fact that I’m gay and stop at nothing to let me know how uncouth that is.”
I looked at him with every ounce of revulsion that I had for him in that moment.
“Well,” I said softly. “I think that you’re a coward. I also think that at the end of the day, if you’re willing to give up on the person that you love, then maybe he’s better off without you anyway.”
I hated that Dre would learn this about the man that he loved. Being lied to was the worst.
And somehow, what Craig was doing to Dre seemed even lower than what Vanessa had done to me.
Craig’s chin lifted up. “You’re not going to tell him?”
I shrugged. “I won’t have to. Harleigh will…you just may want to start making up a better lie than the truth you just told me if you want there to be a relationship there ever again. If you don’t…well, go ahead and tell him what you just told me, and I can guarantee that you won’t have one.”
With that, I walked back over to where Max was leaning against his bike with his son standing next to Harleigh’s vehicle.
“I have to go somewhere,” I told them both. “With Payton here to watch over Harleigh, I figure you might want to come with me.”
Dax’s eyes narrowed.
“I’m not sure I want to go anywhere with you,” he snapped.
I grinned. “Oh, I bet you will.”
I was right.
He did want to go once he learned where it was that we were going.
Chapter 20
Ugh, I need a new house. This one is dirty.
-Text from Izzy to Slate
Slate
“Let me tell you something,” I said as I squeezed the prick’s neck tightly. “You don’t go near her. You don’t look her up on the internet. You don’t even think about her.” I paused. “I want you out of this house in two days. I’ve already cleared it with your parole officer. You’re clear to move. You have a new parole officer in Tulsa.”
“Tulsa?” the prick Roan wheezed. “I don’t know anybody in Tulsa.”
I grinned then. “No, but I do.”
His eyes widened.
“I won’t touch her,” he promised. “I was high as fuck that day. I don’t do drugs anymore!”
“I don’t care what you do and don’t do as long as it doesn’t involve my fiancée,” I said. “What you do in Tulsa is your business. Just know I’ll have eyes on you. I’ll also be checking up on you every once in a while. If I don’t like what I hear, I’ll be amending my plans to let you live.”
He swallowed hard. “I won’t.”
I smiled then, showing all of my teeth. “Good.”
I let him go and rubbed my hands on my pants as if it would help me get rid of the filth that I felt after touching him.
“Go,” I said. “And don’t come back. I don’t even care if your mother dies. I see you anywhere near here and you’re dead.”
Roan took off like his ass had been lit on fire.
Though, maybe it had.
Maybe he finally understood that Harleigh was off limits.
Though, that was only after Dax and Max had gotten ahold of him, too.
I was the closer. The one that got to say the words.
Max and Dax had done all their talking with their fists.
“So…y’all ready to go?” Max asked, dusting his pants off.
I nodded once. “Probably so. We’ve been gone for over an hour, and Harleigh’s going to come looking for us soon.”
“That’s the truth,” Dax muttered. “Are you sure that you want to marry her?”
I grinned wickedly. “About as sure as I am that I want to keep breathing.”
Max snorted.
Dax, however, tilted his head.
“As long as you know that if you ever hurt her, I’m going to make your life a living hell,” he growled.
I held my hands up in surrender. “Like I’ve told your father, I will gladly stand still and allow you to shoot me if I ever hurt her.”
Epilogue
Always get your wife a snack at the gas station. If you think to yourself ‘maybe she doesn’t want a snack,’ I’m telling you now that you’re wrong.
-Max to Slate
Max
“Is he here yet?” I asked as I flipped open one eye.
“Not yet,” my wife murmured as she practically bounced in her seat. “I can’t believe the baby is coming today. I almost asked to be in the delivery room, but I didn’t…”
“I want my mother!” an all too familiar voice practically bellowed. “You can’t hit a vein for shit!”
“Uh-oh,” Payton murmured, biting her lip as she tried not to laugh.
“Better go before she does something drastic like kill her nurse,” I pulled her in for a quick kiss. “Wake me up when he’s here.”
“She’ll be here soon,” I heard Slate, the man that had married my daughter a little over a year ago, say.
I looked up to find Slate standing in the doorway looking frazzled.
The only other time I’d seen him in this current state was the day that I’d handed him my daughter’s hand in marriage.
He’d looked like I’d just handed him the moon and the stars and told him to take care of them.
Which I had.
Harleigh was my baby, my everything, and the only little girl I’d ever had.
She was my tiny little baby who’d been smaller than the palm of my hand when she was born, and I’d given her away to a man that cared for her almost as much as I did.
But now, he didn’t look just frazzled, he looked terrified.
“Harleigh wants you in there to do her IV,” Slate murmured softly. “She’s losing her shit quickly and is freaking out. I think it’d be best for you to just stay.”
Payton was up and moving before he could finish talking.
I grinned at Slate who stayed rooted to the spot for a few long seconds as if he was gathering the courage to put on his brave face once again.
“Everything okay?” I asked softly.
Slate swallowed hard.
“The infection is hitting her hard,” he admitted. “I’m never doing this again. We’re stopping at one baby.”
I snorted. “Good luck with that. I said the same thing about Harleigh, and look at that one.”
Dax was sleeping, stretched out on six of the waiting room chairs, looking uncomfortable as hell but still able to sleep anywhere.
Slate looked that way and grinned. “I’m glad that he could make it.”
I grinned back. “We knew that it was coming.”
Harleigh had gotten the flu when she was thirty-one weeks pregnant. She’d then gone on to get bronchitis, strep, and then pneumonia. Which had then caused her to go into labor. From there, they hadn’t been able to stop it, which meant delivering the baby at thirty-two weeks, eight whole weeks early.
“Take care of my girls,” I said. “But you should probably get back in there. I don’t want two hot-headed women trying to keep it calm and collected.”
Slate snorted.
“Yeah,” he laughed. “I know what you mean.”
With that he left and didn’t look back.
I watched him go, saying a silent prayer that everything would be all right.
There was something seriously fucked up with my heart at that moment in time, and I had a feeling that it was fear.
Cold, hard, shaking in my boots fear.
***
Linc
“Is he here yet?” I asked as Conleigh and I parked our asses in the waiting room next to Max.
“No,” he grumbled. “Been in labor for going on eight hours now. Nothing is happening.”
I sighed and leaned back in my chair.
“Are they going to do a C-section since she’s eight weeks early?” Conleigh asked.
“Not that I know of,” Max admitted. “Though I haven’t gone in there
and asked.”
“Why not?” Conleigh asked.
I wrapped my hand around her mouth and pulled her into my side. “Because not everybody is as nosey as you are.”
Conleigh licked my hand, her eyes sparkling.
“Nosey?” she chirped. “You were the nosey Nancy that had to come to the hospital even though you were told that someone would call you the moment that they had any news.”
I shrugged. “So I wanted to be here when he arrived. Sue me.”
My wife wrinkled her nose at me. “I’m fairly sure you’re more excited about Slate’s kid arriving than you were about your own.”
I rolled my eyes.
“I think it’s because Slate’s been freaking out ever since they labeled Harleigh as a high-risk pregnancy. He’s been treating her like spun glass, and Harleigh looks like she wants to strangle him every time he walks in the room and asks her if she needs anything.”
“Just admit it,” Max said. “You love him.”
I scoffed. “I do not.”
“You so do,” Conleigh disagreed. “You have this bromance going on with him and you know it.”
I kind of did.
Then again, ever since we’d gotten back from Disney World and kicking ass, I did have to admit that Slate had warmed up to the club, and us to him.
He’d been willing to put the effort in once he knew that we weren’t going to fuck him over.
***
Izzy
“Is she here yet?” I practically ran into the waiting room. “I got my kids put to sleep, and my grandmother is watching them,” I explained as I took a seat on the opposite side of Max. “How’s she doing?”
“Still in labor,” Max murmured. “They’re discussing whether or not to perform a C-section.”
“There a reason they’re just not doing it?” I asked.
“My sister is a stubborn asshole,” Dax muttered as he sat up. “Jesus Christ, just go tell her to do it already.”
That comment was aimed at his father, who looked resigned. “Do you think that the Tremaine women do anything that I tell them to do? I’m just a bystander in this thing I call life.”
F-Bomb (The Bear Bottom Guardians MC Book 9) Page 20
