“I know this is just for now,” she says, kissing me as we get on the bike in front of Sydney’s shop. “But it’s a start.”
“Babe, you are gonna kill it,” I tell her. “You’re gonna be the best damn… what do they call it? Barista? The best damn barista Tanner Springs has ever seen.”
And I’m not even kidding. I don’t doubt for a second that Alix will be really good at this. If there’s one thing I know about her, it’s that she’s determined. She’s had a lot to deal with in her short life. And through it all, she’s managed to just keep going, no matter what the odds are. This job’s only a start, but it’s a foothold. Into a new life, and a new chapter, that she gets to write for herself. She has her sister with her again. She’ll have a new friend in Sydney.
And she has me.
We manage not to spill the coffee on our way over to Ma’s house. Alix hands me the cup and hops off the bike, then takes it back from me.
“I’m gonna miss you,” she whispers as she leans forward to kiss me. “All day.”
“Me, too,” I growl. “We’ll make up for it tonight when I come to pick you up.”
“Promise?”
“You bet I do.” I reach around and cup her ass, pulling her toward me roughly. She squeals and hold out the coffee drink so it doesn’t spill on my leg.
“Hey,” Ma calls from the front door. “Stop molesting the help and let her get in here.”
“Sorry!” I call back. “Okay, I gotta go before she comes out here with a baseball bat and assaults me.”
Alix grins. “We can pick up where we left off later,” she murmurs with a wink.
I give her a final kiss, catching her lower lip between my teeth, then let her go. “I’m counting on it, babe.”
On my way over to the garage, I think back to the night when Alix told me in a moment of sadness how badly she wanted to find Eden, but how scared she was, too. Because she was afraid that if Eden didn’t want her help, the last of Alix’s family would slip away from her and she’d be alone.
Now Eden’s back in the picture, and they’re mending their relationship. And if I have anything to say about it, Alix’s family is gonna include me, and everyone that comes with me. My ma. The club. All those people will have Alix’s back from now on.
She won’t have to face everything by herself anymore.
And most of all, I’m gonna make it my goddamn life’s mission to make sure Alix Cousins is surrounded by happiness. And that she knows, every second of every day, she’s got a man who will do anything for her.
As long as I’m alive, she’ll never be alone again.
Epilogue
ALIX
Two years later
“Has it been long enough yet?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I started counting in my head but then I kind of got flustered and lost count.”
Eden shakes her head and sighs dramatically. “You know, sis, there’s this little invention called a clock that you could use to do that for you.”
“Shut up,” I toss back. “I’m nervous, okay?”
“It has to have been three minutes already,” Eden urges. “And the instructions said to read it as soon as possible after the time.” She glances toward the bathroom. “Go look at it!”
I stand up shakily from the couch and go down the hallway. Inside the bathroom, I take a deep breath and pick up the little white stick. Involuntarily, my eyes squeeze shut as I raise it up to my face. I am seriously freaked out. If it’s a yes, then everything is about to change forever. If it’s a no, then I’m afraid I’m gonna start crying with disappointment.
I take another deep breath, let it out slowly, count to three and open my eyes.
It’s a yes.
“Oh, my God!” I scream. “Oh, my God!”
“What? What?” Eden comes thundering down the hallway.
“I’m pregnant!” I scream, and thrust the stick out at her.
“Okay, one, gross — you peed on that!” she says, recoiling. “But two, oh, my God, I’m gonna be an aunt!” she yells, throwing her hands in the air. “Put the gross pee stick down and hug me!”
I start laughing half-hysterically as I toss the test in the sink. Eden flings her arms around me and hugs me so tightly I almost can’t breathe. We’re both laughing and crying and jumping up and down in place, until Eden bumps her hip on the sink.
“Ow!” she cries out, reaching down to rub her thigh bone. “That hurt. Let’s go jump somewhere else.”
We go back out to the living room and she grabs my hand and pulls me down on the couch.
“Holy shit, this is amazing!” she crows. “You’re going to name her after me, right?”
I snort loudly. “You know it might not be a girl, right? You really want me to name a boy Eden?”
“No, I suppose not,” she frowns. “Besides, having two Edens in the family might get confusing.”
“Yeah. And actually,” I continue glancing at her, “I was sort of thinking about naming him or her after Mom.”
Eden’s face grows soft. “Oh, Alix. That’s such a good idea.”
My throat constricts with emotion. “Thanks,” I say, hearing my voice crack a little. “Gunner and I talked about it once, back when we first started thinking about starting a family. We thought maybe Patricia if it’s a girl, and Patrick if it’s a boy.”
“Patricia Storgaard. Patrick Storgaard,” Eden muses, testing out the sounds. “That’s really nice. What about middle names?”
“Gunner’s mom. Lucy for a girl, Lucas for a boy.”
Eden reaches over and squeezes my hand. “That’s lovely. Mom would love this, you know.”
I swallow painfully. “I think so, too.”
“Speaking of Gunner, does he know you were thinking you might be pregnant?”
“Not this time,” I say, feeling suddenly giddy at the prospect of telling him. “We’ve had a few false alarms. It started to get kind of depressing, getting all excited and then being let down. I figured I’d wait until I actually had some good news to tell him.”
“So he has no idea?” Eden asks, her eyes wide. “He is going to lose his shit!”
I grin at her. “Yeah. He is.”
“Does he want a girl or a boy?”
“He’d be fine with either, but you know what? I think he actually wants a little girl.”
It’s true. Whenever Gunner and I have fantasized about the future, he tends to talk about our baby as a girl. He tells me he wants her to have my eyes, and my smile.
“Gosh, it’s gonna be funny to see huge, tattooed Gunner cradling a tiny baby,” Eden murmurs, shaking her head. “I can’t wait.”
My eyes shining, I smile at my sister. “Neither can I,” I say. “Neither can I.”
Eden takes off for her shift at the coffee shop a couple of hours later. Sydney hired her when I decided to quit and enroll in school to become an addiction counselor. Eden works part time at the Golden Cup, and part time as a fitness instructor at a local gym. She got into exercise and healthy eating to help her cope after detoxing, and it’s become a near obsession with her now. Her eventual goal is to open her own fitness club. But for right now, she’s exactly where she needs to be.
When Gunner comes home, I’m finishing up some homework for my ethics and confidentiality class at the kitchen table. The familiar sound of his engine in the driveway makes my stomach flip with excitement, as it always does when I hear it. But today, the excitement’s ramped up a notch, and my skin starts to tingle with nervous energy, because I’m about to tell him something he’s wanted to hear for the better part of a year.
“Hey, babe,” his rumbling voice comes toward me as he walks through the door.
“Hi,” I wave to him, pretending to be hard at work and distracted. “How’s it going?”
“Good.” Gunner bends down and encircles me from behind. His beard grazes my neck as he kisses me, sending a thrill down my spine. “You look like you’re in the zone.”
“Yeah,”
I murmur. “I really need to finish this project. The deadline to send it to the professor is midnight tonight.” I glance up at him. “Could you take care of making dinner? I set everything out on the counter for you. Just spaghetti.”
Spaghetti’s our go-to simple dinner. But it’s also the first meal I ever made for him, back when he decided to let me stay here in his guest room while I was trying to find Eden.
“Of course,” he rumbles. His lips warm against my throat, his beard prickling my skin. It takes everything I have not to moan and reach for him, but that’ll ruin my little plan.
“The pot for the water’s already on the stove,” I tell him. “Just fill it up and put it on to boiling.”
For a second, I think he’s going to decide to take a shower before he starts the water, like he sometimes does when he gets home from work. I can hardly stand to wait any longer before sharing my news with him, so I actually sigh audibly with relief when he goes to the stove and grabs the pot.
Removing the lid, he picks it up, and frowns when something jangles in the bottom.
“What’s this?” he asks, picking up the object. It’s a pair of baby booties, with tiny bells on them. Pinned inside one of them is the pregnancy test.
I don’t turn around right away. Instead, I subtly angle the darkened screen of my laptop so I can watch his reaction in its reflection.
Gunner stares at the booties. For a moment, he doesn’t move at all.
Then the pot clatters loudly as he drops it onto the stove.
Then I’m in the air, in his arms, as he laughs loudly and swings me around.
“You’re fucking kidding me,” he growls as he pulls me against him.
“I would not joke about that,” I laugh, loving how excited he is.
“You’re a sneaky little minx, aren’t you? How long have you known?”
“Not until this afternoon,” I answer. “I wouldn’t keep that from you, Gunner. But I’ve suspected for about the last week. I wanted to be sure before I told you.”
He cups my chin and looks deeply into my eyes. He nods, and I know I don’t have to explain why.
“Holy shit, I’m gonna be a dad,” he rasps.
Laughter bubbles out of me. “Holy shit is right,” I agree.
“Looks like we won’t have a guest room for much longer.” He bends down and kisses me, deep and tender. “You know my mom is gonna lose her mind when she finds out she’s gonna be a grandma?”
I nod. “We should wait until I’m a little further along to tell her, though.” Lucy has been asking us to give her grandbabies from almost the second after we tied the knot at the courthouse last year. As painful as it is that my own mother won’t be here to meet her first grandchild, I’m so thankful that Gunner’s mom is such an amazing mother-in-law. And she’s going to be an even more amazing grandma.
All evening, Gunner and I talk about baby stuff — from what color to paint the nursery to whether we want to find out the sex of the baby before he or she is born. They’re all things we’ve talked about before. But now that I’m actually pregnant, it’s suddenly real, not just make-believe. We’re going to be parents. Even more than we were before, Gunner and I are a family.
And not only that: Our babies will have everything that Eden and I didn’t. Not just a mom who loves them, but a dad who will love them fiercely and protect them with his life. And a grandma who dotes on them. And a whole bunch of other kids who’ll be like cousins to them as they grow up. Jenna’s two kids Mariana and Noah. Samantha and Hawk’s boy, Connor. Sydney and Brick’s new little baby, Sierra. And all the other children of the Lords of Carnage.
Including Eden’s and Lug Nut’s, if and when they have children.
Lug Nut — Bryson — fell for Eden not long after he helped Gunner and the others rescue her from Gonzalo and his men. The two of them had to take it slow for a while, because of how damaged Eden was after her ordeal with Gonzalo. But things are good between them now. Solid. Eden just moved in with him, after living at Lucy’s place for almost a year, and then getting a studio apartment on her own for a little while so she could know what it was like to live alone.
Eden is fitting right in with the other old ladies of the MC, too. She and Lug Nut aren’t married yet, but he proposed to her about a month ago, and Eden said yes right away. He told her he wanted to make sure Eden would know he’d always be there for her.
And apparently, he can’t wait to start a family. As soon as Eden’s ready, of course.
So, soon enough, my little ones will even have biological cousins of their own. It’s more family than I ever thought I’d have in my life.
I can’t believe how lucky I am.
Even though the baby isn’t even as big as the head of a pin yet, I find myself putting my hand protectively over my stomach all evening. I can hardly believe there’s a little life in there. And that it shares half of its genes with my wonderful, strong, sexy husband.
That night in bed, Gunner is so tender with me at first that I have to convince him I won’t break just because I’m pregnant.
As our passion mounts, he locks eyes with me. It’s so intimate, it takes my breath away. Gunner knows everything about me, inside and out. He knows my body, better than I know it myself. He knows my soul. And most importantly, he knows my heart.
With a final thrust, Gunner buries himself deep inside me, and it’s all I need to fly over the edge, calling his name as I do. He tenses and erupts with a shout. As I shake and shudder, his arms envelop me, warm and strong. This man, who saved me once, and who continues to give me everything I’ve ever wanted. He’s all I’ll never need.
“I love you, Gunner Storgaard,” I whisper, as I lean against his chest. “So, so much.”
“I love you, Alix Storgaard,” he growls. “Forever.”
THE END
Bonus Book
GHOST: Lords of Carnage MC, Book 1
1
Jenna
Mistakes.
Sometimes it seems like my entire life has been one long one.
Sometimes you rack up so many of them, you can’t work out where one mistake ends and the next one begins.
That’s how it feels right now, returning to Tanner Springs. The site of most of my biggest mistakes.
Once, it was home.
Then, it was anything but.
And now, I’m back. And I don’t know if it can ever be anything like home again.
“Oof,” Angel grunts as he drops the last of the boxes onto the old moth-eaten sofa. It’s a big, heavy paper ream box full of books — one of a few I’ve been lugging around from place to place for the last few years. Old college textbooks, mostly. The remnants of a dream I should have given up on by now.
“Is that the last one, I hope?” he says. It’s pretty evident by the look on his face what he hopes my answer is.
“Yeah, that’s it,” I nod, and resist the urge to apologize. Even though he offered to help me move in to my new apartment, I still feel guilty accepting the favor.
I watch my brother pull up the front of his black T-shirt, revealing a snarl of tattoos on his stomach and chest. He wipes the sweat from his face with the fabric, then pulls it back down. “You want something to drink?” I ask him. “I think I can find the box of glasses in the kitchen.”
“You got any beer? I sure could use one.” He raises his arms out in a massive stretch.
“Sorry, no,” I say regretfully. “I haven’t had time to go shopping yet.” One more thing on my mental list of things to do, I remind myself. There’s no food in the house, either, and it’s getting close to supper time. I’ll need to find something for Noah and me to eat.
I heave an exhausted sigh at the thought of trying to make a grocery run with a wound-up and hungry four year-old. Hell. Maybe I’ll just give in and order a pizza, I reason. I can take care of the grocery shopping tomorrow, when I’ve had a good night’s sleep.
Speaking of the wound-up four year-old, my son Noah emerges from what will be his new
bedroom. His arms are out in a T and he’s making a buzzing noise with his lips as though he’s a prop plane. He “flies” around the room, circling the boxes and crates, then crashes into Angel’s legs as he turns toward the kitchen.
“Hey, easy, buddy,” Angel said, looking slightly annoyed. “Look, go play somewhere else, okay?” Angel shoots me a glance. “He sure is keyed up.”
“He’s been cooped up all day,” I explain, again resisting the urge to apologize. “First in the U-Haul and now in here. He’s bored.”
Noah flies back down the hall toward his room. I know my brother doesn’t have a lot of experience with kids, so he probably doesn’t realize how easily they get antsy. Actually, I’ve been pretty impressed at how little Noah’s been acting out today, given the circumstances. “He’s only four,” I tell Angel. “He doesn’t have great impulse control.”
I wander the few steps into the kitchen and look around for the box labeled “glassware.” Pulling off the tape, I grab one of Noah's plastic glasses with a picture of Thomas the Tank Engine out of the box. I turn to the sink and hold it under the faucet. Water sputters violently when I twist the handle, and I start and take a quick step back. Brownish liquid begins to run out of the tap.
“This apartment hasn’t been used in a while, the landlord said.” Angel comes up behind me and peers at the dubious-looking water. “You probably want to run that for a few minutes.”
As I wait for the water to turn clear, I look around me at the dingy tile floor and dusty, grease-tacky counter tops. This entire place needs a good scrubbing from top to bottom. Still, I have no business complaining. Noah and I are lucky to have a roof over our heads at all, given everything that’s happened in the last few months. It isn’t paradise, but it’s home for now. More importantly, it’s all I can afford.
“Thanks for helping me, Angel,” I murmur. “Moving all these boxes up a flight of stairs wouldn’t have been easy with just me and Noah.” I fill up the glass with now clearish water and hand it to him.
GUNNER: Lords of Carnage MC Page 19
