by A. J. Downey
“Second of all, I quite agree with Ms. Washington, your blatant attempt at using the system to terrorize Mrs. Turner and her son, are quite probably, the most disgusting abuse of the legal system I have ever seen and that is saying a lot. I don’t think you realize what could have happened and it horrifies me that one of those things that could have happened would be that your grandson landed in your care.
“I can tell you straight off that that isn’t going to happen today, or any other day for that matter. I am denying your petition for custody, and what’s more, I am issuing an order of protection against you in favor of Mr. and Mrs. Turner, that way your attempted abuse of the system is on record.”
The Judge shook his head, “I don’t know where you people get off,” he said and turned to me, “Mrs. Turner, I am so very sorry that you had to be here today, and that you’ve had to live with your fear for this long. You have, by all accounts, been doing a marvelous job as a mother and I wish you and your family all of the best.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” I said faintly, still in disbelief.
“I will leave it up to you, on if you want to show your parents the love, mercy, and compassion they have seen fit to withhold from you by allowing them to be a part of your life and your son, their grandson’s life. I am still going to put forth this no contact order against your parents. If you wish to have your parents be a part of your life again, you will need to have that vacated before any visitation can take place, lest you find yourself in violation of the order. Restraining orders, no contact orders, orders of protection – whatever you would like to call them, are a two way street. Am I understood?”
“Yes, Your Honor. Thank you, Your Honor,” Archer said for me. I was too stunned. My mother was howling and wailing. Her church ladies trying to console her, and Phillip was whispering furiously with their lawyer.
“My decision is final, so entered, so ordered, this hearing is adjourned.”
He banged his gavel and my side of the courtroom erupted in whoops and cheers, along with applause.
“We won?” I asked stunned, it hadn’t quite sunk in.
“We won,” my lawyer confirmed. I held tightly to Archer, and stared at my son who Ms. Washington was bringing to me.
“I don’t understand” I said, “Good things just don’t happen to us without something going horribly wrong.”
Archer barked a laugh, “That may have been the way of things before, but not anymore, Baby. I promised you that I’d protect our family and I meant it. You, me, Noah, and our little bean you got growing in there. Now let’s get out of here.”
I took Noah from her who was just out, slept through the whole damn hearing, which I was so grateful for.
“You have a beautiful family, now go on and get out of here, Melody. You have much better places for y’all to be.”
“Oh you wretched girl!” my mother cried when I turned around to leave. The Judge was long gone and I didn’t even remember him leaving.
“Me?” I asked incredulous, “Take a look in the mirror, Mother. Jesus, I can’t even with you,” I said and let Archer lead me out through the gallery. His club brothers, and my club sisters forming a human blockade between me and my former family.
“Head to the club,” Revelator called out and I marched right out to the parking lot and my car, my son in my arms. I put him carefully in his car seat and strapped him in.
“Come on, Baby. I’m driving,” Archer declared.
“Good, because I’m so not fit to do it.”
Without a single backwards glance, we left this whole damn nightmare behind.
Chapter 36
Archer
The party was in full swing back at the club and Rev and Mandy had been kind enough to take Noah for the night so that I could try to destress my wife. She hadn’t wanted to let him go, which I got, but I’d explained to her that one night wasn’t going to kill her and that she needed a rest.
We were sitting around a fire out back, Melody sharing one of the lounge chairs with me, laying on me, staring at the flames, a blanket over the both of us. She had lemonade in a glass on the ground next to us, but I had a beer perched on my knee. I sort of felt bad I couldn’t get her drunk.
Summer had hung on into fall and it felt like it was finally starting to wind down, the night air holding that crisp edge to it, hence why Dani had laid a blanket over the both of us. I’d nodded my appreciation and had murmured thanks for the both of us, but Mel just wasn’t here with me. A million miles away with her thoughts, which hey, let’s face it. That was okay.
“What ‘cha thinking about,” I asked her and she roused a bit, her hands caressing her stomach, her baby bump starting to show but not really, probably more wishful thinking on my part.
“What do you want to name it if it’s a boy?” she asked me, her voice holding that dreamy quality.
“Well, I kind of would have liked to name my first boy after Grind, but you took care of that for me.” I kissed her hair and she swallowed hard.
“I don’t like the name David,” she murmured.
“I don’t either, I always kind of liked the name Chandler for a first name.”
“Chandler…” she murmured, hypnotized by the flames, “Chandler,” she murmured again and closed her eyes.
“Yeah,” I said.
“I like it,” she said, “It fits, I mean, he did bring us together.”
“Yeah?”
“I named Noah, you should name your first son, especially if it is a son.”
I snorted and took a drink of my beer, “Noah is my first son, Mel. Always will be.”
She dragged herself up so she could look at me, searching my face, “You really do love him as your own, no difference, don’t you?”
“No difference,” I agreed.
She pulled herself up so she could straddle my hips, both of us still in our court clothes which was slightly awkward, and she kissed me. I set my beer down on the cinderblock next to the chair where her alcohol-free lemonade sat, getting watered down by its melting ice. I let my hands gently frame her face as I teased the seam of her lips with my tongue. She opened her mouth to me, plunging her tongue past my lips and I moaned slightly.
I loved how her lush, soft curves molded into my body, how she melted against me, boneless, liquid and graceful. She whimpered into my mouth and I swallowed the small sound. I felt my cock stir between us in the fancy slacks I wore.
Melody adjusted herself, rubbing her body along mine and setting me on fire with a desire to be with her. The light from the flickering fire pit didn’t help me one damn bit with that. I wrapped my arms around her and let the warmth spread from my crotch, through the rest of my body.
“My room?” I asked her and she answered me without stopping her kiss.
“Mm-hmm,” she moaned past my lips and I hauled her up my body, sitting up with her in my arms.
“Hold onto me, Baby,” I uttered and she moved her mouth to the side of my neck, kissing me, lightly, flicking her tongue over the spot in the side of my neck that gave me shivers.
I made quick strides across the grass and the asphalt track to the outbuilding that housed my club room. I took one of my hands off of the taut globe of Mel’s ass just long enough to twist the knob and kick the door open before plunging into the room and it’s blueish, deep shadows.
I didn’t need to switch on a light when I held the light of my life in my arms. This woman, god, this woman who was so tolerant and giving. This woman who was so fucking brave to marry my cantankerous ass, when by all rights she could have laughed in my face for even suggesting such a thing.
I’m glad she didn’t. I’m glad her crazy at the time matched my crazy so well. I’m glad she saw the same wisdom in it that I did, and that she held on and went through with it. I kissed her again, lying over the top of her across my bed while she deftly unbuttoned my shirt and jerked the wife beater under it out of my pants.
My hands were a match for hers, popping buttons free of their
holes on her blouse, shoving her camisole she wore underneath it up out of my way so I could get skin on skin. I paused only long enough to pull my shirt off the rest of the way for her, peeling the cotton back off my shoulders and down my arms. Ripping the tank off over my head and tossing it carelessly aside in the deep gloom.
“I want you,” she breathed.
“I need you,” I confessed right back.
It was a quick frenzy to divest each other of our clothes the rest of the way and it was pure fucking bliss when I sank balls deep into her waiting wet heat, her pussy grasping around me firmly, pulling me in further. She wrapped her arms and legs around me and I drew back, surging forward, her voice painting the night with her pleasure, splashing across my sense of hearing like rich paint, coloring me alive.
“God, Baby, I don’t want to know what my life would have been like if you hadn’t come into it like that,” I told her. “I love you so fucking much, you incredible, brave, beautiful fucking woman.”
She moaned and stroked the side of my face gently, I turned my head and kissed her palm, closing my eyes and breathing deep the scent of her delicate perfume on her wrist. She was everything to me now, and I couldn’t believe that I could be so lucky. She almost made me believe there was such a thing as God, because if there were, she surely had been sent from him.
Chapter 37
Melody
I arched beneath Archer, and reveled in his slow, arduous slide in and out of my body. It was so different when there was true love involved. It felt like he reached places inside of me that couldn’t be touched any other way. It was new, unique, and I don’t think I’d ever experienced anything like it before – nor did I want to experience it with anyone else.
I carefully took down his hair at one point, and now it caressed my body like warm silk, if silk could be a living thing. I loved how it enshrouded our faces as we kissed, and I couldn’t help but close my eyes, to concentrate wholly on all of the feelings I was having at once.
I felt the warm weight of orgasm, deep in my womb, and I loved how Archer simply held me on that edge where I felt so good; my consciousness drifting beautifully, like there wasn’t a care or concern in the world except how we felt right now, right this minute, with each other.
I didn’t want to come, afraid that if I did, that this would all end so quickly, but eventually, I wasn’t given a choice. Archer reached between us, teasing my clit with his thumb and I felt like a star, falling right out of the sky. I shuddered beneath him as I reentered earth’s atmosphere and crashed, plunging deep into the liquid pool of pleasure when I’d fully expected to be dashed upon the rocks.
He held me so sweetly, and loved me so completely, I didn’t ever want to come up for air.
I came back from wherever I’d gone slowly, tucked warm and safe against my husband as he kissed each individual fingertip on my right hand. He’d somehow gotten us tucked beneath the covers and I didn’t remember that happening either. I worried about that, but he stole my worries away with a well-placed kiss against my forehead.
“Sleep, Baby. You’ve had a hell of a day… we both have.”
I nodded against his chest and sighed, “Am I wrong for never wanting my mother to see our children again?”
He snorted, “Hell no. Don’t worry about it too much, Babe. Karma’s on its way to town and it’s going to bite those fuckers but good.”
I felt my forehead wrinkle in a frown, “What did you do?” I asked suspicious.
“I didn’t do shit,” he said and I knew Archer, if he said he didn’t then he didn’t… but I also knew that didn’t mean that one of his brothers hadn’t.
“What’s going to happen to my parents?” I demanded.
“Nothing is going to happen to them, Baby. They’re going to get back to Saguaro Flats just fine.”
I thought about it… just fine, “They’re getting back to the town just fine, but not home?” I murmured, the pieces falling into place.
Archer gave an evil little chuckle and the pieces that’d fallen right into place cemented together. I hadn’t seen Blue or Duracell, and while both of them worked on a road crew, Duracell was a demolition’s expert by trade. A rather specialized field of work.
“I’m not sure how I feel about that,” I confessed.
“Make you feel bad?” he asked curiously.
“No,” I murmured, surprised.
“Well there you go,” he supplied.
A long silence stretched between us and finally he asked, “You wanted to know what I wanted to name our baby if it were a boy, same question, if it’s a girl, what do you want to name her?”
I thought about it and finally sighed out, “It’s a moot point, it’s going to be a boy,” I said with certainty.
“How do you know? Doctor say something already?”
“No, I just know. I just feel it all the way down to my bones, when we were out there, staring at the fire. It’s going to be a boy, I can just feel it, I just know it. Women’s intuition, okay?
“Hmm, you know I don’t ascribe to all that mystical bullshit, right?”
“No, I know you don’t, but mark my words, I’m carrying your son, Archer.”
He gave a little shiver under me and I smiled into the dark, “Ok you need to go to sleep ‘cause you’re seriously giving me the creeps right now.”
I smiled and laughed a little, “So much for not subscribing to all the ‘mystical bullshit’.” I said and laughed hysterically, jolting when Archer went after the ticklish spot on my ribs.
“Don’t you go calling me out, Woman!”
I laughed and settled down, the day’s events settling over me like one of the blankets on the bed. It’d been an extremely long day. I closed my eyes against the pervasive dark of Archer’s room and sighed, beginning to drift off.
Archer kissed my forehead and asked, “You’re sure it’s a boy, huh?”
“Uh huh,” I murmured.
“Sweet,” he uttered and I was out, sound asleep.
***
Life returned to normal for us so quickly I almost could convince myself that the hearing had been little more than a bad dream. Archer worked as much as he could at the shop, but he’d quit his job as a door man and bouncer in the evenings. It’d become important to him to be at home and we really didn’t need the money that bad.
I carried on waitressing, and about three or so days after the hearing, Duracell and Blue had come into the diner, sitting in my section and ordering lunch. I’d gone by to refill their glasses and Duracell said nonchalantly, “It’s a cryin’ shame about your folks’ house, burning down like that. I hear the insurance company isn’t going to pay out, either. They don’t, you know, when it’s a clear cut case of negligence.”
I blinked, stupidly, and Blue opened up his cut and pulled a book out from the inside of his jacket where he’d been holding it under his arm. He set it on the table and slid it towards me and my eyes misted. I set down the pitcher of water on the edge of the table beside the book and picked it up with shaking fingers.
It was Noah’s baby book, the one that had been given to me by the hospital with his teeny tiny footprints, his birth certificate, and his very first picture. It even had his tiny knit cap in it. I looked at Blue and he nodded at the book, saying with his mouth full, “Important stuff.”
“Thank you,” I whispered, and hugged the book to my chest.
“Hey, uh, Blue wants to know, who’s that chick over there?”
I looked over and asked, “Who, the waitress?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s Hayley,” I said and the kitchen rang the bell for pickup. I retrieved my pitcher and said, “That’s me, I’ve got to go.”
I’d set Noah’s baby book somewhere safe and had gotten wrapped up in the lunch rush after that. I’d pretty much stopped seating Duracell and Blue anywhere but Hayley’s section after that. I couldn’t tell which one of them had the crush on her, maybe it was both? I was always too busy to really think about it.
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I had been spending time catching Noah’s book up the last few weeks off and on, and that’s where Archer found me today. He came home and knelt down, first kissing me then kissing my swollen stomach before the patter of Noah’s footsteps came in from the living room.
“Daddy!” he cried and it never failed, no matter how tired Archer was, he caught our son up and hugged him and kissed him.
“How you doing, Little Man?”
“Good,” they wandered into the kitchen, having their talk while I pressed my favorite photograph of them into Noah’s book. The candid photo I’d taken of Noah sprawled across Archer’s chest in the morning gloom of that dreary, sad, little apartment.
“How was your day?” I asked when Archer had set Noah down so Noah could go back to his scattered toys in the living room.
“Good, how about you?”
“It was alright, the car started to overheat on me, I hate to say anything about it since you just got home, but at least it happened as I pulled onto our street and I got it in our driveway.”
“Ahh; that piece of shit,” Archer grumbled, and I gave him a reproachful look. He smiled and leaned back in his seat. Dinner was in the oven, and had about ten minutes more to go on the timer.
“Well, I guess it at least had the good timing to do it now,” he said.
“Why?”
He got up and held out a hand to me, I frowned and took it and let him pull me to my feet. He led me to our front door and opened it wide. While it wasn’t brand new, it was considerably newer than my old rust bucket. A minivan sat in front of our house at the curb. A light blue, with a red Christmas bow on the antennae.
“You bought me a car?” I asked incredulous.
“Naw, I just bought a transmission for it. Customer brought it in last week and when he saw the pricetag, decided to get somethin’ else. Signed it over to the shop. I picked it up, dropped a new tranny in it, and it’s as good as new. Only has eighty thousand miles on it. You like it?”
