by Katie Ashley
“Speaking of the reception, I’m starved. Let’s head back for dinner,” Bishop said.
Back at the clubhouse, we had a sit-down dinner of homemade BBQ and sides. It wasn’t fancy or classy, but I loved it all the same. Bishop and I were making a dent in an enormous piece of chocolate cake when a scream of pain echoed through the room. Two tables down from us, Kim’s daughter, Cassie, was bent over, huffing and puffing. Considering the special circumstances of her pregnancy—she was the surrogate making Rev and Annabel’s dreams of parenthood come true—everyone’s attention was immediately riveted to her. Turning over their chairs in a rush, Rev and Annabel sprinted over to Cassie.
“Are you okay?” Rev questioned.
“Is it Braxton Hicks?” Annabel asked.
Cassie looked up and gave a grim smile. “My water just broke.”
“Holy shit!” Rev shouted as Annabel started to cry happy tears. “We need a doctor! Where the hell is Breakneck?”
“I’m right here,” Breakneck replied with a grin. Rev was so beside himself he hadn’t realized Breakneck was sitting next to Cassie.
“Oh, sorry,” Rev said sheepishly.
Breakneck rose out of his chair. “First thing we need to do is to take a deep breath and calm down.”
“But—” Rev started to argue.
Breakneck shook his head. “You have to calm down. This will go a lot easier for you and especially for Cassie if you’re calm.”
With a reluctant nod, Rev asked, “Okay, what else?”
“We need to get her to the hospital. Cassie, do you have your suitcase?”
“It’s at Mom’s.”
Kim shot out of her chair. “I’ll go get it.”
After she raced out of the room, Breakneck said, “Then let’s get you to the car.”
Bishop and I got up and followed the crowd outside. Once Cassie had been eased into the front seat of Rev’s SUV, Rev turned to Bishop. “I can’t drive.”
“What?”
He held out a hand to show that it was visibly shaking. “I’m too fucking nervous to drive.”
While I bit back a smile, Bishop wasn’t quite so thoughtful. He busted out laughing. “Seriously, dude? After everything we’ve been through, you’re losing it now?”
“This is my child, B. A child we’ve been through hell to get,” Rev argued.
Bishop’s expression grew serious. “I get it. I’ll be happy to drive you.”
“Do you want me to wait here?” I asked.
Shaking his head, Bishop said, “Of course not. Hop in.”
“But aren’t we going to be a full house with five of us?”
“You, Rev, and Annabel can squeeze into the back.”
“If you say so.”
When we opened the back door to get in, Cassie turned to us with tears in her eyes. “I’m so sorry to have ruined your night.”
I leaned forward in the seat to pat her back. “Oh, honey, you haven’t ruined our night. You just made it a whole lot more special by having our future nephew or niece come into the world.”
“Exactly,” Bishop said as he cranked up the engine.
Deacon and Alexandra waved to us as they got in their car. We then led a caravan of cars to the local hospital. Bishop roared up to the ER entrance and screeched to a halt. Before the car was in park, Rev was out the car door and running inside to get a wheelchair. When he returned, he and Annabel got Cassie into the wheelchair and then Rev wheeled her inside.
After a flurry of activity at the front desk, the mechanized doors opened up, and Cassie was whisked away with Rev, Annabel, and Kim. At the sight of us standing around, a nurse said, “You all should go on up to maternity to wait.”
Our herd then moved on to the fourth floor, where we took up half the room and got settled in to wait. Deacon and Bishop played cards while I helped Alexandra with Willow and Wyatt. Hours went by. Wyatt fell asleep in my arms, and finally Willow went to sleep in Deacon’s.
It was a little after two a.m. when the doors opened up and Rev appeared with a beaming smile and a tiny bundle. “It’s a girl!” he cried.
A whoop of joy went up in the room. Rev and Annabel had wanted the sex to be a surprise until delivery. Everyone started hugging and swiping tears from their eyes. Then we gathered round to ooh and aah at the baby, who looked an awful lot like her father. “What’s her name, Daddy?” Bishop asked.
“Natalie Elizabeth . . . for me and Mama Beth.”
Mama Beth grinned. “Good choice, son.”
“You’re welcome,” Rev said. He then passed Natalie into Mama Beth’s waiting arms. With tears in her eyes, she kissed her newest granddaughter, then handed her off to Deacon, who then gave her to Bishop.
“I better get her back to the room. You can come back and see Cassie in a little while. She did amazing.”
After Rev left, Alexandra took Wyatt from me so they could go home. “We better head out, too. Big day tomorrow,” I said.
“Yes, the day I get saddled with a ball and chain,” Bishop teased.
I smacked his arm playfully. With the elevator full of our family and friends, we took the next one down alone. “You looked awfully natural with Natalie,” I mused.
“I’ve had a lot of practice with Wyatt.”
“Think you’ve had enough practice to do it for yourself?”
Bishop’s brow lined in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“This isn’t exactly the place I had in mind to tell you, but it just feels right.” I wrapped my arms around his neck. “Bishop Malloy, you’re going to be a father.”
His blue eyes widened. “Wh-what?”
I grinned. “Remember how we decided to go off my birth control a few months before the wedding to give it time to be out of my system?”
“Yeah . . . And?”
“And I’m pregnant.”
The elevator doors opened, and Bishop ambled out. “A baby . . . You’re pregnant.”
Considering the rough-and-tough man he was, his reaction was pretty priceless. “Are you okay?”
He turned back to me and blinked. It took a few more seconds for a beaming smile to light up his face. “Okay? I’m fucking amazing!”
He pulled me into his arms and squeezed me tight. “You just gave me the best wedding present anyone could ever ask for.”
“I’m glad to do it.”
“I hope it’s a girl, and she looks just like you.”
I laughed. “I have a feeling it’s going to be a boy.”
“Oh Lord, another Malloy to raise hell.”
With a shake of my head, I argued, “No. The Malloy boys’ days of raising hell are over. The last one officially becomes an old married man tomorrow and a father in seven months.”
Bishop grinned. “You’re right. My son will have a different future.”
“But I’m sure he’ll want to ride bikes and patch in to the Raiders.”
“You don’t mind?”
I stared into Bishop’s eyes. At one time, the prospect of a child of mine joining an MC would have been absolutely unthinkable to me. The last thing on earth I would ever have wanted was for my son to be a biker. But times change and people change.
“No. I don’t mind. We’re going to need a good, solid generation of Raiders to keep the new traditions alive.”
“I totally agree.”
Bishop slid his arm around my waist and led me to the car—and to the new future that awaited us as husband and wife and mother and father.
Read on for a glimpse of the first sensational romance
in the Vicious Cycle series . . .
Available now from
PROLOGUE
WILLOW
Bouncing her legs on the worn leather couch, Willow happily followed along with Dora as she took off exploring. No matter where the cartoon went, it was always better than the run-down apartment building where Willow lived. At the sound of splintering glass shards crashing across the kitchen floor, Willow abandoned Dora’s world, tucked her ratty teddy bear under her ar
m, and hightailed it out of the living room. Although she was only five, she knew all too well what was to come after the angry voices and the throwing things began. She had learned to read the signs, and sadly, she was never wrong. There weren’t many places of refuge in the tiny apartment where she and her mommy lived. But there was one place she could always count on to ride out the violent storms.
To other kids her age, the dark recesses under the bed were a frightening place. But for Willow, the known horror that often surrounded her was far less scary than the unknown. Lifting up the faded blue and white patchwork quilt, she crawled across the dingy carpet and underneath the ratty mattress that smelled like smoke and pee. Dust bunnies clung to her clothes, clouding her lungs and making it difficult to breathe.
Once she settled in, she pinched her eyes shut and imagined herself miles and miles away. Whenever she was scared, she went to be with her Angel Mommy. In Angel Mommy’s world, everything was happy, beautiful, and pure. Rainbows stretched across the sky over castles filled with unicorns. But the best part of all was Angel Mommy herself. Angel Mommy never drank too much out of the bottles with dark liquid that made her real mommy angry and then sad. Angel Mommy never had boyfriends who yelled at Willow or smacked her in the face or on the bottom. For Angel Mommy, Willow was her whole world—the only focus of her love and attention. They would play for hours and hours, running along the grassy meadow or playing hide-and-seek in one of the castles on the hillside.
She’d first begun to dream of Angel Mommy two years before at Christmastime. After her real mommy had drunk from the bad bottles and Mommy’s boyfriend had stuck himself with the scary needle, they’d started yelling at each other. Cowering on the couch, Willow had tried to hide behind the pillows. As Mommy and her boyfriend’s voices rose louder and louder, they began to push and shove each other. When Mommy tripped over one of Willow’s shoes, she lost her balance and fell into the small Christmas tree in the corner. Ornaments had broken and scattered along the floor.
After Mommy had screamed at Willow and thrown the offending shoe, hitting her in the face, Willow had tried to pick up the mess to make Mommy less mad. An angel in a long white robe was the only thing that hadn’t broken. It had soft, dark hair that she could stroke like one of her dolls, and it also had soothing brown eyes that gave Willow the reassurance she so desperately needed. Willow hadn’t let Mommy see that she kept the angel. And that very day, Willow named her Angel Mommy and always kept the ornament close to her side.
Under the bed, she let her hand creep down to her shorts pocket where Angel Mommy waited to give her comfort. Willow stroked the doll’s hair as the yelling in the living room grew louder. Just as she was about to plug her ears with her fingers, there was the bang of the front door blowing open and hitting the wall, like when Mommy’s boyfriend came home angry. More voices now. More yelling. More broken glass. It sounded like the living room was being torn apart.
Mommy was begging someone with a voice that Willow wasn’t used to. It rang with fear, and it was usually Willow who was afraid, not Mommy. Thump, thump, thump. Willow’s body began to shake so hard at the sound her teeth clattered. She tried to figure out what was making the noise. Was it pounding boots? Mommy didn’t like when Willow’s shoes made loud noises. Her now-clammy hands went to swipe at her runny nose. Holding her breath, she prayed to Angel Mommy that the man in the boots wouldn’t find her. But even as she was saying the words over and over in her head, the scary person came inside her bedroom. She could tell right away from the size of his feet that it was a man. He headed to the closet. Clothes and toys began to litter the floor as he went through her possessions as if he were looking for something in particular.
Then he went over to her chest of drawers. One by one, he pulled the drawers out and tossed them to the floor. When one landed a little too close to her, she jumped and hit her head against the mattress, which made her let out a squeak. The small noise caused the man to freeze.
Willow’s heart began to beat wildly, and she felt like she couldn’t breathe. As she tried burrowing further underneath the bed, the mattress covering her was ripped away. With a scream, she stared up at a man who was a vision out of her worst nightmares—long, stringy black hair, an angry red scar that ran down his face and onto his neck, and a patch over one of his eyes. Willow pinched her eyes shut with fear. Please, please, help me, Angel Mommy!
But then Big Booted Man snatched her up and hoisted her over his shoulder. She could barely breathe, least of all cry out or scream. It was as if her voice had been snatched away the moment her precious hiding place had been invaded. Her body trembled with fear as he marched out of her bedroom and into the living room. He tossed her about like a mistreated baby doll. When they finally came to a stop, he jerked her around to where she was facing away from his chest. His arm was wrapped tightly around her waist, binding her to him.
Her voice momentarily returned at the horrific sight before her. “Mommy!” she cried. Mommy and her boyfriend, Jamey, were tied with rope to two chairs from the kitchen table. Jamey stared at her with the same aggravation he always had. But Mommy wasn’t talking or looking at her. Blood trickled out of her nose and mouth; her head hung limp. When she didn’t respond, Willow kicked at Big Booted Man to try to get away. “Mommy!” she shrieked.
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