by Jessie Cooke
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I guess I’m not sure how to process this. I thought I was ready...but fuck, baby, I’m going to miss the hell out of him.”
She laid her head against his back. “I know you will. And it’s okay to be sad.”
“He didn’t want me to be, though. He made me promise we’d have this big damned party and I’d get drunk...but all I want to do is grieve for him.”
“Then do that. Saint of all people would understand. Wasn’t he the one that told you to tell people how you felt, and be honest with your feelings?”
“You told me that too.”
She smiled at him in the mirror behind the bar. “I love you for remembering one of the million things I’ve said while lecturing you...but Saint gets credit for you getting in touch with your feelings, and I’m okay with that. I think he’d be okay with you just being sad today.”
“Paige?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“I don’t want to do this anymore.”
She slid her hand across his shoulders and sat down on the stool next to him. “Do what, baby?”
He looked around the club. “This...what I’ve done here and what I do for this club. I don’t want my life to be club first any longer. I want it to be family first and I want you and Jessie to be my family...and I want to make more, and I want to be a man that they can all look up to and be proud of.”
Paige had tears in her eyes. “Are you proposing something here, big guy?”
He smiled. “Kind of. As usual I’m ill prepared. I don’t even have a ring.”
Paige got the prospect’s attention behind the bar and said, “Can I have that O-ring there, the one next to the beer tap?” He handed it to her with a funny look. It was a black silicone ring that kept the beer from leaking out around the nozzle. She handed it to Garrett. “Will this work?”
He smiled again and took it. “I guess since everything else we’ve done so far has been so weird, this may as well be too.”
“Ask me to marry you, Garrett.”
He slid off the stool and put his knee on the floor. People partying around them stopped to watch. “Will you marry me, Paige?”
She put her hands on his face and kissed him. “I thought you’d never ask.” Then she held out her left hand and let him slide the O-ring on her finger. “It’s perfect,” she said, with tears in her eyes.
“Hot damn! Bear’s getting hitched!” Munchkin announced it to the room and everyone surrounded them to wish them congratulations. When it was Trigger’s turn he said:
“You’re getting a good man.”
Paige smiled. “I know, but thank you for saying that.”
“It’s true,” he said. “Except for that one time when he knocked my teeth out, he’s okay.”
Paige giggled. “I’m sorry, but that still makes me laugh.” Trigger glanced over where the quiet and moody Scrubs was sitting and said:
“You won’t be laughing if that sadist ever gets ahold of you. It’s a miracle I’m still so good-looking.” Paige rolled her eyes at that and turned her attention back to Garrett. He’d been watching the exchange and he was smiling.
“What’s that smug look for?” she asked.
“You were the only woman that ever chose me over that pretty boy, and damn, am I glad.”
“You’re not just keeping me to make him jealous, are you?”
“Mm-hmm.” She punched him in the arm and he laughed and wrapped her up, pulling her into his chest. “I love you, Paige, thank you for saving my life.”
“Back at you, kidnapper. I love you so much.”
A few hours later, they were all out near Hoover Dam. They’d piled into the two vans and one SUV the club owned, and the sober prospects had driven them out. Garrett was glad that most of them were drunk already because he’d been to funerals of brothers where people were sober, and they could get ugly. Garrett was the only brother that was stone cold sober. He’d thought about getting drunk, and chasing away some of the pain, but that seemed cowardly to him somehow. Saint wanted him to learn how to feel...and how to talk about his feelings...so today, in Saint’s honor, he was going to do both.
“Okay, let me have your attention up here,” Monkey said, like he was calling church to order. “I know a bunch of us would like to say a thing or two about Saint. But the thing is, it’s about to get dark and I don’t like being in the middle of the desert when I can’t see what the fuck is crawling up my pant leg. So, Bear’s gonna do the talking and y’all can all say goodbye on your own time, in your own way.”
Garrett felt like he was going to throw up as soon as all eyes were on him. He felt Paige reach over and take his hand, and there was something in hers. He looked down and saw that she had put Saint’s gold cross in his palm. She smiled up at him then with tears in her pretty eyes, and suddenly it didn’t matter who else was looking at him. He loved her so much, and he also felt like Saint was looking down at them. He opened his mouth and probably for the first time in his life, the words just poured out.
“I met Saint when he was about twelve years old. He was running to catch a train and ran right into a car. I didn’t even know him yet, but something made me insist on riding to the hospital with him. See, I’d noticed him earlier, sitting in the restaurant. He was a pale, skinny kid and he looked both fascinated by the rough-looking bikers and afraid to be out in the world alone. Saint wasn’t supposed to make it. The doctors told his parents to say their goodbyes. But that little shit had other plans. He wasn’t ready to go yet. For those of you who really knew him, you all know that Saint did more drinking and working than he did anything else. He never seemed like he was enjoying his own life...but he always seemed like he was enjoying everyone else’s.”
The people in the crowd nodded and there was a low rumble as they all agreed. Saint wasn’t necessarily a nosy guy, but he was always checking in to make sure everyone else was okay. Garrett just took that for granted, even after Beau. “Saint had me from the moment I saw him because he reminded me of somebody. That someone is a person that most of you have never heard of, because I’ve always found it too painful to talk about him. My own pain was always more important than anything else. But today I want to tell you about him. He was my little brother and his name was Beau.
“Beau came into my life at a bad time. I’d lost my mother and I was angry about it. I was resentful of him for having a mother and what I saw as trying to take my dad from me. He was a pale, skinny kid who was both fascinated by me and terrified. I was a big, scared kid, and I turned all that fear into anger and I focused most of it on Beau. But no matter what I did, or how I treated him, he kept following me around. It annoyed me and it just made me meaner. It seemed that the meaner I was, the more determined he was to break through those walls. Then one day I watched Beau die. I held him while he bled to death and in those few moments I thought of everything I wish I’d said to him.
“He was stronger than me. Not physically, but emotionally for sure. I’d been grieving over my mother for six years by that time. Beau lost his dad when he was only five and when I met him it had only been a year...but he was okay. He talked about his dad and he missed him, but he didn’t feel sorry for himself. Beau put everyone else before himself. He was just this little bitty thing and he was the baby. He could have manipulated anything he wanted out of his mom, or even my old man for that matter...but he didn’t. The fact is, he was one of the most unselfish people I’ve ever known. If there was only one cookie, or one cupcake in the house, he wouldn’t eat it, until he offered it to me first. Of course, I always took it.” Garrett’s voice cracked as he said, “I remember holding him in the ambulance while they were trying to pry him out of my arms and telling him if he wouldn’t die I would always let him have the last cookie.” He had to stop for a few seconds and compose himself. His heart felt like it was breaking all over again.
“Anyways,” he began again, “Saint was so much like him. Saint’s life before he came to us was shit, basically. He w
as abused and neglected, and he was told every day that he was going to hell. But what those people didn’t know or understand about my brother Saint was that he refused to believe them. It didn’t matter what happened in his life, he believed that he was going to have as much of a chance as anyone else of getting into those pearly gates. No matter what he went through, he held onto something that I lost a long time ago...hope. He always had a smile for you, no matter what. He always had something positive to say. Just like with Beau, I never saw it, until it was almost too late. Saint sacrificed his life for me, but that wasn’t the greatest gift I got from him. What I got was a second chance to be a decent big brother and according to him, I guess I did okay. The other thing I got was hope. He taught me that no matter how bleak things look, there’s always hope...you just have to accept what you can’t change and move past it, and keep on hoping for the best.
“Saint and Beau were the two bravest people I ever met and the hope I have in my heart isn’t for them, because I know they both charmed their way into heaven. Saint’s probably up there right now, making a toast. The hope I hold in my heart today is for me...that someday I might be as brave as the little boy who lost his father, had to share his mother, and looked up to a brother that treated him like shit...and never lost hope. And that someday, when I have to face the prospect of dying, I can do it with as much dignity as my brother Saint. Because in his immortal words...what choice do I really have? Thanks.”
Paige grabbed his hand again and squeezed it. Garrett hadn’t realized as he was talking that tears were rolling down his face. He reached up with the other hand and wiped them away and then he squeezed Paige’s hand and let it go, and opened up the jar. As he turned it over and let the desert wind take his best friend away he whispered, “I love you, brother, both of you.”
32
One Year Later
Paige held her breath. Garrett wasn’t snoring, the window was closed, and there wasn’t another sound in the house. She looked at the clock on the monitor next to the bed. It was three fifteen a.m. She hadn’t gone to sleep until after one. What was she doing awake? She reached across the giant that was her husband and picked up the monitor. Putting it to her ear, she listened hard. Nothing. There were no hungry cries. No whimpers. She didn’t know why she was up, but she knew that she’d better go back to sleep before something changed.
She put the monitor back and instead of returning to her side of the California King-sized bed, she cuddled up to Garrett’s back and rested her hand on his stomach. She closed her eyes and relaxed into the gentle rise and fall of his body as he breathed. She smiled and let her hand inch down just a hair. She hadn’t even gotten as far as the top of his shorts when he moaned. She wondered if he was dreaming about her. It had better be about her. She smiled again. She really never doubted it. He’d been nothing but a devoted husband and father, and she counted herself one of the luckiest women alive. Not a day went by, either, when she didn’t remember that he was the reason she was alive. She let her hand inch down further so that her fingers rested just underneath the elastic band of his shorts. He was just complaining a few days before that since he quit riding every day, he was getting fat. Paige had laughed at that. She didn’t see an ounce of fat on him. But when she saw that he was serious, she’d told him she would start jogging with him, or they could join a gym, and she would stop cooking such fattening meals. He asked her, if he promised to jog and join a gym, if she’d keep cooking those fattening meals. She liked that he loved her cooking. Garrett loved to eat. She joked with him sometimes that she hoped they never ran out of money for food or he might eat her. Jessie had been there that night and she’d gotten in on the joking. Garrett had pretended he was going to eat her for dessert and she’d run through the house giggling and squealing until he caught her. Paige loved watching them together and she loved the sounds of the happy little girl in their home.
She slid her hand down just a little further and when her fingers skimmed the head of his cock, she could feel that he was already hard. She wrapped her hand around it and heard him suck in a breath. Then she leaned in and whispered in his ear, “How’d you like a hand job, sailor?”
“Sure,” he whispered, “but be quiet or you’ll wake up my wife.”
“You’re a brave man to talk like that when I have the family jewels in my hand.”
He chuckled and rolled over on his back. In one swift movement he took off his shorts and then he reached over and ran his hand between her legs. “Those are the family jewels right there, my queen. Why are you awake?”
“I thought I heard something.”
Garrett looked at the monitor. Paige said, “All’s quiet in there. I was going to go back to sleep, but you were lying there looking so sexy.”
He chuckled again. “You can’t see me, it’s dark.” She stroked his hard cock up and down.
“I don’t need to see you, I have it all memorized.”
“Mm...damn, baby, that feels good. You really should be sleeping...”
“You want me to stop?” Paige knew she should be sleeping. Garrett had gone back to work, working at a custom bike shop in downtown Vegas, and she’d gotten about ten hours of sleep total in the past week.
“No...never,” he said. “But if you’d rather sleep...” She took the hand he’d put between her legs and put it back there. Her panties were soaked.
“Does that feel like I’d rather sleep?”
He moaned again and suddenly she was flat on her back and her clothes were being torn off of her. They didn’t have sex as often as they did when they first got married, not that she didn’t want to, or that he wasn’t always horny, but married life and parenthood took priority sometimes. That was why at three a.m. when the house was quiet, she didn’t want to pass up the opportunity to feel her man inside of her.
Garrett leaned down and claimed her mouth in a hungry kiss. Even after over a year together, she still turned to jelly when he touched her. His hands were all over her now naked body, massaging her breasts, rubbing her belly, and sliding down between her legs to tease her clit. She was soaked, and she no longer just wanted him, she needed him. She felt him throw the down comforter off the bed and watched as he sat up with his knees between her open legs and looked down at her with a hungry look in his eyes. He reached down and parted her lips with one hand and used the other to press in a finger. She was so wet that it slid in with no resistance. She moaned loudly, and he laughed and shushed her and then slid in another thick finger. In a breathless voice she said:
“You can’t shush me and then do things like that.”
“You want me to stop?”
“You want me to kill you?”
He laughed and kept moving his fingers. Her back arched up off the bed and she scraped her nails down his chest, running them gently over his throbbing cock and balls before running them back up. She was close to orgasm, but tonight...or this morning...she wanted to come all over his cock. “Fuck me, Garrett.”
“Say please.”
“You’re asking for it, mister. Put that cock in my pussy and fuck me now!”
“Ask nicely.”
“Never mind, I...” He stuck both fingers inside of her as deeply as they would go. “Oh...please...”
“Please what, baby?” he asked playfully as he pulled them back out.
“Please fuck me. I need you. Please. And hurry before...” He stuck them in again until they found resistance. “Oh Jesus!”
The next time he slid them out, he replaced them with his cock. She groaned in ecstasy. She loved the way he filled her up. “Damn, baby...you feel so good,” he said as he began moving inside of her. He did that little circling his hips thing that he’d been doing since they met. She loved it. It made her head want to explode, and tonight, it made her come, hard and fast. She cried out, again too loudly, as she came, but Garrett caught most of the noise with a kiss. He held her up with his mouth over hers and his tongue exploring the furthest corners of it and he plunged his throbbin
g cock in and out of her pussy. He fit her so well, like he was made for her. He was truly her other half. The piece that she’d been missing and didn’t even know she was looking for until he found her.
Garrett was thrusting in and out, quickly, like his life depending on coming inside of her. Paige was clutching onto him like her life depended on it as well. A fire was burning in her core and Garrett was the only one that could extinguish it. He let her come up for air out of the kiss and he slid his big hands underneath her. He held up her hips, the way she liked it, and stroke after stroke after stroke, his hard shaft dragged against her swollen clit. Her second orgasm was like an explosion from the inside of her body out and she felt him come at the same time. She opened her eyes and looked up at him, and he was biting down on his bottom lip while every vein in his neck was distended and a look of pure joy danced in his brown eyes. He kept rocking into her, long after they both finished. His sexy body was covered in sweat when he finally stopped and collapsed down next to her on the bed. “Fuck. That was...damn, baby, you’re so fucking sexy.”
Paige smiled. “Even when I wake you up at three a.m.?”
He rolled toward her and kissed her softly on the lips. “Especially when you wake me up at three a.m. But let’s hurry and go back to sleep before...” The monitor came to life. Sounds of that hungry cry wafted out and Paige and Garrett both laughed, when they really felt like crying.
“I’ll go,” she told him. “We’ll stay in the room and I’ll turn off the monitor. You go back to sleep.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, baby. You have work tomorrow.” She kissed him on the cheek and rolled out of bed. Slipping on a pair of clean underpants and then pulling on her nightgown over her head, she headed down the hall toward the nursery. She’d barely lifted little Beau out of his crib when she heard Garrett’s voice behind her.
“Hey little guy,” he was saying, “did Mommy walk right past you? The nerve of her.” Beau had been the one crying when Paige got to the room, but as soon as she walked past the crib, his twin must have smelled her, and he started to scream. She turned and looked at Garrett with the tiny little boy in his hands. If she lived to be a thousand years old, she knew she’d never see a more beautiful sight than this man of hers with his children. It was sweet and sexy all at the same time and it made her love him even more than she had the second before.
