Lyon's Heart

by Jordan Silver

  “Fuck me harder Colt I’m not gonna break…hold my leg up for me…yeah right there…” I knew I should’ve pulled my strokes but fuck she felt so good I couldn’t hold back. So I’d given her the fucking she wanted, begged for, and came harder than I ever have in my fucking life. I’m talking eyes crossing and back locking up on me. Fucking girl.

  Then of course she had to go and do the shit she always does. Fucking women.

  “Colt.”

  “What?” I don’t sleep for shit now because she has trouble sleeping comfortably with her beach ball tummy. I’d read about that in one of the books so I was prepared for it. These days we sleep with me sitting up more or less, and her reclining back against me. She always seems to need shit in the middle of the night and I’m the fetcher. I thought this was just going to be another ice cream run or maybe she needed ointment rubbed into her itchy tummy but no such luck. She hunched over and grabbed her stomach and all the air was leeched out of me. My mouth went dry and I felt panic try to set in before I pushed it back.

  “My water broke.”

  She sounded scared shiltless so I knew it was going to be on me. I don’t know where I got it from but I knew I had to be on my game this time. I can’t show any fear or she’d freak. I took a deep breath and pushed down the fear that was clawing up my throat.

  It’s a situation Lyon handle it.

  “Okay babe we’re ready for this.” I was up and moving on autopilot. Her bag was packed and already in the car, which had been prepared with the baby seat and all we needed for coming home weeks ago. My mind was suddenly very clear for some strange reason that I didn’t understand because I’d been scared as fuck at the mere thought of this night. I called the doctor and was told to bring her to the hospital. Mom was next on the list and she would get the phone tree going. We were in the car and on the move fifteen minutes after she first called my name.

  “Colt why do I need the comforter wrapped around me?”

  “It’s cold.” Her argument that her coat was enough fell on deaf ears as we drove through the streets, which were eerily empty. What the fuck, did all kids decide this shit? What was up with the going into labor in the middle of the night?

  I kept one hand on her tummy over the comforter all the way and every cringe was felt in my gut. I knew I wasn’t cut out to see her in pain but this was one pain I couldn’t bear for her. I gritted my teeth against the yell that wanted to break free because she was looking at me with wide eyes full of fear.

  “We’ve got this babe, we took all the classes and read all the books.”

  “Colt the fucking books does not tell you what to do about the burning pain of something tearing through your body trying to rip you in half.” Cue the waterworks; fuck me.

  “I know babe but here they’ll give you something for the pain. Aren’t you glad you didn’t go with the home birth thing?”

  I guess that was the wrong shit to say because she actually growled at me. Shit, the books covered this part too.

  They met us at the door with a chair and she was rushed off to be prepped. Somebody was saying something about filling out papers but they were out of their fucking minds. Luckily for them mom and dad came in behind us and I heard dad go into doctor mode which took care of that. I never let go of her hand the whole time, but I couldn’t tell you shit about what was being said. I only had eyes for her. She was trying to be brave but I could see the stark fear in her face as she squeezed the shit out of my hand.

  I stood tall like the man that I am for the sixteen hours it took my baby to come into the world. If you believe that shit I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

  The happy fuck nurse took us into a room and started rattling off questions. Kat was doing all she could to breathe and my brain was still at home on my side of the fucking bed; sheer terror. I knew what I was in for here I’d read about it enough to scare the fuck out of myself.

  “How far apart are your contractions? Did your water break are you in a lot of pain?” What the fuck?

  “Look I don’t know how far apart they are, she got up and told me her water broke and fifteen minutes later we were on the road. She was in pain the whole fucking way here so you need to give her something like now. Oh yeah she doesn’t like needles so we signed up for the intravenous sedation thing whatever the fuck.” This whole time Kat had a death grip on my hand and I was sweating.

  “We can’t give her anything until we’ve checked her over sir…”

  “Uh which part of she’s in pain did you not get?” She started hooking up all these things to Kat and I thought my fucking heart would stop.

  “What the fuck what’s going on?”

  “Colt.” She wasn’t in too much pain to ride my ass however.

  “These are just so we can monitor the baby sir and make sure everything is working as it should.”

  “Uh huh where’s the doctor?”

  “She should be here any moment she called ahead and told us to prepare for you.”

  The doc showed up not long after that and everything became a blur. People came and went in the room. Her mom, Char and mine were in the room with us. The shit looked nothing like anything I’d imagined. There was a separate little area with table and chairs like people were here to hang out or some fuckery. I’m pretty sure people spoke and I answered but I have no idea what was said. I do remember yelling at someone to do something to end her misery when she cried and screamed in pain, that shit was not allowed. I prayed harder that night than on any other that I could remember. She had moments of rest but those were way too short to suit me and each time she started up with the breathing and the screaming I was ready to go to war. I wondered about the purpose of the Lamaze class because I couldn’t remember half the shit they’d taught me. I remembered enough to get us through and by the time my Caitlin was born squalling and complaining there were tears on my face.

  She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life but she was so fucking tiny she scared the shit out of me. When they placed that little bundle in my arms my heart just laid down. I was done, whatever I’d had left after her mother got her hooks in me she took. I put her in her mother’s arms and the sight brought me to my knees. There was a sudden flurry of movement as everyone wanted to get their hands on my girls and I wanted to tell them all to get the hell out. It was pretty much written in stone from that moment on. I wasn’t going to play well with others when it came to my little family.

  Three days after my daughter was born I went and got her name tattooed over my heart right beneath her mother’s, my life felt complete.

  When I brought them home we were overrun with company for the first week. I hardly got to hold my little girl because the women in my life were baby hogs and Elena was the worst, damn. She was here from the first thing in the morning till late at night. She and her posse had pretty much taken over my damn house. Kat didn’t seem to mind but I was at the end of my rope. I actually had to steal my kid to get some time with her. She was a daddy’s girl through and through though I don’t care what the rest of them said. Dad was another one, him Drake and Cy were almost as bad as the women. My poor kid got passed around more in her first month of life than a football.

  I finally put my foot down. I had stayed home for the first three weeks but had to go back to the shop because of the amount of orders we’d been getting lately but I came up with a new rule. When I came home in the evenings she was mine everyone else had to head out.

  “Colt you’re obsessed.” Kat was puttering around the nursery putting stuff away while I rocked my girl in my arms.

  “Your point?”

  She just shook her head at me and went about her business, which was fine by me. She’s another one I have to fight her for baby time too.

  Caitlin didn’t sleep in her crib for the first few months of her life. She fell asleep on my chest and stayed there until the next morning when I got up. The only reason that came to an end is because she was starting to move around a lot more and I got sc
ared that I might roll over in the night and smother her. That first month I hardly slept at night because she got up every couple of hours. But by the end of that month she was sleeping better. I wanted to move her into our room but all the women had a lot to say about that idea so I let it go. When I wasn’t working I was with my baby. It was hard to believe that she had been the orchestrator of all my fears and angst in the last few months or so. Now I couldn’t imagine our lives without her. There was a reason behind my madness. I planned on forming a bond with my kid that would never be broken. I wasn’t going to wait until she was a teen to try to reel her in. I’d read enough horror stories to know that that’s not what I wanted. I still get a little freaked out every once in a while but all in all we’re good.

  My girls were healthy and happy and all was right in my world. Caitie bear was her own little person. I wasn’t sure which of us she was more like, me or her mother, but I do know she knows her dad. She’d pick her little head up when I come into the house as soon as she heard my voice and track me around the room until I picked her up. Those first few months had been eye opening. I’d learned that my capacity for love was tremendous, I loved both my girls something fierce. They’ll probably put me in an early grave.

  KAT

  Well I survived the pregnancy, barely. I think it’s safe to say my life has made a complete three sixty since I got on that plane to come here. Within the year I had a new husband and a baby. I don’t think I had a moment to think until after the delivery room. Colton Lyon is like a Mac truck, he just runs you over and that’s it. I thought he was bad before the baby came but since she got here there’ve been more rules and regulations laid down than a reform school. During my pregnancy there were times I thought he was going to go into a coma. He stressed over every little thing and my movements were curtailed ‘til his mother and mine had to come to the house if they wanted to see me. Every other word was Kat you can’t and Kat don’t. I understood what was going on with him so I took it in stride. Don’t get me started on when he got into the cop shows and reading up on everything that could go wrong. He did everything but wrap me up in bubble wrap and tuck me away somewhere. And when I got big as a sperm whale as Jared liked to tease me, my husband still thought I was the most beautiful thing in the world. He never stopped loving me, or showing me how much, but have mercy I’m not sure there’s ever been another one like him. Unbeknownst to him the women around town were secretly mooning over him. They thought he was just the hottest thing on two feet because of the way he treated this pregnancy. Some of the women at the Lamaze class used to ask me the most embarrassing questions. That is, when they weren’t just staring at him as if they were in a trance. I never felt threatened by them though because he pretty much still did the same thing to me when he took off his shirt. But Colton had no clue he was devastating half the pregnant women in the town. One of them who was a little older, maybe in her early forties had pulled me aside one evening while Colt was grilling the instructor to tell me and I quote. ‘Don’t take this the wrong way dear but I hope you don’t mind the fact that your husband plays a very big part in my latest fantasies’. I didn’t know if to be flattered or appalled. I never told him any of that because he was always worried about how I felt. And if he thought someone was doing something that would upset me there would be hell to pay. He read any and everything he could get his hands on about being a good dad and the best way to raise a child. When it came down to it he was obsessed to put it mildly. Everything was about his baby girl. We’re not going to discuss his behavior when he first heard we were having a girl and the big bad biker boy hit a hitch. The guys teased him unmercifully but his dad is the worst. Nothing can get Colt to muttering more than Daniel riding him about losing his mind. I couldn’t walk down the stairs by myself because I’d made the stupid mistake of telling Colt I could no longer see my feet. His logic was that if I couldn’t see them then I obviously had no idea where I was stepping. I very rarely lost it and snapped at him, which he ignored anyway, so what was the point? Mom made the mistake of mentioning a midwife in his presence and I never heard the end of that one. He lectured he ranted and he threatened. In the end it was just easier to go along with his dictates instead of as he said ‘trying some hair brained bullshit I’d seen on TV.’ Telling him that women did it all the time meant nothing to him so I stopped trying. In the delivery room he did okay, after he got through yelling at everyone to do something. He tried really hard to hide it but I knew he was terrified. His face was white and he kept gritting his teeth. It probably didn’t help that I was screaming like someone had been driving spikes into my vagina, which in my opinion is an accurate approximation of what labor felt like. When he threatened to flatten the quack doctor if she didn’t do something about the pain I had to pull myself together and handle the situation, it helped me deal with the pain a little.

  Coming home was another eye opening experience. The two days I spent in the hospital Colt had corralled everyone into coming over and getting the house ready for us. He’d already child proofed everything and we had everything you could possibly need for a baby. But he somehow found more that needed doing. Jared and Cy were only too happy to tattle and tell me what a madman he had been.

  “I don’t see how he had time to do all this because he never left the hospital, not even when I was asleep.” Colt refused to leave the hospital grounds because he was terrified someone would make off with his Caitie bear. He’d seen some news report where the woman walked into the hospital and made it all the way to the door with the baby before being caught. I had to hear about that ad nauseam. The nurses thought he was too cute because when I was asleep he sat up in the chair next to my bed with the baby in his arms. I thought he was nuts.

  “He called Elena every hour on the hour with instructions. Daniel kept us well supplied with the wacky weed or we might’ve all shanked your husband by now the man’s a menace.”

  “Oh hush Jared he’s not that bad.” My ass, he’s totally out of control.

  For the first three months of Caitlin’s life I don’t think Colton slept a wink. He laid with her on his chest up until she was three and a half months. The only reason he put her in her crib after that is because she was getting bigger and moving around more and he was afraid she’d either fall or he’d roll over on her. I tell you I never really worried about anything, because if there was something that could go wrong Colt had already thought of it and put things in place to prevent it. Everywhere he went that baby was on his arm, she was like an extension of him and boy is she a daddy’s girl. Now his newest obsession is making sure the baby has the best first Xmas ever. He’s got more camera equipment to immortalize the occasion than a photographer at New York fashion week. I just go with the flow and try to keep up. I knew my bad boy was going to be a lot to handle but good grief.

  Chapter 1

  “Caitlin baby give daddy a break will ya?”

  “Dada, da, da.”

  “I’m gonna da, da, da you in a minute get over here.”

  My little princess is nine months going on fifteen. She can’t really talk yet but her first word was dada then came mama. I won that fight. She started crawling at six or seven months and all hell broke loose from then on. She gets into everything so I have to watch her every minute that I’m alone with her or I’m afraid she’d hurt herself. Her mother is a little more lax than I when it comes to parenting. She says ‘oh she’s supposed to do that or don’t worry Colt that’s normal’. I didn’t take shit for granted. In the first three months after I’d started putting her in her crib at night I stood over her to make sure she was breathing right and shit before I went to bed. I spent almost every waking hour worrying about one thing or the other. Anything that could go wrong I tried to head off at the pass. Now realistically I know there are no guarantees in life but I couldn’t help myself. Now instead of one I had two people to protect and take care of. While Kat was healing from the birth I saw that she had everything she needed and was doing everything that
they told her to do. Believe it or not she was up and about in just a few days; which I found unfucking believable after having seen the birth process. I had to keep an eye on her to make sure she didn’t overdo it but all in all things went fine. I was tired as fuck most of the time because Caitlin woke up every hour on the hour that first two or so months. Half the time Kat slept through the feedings while I held the baby in place. Those were our bonding times because as she got older she stayed up longer and longer after her feedings and that’s when she and daddy had their talks.

  Now she’s growing like a tumbleweed. She smiles and my heart melts and she’s so much her mother’s daughter that she knows it and uses it. She gets into shit and heads for me with her pouty face and those teary eyes that I can’t resist. I always know she’s done something that she wasn’t supposed to but I can’t scold my baby. She’s going to be a handful if I keep that up or at least that’s what I keep hearing from everyone around here. Like I give a fuck.