“Would you just sit down?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
I continued pacing, and she continued chewing and laughing.
“You know you did this, right?”
I looked up at her. “Got you pregnant? Yah, I thought I had something to do with it.” I sarcastically remarked. I wasn’t in her chipper mood; I couldn’t joke about this.
“No, I mean you induced my labor.”
“What?” I felt the horror spread across my face.
“No, no, no. Come here.” She held out her hands to me, knowing she needed to comfort my uneasy nerves. I met her hands with mine and waited until she squeezed my fingers with hers to make eye contact. “The baby is ready. But the sex… all the sex… triggered this part.”
Then she gave me a wink. Why was she so calm?
“How are you not freaking out?”
“You’re doing enough of that for the both of us.”
“Well… well… you’re having a baby.”
“We’re having a baby.” She corrected me with a small chuckle.
“Yes. Exactly. So we should be freaking out.”
Her smile found me and calmed me yet again. She motioned to sit next to her, which I gladly accepted. I curled up next to her while she wrapped her arm around me and brought me tight into her side. It should have been me comforting her, I should’ve been calming her down, but right then, she was the strong one among us.
“You’re so beautiful.” I held her tightly, quietly knowing it might be the last time. But I didn’t want to think of it that way. I wanted to live in that moment with her.
The contractions hit, the epidural took over, and before long, a tiny person was placed into my arms. I was holding my baby girl. What I had spent months conditioning myself to believe as a fact, was no longer applicable. I had gotten to meet my daughter.
It was 10:15 a.m. My phone was buzzing in my pocket. Rocky was waiting for me, Sean and the gang were set up in the basement of the Cupid’s clubhouse, but I was holding my child. How could I leave now? How could I walk away now that I knew her?
“Grace…”
“You have to go.” She looked up at me, so matter of fact like.
“I don’t want to.”
“Then don’t, Ryan. Just… don’t.” She pleaded with me. It was heart breaking. And so tempting.
“Grace,” I moved to her side, handing her our daughter, “if I don’t leave now, something very bad could happen.”
I was sending Rocky straight into a trap. How could I do that? What had come over me? Everything I had done the past few months, I vowed was for Grace. But would Grace even recognize the man I was when I walked away from her? Would she, could she, love that man? What was I doing?
I needed to put a stop to it. Motorcycle clubs were inevitable. Drugs, gun running, the same. I had learned that these things happened with or without me. But the Cupids were about to be annihilated by a club that had done such a good job at staying under the radar, that their mere existence was nothing more than rumors. I had planned that. I had brought that plan into action. And now I knew, I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t let my daughter be brought into a world where I was the bad guy.
I had spent months being brainwashed into thinking that a normal life with a child and the woman I love would never satisfy my needs. I had told myself time and time again that if Grace had truly wanted me, she would have found a way back to me. But what had I been doing but making excuses? I had chosen the easy way out. That wasn’t how Grace and I did things. We saw things through to the end. We changed our stars.
“I’m going to fix this.”
“What?” Her brow furrowed.
“I… something is about to go down, something I’m not proud of. I’m going to stop it. And then I’m going to find my way back to you.”
Maybe it was the rush of hormones from just giving birth, maybe it was the reaction I deserved, but Grace broke down into shrieking sobs. I had never seen her collapse in such a way.
“Grace? Baby?” I pulled her into me.
“I just… I just… I just…”
She could barely speak through her cries. I lightly kissed her forehead, waiting patiently for her emotions to calm.
“You suck, you know that?” She whispered.
“What? Why?”
“What you did to me. You left me. And I tried to be strong, I tried to put on a good face, but damn…” She wouldn’t look at me, only kept talking. “I have been waiting, just waiting, for someone to knock on my door and tell me that the one person left in my life was dead: that I was officially alone. I prepared for that news. And then you came back. You rocked my world, but I knew it was only a taste. I knew I wouldn’t get to keep you. And now this.”
“Grace, you don’t know…”
She cut me off before I could finish. “Shut the fuck up, Ryan. You don’t know. You don’t know how hard it is to sit here and listen to you promise me that we’ll figure it out, that you’ll make it back to me, all the while knowing deep down that your first instinct is to run. If there’s a chance that you can keep me uninvolved, you’ll take it. That’s not how this relationship, this marriage, works; we’ve established that. So, you know what? Leave. Do what you have to do, but know that I don’t plan on you coming back. Know that the pattern you’ve established proves my point.”
I was shocked. And hurt. And she had every right to say each of those things. I had no rebuttal. I had nothing with which to fight back. The only thing I could give her was proof: proof that this time it would be different.
I stood, leaving her side. “I will find my way back. I will raise our daughter with you. I will find a way to make you trust me again.”
I didn’t hug her, I didn’t kiss her; I just walked out of the room. I left my wife and child to finish a fight. I left them then so I could win them back later.
I took a quick peek at my phone. It was 10:32.
“Rocky, change of plans.” I quickly spoke into the receiver. “Meet me at the clubhouse, just in the front. I’ll be there in fifteen.”
Grace
“Grace…”
Just the way he said it… I knew. I knew it was over: the bliss. The pure joy I felt staring at him as he held our baby girl was about to be taken from me. He was ending it.
“You have to go.” I looked straight into his eyes, wishing that daggers would fly and he would know the depth of my disappointment.
“I don’t want to.” I believed him. He was hurting; I was sure of it. Could there be a way to stop him? Would I have a chance at manipulating the situation?
“Then don’t, Ryan. Just…” So many reasons came to my mind, so many other options I could give him, but he needed to make that decision on his own. I needed to make sure he still could. So all I said, was: “don’t.” I thought it might be enough. I hoped it would be enough. But it wasn’t.
“Grace,” I couldn’t bear to hear him say my name that way. I knew what it meant. He wasn’t choosing me. He wasn’t choosing us. “If I don’t leave now, something very bad could happen.”
What could be worse than leaving his family? What could be worse than depriving us of a lifetime of these happy moments?
I wanted to hate him. I wanted to tell myself that I was strong; I could handle a life without him. I didn’t need him to choose us, because I was choosing my daughter. I would be able to give her the life she deserved, one where she wouldn’t, we wouldn’t, have to constantly fear abandonment.
But I couldn’t hate him. Deep down I knew that everything he did, every decision he made he did because he loved me. Every choice was only to protect me. How could you hate someone who offered up his own happiness in exchange for your safety? How could you not be absolutely in love with a man like that?
“I’m going to fix this.” He eyes were so determined.
“What?”
“I… something is about to go down, something I’m not proud of. I’m going to stop it. And then
I’m going to find my way back to you.”
It seemed random at the time, but when hearing those words, I snapped. Love him or not, I had enough. I was tired of promises. I was tired of getting my hopes up and then being let down. I couldn’t wait for him anymore, especially now that we had our daughter to think about. I had to put an end to it, for her sake. I wouldn’t subject her to the pain I had been living with the past six months. But the mere thought of my conviction combined with my exhaustion sent my emotions into overdrive. I simply broke down.
“Grace? Baby?” His arms were around me. Why did his touch bring me so much comfort?
“I just… I just… I just…”
Just say it, Grace. Say what you need to say. End this madness right here and now.
“You suck, you know that?” My tiny voice squeaked.
“What? Why?”
And then I let him have it
Everything I had wanted to say, but knew would be too hurtful, I threw at him. I said things I didn’t truly mean only to push him away. I didn’t care if the past six months had been hard on him as well. I only cared that I was the one who was left. He had made a choice without me. And sure, I understood his reasoning, I really did, but with everything we had been through, all the rules we had established, for him to just blatantly disregard a promise we had made to each other… I couldn’t live with that.
But he knew my threats only went so deep. He knew I was in love, and if the chance for a happily ever after were to take shape, I’d gladly choose that path. I would always choose the path that took me to Ryan. And only because he knew me so well was he able to still make me a promise after I had so terribly cut him down. “I will find my way back. I will raise our daughter with you. I will find a way to make you trust me again.”
He didn’t hug me, he didn’t kiss me; he just walked out of the room. He left me there, happy I had said my peace, but wishing I could take it all back. I didn’t want that to be the last thing I said to him, the way he would always remember me.
Luckily, I knew deep down that after the fight was over, really finally over, Ryan would always choose the path that took him to me.
Ryan
I was fuming as I left the hospital. I’d love to say it was because Grace had no reason to talk to me like that. Everything I had done had been to keep her safe. I watched her almost die, I watched as Sean held her life in his hands, and I made a decision in the moment that ensured she and our child would live. How could she berate me for that? How could I have been in the wrong?
But what I had been too ashamed to tell her, too ashamed to even admit to myself, was that I could have easily found a way to see her sometime in the past six months. Sean didn’t monitor me. He made a threat, yes, and had he found out about any rendezvous, I’m sure he would’ve taken action on that threat, but he wasn’t actively waiting for me to slip up. And I knew that. I had known that for quite awhile.
The reason I was so angry with Grace was because I had made the mistake, and she had pointed it out, even if she didn’t truly know what mistake I had made. It would’ve been so easy to explain my actions on the surface: it was a choice between her life and me getting to be with her. I chose her life, and I was suffering the consequences, plain and simple. It was black and white.
But the second layer wasn’t so black and white. The gray area was the power I felt, the success I let go to my head. When I chose love, I also chose a life where I had no other purpose. Everything I had been trained to do since childhood was dropped off on the corner, and I was supposed to forget it. I was supposed to forget who I was, forget my conditioning, and become a nobody. And yes, that was what I wanted. I didn’t care for that life anymore, and that was a choice I made even before meeting Grace. I wanted out. I wanted normal.
But when I found out Grace was pregnant, the first thought that went through my mind was the question of how I was to support a child. Sure, I had saved up a good chunk of change, but that was just supposed to be for Grace and me to live large for a brief amount of time. A child changed all of that. Would my child shake their head at me because I was just some greasy mechanic who had no way of providing for my family the way a man should? Would my child want for things that I regrettably couldn’t provide because my skill set was so limited?
I hated Sean for the way he had gone about it, the way he pulled me from Grace, but once I got that first taste of success, everything began to turn around. I stopped seeing him as the monster and started seeing him instead as the man who had shown me the full extent of my talents. He showed me power, he showed me focus, and then he gave me back the family I had been dreaming of since childhood. What started out as a way to support Grace and our baby from behind the scenes, turned into a life I craved to wake up to each morning. He knew from that moment that he had won. I had been sucked in. If I went back to Grace, I would lose everything else.
So he didn’t monitor me, and I didn’t sneak out to see my wife. I let her suffer. I let her be truly alone. I allowed her to think the worst, while I convinced myself that if she cared for me, she would have found me.
So yes, I was angry because of what Grace had said to me, because of the accusations she made. But I was angry because she was right. I let her down. I didn’t choose love.
It was time to change that.
Grace
I felt terrible. I don’t know what I expected from my little outrage, but it wasn’t to end up alone in a hospital room. I just wanted to prove a point, for someone to listen to me. I didn’t want him to actually leave.
“Knock knock.”
I looked up as Mark peeked his head around the corner of the hospital room door.
“Well this feels oddly familiar.”
I chuckled, half sincerely, half out of pity. “What are you doing up here?”
“What, I can’t visit my favorite patient?”
“I’m not your patient today.”
“True, but my shift doesn’t start for another ten minutes, so I guess I’m just visiting my friend.” He gave me a crooked half smile.
I was happy to see him, happy to see a familiar face, and happy because I knew he wouldn’t leave me. If I could count on Mark for anything, it was that he never left my side when I needed someone.
“How did you know I was here?”
“Funny story,” he moved closer to me, sitting on the edge of the bed, “I woke up this morning realizing how big of a jerk I came off as last night, so I stopped by your place to apologize.”
“And I wasn’t there.” I continued his thought.
“You weren’t. I noticed your car wasn’t in its spot, so I figured I’d just check up here before my shift, and voila, here you are.”
“Stalker.” I teased.
“Yes, pretty much.”
We both laughed at our little exchange, neither of us really ready to talk about what happened. We made small talk about the room, about the weird pictures on the wall, and about all the tubes hooked into my arms. We laughed at the people we could see out of the window and how they had no idea we were spying on them. We laughed at anything and everything, even though during that whole exchange, he had found a way to hold my hand.
“So, this might be awkward, but where’d you put the baby?”
“Ha!” I choked, finally finding an excuse to pull my hand away without screaming at the awkwardness. “The nurse took her to the pediatrician for a check up.”
“Ah, yes.” Mark inched himself higher on the bed, closer to me. “So, how are you feeling?”
I took a deep breath, trying to combat the tension. “I’m fine. And just to help move this conversation forward for you, I’m fine with last night too. You were drunk.”
“I was unacceptable.”
“It happens.”
“It shouldn’t have.”
“But it did and while I appreciate your apology, I’m happy to move past it.”
Mark smiled softly at me and shook his head as he lowered his hand on top of mine.
> “Mark…” I stopped him, pulling my hand away before we touched. “Ryan came back last night.”
He half laughed and turned his face toward me. “I’m sorry… what?”
“My husband, Ryan, he showed up last night, at my apartment.”
“So he’s not dead?” He was oddly becoming angrier as he said each word.
“No. It’s a long story, but…”
“No, Grace. It’s not a long story. You see that, right? Here are the facts: he left you drugged up and alone in the hospital emergency room and then didn’t show up again for six full months. That doesn’t need a story. That needs some sort of restraining order.”
“Mark, it’s not like that.”
“And you’re defending him? Where is he now?”
I didn’t want to answer him.
“I said ‘where is he now?’.”
“He… he had to go take care of something.”
“Sure he did. What, Grace, are you just stupid when it comes to him?”
My jaw dropped involuntarily. “Fuck you.”
“Grace…”
“No, you don’t get to talk to me like that.”
“But I do.” He leaned in closer to me, his hand moving to my cheek. “I care about you. You’re my friend. How am I supposed to let you run back to someone who could turn his back on you like that?”
Death of Cupids (The Blood of Cupids MC) Page 13
