by Zoey Parker
I wasn’t proposing, but there was no way I wasn’t putting it out there. I was definitely putting it on the table. It was something for us to think about as we continued to move forward. Together.
“I mean, you’re talking about making yourself and the MC my family,” she said. The more she talked, the more animated she became. “You want me to be yours. Not just your lover or your girlfriend, but yours-yours.”
I laughed as I watched her wrap her mind around what I was saying. “Right,” I agreed. “I want you to be mine, but not in the sense that you belong to me. You’re not a piece of property, and your independence is one of the things that continues to attract me to you. You’re strong. You’re my equal. You are not beneath me. You will be more than just my girlfriend, my lover, my old lady, or my wife. You will be my partner, and that baby will be our baby. I will take the place as your child’s father,” I said.
I didn’t tell her that because she made me nervous, she also made me certain that she was the one for me. I didn’t tell her that talking about the future made me a little scared, but it did. The last time I had talked to anyone about the future, there had been no future for us. We married, made each other miserable, and divorced. And it was ugly. I had vowed never to do it again.
But I found someone who made me want to give love another try in Lucy. I felt her affection was genuine. She wasn’t hiding a heinous bitch inside anywhere, waiting to pounce on me as soon as we slid the wedding bands on.
“Are you asking me to marry you now? Are you proposing to me right this moment?” she asked.
“No, I’m not. I’m asking you to be mine. I want you as my old lady, essentially as my girlfriend. I want us to give this relationship a real try instead of leaving it as just sex. I want more out of this, and I want to offer you more, too,” I told her.
She looked at me and opened her mouth as if to speak a couple of times. I could see that she was thinking over what I’d told her. If my divorce still felt new from time to time after a couple of years, surely her breakup with the baby’s father felt like her immediate past. If she was unsure of herself, I understood completely. I was asking her to make a big move, to take a huge leap of faith.
We sat in silence and stared at each other, hoping the other would speak first. The longer she went without saying anything, the farther away I felt my chances slipping. I wanted to say something, to urge her to take a chance on me, but I didn’t want to push her farther away than she was already drifting.
I grabbed her hand instead. I laced our fingers together and pulled her back down to me, to lie across me. I wanted us to touch, because it was harder for us to ignore the possibility of being together as a couple if I made it feel like we already were.
Then, I waited.
Chapter 18
Lucy
Blade was definitely unlike any other man in my life. He wasn’t afraid to address my concerns. I knew he meant what he was saying when he told me he wouldn’t turn his back on me. I knew he meant it when he said he wanted to adopt my child, to make the baby ours instead of just mine. I also knew he wasn’t proposing to me, not right then. He was simply letting me know what he wanted, down the line.
It was everything I wanted. He was everything I wanted. In Blade, I found someone no one else wanted to be. The person I was supposed to avoid because he was sleazy or violent or a criminal, was turning out to be the Prince Charming I had been searching for all my life. He might have been all the things he was supposed to be, but he was nothing but sweet perfection when he was with me.
I could tell he lived his life according to a moral code. It was a code he didn’t flaunt. He didn’t constantly have to repeat neat, streamlined quotes from his code, because his morality was reflected in how he lived and how he treated the people around him. I had seen already that he was held in high regard by his peers, and that spoke volumes about who he was.
I knew he was a man of his word. Sure, he may have had a past, but it was his past, just like mine or anyone else’s. The person in front of me was all that mattered.
I stared at him, waiting to see if he would say anything else. I thought about everything he had already said to me in his bed, from college to my kid, to never leaving my side. He even said he wanted me to be his partner more than just his girl. That stuck out to me. I didn’t want to lose my independence by allowing myself to love this man the way I really wanted to, the way he really wanted me to. According to him, I wasn’t going to.
“I’ve got news for you, Blade,” I told him, finally.
“What’s that?” he asked with a concerned look on his face.
“I already am your old lady.”
He laughed and put his arms around me.
“Everyone already thinks so anyway. The girls at the club, the other old ladies at the MC, and definitely all your brothers,” I told him, laughing with him. “I think you’re the last one to figure it out.”
“Yeah, yeah. I just wanted to hear it. I wanted to make sure we were on the same page as everyone else,” he said. He pulled me up so our faces were even and we kissed. Our lips met and we kissed slowly, letting our lips linger together before our tongues met between us.
He pulled back and brushed my hair out of my face. There was so much life in his eyes now. I figured it must have really bothered him that we weren’t together, or that there was any possibility I was going to leave once I got back on my feet. We’d had an argument and I had told him I was going to leave. I had told him I was only going to be around until I could get back on my own, but there was no turning back now, and he knew that. He had me for good.
“So, when are you moving back in?” he asked.
“I guess whenever you want me to. I don’t have much to pack up from the clubhouse,” I said.
“Yeah, we need to do something about that. We need to get you out of your backpack and into this house for real. What about the stuff from your parents’ house? What’s happening with all of that?” he asked me.
“I don’t know.” I didn’t know. I hadn’t thought about my things from home since I’d left home. I imagined it was all still there, waiting for me to come back for it one day.
“Well, do you want to go and get it?” he said, as if he’d been listening to my thoughts.
“I don’t know,” I said again, cautiously.
“What do you mean? You’re an adult. You have the right to go to your parents’ and get any of your things that they still have.” It felt like a lecture more than anything else.
“I do need to talk to my father,” I told him. “I need to talk to him about all of this before he finds out some other way.”
“That would be bad, wouldn’t it?” he said, an almost smug look on his face.
“If I talk to him and try to patch things up, I might still be able to salvage what’s left of my inheritance from him,” I added. “If he hasn’t already cut me out completely.”
It was one of those topics I assumed Blade didn’t know much about. He didn’t seem to have an inheritance lying around anywhere. He didn’t seem like the type who came from a family concerned with inheritance money. I felt awful for thinking that way, but it seemed to be the case.
“I feel like that’s the best way to handle it. You know, he kicked me out, but he’s still my dad. I still feel like I owe him at least that much respect,” I added.
He didn’t say anything to me, but I could see he was thinking. His mind was going over what I’d just said to him.
“I mean, what do you think?” I asked, pushing on his chest. “You have to have some input on this.”
“I feel like he doesn’t deserve any respect from you. Like you said, he kicked you out. He doesn’t need to be concerned with what you’re doing now. If he doesn’t have enough respect for you, his daughter, or the baby you’re carrying, his grandchild, to keep you under his roof and take care of you in your current condition, then he doesn’t deserve to be part of your life or your child’s. Maybe that’s just me, but where I
come from, we choose our family based on loyalty, not on blood.”
“I know. But, still, he’s my dad.” I sighed.
“I guess you’re right. And he always will be. I guess it’ll be good to let him know what you’re up to, but he’s already been asking around about you, and the guys have already told him you’re not involved with us. No one has seen you,” Blade explained.
“I’m sorry, what was that?” I pushed myself back up so I could hear what he was saying again. I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right the first time.
“The guys told me he’s been around asking about you. He’s been showing pictures and everything. They all know to tell him they haven’t seen you, even the ones who have. We don’t give our people up like that,” he explained.
“You don’t give your people up like that?” I repeated as a question. “Why didn’t you tell me he was out there looking for me?”
I imagined my father on the street with a picture of me, showing it to guys like the Thrills I saw at the clubhouse – tough, intimidating looking bikers. He had to have been worried sick about me. Of course, if these same bikers had been telling him I wasn’t around, and he found out I was with another member of their MC, he was going to be pissed. When my dad got pissed, it didn’t end well for people.
“It was right after you had shown up. I was trying to protect you,” he said in a reassuring tone.
I wasn’t reassured, though. “Do you understand how powerful he is?” I snapped.
“Do you understand how beyond his reach we are?” he fired back at me.
“Fair enough, but I’m sure he knows people who could cause a lot of problems for you,” I warned him. “Dammit, Blade, you should have told me right away. Even if I hadn’t gone home with him, it would have opened the door for a conversation between us at the right time. Now, everything is going to be jeopardized.” I had to think of something to tell him when he asked why he’d been told I wasn’t hanging out with the bikers when he came around looking for me. I knew he wasn’t going to believe me if I told him I hadn’t come around yet. Hell, I didn’t believe it enough to even consider saying it.
“Look, I’ll help you break the news to him,” Blade offered.
“No, absolutely not,” I told him. “Absolutely not. You are not going to come with me.”
“I figured, in case you needed someone to explain why we told him no in the first place,” he said. He had a stunned look on his face.
“No,” I said adamantly, shaking my head. “I don’t care what he says or how he responds. This is one I have to handle on my own. I had to tell him alone. This is my problem.”
“At least let me drive you over there,” Blade insisted.
“What’s the deal?” I asked. “Why can’t you trust me to handle this alone?”
“What are you going to do, get a cab?” he snapped at me. “I’m just going to sit in the car. I don’t have to come in with you. I’m going to sit back and wait for you.”
I took a couple of angry breaths and stared at him. He was right. I couldn’t go alone. I didn’t have any way of getting over there. But I didn’t want him there. I didn’t want any of them there. I was worried about what my father might have tried if he saw anyone else with me, especially someone like Blade or the rest of the MC, someone who had no business with his daughter, as far as he was concerned.
After the moment passed, I laughed, though. We had just agreed to become an item. I had agreed to be official with Blade and already we were having a fight where he was trying to overstep his bounds. In reality, maybe he wasn’t trying anything like that. He was probably trying to be helpful.
There wasn’t a whole lot I could accomplish without his help at the moment. It didn’t necessarily mean I was helpless or that he was being controlling. It just meant I had to adjust my boundaries a little with him. I had to give a little more than what might have been comfortable for me to do. But it also meant I had to be clear when it came down to it. I had to be very clear with what I would allow and what I would not.
“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I’m still getting used to having to accept other people’s help.”
“It’s okay. I get it. But understand I’m just here to have your back. I’m not here to get in the way or control you. That’s not what I want to do,” he reminded me.
I was falling in love with this man. Everything he said was exactly what I wanted and needed to hear. I seriously didn’t know if there had ever been another man in my life who had my back more than Blade did. I smiled and kissed him, and I rested my head on his chest. I agreed we would have to go soon to see my dad. I didn’t want to put it off any longer than I had to, especially if he were already looking for me.
Chapter 19
Blade
I called Robby the next morning and told him what we were doing, explaining that I was going to bring Lucy in after she went to see her father. He was fine with it. By the time she woke up, everything had been handled. I ran her to the clubhouse so she could get ready and so she could grab her things from her room. If everything went well, I hoped we would be grabbing the rest of her things from her parents’ house before the end of the day.
She showed me how to get to their neighborhood. It was amazing to me that we had only lived a few miles apart in the city, but we lived in different worlds. I wasn’t surprised by her parents’ neighborhood. The lawns were neatly trimmed, and all of the houses seemed uptight and almost clenched together, as if they were terrified of their neighbors. There were no porches and no signs of life out in front of the properties we passed.
There weren’t even any sidewalks. I knew that in my neck of the woods, we were also guilty of focusing most of our outdoor activities behind our houses, but at least we had sidewalks in case anyone needed to be outside. Somehow, despite our fences and overgrown hedgerows, our houses felt more connected to one another than the ones around her old neighborhood. It could have been that my neighbors’ houses sprawled across their properties, making them literally closer to one another.
All the houses surrounding her parents’ house were boxes. Everything was square or rectangular and perfectly contained in its own space. Nothing seemed out of place. It was exactly the kind of neighborhood where I would have expected to find the kind of parents who would disown their daughter for being pregnant.
We pulled up in her driveway, which looked like every other driveway on her street, and I parked in front of the brick two-car garage with the white wooden doors. I cut off the engine, and the silence of her neighborhood came crashing in on us.
I was used to the city noises of traffic, sirens, and yard work. There was nothing where we were. It was a void.
“Do you have your phone on you?” I asked her as she unbuckled.
“I do, but you’re staying in the car. You got it?” she reminded me forcefully.
“I’m just saying, in case you need me to come in or get the hell out of Dodge, okay,” I told her, holding my hands up to show her I didn’t mean anything by it.
“Okay.” She took a couple of deep breaths.
“It’ll be all right. I can come in if you need me to.”
“No, that’s not it. I have a few questions before I go in, things that have been bothering me,” she said, turning around to face me in her seat.
“Okay.” My stomach sank. I knew it was only a matter of time before she started asking about the MC. But if she was going to present us to her dad, she had to have her story straight before she went to him. Otherwise, he was liable to eat her alive.
My eyes glanced behind her at the perfectly manicured lawn. I wondered how many people had disappeared from this neighborhood without a trace, and without so much as an investigation. I was willing to bet their dirty secrets were juicier than mine.
“There are some things I’ve wanted to know, but I haven’t wanted to ask. My father is going to bring these things up when I tell him I’m dating a prominent member of an MC called the Vicious Thrills, especially when I tell him
that you go by Blade, which isn’t even your real name,” she said.
“Right. Well, shoot. I’m an open book,” I told her.
“First, what’s your full name? I know your name is Devin, but what’s your last name? I should know this if I’m dating you.”
“My real name is Devin Shaw. Not nearly as impressive as Blade,” I told her.
“Shaw,” she repeated, committing it to memory.
I wondered if her father really needed to know all of that. If he were as powerful as she assumed he was, having my full name gave him more power over me.
“And he’s going to ask this because it’s the stereotype: is the MC in on any underground stuff, any illegal stuff?” she asked.
