by Naomi West
“You should go back inside and check on Lipstick.”
He stares at me for a long heartbeat, his jaw clenched tightly. Finally, he nods and walks away, heading back inside.
I load Phillip into the car and drive off, feeling more confused than ever, and sure as hell positive that Phillip needs to be out of my life for good.
Chapter 13
Axel
I want to punch something. Besides Phillip’s face, which provided a too-brief moment of satisfaction.
I can’t believe the shit that asshole said to her. Why would she stay with someone like that? Why let him stay in her life?
The only thing that calms me while I wait for Lipstick to come out of her exam is the thought that Millie is carrying my baby. I have wanted to be a father for a long, long time. I’m giddy about it, a big bouncing idiot of happiness.
So how do I convince Millie that I’ll be a model citizen when it comes to caring for her and the baby? How do I make her see that being a father is something I was born for? That the baby and her will always outweigh the other bullshit?
When Lipstick comes back out, we head to her car. She’s too pregnant to ride on a bike these days. I have a truck that I drive in the winter months, but it’s too tall for her to climb into right now. Pregnant ladies require special attention, I’ll tell you that.
Anyway, she tells me the kid is healthy and looking good.
“So the little girl is growing just like she’s supposed to,” I say.
“Oh,” she says. “Get this. It’s not a girl. It’s a boy!”
“What? A boy? How did that happen?”
“I guess the baby always had his legs closed. They got several images and thought it was a girl but today they did a 3-D thing and, boing. Little boy parts.”
“Cool,” I say. “I mean … I guess? You kinda wanted a girl, though, right?”
“I did,” she said. “But I’m happy either way. And I called the station. They let me talk to Rod, to tell him. He’s psyched.”
“I’ll bet,” I say. “Can I tell you a secret?”
“Sure,” she says.
“I saw Millie today, in the doctor’s office. She’s pregnant.”
“And it’s yours?” she asks.
I give her a wide grin in response.
“Do I assume this is happy news?” she asks. “You look like you’re ready to burst.”
“I’m happy about it, yes. Got some work to do on Mama, though.”
“Well, keep trying. She’s crazy if she doesn’t realize what a great guy you are,” Lipstick says. “I’m serious. You’ve been such a blessing to me, Axel. I couldn’t have done this without you. And today … today was amazing. I feel so much more like myself. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” I say. “Rod would do the same for me.”
“No he wouldn’t,” she says. When I smirk, she says, “I’m serious. I love him. He’s the father of my baby, and he is trying, but there is no way he would step in the way you have—for me, for the club. You’ve been amazing.”
“Aww, you’re embarrassin’ me,” I say.
“You need to keep trying,” Lipstick says. “She wasn’t raised on bikes like we were. We’ve been in this world a long time but she doesn’t know a thing about it. It’s scary to an outsider, I’m sure. And to think about having a baby through all this mess … It probably plays a big part in how she feels about having a relationship with you. But you need to keep at it. She’ll see the good in you. I’m sure of it.”
I just chew on the inside of my cheek. I hope she’s right.
“If she doesn’t,” Lipstick says, “I’ll punch her in the nose for you. I may be pregnant, but I’m not weak.”
***
Millie
Phillip comes to with a start. I’ve not let him sleep for more than an hour at a time and now it’s nighttime. He comes to, looking around blearily.
“What the fuck?” he asks. He puts two fingers to his broken nose and winces. “Ow.”
“Yeah, ow,” I say. “You’re going to need to go have someone reset that nose for you.”
“What happened?” he asks. “I remember seeing that Neanderthal of a biker dude, but I don’t remember much after telling him to get lost.”
“Well, you said a few things. Many of them were pretty rude,” I say.
“To him?”
“To me. About me,” I say. “So he punched you. And you deserved it.”
He looks confused.
“Let me refresh your scrambled memory. You called me a whore and said someone other than you or Axel could be the baby’s father. And you called me a walking cliché, which is probably the most racist thing I’ve ever heard you say in all the years I’ve known you.”
He cringes. “Oh.”
“Oh,” I repeat. “That’s what you have to say right now?”
“I’m sorry?” he asks. “I don’t know what got into me. That guy just brings out the worst in me.”
“Except, you barely directed it to him,” I say. “You directed some very nasty bullshit at me, and he only responded to defend me. And you know what? I’m done worrying what you think of him. He’s a good man. And you don’t know a thing about him, other than he doesn’t fit into your lily-white, uptight, preppy world. And, frankly, neither do I.”
“That’s unfair,” Phillip says. “This isn’t about race.”
“You made it about race today,” I said. “But I don’t even care. I was with you for a long time and for a big part of it, we were both unhappy. We never had fun. We had terrible sex. This is not a relationship that will work in the long term and now that I know how you really feel about me, I need you to leave. And don’t come back. Don’t call, don’t text, and don’t come here. We are done.”
Phillip holds his head in his hands, staring ahead like he’s lost. He sighs deeply and then, very slowly, gets up, pats his pockets, looks around to locate his keys. When he spots them on the coffee table, he stands to collect them and makes his way to the door. When he leaves, he doesn’t look back. He doesn’t apologize. He just goes.
I sit for a long, long time, just thinking. I don’t feel even an ounce of remorse over throwing Phillip out. I should’ve done it a long time ago. I mean, I guess I did, really, but he just wouldn’t give up. Really, I think I just felt afraid of letting go of the past. He was such a part of my life for so long. But seriously, he showed his true colors and then some today, so I’m glad he’s gone.
“We don’t need him around, messing with our mojo, do we baby?” I ask out loud. A resulting little flutter responds from inside my belly. It’s like little gas bubbles. At first, when it happened for the first time a few days ago, I thought it was gas bubbles. But no, the doctor said today that those are the baby’s first kicks. I rub a hand over my little baby belly, smiling.
Axel would be so excited right now. I know he would, because he was beyond thrilled to hear that I was pregnant. He wasn’t weird or upset, like many men might be. No, he was genuinely happy.
I have a bright idea. I get out my laptop and look on social media for anyone named Lipstick. It’s a pretty easy search, and I find Kelly “Lipstick” Marquez pretty easily. There are lots of pictures of her with Hard Rod, the big redheaded leader of the Rippers. A few are with Axel in them, too—some with other women hanging on him, which makes my blood boil.
I look her up in the white pages and find her address. It’s not too far from my house, actually, so I impulsively get in the car and drive over. It’s pretty late, I guess, past nine, but I’m hoping she won’t be too annoyed.
It takes me a few minutes to get the courage to knock. When I do, she comes to the door pretty quickly. Her head tilts to the side in confusion at first, but just as I’m about to introduce myself, her eyes go wide and she says, “Ohhhh, you must be Millie?”
I nod. “I hope I’m not here too late? This was a whim …”
“Come in,” she says. She’s in some giant sweatpants and a tiny T-shirt that in no w
ay covers her huge belly. She has striped, fuzzy socks on. She looks younger without makeup.
We sit on the couch and she apologizes while she arranges pillows behind her back. “It’s so uncomfortable, the bigger you get. When are you due?”
“Um, April. You?”
“February,” she says. “Can’t come fast enough, but I suppose you didn’t come here to talk about babies?”
“No,” I say with a little huff of a laugh. “No. I came to talk about Axel.”
She gives me a sly smile. “He’s a good guy.”
“I know …”
“No,” she says, “You don’t. He’s one of the best. You just know him this tiny bit. Probably mostly naked. Am I right?”
I blush at this and grin sheepishly.
“Thought so,” she says. “Look, it was like that for me and Rod at first, too. Just all sex all the time. Wasn’t supposed to mean anything, right? But it was more. It became more. Probably faster for me than for him, truth be told, but he surprised me. He really stepped up when I told him I was pregnant.”
“Axel seemed really happy,” I say. “When I told him.”
“He was happy,” she says. “Did you know he’s put together most of my baby’s nursery? And he sent me for a spa day today, so I’d start to feel more like myself? And he shopped for nicer maternity clothes? Like, he went in and bought all this stuff on his own. Can you imagine? Big guy like him, all tattooed and humongous, wandering around with all those pregnant ladies?”
We both laugh at this thought.
“He didn’t have to do any of that,” she says. “But he did. And he’s happy to do it, in addition to stepping up and taking care of the club. Rod made a big, dumb mistake, and that left Axel in a position he never wanted. But he’s handling it. He’s good at it.”
“I confess that I know very little about the club life,” I say. “It seems very dangerous. Wildly criminal. I don’t know if I can be part of it. If I can be with him if he’s part of it.”
She smiles, her tongue running over her bottom lip. “I get that.”
“I mean, I hope I’m not offending you or whatever. I just … I don’t get it. It’s not my world.”
“My daddy ran a club for a long time,” she says. “I’ve been in it my whole life. And I love it. Love the rides, the bikes. I love the mechanical smell in the garage. It’s not for everyone but … yeah … I love it. And there’s a family bond that is forged. These guys would take a bullet for each other. Most of them came to the club for the love of the machines, you know? Many of them only do group rides and parties, they never see the other parts of the business.”
“The illegal parts, you mean?”
“Yes,” she says. “And some clubs are way more hardcore than ours. We dabble in distributing pot and weapons. That’s it. We don’t do heroin or coke. We don’t trade in people. Some clubs do those things. Sex, designer drugs … you name it, it can be sold. We are lightweight compared to some.”
“Why would Axel have showed up on my doorstep covered in someone’s blood?” I ask.
“Loyalty is a big thing,” she says. “If a member gets caught doing side deals or working with another club for profit, he gets gutted.”
“Gutted?” I ask.
“Stabbed in the gut. He gets his colors taken away, too, which is often more painful than the stabbing. Also, sometimes there are territory disputes with other clubs. Those can get ugly. Guys get shot sometimes.”
I can feel the horrified expression marring my face. I shake my head. “None of this sounds like a recipe for familial bliss, for raising a baby.”
“Usually club member’s old ladies and kids are left out of the mix. It’s a code they all follow, even the worst clubs, usually.”
As I let all this sink in, Lipstick chatters about friends she has who have kids with some of the club members. They lead fairly boring lives, she says. They take their kids to daycare and school; some of them work outside the home, in perfectly normal jobs. Many of them only go out on charity rides. Their partners spend plenty of time at home. It’s kind of oddly normal, she explains.
“It’s a risk,” she says, “but what isn’t? I mean, there’s risk in driving your car down the road.”
“Did he tell you that’s how we met?” I ask. “I hit him with my car.”
She laughs. “He did tell me that. That’s wild.”
“It was pretty crazy,” I say. “He didn’t go when the light turned green. But … I was also looking at my phone.”
“That’ll do it,” she laughs. “I think it was meant to be. Look, Axel doesn’t see a lot of women. He’s no saint or anything, but he doesn’t take relationships lightly. And he cares about you. For real. I can see that it’s not just sex for him. You should give him a chance.”
“I want to …” I say. “I mean. I …”
“You love him?” she asks. “I can see it all over your face. And you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t want to try to make it work. Right?”
I pinch my lips with my fingers. It takes me a minute to gather my thoughts. “I admit I think I love him,” I say. “But I can’t believe it, you know? I mean, I hardly know him. We hardly know each other. And now I’m having his baby, and none of this was part of the plan. I’m really overwhelmed.”
“Babies are never part of the plan, you know? They never come when you’re, like, perfectly ready. And love? Well, it’s messy, too. And who says you have to know someone forever to fall in love with them? I mean, Axel tells me you were in a long-term relationship but if you think hard, did it make it work any better? Was the love more intense for all that history you shared?”
“No,” I say softly. “I loved him less the more I grew up.”
“Love is crazy,” she says. “It evolves and changes.”
I look at my phone and realize the time. “I should let you get some sleep. I’m sorry I barged in here unannounced.”
“It’s no bother,” she says. “I have trouble sleeping these days anyway. The things they don’t tell you about pregnancy …”
She walks me to the door and gives me a hug. “I’m glad you came,” she says. “You seem great. I really hope things work out with you and Axel. He’s a super good guy.”
I leave feeling suddenly lighter. Ready. Needing to talk to Axel.
Chapter 14
Axel
It’s been seven days since I saw Millie, since I punched that fucker Phillip’s face in. Seven more days for that bun in her oven to cook. Seven days that I’ve spent in a haze of alcohol because I can’t stand the idea of her going home with that douchebag who clearly thinks very little of her.
I know one thing—I don’t want that guy around my kid. But I haven’t yet figured out what to say to sway Millie my way. How can a guy like me get a woman like her to see that I am not a piece of garbage? That I am worthy of her, and that I’ll be a good dad?
Probably stop walking around soaked in whiskey. For a start. And don’t carry out half-brained rescue missions like the one I’ve got planned for tonight.
Rod’s court case moved to sentencing this past week. He’d been in the local lock-up while he awaited a court date. He had a decent public defender in the first months but still got three years in prison for the drug charges. He could get out in eighteen months, if he behaves.
That means he won’t be out for the birth of his baby boy. Lipstick announced recently that she wants to name the baby Seamus, after Rod’s grandfather. I want my friend to be there for his baby’s birth. I want him to bond with his son from day one.
So, tonight, Hard Rod gets moved to the state prison, and I plan to take a group of guys and get him out.
We’ve got money and fake IDs and backs packed. We plan to have Lipstick ready at a pickup point, and while she’s waiting, we’ll go on the road and get Rod. Since he’s only going on drug charges, we figure he’ll only have one driver and one guard. Maybe. Six of us will go on bikes, surround the vehicle, and when it stops, we’ll tie up the two guards
and leave them for someone to pick up. We only need a little bit of time to get Rod out of there. He and Lipstick will board a plane bound for South America. They’ll lay low there until we feel it’s safe for them to come back.
Mickey comes into the office, hands on his skinny hips, lips pursed like he’s ready to say something judgmental.
“What?” I ask.
“Boss, I ain’t one to judge, but you’ve been drinkin’ a shit-ton lately. You think it’s a good idea to head out on a mission when you’re not in a clear head?”
“I’m not in the mood, Mickey,” I growl. “You got actual business to talk about, or you just here to stage an intervention?”
