“Babe? Did I hurt you?” Ryder spun me around in his arms, and the look of concern on his face made me cry even harder.
“That just felt so fucking amazing.” I was blubbering, smiling, and sobbing all at once.
Ryder started laughing hysterically.
“What?” I sniffled.
“You’re crying because we just had amazing sex? Am I understanding this situation correctly?” He was still laughing as I nodded.
“Help me get into the bath before you leave, jerk.”
“As you wish, my lady.”
Ryder drew me a bubble bath, lit a few candles, laid out a towel for me, and even made sure I had a fresh change of clothes waiting for when I was ready.
“Have I told you lately that you are the best husband in the world?” I kissed him as he was one foot out the door.
“You tell me that at least five times a day, but I still love hearing it every damn time.”
“I hope you never get tired of hearing it,” I called after him as he raced down the hall.
“I never could. Love you, Raine. I’ll be home early tonight.”
Even with being the president and basically the boss now, Ryder still tried to beat everyone to the shop in the morning to make sure the paperwork was all situated for the day.
Sinking into the nice warm water, I beamed with pride that my husband was such a wonderful man, provider, and outlaw. I knew most people wouldn’t understand the life we lived, the dangers that lurked, or the choices we willingly made every day, but it was our little slice of biker heaven.
The lavender aromatherapy candles mixing with the warm comfortable bath lulled me right into a little catnap. I must have only been out for a few minutes at the most when shooting pains forced me to wake up. I practically jumped out of my skin when I realized I was going into labor and the pain I had just felt was a contraction.
I frantically looked around for my cell. After the initial panic wore off, I remembered I had set it on the dresser before I got into the bath. When I tried to get up, another wave of shooting pain made it impossible for me to even think about moving.
Inch my inch, I slowly made progress getting out of the tub, grabbing the towel, and shuffling over to my phone.
I dialed Ryder over and over until he finally answered.
“Raine? I’m with a customer. Can this wait?” he said hurriedly.
“Do you think me calling five times in a row means it can fucking wait?” I screamed.
“What’s wrong?” I could tell from the sound of his boots hitting the gravel in the parking lot that he was already running to his bike.
“He’s coming—right now. Ryder, hurry. We’re going to have a baby today.” I was screaming from the pain as Ryder started shouting from the excitement.
“On my way, see you in a couple of minutes. Just breathe and I will be there before you even know it.”
I hung up the phone and shot a text to Crickett.
Me: Baby coming right now.
Crickett: Closing the bar. I’ll tell Holt and Collin to head to the hospital.
Me: Bring Fun Dip.
Crickett: On it. Anything else?
Me: Miss Gilda.
Ryder was running up the stairs as I was setting my phone down.
“How many laws did you break driving here?” I asked as he grabbed my bag from the closet.
“They were only traffic infractions baby, nothing Crowley wouldn’t have been able to get me out of it we really needed him to.”
“Holy shit! That was a big one.” I stood at the top of the stairs, paralyzed from the pain.
“We’re almost there, just down these stairs and into the truck.”
Ryder had to practically lift my ass into the passenger’s seat of my dad’s ginormous F250.
“Why aren’t we taking the little truck? The one I can actually get in and out of?” I barked at Ryder before he sprinted around to the driver’s side.
The engine was already running before he was all the way into his seat. “Because I am doing a little bit of work on it and this one is way safer.”
“Whatever, fine. I don’t give a fuck. Just get me to a damn doctor so he can give me something for this fucking pain.” I was trying to remember all the freaking breathing exercises I had learned in Lamaze class, but nothing was helping.
“Almost there, baby. Just a few more blocks.”
Chapter 11
Ryder
“Holy! Fucking! Shit!”
Raine was gripping my hand like it was the end of the damn world, but it was just the beginning—our beginning.
“All right, you’re going to have to push now.” The sweet older nurse smiled sympathetically as she watched Raine’s eyes slam shut and her knuckles turn white. I had never seen my wife look so gorgeous than she did right then—cursing like a sailor, body covered in sweat, wearing a paper-thin hospital gown, hair matted to the side of her face, makeup smeared everywhere. She was a mess, but she was simply and perfectly stunning.
“Arggggggg! Fuck this shit. I swear to God you are never knocking me up again.”
“We’ll talk about that after we have the first one successfully,” I teased.
“I am not joking. I am never going through this ever again.” She was practically spitting at me through gritted teeth and rage-filled eyes.
I wiped the sweat off her forehead while she pushed with all her might to bring our little boy into the world.
After a long fourteen hours of labor and Raine’s swearing skills improving exponentially, Abel Ravage Walsh was delivered at four in the freaking morning, weighing in at seven and a half pounds.
“You done good, momma.” I kissed Raine’s cheek while I bounced our sleeping son in my arms.
“I love you, Ryder.” Raine’s sleepy eyes fluttered closed. “I’m sorry for calling you a twat waffle and a cock bag and…what was the other new one I came up with?”
“A splooting sack of monkey shit.” I chuckled.
Through a yawn, Raine mumbled, “Yeah, that was a good one.”
“Love you, crazy lady. Get some rest.” I pecked her cheek as her breathing got soft and she started to quietly snore.
It was the most magical moment of my life. The woman of my dreams really had made my life complete. Looking down into the face of my sleeping son, I realized everything Abel had worried about for so long and fought so hard to protect had been completely justified.
There was a light tap on the door.
I opened it slowly. “Shhhh, mom and baby are sleeping.”
Crickett, Collin, and my dad were all standing in the hallway, practically gushing with excitement.
“Can I just hold him for a minute?” Crickett’s eyes were watery as she took in the sight of her first grandbaby.
I nodded and passed little baby Abel on over into her loving arms.
Collin shook my hand with a quick smile. My brother-in-law was a man of few words, but under his tougher-than-nails exterior, he was just like his old man—a soft teddy bear when it came to his family.
“He’s beautiful, son.” Holt slapped my shoulder. “Abel would have been proud of both of you right now.”
It had been a long road with my father-in-law. I had barely felt like he trusted me half of the time, but I knew he had truly loved me and the rest of our family. I hadn’t missed him quite as much as I did in that moment, and I just hoped he was there with us somehow, enjoying the wonderful event.
“Hey guys.” Raine’s meek voice came from behind me.
Seeing the way Raine looked at her stepmother as Crickett strode over to her with her grandson in her arms was breathtaking.
“Congratulations sweetheart, I am so proud of you.” She beamed, wiping a tear from her cheek.
“I wish Dad was here,” Raine confessed.
“We all do.” Crickett kissed the back of Raine’s hand as they took a moment for each other.
After a few seconds, Crickett turned to me. “Will you grab Miss Gilda out of my
purse.”
I rummaged around until I found the old unicorn rubber duck. I placed in Raine’s hands as tears filled her eyes. “I remember the day my dad got me this stupid toy.” Raine paused to wipe her eyes with the bedsheet. “We were on the way home from a doctor’s appointment and he stopped at a toy store to make me happy.”
I sank down on the end of her bed, taking the toy from her to look at it up close. The rainbow mane was fading and the white of the body was more yellow from old age. “Where’s the name Miss Gilda come from?” I asked.
Raine shrugged. “Fuck if I know.”
Crickett handed Raine our sleeping baby after kissing the top of his head. “I already am so in love with him.”
“So are we.” I squeezed Raine’s shoulder while looking down at the tiny face of my son.
I wasn’t usually a sappy guy—heck, I was usually a fucking dick—but having watched the birth of my son only a few hours before made me an instant puddle of dad-goo when anything remotely sweet happened.
There had only been a few times in my life that I had been truly sure of anything. The moment I saw Raine for the first time, I knew she was going to be mine. The moment Raine said yes to marrying me, I knew I would spend the rest of my life proving to her I deserved to be her husband. And right then, looking at my entire family together, I knew I was right where I was supposed to be, with people I would put my life on the line every damn day to protect from ever feeling another ounce of pain ever in their lives.
The End.
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STAY TUNED: Sneak peeks for UNACCEPTABLE, a motorcycle club & stepbrother romance & Cross Checked, the next standalone hockey romance in the Shots On Goal Series… If you want to know more about Karla and Brayden’s story, don’t miss out on their book!
Unacceptable
Sneak Peek
A Stepbrother & Motorcycle Club
Standalone Romance
by Kristen Hope Mazzola
Chapter 1
Slam!
The sound of my mom throwing her hair dryer across their room and it crashing through the thin walls of our doublewide jolted me from my deep sleep.
“Why don’t you just leave then, you fucking scumbag?” She was messed up again, slurring her words together as she picked another fight with my father after coming home in the early hours of the morning.
“Don’t you freaking tempt me Helen, I swear to fucking God.” My dad’s raspy voice was low and gravely, probably trying to not wake me.
Too late.
This fight wasn’t like every other night that she came home late from the bar; this one sounded worse.
“If you want to leave so badly, then just do me a damn favor and get the hell out, you rat bastard.” I heard their door open and the sound of my dad’s boots stomping down the hallway with the light thudding of my mom trying to run after him in heels.
“Helen, get the hell off me. Enough is enough.” He was right outside my door. I held my breath. I was ready to run away with him.
“You damn asshole you’re not taking her with you!”
Slap!
Slap!
Slap!
I could hear her hitting him.
“You’re not going to raise my daughter, you fucking, no good, whore. I’ll leave her here over my dead body!” That was the first night I ever heard that word: whore. It was the perfect definition for my mother. It was exactly what she was.
I heard my mother’s sobs getting softer as my dad slowly opened the door to my room. I held my breath, trying to pretend I was still asleep, silently begging him to pick me up in his strong arms and whisk me away from the trailer park and the terrible person that pretended to be a good mother.
“Yes. Hello.” I heard her meek voice crack as she sniffled into the receiver of our old yellow corded phone in the kitchen. “My boyfriend is trying to kidnap my daughter. Please send someone fast.”
“You damn—you goddamned cunt! She’s my daughter too.”
“Fuck you, Rave! If you wanted her to be your daughter so badly, you should have signed the damn birth certificate!”
The front door swung open and my father’s boots trudged down the metal steps, the sound echoing in my ears as my heart got heavier with each stomp. I ran to the window and watched my hero, my savior, the only person that ever showed me love get in his truck and drive away.
Taillights. That’s really what I remembered from that night. The glow of the taillights of my father’s rusty, clunking white long-bed. The gravel spit out from under the tires as he ran away to his freedom. Who could blame him? Not me, that’s for damn sure. I was about to follow in his footsteps. It had only taken me seventeen years to grow the metaphorical balls to realize that he was right. He had made the right move. All of the resentment and anger I had displaced onto him for abandoning me was finally falling on the right shoulders: hers, my fucking whore of a mother.
I sat outside the trailer I’d grown up in, in the same spot my dad had escaped from, watching the light switch off in my mom’s room from the front seat of my beat up Camaro. She was probably overdramatically faking another orgasm while john-number-five-hundred-and-something believed every grunt and groan. I had to hand it to her: she was damn good at her job.
I took the worn pages of the letter I had read thousands of times and stuffed them back into the envelope. I read the city name in the return address again: Vilas. That’s where I’d start my new life. That’s where I’d start my search, not for him, but for myself. If it was good enough for my father, it’d be good enough for me.
It had been ten years since I’d gotten my only letter from him. It was my most cherished possession. I knew the whole thing by heart, but the last line stuck with me, like a broken record in my mind:
I have always loved you and I always will, never forget that, Princess.
Getting that handwritten note changed my life. It gave me hope, courage, and a fire under my butt to make something better of myself. In the back of my head I knew that it was only one short letter, that if he truly loved me like he had so dramatically claimed, he would have come back for me, fought for me, even stayed that night, but that was all in the past. It was time to start the future and for fuck’s sake, I was about to take the bull by the horns and be something more than a trailer park critter that stripped to make ends meet.
The old engine cried to life after the third time I turned the key. I really needed to get it looked at, but I needed to get the hell out of the trailer park first. I had no plan, just a stack of uncashed paychecks from the Pink Kitty, where I had been working for years, and a wad of dollar bills that I had managed to hide from my mother, but it would have to be enough. I had hit the wall and was finally able to see it: I needed to move on.
I did have to give her some credit where it was due: my mom tried. She loved me in her own way, but she was never loving or motherly. She was either high or fucking to get her next fix for most of my childhood, but that was ok; I was over it. I’d realized long ago that you can’t ask more of someone than they are capable of; she was nothing more than a hooker, and I had to accept it. My mom had no aspiration to make something more of herself and I would have to live with that. There is no saving someone that doesn’t want to be saved,
that’s for damn sure.
I glanced back in my rearview mirror as the dusty road took me away from the only home I had ever known.
Hopefully this will be my last look at that hellhole.
I jammed out to Katy Perry and T-Swift while shifting and grinding gears as the road twisted and turned, my long black curls dancing in the wind coming in through the open windows. Liberation boiled in my veins while a sting of guilt bit at the back of my mind. I knew that she would figure out later rather than sooner that I had ditched her. It probably wouldn’t be until she went to raid my room for my stash of money that I tried to hide from working all those damn late nights for nasty truckers and slime balls.
I drove and drove, stopping for gas a handful of times, having to fill up the clutch and power steering fluid on a few occasions, and ignoring my body’s aching need for a bed. I desperately wanted to put as much road and as many states as humanly possible between me and the shithole I was crawling out of. Coffee and chocolate donut holes would have to do until I just couldn’t take it any longer.
The day droned on and my eyelids got heavier and heavier as a slow Boyz II Men song poured from the speakers. That’s when I finally saw it, the sign that I had been waiting for: “Vilas – 5 miles”.
Heck yes!
I was as giddy as a schoolgirl as joy consumed me. I felt like I had finally made it. This wasn’t just a dream built up in the mind of a naive child. It was real. I was finally free. I could fucking taste the sweet victory as I breathed in the dusty road that was leading the way to my salvation.
As I pulled off the highway and turned down a back country road, the exhaustion started to settle in deep. A yawn took over as I made my way into a dive-looking bar’s parking lot. I needed to find a place to crash and figure out my next move. I grabbed the bright red lipstick from my bag; even though I felt and probably looked like shit, lipstick would make it a little better. Two things I never left the house without: a good bra and lipstick.
Unbreakable: An Unacceptables MC Standalone Romance Page 7
