by Fox, Nicole
There was an old table in the middle of the room, surrounded by shitty folding chairs. It was covered in film and powder, a couple of lines here and there. Strewn across were baggies and needles of all sorts and green bits of bud. It was a clusterfuck. A couple of people sat at this table, but the person that caught my eyes was the one at the head.
He looked familiar, but only vaguely, and when I realized why he looked so familiar, my jaw dropped. It was a momentary reaction when I was forced to sit at the table, and the man who brought me in kept the gun held to my head.
“R-Rodent?”
I couldn’t fucking believe it. This ... junkie sitting across from me—because it was obvious that he had been doping, and doping for a long time, his skin was sunken and sore, yellowing. He looked like he had aged a few good years, and none of those years had done him any wonders.
He laughed, coughed, and leaned forward.
“Well, well, I didn’t expect the little fucking spy outside to be you, Grizzly, but I’m not mad that it was.” He sneered. “It’s Road Rage now, though. Rage, if I like you. Unfortunately for you, I don’t like you.”
I had never seen the hatred in Rodent—Rage’s—eyes that I saw before me then. He looked crazy, pissed, like he wanted nothing more than to kill me.
“Road Rage ... Right.” I shook my head. “I don’t understand. I thought you were dead. I saw you die.”
“You’d have liked that, wouldn’t you? Me being dead?” He ran a nasty, sore-looking tongue over his teeth, sucking them in. “You saw wrong. I went down. Almost died. Watched you cart off my girl and then I knew ... I knew ...” He shook his head and started muttering to himself. After a moment, he looked to the one that was standing behind me.
“Go away!” he barked at the man, loud, violent, volatile. I had no idea what the fuck had happened to him over the years, nor what he was talking about when he said that I’d have been happy for him to die.
“What are you talking about, Rodent—”
“Road Rage!”
I clenched my jaw. This wasn’t good; he was too prone to snapping and obviously had no normal control.
“Road Rage ... I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. What did you know? I thought that your family had come by and taken your body. If I had known you were still alive—”
“You’ve have tried to finish what you started, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you!?” He shook his head again. “But I lived, and I saw, and I knew.” He laughed and stood up, walking over to me.
My face scrunched up as he got closer to me. He smelled like body sweat and piss, like he’d not showered in weeks and had been fucking that whole time. He was a mess. Hair oily and greasy, skin nasty. I said nothing to make him angrier about this, however. I eyed him warily as he sat on the edge of the table and continued to speak to me, like he was reminiscing with an old friend rather than someone he seemed to think had wronged him in some manner.
“I always saw the way you two looked at each other,” he said. “Towards the end. Always trying to find excuses to be around her. Always trying to get in with her. She had troubles; you were suddenly there to help her. She needed help, there you were. I knew you were fucking her behind my back, but I didn’t think that you would try to kill me just to get her pussy all to yourself.” He cackled again. “But that’s all right. I don’t know where you hid her all these years, but now she’s back in town again and now the two of you can pay for what the fuck you did to me.”
The more and more he spoke, the clearer it became. This picture in his head that he had painted about what he thought we were doing. I shook my head.
“I never fucked Ana while you were together,” I said. “I wouldn’t have done that to you. We were friends—”
“Liar!” he screamed at me. “You’re fucking lying now, just like you were lying then. Smiling to my face, making me think that we were friends. I thought she loved me! I was going to make her fucking honest. But she was walking around on me ...” His eye twitched. “I bet she gave it to you really sweet, huh? Her cunt always tasted like sugar.”
“That’s e-fucking-nough,” I snapped. “Never fucked Ana while you two were together. I don’t know where you got that idea—”
“Lies. I saw it on your face. You wanted to.”
I said nothing, and he smirked.“I thought so.”
“It doesn’t fucking matter. We didn’t plot to kill you. That was that other shit that was going down, you crazy piece of—”
His hand came across my face. Despite the fact that he looked sickly and thin, his back hand was pretty powerful, I’d give him that. It knocked me a little silly for a moment, and if I had been certain that he wasn’t hiding a gun or something on him, I’d have knocked the shit out of him right back. I gritted my teeth instead and glared up at him, almost daring him to touch me again. I wanted him to give me a reason to lay him out.
He didn’t.
“You know, I had always looked up to you, Grizzly,” he went on. “I had always thought of you as something to aspire to. But then that happened ... everything started to make sense ... it all ended up working out for you, didn’t it? Got your own club and my girl now. King of the castle,” he said bitterly.
“You’re delusional,” I said. “I’m not answering you.”
He smirked down at me, showing off nasty rows of un-brushed teeth.
“That’s fine. You don’t need to. I have something special for you.”
He walked away from me, heading to the door. He closed it behind him, but I noticed that he didn’t lock it. Thinking quickly, I got up. I rummaged around the room, looking for anything that I could fight with—nothing. No guns, no other weapons, either. Fuck. Just my luck. I moved over to the door, listening, to see if I could hear anything on the other side.
“ ...go back in there, I’m gonna fill his skull with bullets. Deliver him to his precious Butchers, see how much he likes it then. Fucker ...”
There was laughter that followed, and my heart started racing. I needed an out, and I needed an out quickly. Luckily for me ... I found one.
The room had windows—nasty, dingy windows, but they were windows nonetheless, and they weren’t barred in any way. I listened carefully outside the door. Rage was still talking happily about filling my head up with lead.
Keep talking motherfucker and you’ll never get the goddamn chance.
I went back to the window, turning the standard lock on it as quietly as I possibly could. I raised it up in the same manner and pushed the screen off of it. I paused when it sounded like they had stopped talking outside, but they picked back up and I breathed out a sigh of relief.
I pulled myself up and through the window. As soon as my feet hit the ground, I started running toward the woods. They hadn’t brought my bike up close to the house—which was a good thing for me, that they apparently weren’t organized enough to think of making sure that I had no way to escape.
As I hit the edge of the road, I heard shouting behind me, and shooting started. A bullet or two hit a tree near my head, but I kept on running. I wasn’t going to let these assholes get me again, and now that I knew who they were, what they wanted, and what they were doing, there was no way in hell that they would be able to succeed, especially when their leader was a whole bag of crazy and his issues had no sane kind of foundation.
I hit my bike in no time, jumped on, and hightailed it out there. They didn’t follow me—which shocked me. I heard angry screeches coming from the house before I peeled away and could only imagine that Rage was beyond pissed that his prize catch had managed to get away from him. Whatever, that wasn’t my problem, and if he’d wanted me so damn badly, he’d have done a better job at keeping me there, goddamn it.
I rode hard and fast all the way back to the clubhouse. I skittered to a stop in front of it and sat there for a moment, trying to process everything.
How the fuck could I even process everything?
First, I needed to take a shower. I smelled horri
ble, and I didn’t particularly want to have whatever Rage had touched still on my face from where he had hit me. Full offense—he was a dirty little shit stain and I wasn’t going to have that.
I knew for sure that the details of this meeting weren’t going to get out to the boys. They’d be inclined to help, knowing that this was all directed at me; they were too protective for their own good. And that, of course, left ...
Ana.
Did I tell her that the man that she had been in love with wasn’t actually dead, but very much alive and very, very angry? She had up and left us when he had ‘died,’ so perhaps it would bring her comfort to know that he hadn’t died ... But would it comfort her to know what had happened to him? How he thought about us now? Especially when we had, in fact, fucked. Maybe not when they were together, but we’d fucked since she’d come back. We’d shared intimate moments. There was nothing that could explain that away and she already felt guilty enough without all of that.
Fuck.
I slid off the bike. Shower, then everything else. I’d figure this out, like I’d always figured everything out when it came to running my MC. Now, I had a little more responsibility with Ana here, but that wasn’t something that I was going to complain about or begrudge.
I ignored the calls to me when I walked in. I didn’t feel like dealing with anyone right now, and I wasn’t in the mood to talk, either. I headed straight to my room—mostly. I lingered a little outside of Ana’s, wondering if I should talk to her first instead. If I should tell her what was going on.
I shook my head.
No.
Not yet.
Chapter Fifteen Ana
Grizzly had left early in the morning, and that had left me to my own devices. It was an off day, and that was good; I’d been sick as a damn dog, and I didn’t feel like I was going to be getting any better.
I knew that I needed to take a test. I had been putting it off since the night with Grizzly. It had been ... oddly romantic, temptingly sweet. Nothing had happened between us, but it had lingered with me in a way that our other nights had not, and I knew that as soon as I knew the answer to this question, it would all come crashing down around me.
If I wasn’t pregnant, I would have no reason to stay. If I was, who was to say Grizzly even wanted to keep me that way? Sure, he had never had a club girl here like he had kept me, but did that really mean anything? Did that mean that he actually wanted me? Maybe he was just trying to do what he had done when I was with Rodent—protect me. Maybe he thought this was the way to do it.
Maybe it was just pregnancy hormones that had me thinking that any of this was necessary to stress over more than I was already going to stress.
I needed a test, so I let Kid ride me out to the convenience store. I told him I was going to get something for the ‘stomach bug’ that I thought that I had. He was curious, and I think that he sensed that something more was going on, but I didn’t let him come into the store with me, telling him that I didn’t need an escort for something like that, that I would be fine, and that I would be only a few minutes. I bought one of each brand of pregnancy test that the store offered.
Each one was positive.
I sat then, in my bathroom, surrounded by the evidence of my suspicions. I was carrying Grizzly’s baby. I was pregnant. I was going to be a mother.
Grizzly was going to be a father.
The thought had my head swimming. The first time that this had happened, I was young and stupid and terrified, but I had also thought that a baby would fix my slowly waning relationship. That idea had been broken before it could really come to fruition. Now, it was scary, exciting, confusing. I didn’t even have a relationship with the father of this baby. I didn’t even know if the father of this baby would want something like a family with me.
I wanted him to, though.
I think that was the scariest thing of all, when it came to realizing that I was, in fact, going to have Grizzly’s baby. I knew that life for a single mother wasn’t easy, and I knew that life as a mother tied to an MC was even harder.
Pathetically, I bawled. I cried into my hands and sobbed like a little baby because I would have given anything to not have to make these choices again a second time around, so ill-prepared. I let all my tears run out, down my face, into my hands. When I felt like I couldn’t let anything else out, I got up, splashing water on my face. I was resolved.
I needed to tell Grizzly.
I tried to make it look like I hadn’t been bawling my eyes out like some crazy, deranged woman, and I took myself right out my door, and—
Ran face first into a very bare, wet chest.
I looked up, surprised to see Grizzly, and he looked surprised to see me as well. I had no idea what he was doing outside my door, but my intentions disappeared as soon as I saw a huge black and purple bruise on his face.
“What the hell happened to you?”
He tilted his head, confused. “What?”
“Your face.” I pointed. “Christ, Griz, come in here.”
I pulled him in, giving him no room to protest and tell me no. I think he had just gotten out of the shower; he was still a little damp and in low-riding sleep pants. My focus was mostly on his face, however. It looked like someone had hit him over the face with a bat!
“What the hell kind of trouble did you get into today, Griz?” I asked him. “I thought you were just going out to look into leads from the motel. Did you get into a fight?”
“Ana, nah, it wasn’t like that—”
“After everything that’s happened, why are you running out and getting yourself into trouble—”
“It’s just a little bit of a black eye—”
“That’s not the point, you’re hurt!”
We stood in the middle of my room, staring at each other. I didn’t know why I was so passionate about a black eye. It scared me, I knew that much. That something had managed to hurt Grizzly in some manner almost made me panic. And in his eyes was something that I couldn’t quite discern, but whatever it was, it made me not push him away when he pulled me to him to kiss him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and we started walking back to my bed. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you worry.”
“Shut up,” I panted out. I didn’t care if he was sorry. I didn’t care if he didn’t mean it. He was hurt. He was—
I kissed him, and I forgot about the reason that I had left to begin with. I needed to show him why it mattered to me. I needed this.
I needed him.
My chest felt like it would explode with the rush of emotions that went through it. So I channeled it into something constructive—pulling Grizzly on top of me in my bed. I rolled my hips against him, making my intentions very clear to him. I wanted him, needed him, now. He had worried me fucking sick!
“Ana—”
I covered his mouth with mine, biting at his lip aggressively. If he was going to try and hold out on me, then I would show him I didn’t want him to. I was rewarded with him growling against my mouth and pressing hard between my legs. Through his flimsy sleep pants, I could feel his cock, hard and ready to claim me again.
If only he knew how much of me he’d already claimed.
We shoved at each other’s clothes, desperate to touch skin to skin entirely. My tank top went, and then my bra. He fumbled with it before I finally yanked it off, breaking one of the clasps on the back in my haste. I didn’t really care, not in this moment. Not when Grizzly pressed his mouth to one of my breasts to kiss and suck at the nipple, making me whine for him.
“Grizzly, please.”
I pushed my fingers through his hair, pulling him up to kiss me again. His hand found my breast where his mouth had left it, and he tweaked my nipple, making me writhe. I felt myself getting wetter and aching more, and as he kissed me and fondled my chest, I worked on getting my shorts down, and then worked on his pants. I shoved them down, freeing his cock. He groaned against my mouth and bucked like a beast into the grip that I
had on him, and I squeezed him a little harder, making him roll into the tightness of my hand. I felt the tip of his cock already slicken in my hold.
This was the man that I knew I should have always been with. It would have happened had I stayed, and had I stayed, we might have already had a baby—maybe even more. But he was hurt, and that scared me. This was the only thing that could remind me that he was okay. That this was real. That he was all right.
Grizzly shoved his pants off all the way, kicking them off. We were completely bare, and I liked that. I liked having every inch of his skin exposed to me and I loved the way it felt to have his massive body pressed close against mine. He was so much bigger than me. So strong. His muscles barely gave under my fingers as I wrapped my arms around him and held him close to me.
