Creed (A Blood Riders MC Novel Book 3)

by Tia Lewis

  I never did reply. Instead, I’d waited until I got home on my first leave to look Angie up. By that time, I’d started piecing it together. I looked back on her letters, how sexually explicit they were. She had described things we had never done together. How had she become so talented in between the sheets when I hadn’t been there to experience those acts with her? She’d been a virgin when we were first together, or so she had told me. We should have been learning how to please each other together. I started to wonder if another guy was teaching her how to please a man while I was away.

  That was exactly what had happened, too. When I’d shown up at Angie’s house, she had been there with him. We’d had a big blow-out scene, complete with screaming and throwing shit around. I’d landed one blow on that motherfucker’s face, and he’d gone down like a sack of flour. She’d thrown the ring that I bought for her at me and told me that it was a piece of shit just like I was. She claimed that I was a joke and that she’d never cared about me in the first place. Angie made sure that I knew that she only wanted the benefits and notoriety that came along with being a military wife.

  She never wanted me.

  It’s been eleven years since Angie tilted the world as I knew it on my axis and I couldn’t forget it. It just wasn’t possible. When something so utterly earthshaking happens when you’re not even twenty years old, it tends to stick with you. It might even color your opinions of people, and of life in general. I’d never trusted a woman since Angie fucked me over, ran off into the sunset with her secret lover and never looked back.

  And I never would.

  Not for a single, solitary minute.

  Love and marriage were okay for Drake and people like him who could stomach the risk of giving yourself to someone wholeheartedly and hoping that they wouldn’t get burned in the process. I told myself that I’d never be one of those unsuspecting suckers again as I polished off my second eggroll and my third beer.

  That shit just wasn’t for me. I had learned my lesson about traitorous women early on, and that was probably a good thing. I told myself that I wasn’t the kind of man to repeat a hard-earned lesson repeatedly, the kind of man that would sink balls deep in some pussy and never come up for air. That same philosophy went into all areas of my life, but especially “love.”

  Fuck that shit and all the heartache that came with it.

  By the time that the movie was over, so was my dinner. I had already had three, or was it four, beers?

  I was feeling good. I switched off the TV and stumbled into bed. If being alone was the price that I had to pay for not getting hurt anymore, then so be it.

  7

  Tamara

  “Shit.” I turned to look at my profile in the mirror on the back of my bedroom door. I couldn’t hide it any longer. I was starting to show.

  “Sixteen weeks,” I muttered, looking at myself from every possible angle. It had only taken sixteen weeks for my belly to pop out. I could still wear my jeans, but I had to use an elastic looped through the button hole to get them closed. That would probably work for another week or two, maybe more. I would have to buy a bigger size if I didn’t stop gaining weight, since they were tight in the butt, too. Not that I didn’t have the money—it was just that having to do it, having to actually think about it and plan things out, made everything that much more real. It was too late for denial. I couldn’t avoid thinking about my situation and coming up with a plan to address it any longer.

  Sometimes it was possible to forget, even for just a little while. When I wasn’t throwing up, for instance. Or when I was chatting with the girls at the clubhouse and pretending that everything was normal when in reality I was falling apart inside. I could distract myself then, but when the truth smacks you in the face, you have no choice but to deal with the force of its blow.

  But there were times when I got too distracted. Like just the day before, when I’d poured myself a cup of coffee out of habit and not realized what I was doing until I’d already drunk half of it. I’d done a lot of frantic online research to make sure that I hadn’t permanently hurt the baby by doing it. It had taken Nicole two hours to calm me down.

  “You know what this means, don’t you?” she’d asked with a soft, gentle smile.

  “No, what?” I decided to play crazy, but I knew what she was getting at.

  “It means that you really care about the baby,” she’d said. And I’d known that she was right. When I found out that I was pregnant, I had gone off coffee cold turkey because that was just the right thing to do. I wasn’t a barbarian or uneducated about what I needed to do. When I thought I might have hurt the baby with my inadvertent negligence, I couldn’t stand the guilt because I loved it and wanted it.

  Once I figured that out, something else was clear. I had to tell my mother about it. I couldn’t keep taking money over to her without cluing her in. She would figure it out on her own—she wasn’t the smartest bird in the nest, but she wasn’t stupid either. Six kids of her own meant that she knew what a pregnant woman looked like.

  When I went to her house that morning, my jeans closed with an elastic hair tie, she saw it right away.

  “You’re knocked up, ain’t ya?”

  I sighed, my breath leaving in a big sort of whooshing noise.

  “Hi to you, too. Can I come in and sit down, at least?”

  She opened the door wider, eyeing me up as I walked into the small trailer. I reminded myself to keep from getting upset since that wouldn’t do my blood pressure any favors. And that would affect my little nugget, and that was unacceptable.

  “How far along are ya?” She sat across from me, lighting up a cigarette.

  “Can you not smoke in here, please? At least while I’m here?” I pointed to my belly, wondering how much smoking she had done while she was pregnant with me. I knew she had smoked cigarettes when my younger brother and sister were little buns in the oven since I was old enough to remember watching her do it.

  She grimaced, then put the cigarettes on the coffee table.

  “Don’t worry. I won’t stay long,” I muttered. It would be a pleasure to leave. “Don’t let me twist your arm or anything.”

  “Don’t get bitchy with me.” She sat back, folding her arms and smiling with a kind of nasty knowingness. I felt so cheap and ugly when she looked at me that way. She would never understand the way that it made me feel—she couldn’t. Why would she make her own child feel that way if she knew she was doing it?

  “So who is the baby’s daddy?” she asked. “Some loser from the club?”

  “Don’t go there, Mom. I’m not up to it.”

  “So it is, then. I know that look.” She nodded knowingly.

  “What look?”

  “The look that says you should have known better but you were stupid enough to get yourself in trouble, anyway.”

  “In trouble. What a way to put it,” I muttered. “Is that how you talked about the rest of your kids and me when you were pregnant with us?”

  “Well, you’re in trouble, ain’t ya? Is there any other way to put it?” she asked, running her hands through her greasy blonde hair. Her arms were thinner than they usually looked—in fact, she was skinny all over. She’d always been a small woman, but she was down to skin and bones.

  “I’m pregnant, I’m not ‘in trouble.’ This isn’t the sixties.” I looked at her with a sharper eye. “Are you sick?”

  “Huh?” She looked at me like I was crazy for even suggesting it.

  “I asked if you were sick. You don’t look very well.”

  “Is that any way to talk about your mother?” she asked, shaking her head.

  “Are you? Or were you? Out with it. I’ll be paying the doctor bills anyway, so you might as well tell the truth.”

  She shrugged. “I had a cough for a while.”

  “A cough? What kind of a cough?”

  “The kind that makes you cough,” she snapped, shifting on the old, patched-up recliner. “What difference does it make?”

&
nbsp; “There’s a difference between a cough and bronchitis, Mom. Or pneumonia. Or something even worse.” I had a quick flash of memory, seeing Jack in front of me instead of my mother. He had wasted away, too, though my mother didn’t have that gray color to her skin that he’d gotten when his time was winding down.

  “I had bronchitis, okay? And I didn’t have much of an appetite, either. I was too tired to cook. The cough really took it out of me.”

  “So you went to the doctor?”

  “Yeah, and he gave me an antibiotic and cough syrup.” That part bothered me a little. Cough syrup. I wondered how much alcohol there’d been in it. That was the last thing she needed.

  “And you’re feeling better?”

  She smirked, but there was a nasty edge to it. “Have I coughed since you walked in? Trust me, if I were still sick, you would know it. I thought I broke a rib once, just from coughing so hard.”

  “Jesus, Mom. You gotta take better care of yourself.”

  “Look who’s talking.” She grinned, looking at my belly. I scowled at her, crossing my hands over my baby bulge. She looked into my eyes, shaking her head. She had the nerve to look disappointed. “Why’d you go and do a thing like that?”

  “Because we all make mistakes sometimes, right? But it wasn’t a mistake. It was an accident.”

  I had to stop thinking of the baby as a mistake. I’d read somewhere that the baby could feel the way that its mother felt about it even before it was born. That would explain a lot about how I’d grown up feeling about myself. Like I was unwanted like I shouldn’t be around. That was another thing that I could thank my mother for my insecurity and emotional vulnerability.

  “That’s an accident you’ll pay for the rest of your life,” she promised.

  “Funny. I thought I was the one paying for you to live your life,” I snapped. “I’ve been paying your bills for the past five years, and you sit here telling me kids are nothing but a mistake. That I’ll pay for my child for the rest of my life. Thanks. I can stop coming around any time you want me to if I’m such an accident.”

  She sighed, rolling her eyes. “You’re always so damned dramatic.” I could see her looking at the cigarettes on the table. It was so obvious she was jonesing for one, like a real addict. That was what she was. She always had a very addictive personality when it came to booze, drugs, nicotine, and men.

  “Can you just go out to the stoop, out front or out back? I just don’t want the second-hand smoke,” I said.

  She stood, swiping the pack off the table. How many times had I tried to get her to stop smoking around us? I used to hide them from her until she started beating my little sister for it, thinking she’d been she’d been stealing from the pack and smoking them herself. So, I had fessed up. I gave up after that, too. No sense in trying to help somebody who didn’t want the help. She was always sick, too. This time it was bronchitis. Once she had pneumonia. How many times had she had some sort of respiratory infection? Too many to count at this point.

  I went through my mother’s kitchen while she was out back. Crackers. I smiled wryly to myself when I saw her collection of snack food. How many boxes of saltines had I gone through dealing with morning sickness?

  The rest of the selection in the pantry was as meager. Cereal. Instant mac and cheese. Pop Tarts. Ramen noodles. I would never win any awards for healthy eating, but my mother’s poor nutritional choices were in a class all by itself.

  I looked through the bottom of the fridge, which wasn’t much better. Orange juice, milk. That was good, at least. Beer. A lot of beer. I closed my eyes, leaning my head against the freezer. I didn’t have the nerve to look inside the freezer but would have bet my life there was at least one bottle of vodka in there to go along with the orange juice.

  So, she was drinking again. To think, some women relied on their mothers to help care for their child. If my mother weren't a chain-smoking alcoholic, I would have asked her to help me out. She didn’t work; she could have watched the baby while I did. But no. That was out of the question. I wouldn’t trust her with a goldfish, much less my child.

  When she came back inside, I was back on the beaten old couch with a glass of water in my hand. “Thanks for asking if I was thirsty,” I said.

  “You know where the kitchen is. Why do I have to treat you like a Queen because you show up every once in a while?”

  I smirked. “With money. Don’t forget the money.”

  “Of course. You would never let me forget, would you?” She sat down, glaring at me. I had always known that she resented me; even though she needed the money, it was hard for her to stomach my presence. I guess it was guilt, or perhaps she resented that I was capable of providing for her because she obviously needed my help. She would rather have me support her than do anything for herself and she despised me for that. She hated herself for needing me and for making her hate herself. It was all a big, ugly cycle.

  “Jacinda visits more than you do,” she said. “And she doesn’t have money to give me. She just comes to see me because she wants to come.”

  “Because she wants something from you, right? Her latest boyfriend still beating on her? Did she have to stay with you for a little while?” I knew the answer to my questions since I had already spoken with my older sister. She had come to the clubhouse one day three weeks earlier. I had given her a little money to get her by since my mother wouldn’t have any to help her.

  “What about it? We’re not all lucky like you. We don’t all have a job with a motorcycle club.” She said the words like they were a curse. I wondered how many times she cursed herself for ever getting involved with the Blood Riders. How many times had she wondered how her daughter could have gotten hooked up with them when she’d spent so many years being bitter about her own connection to them?

  I didn’t stay much longer. It was getting harder and harder to visit my mother’s home. I’d read a book years earlier that told me all about the kind of woman that my mother was. She was a toxic person, rotten to the core. She might even have been a narcissist for all I knew.

  Everything was about her. She didn’t care about her kids, and it showed. I was easily the most put-together of all of us, and that was saying something. The only thing that had ever set me apart from the rest of them was having a steady job as the bartender at club, and never having kids. Now the job was the only thing that I could brag about.

  She didn’t ask me about the baby. Not once. She didn’t inquire about how I felt, or whether I knew if I was having a boy or a girl, or who the father was. Not a single thing. It was like she didn’t care at all.

  8

  Tamara

  I had to talk to somebody who would understand. I was tired of carrying everything on my shoulders. I was tired—and not just because of the baby.

  I went straight to the clubhouse after my visit with my mother. The guys were having a meeting with the doors closed, I was relieved since I didn’t feel like seeing any of them. I was too upset.

  Nicole was in her office like I knew that she would be. Even though it was tiny, with only a small window to let in any sunlight, I envied her. I wished I could have an office of my own one day, though I wouldn’t have admitted it to her or anybody else. She was so wrapped up in her work, that she didn’t notice me standing in the open doorway until I knocked.

  When she looked up, it was with a smile on her face—until she saw the look on my face, and her smile dissolved into a frown.

  “Oh, no! What is it?” She waved me in, and I shut the door behind me before sitting in one of the small, plastic chairs next to her desk. “Are you feeling okay?”

  “I told my mom about the baby,” I whispered.

  “Oh. She was unhappy about it?”

  “She couldn’t have cared less. I think that it would have hurt less if she had been unhappy, or upset. She just sort of… smirked. Like she figured that I had it coming to me or something.” I shook my head, thinking about how she’d acted. “I always knew she never wanted any
of us, but when she told me I would pay for it for the rest of my life…”

  “She what? What a bitch.” Nicole’s face got red. “Sorry. I know it’s your mom we’re talking about, but you got me heated.”

  “It’s okay. She is a bitch. You can call her what she is.”

  “I can’t believe that she would say something like that to her own daughter. But you know that’s really sad for her, right? It has nothing to do with you. She could never enjoy having a child, and that’s a sad thing.”

  I snorted. “Yeah, especially since my mom had six of us.”

  “No kidding!”

  “No kidding. And I’m the only one who gives a damn about her. So, what does she do? She gives me shit about it.”

  Nicole surprised me by smiling. “My father used to talk about his mom sometimes—I never met her, she passed before I was born—and you know, she was the same way.”

  “How?” I asked, leaning forward. I was desperate to hear that something about my mother was normal, or at least not outside the realm of what ordinary people did.

  “My grandmother was sick for a long time. I think she was the kind of person who was sick even when she wasn’t actually sick if you know what I mean. She liked the attention. My father was always there for her, every minute of the day. Whatever she needed, he would get it even before she asked. Nothing was too good for her. He wanted so much for her to be happy and taken care of, and he never asked for her thanks. That was a good thing because she never gave it to him. She treated him like shit, but she put Aunt Karen on a pedestal. Whenever Karen would show up for even the quickest visit, it would be like the Queen was coming over. My father would be in the middle of doing something for her—fixing her something to eat, or putting away her groceries, or mowing her lawn—and she would ask if he had heard from Karen lately. I know it got to him after a while.”

  “That’s sad.”