by Tia Lewis
I held onto the sink for support. “How do you know that?”
“I already saw Diesel this morning. He was just coming in when I got here. They partied all night long. He told me about it. He’s sleeping upstairs now.”
I wanted to go straight up there and bang the door down and demand that he tell me what happened at Bobby’s. Creed had to pay twice? What did that mean? I had a sick feeling that I knew exactly what it meant, and it chilled me to the bone. Two women. He had been with two women. I didn’t know what to do, or what to think. I turned away, hoping Harris would leave the room so I could be alone.
He walked out a moment or two later, whistling to himself like he was on top of the world and wishing that he had been in Creed’s shoes. He had no idea what he had just done to me.
Harris had wrecked me, torn my heart out and stomped it into the ground. He could walk around whistling, totally clueless. Meanwhile, my world was crumbling around me. How could Creed do something like that, when I thought that we were getting closer again? When I had been so ready to tell him about the baby?
I couldn’t believe that I had ever thought about telling him the truth. I knew then and there that I had been smart to trust my instincts. He wasn’t the kind of man that a woman could depend on, and he never would be.
I was still fuming when he walked into the clubhouse a short time later. It would have been better for him not to come in at all. I turned away so he couldn’t see the look on my face. I could almost feel the murderous rage radiating from me.
“Hey, it’s quiet here today,” Creed observed, sitting at the bar. I didn’t answer. I couldn’t speak over the tightness in my throat.
“Hello? Did you hear me?”
“Yeah, I heard you,” I spat. “Am I supposed to fall to my knees just because you walked in?”
I caught his eye in the mirror behind the bar and saw nothing but confusion. “Uh, no. But acknowledging me goes a long way.”
“I’ll make a note of that.” I wiped down the shelves, picking up each bottle of liquor and slamming it back down when I was finished. “From what I heard, I didn’t think you would be here until much later today. If at all.”
“You heard about the party?” he asked.
“Yeah, I heard about the party. I heard it went on all night.”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” he said with a quiet laugh. “I cut out early.”
“Yeah. I know all about that, too.” I slammed a bottle of vodka harder than I needed to.
“You want a hand full of broken glass?” There was an edge in his voice.
“If you think you can do a better job, you’re more than welcome to come back here and help me. Otherwise, I would appreciate you holding back on the comments.”
“What is your problem now? It can’t just be the baby.”
I whirled around. “Watch it.” I was Mount Vesuvius, about to explode and obliterate everything in its path.
“Well? I was willing to chalk up your bitchy attitude to being pregnant. It was the only reason that I never told you to go fuck yourself when you were acting like such a bitch to me before. But now? Go fuck yourself if you’re not gonna tell me why you’re pissed at me this time. If you don’t wanna be an adult about it and talk things out, I don’t care.”
I took a deep breath or two, willing myself to calm down. “I don’t need a fight right now,” I whispered. “I can’t risk my blood pressure going up too high.”
“Why don’t you think about that the next time you wanna start a fight with me?” he asked, sliding from the stool.
“Because the very sight of you pisses me off right now, okay? Happy now?” I threw my dust cloth at him. He caught it deftly, then threw it back.
“Stop being such a child,” he spat. “Why don’t you tell me what’s really on your mind?”
“Fine. Why did you do it?”
“Why did I do what?”
“I know what you did. You know what you did. Did you have fun with your two whores? Everybody saw you go upstairs with them.”
His face changed. He looked almost smug. “Oh, so you heard about that, huh?”
“Yeah, I did. You disgust me.”
“I disgust you?” He laughed, throwing his head back. “That’s funny coming from you.”
I turned red. My entire body got warmer. “What does that mean?”
“It means you were fucking somebody else when we were together.”
“We were never together, Creed. We just fucked. That’s all.” I shook from head to toe, gripping the counter as tight as I could to stay on my feet. I felt sick. Why were those hateful, hurtful words coming out of my mouth? I didn’t mean any of them. I didn’t want to hurt him.
His face turned as red as the crimson color of my cheeks.
“Well, I’m glad that I know that now. I’m glad that you act so fucking high and mighty when you’re no better than one of those girls who works for Bobby. At least they get paid to take dick. You give your pussy away for free.”
Now I was seething. Creed had no idea that he had just awakened the devil in me.
“Get the fuck away from me before I throw something sharper and heavier than a dust cloth. I’m warning you.” I picked up a whiskey bottle, ready to throw it straight at his shiny bald head. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to make him hurt the way that he was hurting me.
It would all be so easy if you would just tell him the truth. My subconscious plagued me, but I would never do it, especially not now when I knew the kind of man that he really was. And to think, I believed that he was turning himself around. What a bunch of bullshit. He would never change. He could lose weight, bulk up, and shave his beard and his head to make himself look like he was a reformed man but he would always be the same fucking loser. I’d never be able to depend on him, and that was the one thing that I needed most: A man that I could depend on to be an example to my child.
He sneered before turning away. “A woman in your position shouldn’t be such a bitch,” he muttered, his tone flat and murderous as he walked away from me. “Who’s gonna want your ass once you pop out that kid?” he called over his shoulder.
“Get the fuck away from me!” I screamed, waiting until he was in Drake’s office to break down. I buried my head in my folded arms, leaned on the bar, and cried my eyes out.
Nicole heard us arguing and came running. “What happened?” She put her arms around me, and I leaned on her as I wept.
“It’s all over. It’s all over.” I said it over and over, overwhelmed with sobs as the words weighing heavy on my heart. I was so stupid—though whether it was believing in Creed or pushing him away again, I wasn’t sure. Either way, I’d screwed everything up.
His actions and his cruel words had cut me far too deep. I could finally acknowledge the painful truth: there was no coming back from this.
18
Creed
I went into Drake’s office and slammed the door so hard that the walls shook and a few of the pictures fell to the floor. One of them was the one of Jack next to Tamara’s father. Ironic. I hung it back up.
“You have a seriously fucked-up daughter,” I muttered to the man in the photo. I never knew Clayton. He had died before I joined the club. I’d heard stories about him, stories that would make a whore blush. He was the biggest manwhore in the club, always chasing after pussy.
“Thanks a lot,” I said, throwing myself down on the sofa with my fists clenched. I covered my eyes with my hands, wondering when she would finally get her shit together and stop acting the way she was around me. I couldn’t get a read on her from one day to the next. Everything had been going so well, too. I had just started wondering if we could make a family together, the two of us and her kid. I had tried to convince myself that she needed me and that I needed her. I’d told myself that it would be best for the baby for Tamara and me to raise a family together. But what the hell did I know? No kid deserved parents who fought all the time. I had learned that one the hard way.
&n
bsp; Drake came in a minute later, slamming the door almost as hard as I had. “What the fuck did you do?” he demanded loudly. I knew from the tone of his voice that he was furious with me.
“Excuse me?” I stood up, staring at him. “What are you talking about, what did I do? I didn’t do anything. You need to place the blame on this shit where it’s due.”
“What did you do to Tamara? She’s out there bawling her eyes out! She’s all worked up, and Nicole can’t get her to calm down. She could go into labor over some shit like that.”
“Tamara will be all right,” I said, waving him off.
“Are you a fucking pediatrician? Since when did your ass become a psychologist or an expert in child development? You better fucking speak because I am seconds away from laying your ass out! Explain yourself!” Drake roared.
I couldn’t tell him that I had done a little internet research, hoping that I could use some of the knowledge I picked up as I pursued Tamara. I had already looked up whether a woman could go into premature labor due to stress. It was possible, but usually, that was only in high-stress situations, like wartime or extreme trauma. We might have fought like animals, but it wasn’t the same thing as being in the middle of a war zone or going through a gruesome accident.
When I didn’t answer, he sighed. “Come here and sit down,” he said, pointing to one of the chairs in front of the desk. I did, only because I was curious about what he wanted from me and what he had to say in return.
“Why don’t you get over yourself and admit that you’re in love with her so that we’ll all be a lot happier?”
“Aw, man, you’re crazy. You don’t know what the hell that you’re talking about.”
“Bullshit! You think that I don’t know what I’m talking about?” He sat in front of me, perched on the edge of the desk. “I know what you’re going through. It’s the same thing that I went through when I fell for Nicole. I hated the way that I felt. I hated that she could get to me the way that she did. I was used to being in control of my emotions and then here came this slip of a woman who totally undid me. She could kill me with a single look. I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I told myself to forget her.” He smirked. “That went well, didn’t it?”
“It’s not the same for us. You and Nicole, you were meant to be together. If it were gonna happen between Tamara and me, it would have happened by now. Believe me.”
Drake’s face changed. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that we’ve already been together. Two different times we had sex, but we didn’t tell anybody about it.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because… I don’t remember why not, I guess. She didn’t want anybody to know, and I went along with it because that was what she wanted. The first time was when we were warring with the Vipers, and the second time was a couple of months before your wedding.”
“Oh, shit. You slept with Tamara twice, then?”
“Hell, lots more than that. All day every day, a few weeks of constant fucking both times.”
“And you didn’t tell me?” He shoved me hard, knocking me back in my seat.
“I told you, she didn’t want anybody to know. It’s stupid, now that I think back on it, but it made sense at the time. I don’t know. I don’t remember too well.”
“Holy shit.” Then it was like a lightbulb going off in his head. “I remember seeing you two running upstairs together during Jack’s goodbye party.”
I nodded. “Yeah. That happened.”
He surprised me by laughing. “So that’s what this is really all about. It’s not that you can’t keep away from each other. It’s the fact that you had already gone there and after you had got involved with each other, shit went crazy. Okay, it makes more sense now.”
I snorted. “I’m glad that it makes sense to you brother because nothing makes sense to me right now. I don’t know where she’s coming from or why she’s acting the way that she is. I just duck and try to stay out of her way.” I stared off into the distance, out one of the windows behind Drake’s desk. It wasn’t much of a view, but it wasn’t like I could appreciate it anyway. “It’s funny because things were working out for us. We were getting along again, hanging out. She even let me take her when she was registering for presents for the baby. We had fun, as weird as that sounds. And the baby kicked, and she put my hand on her stomach, and it was… It was something.”
Drake put his hand on my shoulder. “You’re in love with her, aren’t you? It’s okay to admit it, man. You can say it out loud. It goes no further than these four walls.”
“I guess I am. When Tamara did that—with her stomach, I mean—yeah, I felt it. I felt like I loved her. It all kinda made sense. And I wished that we were there registering our baby. I wished it was mine. Isn’t that fucking sick?”
Drake shook his head, frowning. “It’s the least sick thing that I’ve ever heard. You love her and, you wanna raise the kid with her. That’s really cool.”
“Not when it’s not my kid. Not when she was fucking some other guy when we were sleeping together, Drake.”
He shook his head again. “Did you talk about keeping it between you two? Did you decide that you were a thing?”
I wanted to say yes, but I couldn’t. “No.”
“So you can’t blame her. It only takes one time to make a baby. It doesn’t even mean that she was with this other guy, whoever he was when you were a thing. You keep blaming her for doing the same sort of shit that you’ve been doing for years.”
“Hey,” I protested. My objection was futile because deep down I knew that Drake was right.
“It’s true. How many times did you sleep with a different chick every night for multiple nights in a row? And that was okay with you and everyone else. I’m not trying to give you shit for your past. I’m just saying, it’s the exact same thing.”
A lightbulb when off inside of my head. “You’re not the father, are you?” I asked, unsure of whether I wanted to hear his answer.
Drake stood up, backing away. “Are you fucking serious!” He looked at me like I had lost my mind.
“So you’re not the father of Tamara’s baby?” I had to know.
“No! Jesus, why don’t I just fuck my sister while I’m at it!” He rolled his eyes and his eyebrows furrowed like he was offended that I would even go there.
“Um, you used to fuck Tamara all of the time,” I remembered when the two of them had slept around together, just casually.
“Not all of the time. Only a few times, but that was years ago. Way before I met Nicole. You’re sick bastard.”
I couldn’t believe the relief that I felt when he said that. “I thought it might be you,” I admitted. “It’s been driving me fucking nuts.”
“You’re the one that’s ‘fucking nuts’ if you think that I would cheat on Nicole or that I would sleep with Tamara while I was happily married.” Drake shuddered.
“Come on. Don’t act like Tamara’s not hot.”
“She’s seriously like a sister to me now. I thought that you knew that, man.”
“Yeah, but there’s no telling what could happen when you get a little drunk, maybe she gets a little drunk, things happen, whatever. You’re comfortable with each other. I mean, you wouldn’t be the first to sink balls deep into someone that was supposedly just a friend.”
“You are so fucking sick! I need to take a shower.”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay, okay. Enough. Who do you think it could be her baby’s father, then?”
He looked at me with narrowed eyes. “You’re sure it’s not you?”
“She already told me that it wasn’t.”
“And you’re sure that she was telling the truth?”
“Why would she lie?”
“Maybe she was scared.”
That was something that I hadn’t thought about before. “Why would Tamara fear me? That doesn’t make any sense. What have I ever done to scare her?”
“I don’t mean, like, physically sc
ared. Maybe Tamara thought that you wouldn’t be cool with it. I don’t know. I’m just making shit up in my head. But it makes sense. Maybe that’s why she didn’t tell any of us who the father is.”
“You mean your wife doesn’t know?” I asked, smirking. “I don’t believe that.”
“If she does, she won’t tell me. She’s like a locked box, I swear to God.”
“So you tried to get it out of her, then?”
“Fuck yes. I’m curious. But Nicole won’t say a word.” He shrugged.
“She won’t tell me the truth, that’s for sure. Tamara, I mean. She’s had ample opportunity to come clean.” I slouched in the chair, at the end of my rope. She had no idea what she was doing to me by acting the way that she was. I couldn’t take much more of it. I was sure that I wanted to be with her, and I was willing to do just about anything that she asked me to do to make things right between us. But I couldn’t put myself out there like that as long as she was keeping secrets from me.
“I don’t even know what I did wrong,” I admitted. “I walked in here this morning, and I thought that things were cool. Tamara flipped out because of the girls last night—when I didn’t even fuck them.”
“She flipped out over them?” Drake asked, grinning a little.
“Yeah, that was one of the things that she mentioned. Someone sold me out; it had to be that fucking Harris kid that she works with behind the bar. Tamara was livid. She talked all kinds of shit about the girls, and I didn’t even give up any cock!” Now I was pissed.
“You’re so fucking dumb. Tamara is mad because you slept with somebody else—or at least she thinks that you did. She’s jealous, you idiot. Do I have to spell it all out for you?”
“That was jealousy? Threatening to throw a bottle of whiskey at my head and getting all violent and shit?”
“Oh, hell yeah. Please. I wish that were the smallest thing Nicole ever threatened to throw at me.”
“Huh.” I didn’t know if I could believe him. It was nice to imagine Tamara giving a shit about me, but I had seen the straight-up hatred in her eyes. No, it wasn’t jealousy. She couldn’t stand me for some reason. I didn’t know why. I wished that she would tell me what the fuck made her hate me because whatever it was, I would never do it again. I was man enough to know that I had to pick my battles and it just wasn’t worth fighting with her.
