by K. L. Savage
It’s hard to focus when someone I love needs me to save them, when all I want to do is have the ability to freak the fuck out and have another doctor take care of them.
“Eric,” she mumbles. “Badge?” She turns her head to see Badge sitting next to her, and he leans forward, shaking his head.
“Girl, you about gave us a heart attack. Don’t you know we’re too old for shit like that?”
“Sorry, Badge. I—”
“Shh, it’s okay. We all have our demons, and sometimes, they possess us. It’s why everyone here is a sounding board. It’s easier said than done, but talk to us,” Badge says, taking her hand in his.
I lean forward and take a deep breath, in and out, and try to figure out what to say. I want to yell at her. I want to understand why she wants to leave me so bad. If she leaves me, and my mom is going to die, I’ll be alone.
I don’t want to be alone. I’ve never been alone.
I don’t do lonely well.
And maybe that isn’t the best thing to admit because I’m a man. I’m a biker. I’m a Ruthless King, but you know what? I’m not like the other guys. They can be alone, suffer in silence, and say they don’t need love.
But I’m not like them.
I do need it.
I need love, and I need to love. That’s who I am. I’m not ashamed of that. My mom taught me love is the greatest warrior someone can have inside themselves, and she was right because anyone who lives through something horrific, lives for love.
Love for themselves.
Love for someone else.
I’ve seen it all. I’ve seen why people come back from the brink of death, and it sure as hell isn’t to feel what it’s like to die again.
“Do you want to leave me?” I whisper loudly enough that Badge can hear me. I move around to the other side of her body and hold her hand. “I don’t want you to. Can I say that to you? Can I say that I don’t want you to leave? Can you … can you do me a favor, and the next time you think about doing this, think about if you really want to leave. I can fight for the both of us, but I need to know if you want me to.”
She nods, wincing when she tries to move her body. “I do. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she cries. “I remembered. I remembered everything, Eric.” She turns her head away and closes her eyes, and a tear drips free. “Everything.”
Badge stands up and grips the rails. “What happened?”
“You can trust him. Badge used to be a cop; he can help. He knows people if you want to go about this the legal way,” I tell her.
The pain medicine starts to kick in, and her eyes go a bit glassy from the high, but her shoulders relax. “He took advantage of me the illegal way. He can be dealt with the illegal way. I went to his party. I had half a beer, and my body went numb. I could hardly speak. He took me to his room and undressed me. He said I needed to relax and knew I always wanted it. Maybe it was just a dream? Maybe it was nothing,” she slurs. “Maybe it’s all a lie, but I felt him all over. I know he did it. You have to believe me.” She grabs my hand desperately. “You have to.”
“I do, Jo. I believe you.” I bend down to kiss her head, fury burning the ridges across my back.
“I felt him. I feel him,” she sobs. “I feel him everywhere.”
I push my arms around her waist and hold her to my chest. I’m going to give her a chance at revenge. I don’t care what it takes. Her hands curl around my neck, and I bury my nose in her hair, hating that she feels like she’s fighting this alone.
“I’ll go update Reaper in church. You stay here with her. I’ll tell him where you are,” Badge says.
“Thanks,” I say quietly, watching him squeeze the rail in support as he walks away.
“Glad all that bellowing is over,” Moretti says with venom.
I slide the curtain over, open the medicine cabinet, and grab a sedative. I retrieve a syringe and the glass vial. I inject the syringe into the vial and pull the medicine to the syringe. Having to deal with him makes me have to let go of Jo. “Don’t you know the last thing you need to do is piss off your doctor?” I stab him in the neck with the sedative and his mouth opens, gaping at me in surprise. “This isn’t Vegas Memorial Hospital, Moretti. You’re in my house. Piss me off, I’ll make sure you never wake up again.” I yank the needle from his vein, and slowly his eyes fall shut, finally giving me peace and quiet.
I turn around to check on Jo, and she’s staring at the ceiling, almost catatonic. “Jo?”
“I’m sorry,” she apologizes, unable to look at me. “That … that I feel him.”
“Hey, what he did to you wasn’t okay. Your mind reminded you for a reason. What he did can’t truly be forgotten. You want to know something?” I ask her while moving the ultrasound machine closer to me. I lift the shirt she’s wearing so I can see her flat belly. I apply some clear jelly on her stomach, then take her hand and lay it on my chest. “I feel you everywhere. I hope one day, you can feel me too. One day.” I flip the switch on the device as it boots up.
“I do,” she whispers, laying still as I place the wand on her stomach. “I wish I only felt you.”
“You will,” I say, moving the wand around to see if I can find the heartbeat. “Do you know what we’re doing?”
She nods without saying anything and bites her bottom lip.
“If we don’t find a heartbeat, I want you to know I’m here, and you aren’t alone. I love you.” I bend over to place a kiss on her forehead. A whoosh fills the air, and I smile against her head when I hear it, relieved.
“Oh my God,” she cries. “Do you hear it?” She lays her hand next to where the wand is on her belly and grins. It’s the first time I’ve seen her happy about the pregnancy. “He’s alive.” She covers her face, and her shoulders shake.
More tears.
I don’t know how she has any left.
“It’s so different to hear the heartbeat. Is he okay? Is he healthy?” she asks and clutches my shirt. “What if he’s going to die? What do I do? How do I take care of a baby, Eric? Oh my God, he sounds so beautiful.” This time the cries are loud and heart wrenching, yet … happy?
I think.
I’m not sure if she wants comfort, or if she’s finally accepted everything.
“You think it’s a boy, huh?”
“I don’t know… I know he isn’t an ‘it’; that sounds so rude,” she huffs.
I pull the wand away, but she snags my wrist to put the wand back in place. “I don’t want to stop hearing him. Not yet? Please?”
“Yeah, we can listen to him more.” I lay next to her, and she leans her head against my chest. The heartbeat whooshes, and another relieved breath leaves my lungs when I hear him. Or her. All I know is that it’s a miracle this baby is still alive. She struggled with the idea of a baby, but I think she would’ve been depressed if something happened to him or her.
I’m not saying I know because I don’t.
I don’t know anything about her decisions or about how she truly feels, but right now, as she smiles and laughs with every whoosh of his heart, I know she’s fully accepted him in her heart. If she hadn’t, I would have loved her anyway.
I’m not going to judge someone to make the hardest decision of their life because they were raped. There is physical trauma, mental and emotional trauma, and I can’t act like I know what she’s going through.
Our traumas are different.
Our reasons for what we do and how we think are different.
But our hearts are the same.
“He sounds good, right?” she says sleepily.
“He sounds healthy,” I reassure her. “More testing needs to be done, but I’m glad there is a heartbeat.”
She wraps her hand around mine where I’m holding the wand, and she sighs, on her way to falling asleep. “Me too, Eric. Thank you for saving me.”
“I’ll always save you,” I promise.
“Mmm.” Her head lulls to the side as the morphine takes over.
“Congrats,
Doc,” Skirt says from across the way. “Ain’t nothing like it, I’m telling ye.” He holds his little girl in his hands, never once letting anyone else try to hold her; not even Sarah. He’s smitten. That cute potato has him wrapped around her tiny potato finger.
“Thanks, Skirt.”
Da-dum da- dum da-dum.
The whoosh is too astonishing to hear. I can’t seem to put the wand down either, but I have to get up. I have a few other patients to check on.
I can’t seem to move. I don’t want to. I want to lay here with her until the end of fucking time and this baby is born.
I’m so attached, and I have no idea why.
I listen to the whoosh a bit longer before I get up, clean off her stomach, and hang the portable ultrasound on the bed so it’s always there when I need it. I lay my palm across her stomach, bend down, and kiss her belly.
I’m attached because I love her.
And loving her means loving this child.
“Doc?” a feminine voice calls out for me from another bed, and when I look over my shoulder, I see Melissa finally waking up. Her eyes are closed, and she groans in pain.
“Holy shit, is Poodle going to be glad to see you. You scared us. Church is happening right now. It’s why he isn’t here, but he hasn’t left your side.”
“I know, I heard him talking to me.” She grins as if she’s thinking about all the things he said to her when she was unconscious. “He’s still so dirty, even when I’m sleeping.”
“You’re in good spirits for someone who’s been unconscious for days. You feeling okay?” I ask, peeling her lids back to check for pupil dilation. They are perfect.
“My head kind of hurts.”
“That’s normal, considering…” I joke. “Want me to go get him?” I wrap the stethoscope around my neck after I finish listening to her heart.
“Nah, keep him wondering.”
I make a face and pucker my lips, shaping them in an O. “Ouch, that’s just mean.”
“That’s what he gets for saying…” She blushes bright red. “Never mind.”
Dirty seems to run in Ruthless King blood. We’ll do anything to win our women over, even if it means penetrating their dreams with the filthy things they love most.
“Well, you can’t say his method didn’t work. You’re awake.”
“Don’t tell him that. I’ll never hear the end of it.” She looks around, rolling her head left and right, and she frowns when she sees all the people around her that she cares about so much. “Oh my God.”
“Yeah, this is what church is about,” I say.
“Whoever did this is going to experience a bloodbath.”
Yeah, that’s the plan.
Raise hell.
Bring fury.
Spill Blood.
It’s the Ruthless way.
“I need to go see his mom,” I say to Reaper, who’s currently sitting there signing a piece of paperwork. From the header on it, it has something to do with Kings’ Club, which reminds me that I want to ask him about a job when I’m healed.
If I’m healed.
Even if it means waiting tables when I’m nine months pregnant, it’s what I’ll do.
Reaper leans in his seat and crosses his hands over his stomach. “No.” He doesn’t think about it. He doesn’t even blink.
I readjust the crutches under my arms and keep the weight off my bad leg. “Why? I really need to see her. Eric is busy today, and…” I’m not sure if they know about his mom having breast cancer. It isn’t my place, but everything has been so hectic that no one has had a chance to talk about the other things going on in people’s lives. “She’s dying, Reaper. She has breast cancer.”
His brows lift and the chair drops to the floor when he shoots forward. “Rachel has breast cancer? Since when? No way… She would have told us.”
“Years. She thought she could beat it, but the doctors have deemed it terminal. They gave her three months.”
Reaper hides his face in his hands and runs his fingers through his thick head of hair. “Fuck, Doc has got to be devastated. He and his mom are as thick as thieves. He’s closer with her than he is to us.”
“He’s taking it as well as he can, I think, but I really want to go check on her. Please?” I ask.
“Not by yourself. I know you’re pregnant and you have fifty stitches in your leg. Letting you go by yourself would be stupid on my part.”
Eric and a few of the guys are creating a plan, surveying, studying the casino, and Reaper is here waiting on Maximo and Natalia to come. They couldn’t make it yesterday. Maximo’s flight was delayed in Italy since he went to get Natalia himself.
“Take Knives with you,” Reaper says. “I need Tongue here for when Maximo comes over. Tongue makes him uncomfortable, and that’s my goal when I see Maximo today.”
“Knives,” I mumble and swallow. I can deal with Knives. He is a little touched in the head like Tongue, but not as bad. Unlike the other guys, Knives is one of the members I don’t know as well.
“Knives!” Reaper hollers, then stands to his full height. I crane my neck to stare up at him and tilt my head down. I hear the leather of his boots stretch from his wide feet as he walks. “Don’t turn away. You have no reason to be afraid of me. You know we have your back, right? You’re part of this family too. We’re going to find Brody. We’ll bring you justice, but you and the baby have a home here, no matter what happens with you and Doc.”
“Thank you,” I whisper.
“I swear to fucking god, Knives. Sling that ninja star again and slice another chunk out of my hair, and I’ll fucking kill you.”
Reaper groans in annoyance and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Not this again.”
“Maybe you should be quicker,” Knives mocks and then there’s a slam against the wall, followed by a picture falling to the ground, the glass shattering.
“Maybe you need to stop flinging those fucking things before you take someone’s eye out,” Tool snips.
“Shut up! The both of you, shut up.” Reaper swings his door open to find Tool there at the doorway and Knives flipping the star between his fingers. Tool has a cut on his cheek and the front of his hair is shorter than the rest. His lips are pressed together in a tight line, and his arms are crossed. Neither of the guys are looking into the room. They’re staring at the wall. “Get your head out of your asses, now. I’m not in the mood. We have bigger fish to fry than your goddamn hair and you with your tendencies.”
“Yes, Prez,” they say at the same time.
“Tool, go shave your head. You look fucking ridiculous. Knives, you’re going with her to see Doc’s mom. We need to make room for her here. I’ll say why at church. Don’t ask me questions, and don’t fuck around; I don’t have the patience.”
Knives doesn’t say a word. He steps forward and stares down at me. His head is shaved on the sides and the top is a little longer than the rest. He has a tattoo under neck that says ‘Judge Me’ and it makes me wonder what would happen if I did…
I bet he’d gut me.
Knives bends over and slides his arms under me, and I barely have time to clutch onto the crutches before they fall. “What are you doing?”
“Picking you up. You’re pregnant and cut yourself.”
“I can walk. I’m fine,” I say, blushing as Reaper and Tool eye us down as we leave. Tool sneers at Knives, and I have to hold back a smile with how goofy he looks. He does need to shave his head.
“No way. Pregnant women can’t be walking around anyway. It’s better this way. You’re safe. I don’t want Doc to slice me with his scalpel. Man is dark. I see it in his eyes.” Knives gets a little shifty, darting his eyes around the kitchen as we walk. “Eyes tell all,” he adds.
“Ooookay,” I say, lifting my head up to watch where we’re going. “You know the baby isn’t going to fall out of me, right?”
“We don’t know that.” Knives shrugs and angles his body as we squeeze through the hallway so my legs don’t hit the w
all.
That’s thoughtful.
I never should’ve cut myself. I need to have another outlet. Maybe I can talk to Eric about therapy. Reaper mentioned it, but with everything that has happened, therapy hasn’t been on anyone’s mind. I need it, though.
I don’t want to be broken anymore. I want to be better, not just for me, not just for Eric, but for the baby. God, when I heard that heartbeat for the first time, I felt something inside me shift. The need to survive overwhelmed me. Life isn’t about me anymore; it’s given me something to focus on, to make sure I get strong enough to be a mother to this child.
Even though I never wanted to be pregnant any time soon, even though I never imagined getting pregnant like I did, not ever hearing that fast whoosh of his heart would devastate me.
“Got a new bride, Knives?” Slingshot asks, making me giggle as he eats one of those forbidden tacos he isn’t supposed to gnaw on.
“Shut up. Don’t say that shit. She isn’t my bride. I’m making sure she doesn’t walk. She’s injured. If Doc comes at me, I’m stealing your tacos,” Knives threatens. We reach the door, and Tank hurries from the couch to open it. He gives me a shy smile and looks away from me.
For a man who has a badass look to him, tall, muscular, tattoos, piercings, he is a bashful thing. “Thanks, Tank.”
“Aw, it’s nothin,” he scoffs, slapping his hand through the air.
“It’s very kind.”
“Don’t talk to anyone. Doc might hear,” Knives says.
“Doc isn’t even around,” I point out as we step onto the porch. The day is promising fall. The air is cool, but the sun is warm. It’s a perfect combination. Knives stomps down the steps, looks longingly at his bike as we head toward the black on black diesel truck.
I reach out to open the door, and Knives yanks me away so I can’t. “Knives, come on. I can open a door.”
“No fucking way. Hands to yourself,” he says, moving around and grumbling under his breath as he tries to open the door. “Damn it.” He struggles. He spins around, pressing my head against the truck, and he manages to get his fingers under the door handle.
