Riggs' Saviour (Kings Reapers MC)

by Nicola Jane

  “Six letters over the last few weeks. I haven’t opened them.”

  I nod stiffly. “I’ll collect the letters later.” I watch her walk away. That fucker’s got a nerve after what he did to Anna. My blood boils knowing he’s got her new address. That means he has contacts watching her.

  By the time I get to the hospital, I’m raging. Before, if I felt like this, I’d fuck. It was the only way to bring me down and stop my path of self-destruction. Now, I can’t even do that.

  The radiation therapist shakes my hand. We’re becoming friends, if that’s possible, as these sessions have been taking place almost every day for the last few months. We do the usual shit, an MRI and then treatment. Then I head to the restroom. Sometimes I leave straight away, but today, I want to see if Cal’s around. I met him at the start of my journey. He was already three weeks into treatment and we got to chatting on one of my first visits. He hadn’t told anyone in his family either, so we kind of formed a friendship based on supporting each other and keeping a huge secret.

  He isn’t in the restroom, but I take a seat anyway to wait for him. He sometimes arrives a little later than me. I have my head resting back and my eyes closed when I hear the sound of her laughter. My heart skips a beat. Fuck, I’m even hearing her in my daydreams. I laugh to myself, but when I open my eyes, there’s Anna, staring at me with wide eyes. A second later, Cal comes in, grinning when he spots me.

  “Brother, how was it today? I had that hot nurse, but it was brutal,” he says, patting my shoulder and seating himself next to me. “At one point, I . . .” he trails off when he sees me and Anna staring at each other. A female standing with Anna gently takes her by the arm, startling her. She shakes her head, like she’s clearing a bad dream, and follows the woman without another word.

  “Who was that hot piece of ass?” asks Cal.

  “My wife,” I mutter, watching the two women leave the room.

  I don’t bother going to Anna’s to collect Reggie’s letters. I can’t face the questions and I’m exhausted. Proton therapy causes me some serious fatigue. Raven spots me making my way through the club and follows me until we get upstairs. “How was it?” she asks.

  “Anna was there,” I mutter, and her eyes bug out of her head.

  I open my bedroom door and she follows me in. “Shit. Did you tell her?”

  I shake my head. “She walked away before I could. She was there with someone, a woman. I think we were both too shocked.”

  “You have to tell her, Riggs.”

  “I have one more fucking session. Why the fuck was she there?” I growl, slamming my hand against the wall.

  Raven sighs, grabbing my hand and examining the cuts left from where I punched the wall. “Get some rest. You look terrible. We’ll come up with a plan. And stop punching shit, it won’t help.”

  I shake my head. “I ain’t telling her. If she asks, I’ll refuse to tell her.”

  “That’s a dumb idea,” mutters Raven. “You tried that with me, remember? Anna knows you better than me, so she’ll work it out, if she hasn’t already. And maybe,” she pauses, “maybe this happened for a reason. It’s a shove in the right direction. Now is your chance to open up and tell her everything.”

  I lie down. In the beginning, I didn’t tell Anna because we were dealing with the pregnancy thing. Then it became too hard to talk. Eventually, I decided to keep it to myself. Call me pig-headed, but since treatment for my prostate cancer began, I’ve felt less and less like a man. I can’t even have a fucking wank. I groan out loud and Raven smiles at me sympathetically.

  “Maybe this will make things better between you.”

  “Exactly,” I snap. “She’ll feel sorry for me and come back. I don’t want that. Anna’s too kind and caring to walk away. She’ll stay out of pity.”

  Raven rolls her eyes. “Sleep, Pres. Worry about the rest later.”

  Chapter Eight

  ANNA

  I’ve tried calling his phone a million times, but he won’t answer. I’d gone to the hospital to see one of my former foster mums. I’d found out she’d gotten cancer and promised to pop in and see her. I wasn’t expecting to see Riggs there, and I left in shock. But it’s been three days and I’ve not seen him to ask what the hell is going on. That’s why I’ve asked Eva to come over and watch the girls for me. I’m on a mission and I’m going to find out everything, once and for all.

  I get to the club and Cree is outside smoking a cigarette. “Anna,” he says, sounding surprised. “I thought you were seeing Eva at your place tonight?”

  “Don’t worry, Cree. She’s exactly where she said she’d be. She’s watching the kids for me. I’ve come to see Riggs.”

  He winces. “Probably not a good idea. He’s been drinking today.”

  “I can handle him,” I say, heading inside.

  Riggs is sitting on the couch with a club girl resting on his lap, placing kisses along his jaw. I watch them for a minute, feeling everyone’s eyes on me. I won’t give them a show—I’m not that sort of girl. Instead, I stand in front of them. The girl panics, jumping up from his lap and rushing off. It isn’t her fault, he’s the President, and she can’t say no to him if she wants to carry on staying at the club. I place my hands on my hips and Riggs stares up at me with a stupid smirk on his face. “Here she is,” he grins. “Come to ruin the party, my love?”

  I call over to Lake and Chains. “Get him up,” I order. They exchange a wary look.

  “Do as she says,” comes Frankie’s voice, and I suppress the urge to smile as they move to Riggs, taking an arm each and lifting him from the couch.

  “Upstairs,” I say.

  I lead the way to our bedroom. It’s a mess. I push the bathroom door open and turn on the shower. “In there,” I say, and they push him under the spray of water fully clothed. He splutters, trying to suck in some air but getting a mouthful of water instead. “I need coffee and water,” I say and Lake rushes off. After a few minutes, Chains helps Riggs from the shower and guides him to a chair by the window. “I’ll take it from here,” I say and he gives me a relieved smile. “Ask Lake to leave the coffee outside the door.”

  I wait for Chains to leave, then I slowly unfasten the buttons on Riggs’ shirt. He’s half asleep and doesn’t stir as I undress him. I go to tug his wet jeans down his legs, and that’s when I see the large red mark on his abdomen. I’m at eye level, so there’s no avoiding it. I gently run a finger over the area, as he flinches slightly but doesn’t fuss. I finish getting him out of the wet clothes and pull on a fresh pair of boxer shorts. “This is what I mean,” he slurs. “You’ll become a fucking nurse to me.” I help him over to the bed and he half sits up against the headboard.

  “Tell me everything,” I say, fetching the coffee and water from outside the room. He takes the coffee with shaky hands. “From the beginning,” I add.

  “I’m one of the statistics,” he mutters. “You know, only four in ten men get prostate cancer in their thirties? Most men get it in their sixties, but no, not me.”

  I suck in a breath and climb onto the bed, facing him. I tuck my legs underneath myself and resist the urge to throw my arms around him. “I was pissing all the goddamn time. I’d piss and need another in ten minutes. It drove me nuts, and I remember Raven asking me about it. She was in The Windsor with us and I went to the toilet three times in twenty minutes. She said she knew a guy who was like that and he’d been diagnosed with cancer. I laughed. As if that could happen to me. I have a wife and kids to look after, a club to run, it wasn’t gonna be me. But she nagged me, said I needed to get checked out or she’d tell you and Mum.” He pauses, drinking the rest of his coffee and setting the cup down on the bedside table.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I whisper.

  “Cos you announced you were fucking pregnant the very same day I got my test results. My head was fucked. I’d been with a doctor telling me I might have to have a fucking colostomy bag for life, that I’d probably never get a fucking erection on my
own again let alone have any more kids, and then you stood beside me, smiling and laughing, and told the club we were having a kid. And I just went into shock.”

  Tears silently fall down my cheeks. “I didn’t know,” I mumble.

  “Part of me didn’t wanna take your smile away, you were so happy. Then I ended up doing exactly that by pushing you away. When I left, before you had Willow, I told the club I was hitting the road for a while. I was actually having an operation to see if they could remove any of the cancer. They got most of it, but they’ve been giving me proton therapy to target that area. The last one was two days ago. Now, I’ve gotta wait to see if they’ve gotten it all or if I have to try something else.”

  “Like chemotherapy?” I ask, my voice shaky. I’d been searching up cancer treatments since I saw him at the hospital.

  He nods. “And if I have that, the chance of us ever having another kid is unlikely.”

  “I don’t care about having more kids,” I say. “You’re the most important thing in all this.”

  He shakes his head with a look of disgust on his face. “I don’t expect you to stick around, Anna. I’m not the man you married.”

  I shuffle closer and place a hand against his cheek. “Don’t say that. Why didn’t you tell me? All this could have been avoided.”

  “I don’t want you with me out of pity. I can’t get a fucking erection. You know how that makes me feel?”

  “None of that matters. I love you. I don’t care about the sex or kids.”

  He pushes my hand away from his face. “You will. In time. I don’t know if things will get better or a shit tonne worse. I don’t want you looking after me. I never wanted you to know. Now that you do, I don’t feel better for it. Now, I’m stressed about you and how you’ll cope. Just walk away. It’s less complicated when you aren’t around.”

  I recoil like he’s slapped me. “That’s not fair. You never gave me a chance to stay and fight for us with the whole truth out. If you’d have told me, I could have understood your behaviour. I thought you hated me, that you’d stopped loving me!”

  “Maybe I have. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t bring myself to tell you.”

  I swipe my tears away. “Stop pushing me away,” I snap. “It’s cruel.”

  “I mean, how messed up is it that Raven noticed and you didn’t? What does that say about us?” A physical pain swells in my chest. I know he’s being like this so I’ll walk away, and right now, I’m considering it. “She’s been around, yah know, asking how I am. Making sure I rest and everyone leaves me the hell alone.” I can’t stop the flow of tears anymore. “She did the job you should have done.”

  “Stop,” I whisper. “No more.”

  “And she’s pretty, right? If my erection is gonna come back, then surely it’ll work for her.”

  I clench my fists because slapping his smartass face will only make me feel shittier. His cruel eyes glare at me. He expects me to run. Instead, I lie beside him and leave my tears to fall. He should witness what his cruel words do to me.

  RIGGS

  I stare straight ahead, fixing my angry glare at the window. Why won’t she fucking leave? Her quiet sobs shake the bed. I’m angry she’s found out the truth. Now, she’ll hang around and I won’t know if that’s because she wants to be here out of love or if she feels duty-bound cos we’re married. I haven’t stopped drinking since my last round of therapy. I shouldn’t even be fucking drinking, but who was gonna stop me?

  “Is it something I do?” she eventually whispers. When I don’t answer, she continues, “Am I the problem?”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, sighing impatiently.

  “Is it something I do to make men treat me like shit?”

  Her words cut me like a knife to the heart. “No,” I mutter.

  “Then why does it happen to me? When will I meet a guy who treats me like . . .” She pauses, thinking. “Like Vinn treats Leia?”

  I scoff. “Vinn isn’t even with Leia. He’s just obsessed.”

  “But he treats her so well. He doesn’t care that she’s with Chains. He would do anything for her. He even put me in one of his houses just because she asked him to.”

  “Anna, you don’t do anything wrong,” I mutter. I feel like a shit bag. I drink the glass of water as my head feels fuzzy. “You just fall for arses like me.”

  “You treated me like that once,” she says. “When we first met, I thought the world of you. You stuck me on a pedestal. Maybe that’s why it feels so much worse—you put me up so high and then kicked it from under me. Now, I don’t know how to get back to the woman you fell in love with.”

  “You shouldn’t want to,” I say. “You deserve better.”

  “It breaks my heart to know you didn’t trust me enough to tell me about this. I didn’t notice like Raven did. I guess I was too busy trying to be the perfect Pres’s wife. I wanted to make sure I was doing everything right, like your mum did for your dad. She gives so many tips, sometimes, I feel like I’m in way over my head.” She smiles, but it’s sad and empty. “Don’t ask too many questions, Anna. Make sure you’re there to listen, Anna. Don’t make decisions about Ziggy, Anna, but don’t pester the Pres with unimportant shit. You just have to stroke his ego, Anna, make him feel special so he doesn’t turn to a club girl.” She winces as fresh tears fall. “I got it all so wrong. I stopped being myself. I wanted to be like the other ol’ ladies, but it didn’t even work because in the end, you couldn’t talk to me.”

  Guilt eats away at me and I pull her against my chest. She sobs harder. “I didn’t know you were under so much pressure,” I say into her hair. “I fell in love with you because you weren’t like the other women here. I liked that.”

  “The women have so many rules. Rules for how to behave around other charters. How to fuck, depending on the mood of your man. Shit, they even decide what food to cook depending on what mood you’re in. This whole club works around you and how to please you. I feel so insignificant because I don’t know what rules apply when. We stopped having fun. We stopped laughing together.”

  I nod. “We’re both guilty of that,” I say.

  “Would you ever have told me, if I hadn't seen you at the hospital?”

  I shake my head. “No.”

  “And you haven’t told anyone, not even Cree?”

  I shake my head again. “Just Raven.”

  Anna pushes herself to sit. “I’m glad you finally told me, even though you didn’t want to. I’m only sorry you felt you couldn’t sooner. If you need anything, anything at all, I’m here.” She stands and I have a second to make a decision. I can’t let her leave. Not again.

  Chapter Nine

  ANNA

  I feel so exhausted from our talk. My eyes are swollen and sore from crying and my heart is in tatters . . . again. All this time, he’s been suffering and he couldn’t even tell me. I feel like a failure and a shitty wife. As I turn to leave, I feel his fingers wrapping around my wrist. “You’re not leaving,” he says, his voice firm. He pulls me back onto the bed. “You’re talking like it’s final. Like you can just walk out of here and pretend nothing’s changed.”

  He wraps himself around me, my back to his chest, and presses his nose into my hair. We lay in silence for a few minutes. “It was easier to talk to Raven,” he whispers, and I try to pull away, but he holds me tighter against his body. “Relax,” he hisses. “It was easier because there’s no connection with her. She doesn’t look at me with puppy dog eyes like I’m crushing her whole world. Fuck, Anna, there’s no one that’s gonna replace you. You're my world.”

  “Everything’s such a mess,” I mumble.

  “You said, if there’s still love, then there’s still hope.”

  “What do I know,” I say briskly.

  “You know I love you. That never stopped. And you love me.”

  “Do you, Riggs?” I ask. “I haven’t felt like you’ve loved me in a long time.”

  “Apparently, I project,” he says and I frown. �
�Least that’s what Eleanor tells me. I projected my anger and hurt from Michelle onto you. My situation with her and Ziggy made me fear the same would happen with you and Willow. My behaviour was pushing you away, so if it happened again, it wouldn’t hurt me as much. I did it subconsciously, not intentionally.”

  “The end result was still the same. I love my kids. I love yours. I’ve treated Ziggy like my own. I’d never leave my kids.”

  “I know,” he mutters. “With everything else happening, I lost sight of shit. I stressed myself out thinking you’d leave the kids and I’d drop dead and then they’d lose us both.” He shifts and I feel his cock pushing into my back. “Don’t get any ideas,” he mutters. “It won’t stay.”

  “How do we stop it happening again?” I ask. “We can’t keep putting the kids through this. Malia and Ziggy will end up messed up.”

  “I can’t concentrate,” he mumbles into my hair as he pushes his erection against my ass. “It’s been too long since this has happened.” I smile. It should be the last thing on either of our minds, but I wiggle my ass against him anyway. “That ain’t helping,” he mutters.

  “Maybe we should see what happens. If it turns out to be a false alarm, then so what,” I say, shrugging.

  “I’d feel like less of a man,” he admits. “If I can’t please my wife.”

  I move his hand to cup my breast. “I don’t think you’ll have a problem with that,” I whisper. “I seem to recall you were good with your tongue.”

  I feel his body shake as a laugh escapes him. “There is that.”

  His hand moves around behind my ass and he pushes up my dress, then gently tugs my panties down my legs. He pulls my ass closer to him and lines himself up at my entrance. “It might not work,” he mutters.

  “Then I have a perfectly good vibrator we can play with instead,” I say, trying to ease the pressure he’s putting on himself. He enters me in one swift move, causing my breath to leave my body. I grip the pillow and push my face into it to stifle the moan of pleasure that escapes me.