Bad Boy's Baby: Wicked Angels MC (11 page)

Between Darius and Jenny, my whole life felt like it had turned upside down in a matter of days. I opened the door and walked down the hallway, half expecting Jenny to pop out of nowhere and tell me that she was leaving, or something equally outrageous. It was a contradiction: I wanted her around and yet I couldn’t stand the sight of her. More than ever, she inspired a fiery reaction within me. It was the same way before, even when I’d worshipped her, she always found a way to get on my nerves. We’d had a tumultuous and loving relationship. Even if we couldn’t have that ever again, I still had to protect her.

“Hey, man, penny for your thoughts,” Rod said. He was sitting in a chair at the kitchen table, his little handgun on the table in front of him. When I glared at him, he seemed to shrink back. I wondered if he was thinking about Jenny again, and how he’d basically let her escape. There hadn’t been time to yell at him when I’d gotten Jenny home. But now, some of the anger was coming back.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” I hissed, leaning down in his face. “You realize she could have been killed?”

Rod nodded tersely. “I know,” he replied automatically. “I’m sorry, man. She told me she was taking a bath and then she must have crept out the window. She made up some bullshit lie about how her period had started. She asked to go out and buy tampons or pads or whatever the fuck chicks use. I was caught off guard, man, that’s completely my fault. I should have known she was up to no good.”

I shook my head and let out a humorless laugh. “It’s okay, man,” I told him as I cuffed him on the shoulder. “I get it. She’s fuckin’ crafty.”

“She really is,” Rod said. “Are you okay? Did she get in another scrape?”

I felt my stomach twist into knots. “It’s worse than that,” I told Rod. “I think Darius is behind all of this shit. I thought it was a coincidence until I showed up at his place and he told me that he’d basically set his thugs on her.”

Rod let out a low whistle. “Damn, man,” he said, sucking in his breath.

I shook my head. “It’s some fucked up shit,” I told him. Getting up, I ambled over to the fridge and pulled out a couple of beers. “You want one of these?”

Rod glanced nervously down at his gun. I let out a chuckle. “It’s fine, man,” I told him. “I’m not going out again tonight. I’m gonna be here. You can relax a little bit.”

Rod relaxed his face and reached out for the longneck. “Thanks, man,” he said after he’d gulped half of the beer. “This is good right now.”

I settled down in my chair without saying anything. Jenny was weighing heavily on my mind. Rod was my best friend, and I told him everything. But, somehow, this seemed like it would be an awkward conversation. I wasn’t ready to let him know, at least not everything. Not about Phin, at least.

As if reading my mind, Rod set his bottle down on the table and looked at me. “So, this chick, you knew her a while ago?”

I nodded. “Yeah, you could say that, man,” I replied. “I mean, we were just kids ourselves.”

Rod chuckled under his breath. “Those memories come back at you, don’t they?”

I swallowed a lump that was forming in my throat. “That they do,” I said in a quiet voice. “That they do.”

Rod leaned back in his chair and swigged the last of the beer out of his bottle. “I knew a girl when I was a kid,” he said. “Her name was Margie. She was gorgeous. Blonde, skinny, willing. Liked to get drunk with me. I smoked pot for the first time with her. She was my first kiss, my first fuck.”

“What happened?” I was intrigued. Rod and I had been close for a long time, but we hadn’t grown up together. Sometimes I wondered about the pasts of all of my guys, but especially his. He was so quiet and measured, I wondered if he’d had anything really tumultuous happen. But he was a Wicked Angel, after all. Something had to have pushed him over towards this side.

Rod let out a long sigh. “When we were in high school, I started feeling a little cheated,” he said. He grinned at me and I knew the exact feeling he was talking about. “After all, she was the only girl I’d ever been with. Those girls back then, they looked so fresh. So young, I thought I wanted to try more of them. So we broke up. She got real hurt, real bad. Wouldn’t talk to me when I called her, and then she started dating a bunch of different assholes at once. The last time I checked, she was dating some asshole jock who beat her when he got drunk.”

I blinked. I hadn’t known what Rod was going to divulge, but I hadn’t expected anything that sad. “Then what happened? She marry that dude?”

“Hell no,” Rod said. He snorted. “I wanted to ask her to marry me, but by the time I asked her, she didn’t feel up to it. Said she liked dating around and didn’t want to go back to being with just me. Said she had a lot of exploring left to do, and that maybe we’d meet back up when we were older.”

“Damn, dude,” I said, slamming my empty bottle down on the table. Rod snorted and I got up and ambled over to the fridge again. By the time I’d handed him a new beer, Rod was looking up at the ceiling. There was an odd, pained look on his face that I’d rarely seen before. I didn’t understand. He couldn’t still be broken up over some kid, could he?
Why not?
I thought quickly.
That’s what you are, Tristan. Broken up over a kid from your past, just like Rod
.

“Anyway, she died,” Rod said flatly. I blinked at him. “She was driving drunk and she ran her car off the road. Cops said it was instant, but for some reason, I know she suffered. She was pinned against the wheel for hours before anyone showed up. I can’t imagine that was a good way to go.”

I gulped my beer so Rod wouldn’t see my expression. I hadn’t imagined the story ending like that, and it gave me almost a new perspective on things. Yeah, Jenny had fucked me over and left. But at least she hadn’t died. At least she was still here, warm and breathing. Even though Phin didn’t have a father, at least he had her.

“Yeah, man,” Rod said. “It sucked. I thought about her for a long time. But she’s not in my head anymore, you know?”

I nodded. “I sorta get it,” I said slowly. “I mean, Jenny and I…” I was going to tell him that we hadn’t been serious, but suddenly I didn’t think I could get the lie out. After all, what was the point of lying to Rod? He was my best friend. Even when I thought about it like that, I still couldn’t make myself lie.

“You what?” Rod turned to me and gave me a curious look before knocking back some beer. The sadness of the previous moment was forgotten. “You were gonna say…?” He raised his eyebrows at me and laughed.

Suddenly, whatever openness had been building up between us vanished. I shook my head. “It’s nothing,” I said darkly. “Forget it.”

Jenny

I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that I’d slept with him again. After all this time, after I thought he’d been lost to me forever. All it had taken to turn me weak gain was a mere look from Tristan’s piercing eyes.
You dumb slut
, I thought.
So much for independence and feminism if you’re gonna drop your panties every time he looks at you like that!
It was enough to make me laugh. After years of living like a nun, the first person I lost control to was Tristan! The man who made me lose everything in the first place. It was like a vicious cycle.

Being with Tristan again was making me feel the way I’d felt all those years before, like I could really picture us together. It felt weird staying in his house, or rather it had at first. That feeling had disappeared within the first few minutes of watching how comfortable Phin was in a new setting. I was proud of him; Phin wasn’t the most adaptable kid in the world. But he really seemed to love it here.

I was sitting in the room Phin had chosen, watching him sleep. His light brown hair fell across his forehead and I reached down to smooth it back. He looked like an angel when he was sleeping. His face was peaceful and calm, and there was no hint of the anxiety that had plagued him when Tristan had first brought me home. If he still wanted to know everything about Tristan, he was doing a good job not showing it. I still couldn’t think of the right way to tell my son, “This is Mommy’s ex-boyfriend. Oh, and your daddy.”

A pang of guilt flashed through me as I watched Phin toss and turn in the bed. He opened his mouth and for a second I thought he was going to sit up and ask me for a glass of milk. But he stayed asleep and peaceful, and soon his leg was twitching in another secret dream. He was such a good kid. I felt like the worst mother on the planet for having deprived him of a father.

“Stop it,” I mumbled under my breath. “You don’t know that things are going to be any different now, and you have no way of changing that. After all, what if Tristan kicks you out once Darius is taken care of? What are you going to do? Spend the rest of your life mooning over him?”

A black depression settled over me and I closed my eyes. Those days when I’d been pregnant and alone had been some of the worst of my life. If I hadn’t been pregnant, I probably would have cried myself to sleep every night after a long glass of wine in the bathtub. But I had been pregnant, and feeling Phin grow in my belly had been one of the only things keeping me centered. I remembered driving out to the edge of Centreville and sitting in my car, looking out the window and feeling so lonely that it washed over me like a wave. I’d never been so alone in my life.

Telling Mummy and Daddy had been the worst part of it. Foolishly I thought that they would have supported me. After all, Mummy pretended to be a good Christian. She went to church every week and made a habit of telling me that she was going to pray for me if things weren’t going well. She used to tell me all the time that she was praying for me to find peace when Tristan and I were still together. At the time, I hadn’t known what she meant. But now I knew: she wanted me to find the peace of mind to leave him.

They hadn’t found out until after Tristan had been gone for a couple of months. I hadn’t been showing for weeks and weeks and then suddenly, to my horror, I realized that the snap of my jeans had to be fastened with a safety pin. When I got home that day, I’d intended to run straight up to my room and hide. But Mummy had caught me putting my coat away, and she must have read the guilty look on my face.

“You’ll want to get rid of that,” she said callously, pointing towards my stomach. “I hope it’s not the spawn of that no-good Mayer.”

Tears pricked my eyes and I recoiled, blinking back the hurt and shame I felt. “This isn’t a problem,” I snarled in her face. “This is my child, your grandchild! And you’ll love them no matter what once you see them.”

Mummy laughed, a dry, humorless sound. “That’s what you think,” she said coldly. “You think everything’s going to be easy for you, but it’s not. Once you have a baby, that’s the end of your life. You won’t be able to go to college; you won’t meet an eligible man. No one is going to want you if they think you’re damaged, Jennifer. Haven’t I raised you better than this?” 

I blinked to clear my head of the painful images. Even now, eight years later, it still hurt more than almost anything in the world. Losing Tristan, then losing my parents. I looked at Phin and felt love radiate through me like heat waves. At least I had Phin, my perfect son. He was worth everything, and I would have gone through worse to protect him. I always had to protect him. He was the only thing I had left.

I didn’t want to admit it, but being around Tristan again was giving me all kinds of ideas. Not good ideas, either. The kind of ideas that I didn’t want to admit to having. Just being in his house was enough to make me start thinking about a future together. Would Tristan stay in the Wicked Angels? Would he quit and pursue a more legitimate line of work? It was enough to bring a smile to my face when I thought about us coming home together, with Phin. Sure, Phin would have to go to daycare. But there was always Lindsey to watch him.

I closed my eyes and imagined what Tristan’s house would look like if I redecorated in cheerier, warm colors. No more of this masculine grey and black theme, but something warm and welcoming. I could do the kitchen in sunny yellow with red accents. Growing up, my favorite TV show had featured a kitchen decorated with an apple theme. I knew it was cheesy, but I’d always loved it. I pictured us sitting down in the kitchen bedecked with cheery apples and natural sunlight. Tristan had picked a great house, now it just needed a few homey touches. I smiled as I thought about us shopping for furniture together, Phin whining at my side, and the kinds of faces Tristan would make when I told him that we just had
one
more store to visit before we were done. I imagined Tristan and Phin conspiring against me to run off and get ice cream before I could drag them into just one more store. I saw Tristan running around with Phin on his shoulders, Phin screaming and laughing with delight.

It was more than just the house, too. Phin was only allowed to watch an hour of TV per night—supposedly so he wouldn’t develop ADHD, but also because the power bill was expensive—but his favorite commercials were for Walt Disney Land. He was always begging me to take him. I told him that if he was very good, we’d find a way to go, but, truthfully, I had no idea how to afford such a vacation. Phin had always been a good kid, but he could be the most well behaved child in the world and I still wouldn’t have the money to take him on such a costly trip. Every time he told me about a classmate or a friend who was going, I could tell he was jealous. But to his credit, he never badgered me and he almost never sulked.

Still, I would have liked to take him. With Tristan, I bet we could do it easily. Tristan’s house spoke of money, and even though I didn’t want any handouts, I had a feeling he’d start spoiling Phin as much as he possibly could. And that would probably include a vacation to Disney Land. I couldn’t help but grin when I thought of it. I thought of how Tristan and I would hold hands in the airport, on the plane. I thought of Phin racing excitedly ahead of us towards the entrance, swinging his arms and making my heart race with the giddiness of it all. For a long time, I didn’t feel like I’d deserved to be happy. But now I almost felt like I was getting a second chance. A second chance at everything: Tristan, happiness, Phin’s childhood. Life.

I knew I shouldn’t think like this, but it was so tempting. In Tristan’s house, enveloped in his scent of leather and sandalwood, I felt like a new woman. It was like I’d already forgotten about all of the bad things in my life. All of the debt, all of the problems. It was easy to just pretend like none of that had happened. And that was probably the most dangerous thing of all.

I didn’t think I’d changed much in the years since I’d been with Tristan, but that probably wasn’t true. After all, I wasn’t the same girl I’d been when I was living with Mummy and Daddy. For one thing, I no longer counted on having a set future. I knew that things could change in an instant, and I learned to expect the unexpected. Everything had been different than I’d been expecting, and the changes had come almost immediately.

Mummy and Daddy had thrown me out when they’d found out about the baby. Well, they hadn’t exactly thrown me out because of the baby. They’d thrown me out because I refused to have an abortion. Even though I was theoretically pro-choice, the idea of getting rid of something in my body was abhorrent. Especially because it was the last little remnant of Tristan that I had, clover pendant aside. I’d had nowhere to go, and I’d been completely clueless about what I’d need to survive in the real world. Even when I’d traveled with Mummy and Daddy, the help had always packed my bags. I didn’t even know what to bring with me on a weekend getaway, much less an actual lifetime of being away. When I’d left home, I’d brought the things I thought I could sell, like clothes and jewelry. But even that had been difficult. I’d found a pawn shop out of town and tried to get rid of some diamond jewelry that Daddy had given me on my sixteenth birthday. But the guy at the pawn shop very obviously thought I was selling stolen goods. He didn’t listen to me when I told him that they’d been gifts from my parents, especially after I’d begged him not to call Daddy and tell him where I was. When he called the cops, I barely escaped with what I’d brought in.

I wound up selling the jewelry in the back alleys of the nearest city, for much less than all of the items were worth. One of the downsides of growing up rich was that, for a long time, I’d really had no understanding of how money worked. I didn’t know if a hundred dollars was a lot or a little. Unlike a lot of other wealthy kids I’d known, I’d never carried cash. I had a credit card, and if I wanted something else I had Mummy’s personal shopper get it for me. When I finally started using money, I couldn’t believe how much of it was allocated to different things. I couldn’t believe how expensive certain foods were; it made me regretful of all the years I turned down my nose at Daddy’s caviar and quail eggs. Daddy had used to love a dish made with avocado, crab meat, and caviar, and sometimes I still craved the taste. When I’d gone to the store looking for ingredients, the manager had looked at me like I was crazy when I’d asked for caviar.

And raising Phin alone had been something else altogether. Now, more than anything else, I regretted not trying to find Tristan and letting him know that he had a son. I felt so guilty. I’d always thought I was doing the right thing, trying to protect my son, but now I realized that I’d basically crippled him. It would have been better for Tristan to know and choose not to be involved. Hell, now he’d probably choose that anyway. A flash of pain flickered through my body and I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I wanted Tristan to step up to his responsibilities more than ever, but what if he didn’t? What if he couldn’t forgive me? What if he never wanted to be a part of a family with me and Phin? It was unlikely, but possible. I hated to realize it, but I would understand if Tristan never wanted to be involved with me again. After all, I couldn’t imagine the shock of discovering an ex with a child, only to find out that the child was yours. Just thinking about it hurt my chest. I’d been trying to do the right thing, but it hadn’t ever worked. And now, I felt worse about my choices than ever before.

Phin shifted in bed and stretched one of his skinny arms out of the blankets. I felt the love swell up in my heart as I watched him settle back in bed.
I’ll make sure you finally get a family,
I promised him silently.

With renewed enthusiasm, I stood up and stretched. It was late, but somehow I had a feeling Tristan wasn’t asleep yet. I thought I’d heard him walk down the hallway a while ago, but I couldn’t be sure. Besides, I’d been so deep in thought that it had been difficult to pay attention to what was really happening. My body was a mix of confusing emotions: desire, anger, betrayal, anxiety, love. I couldn’t shake the feeling of déjà vu, even though it had been almost ten years since I’d been around Tristan. That was the funniest thing of all to me, that we’d been around each other for so long and never realized it. I’d never left Centreville. Had Tristan? Had he left for a long time and recently come back? Trying to piece together how we’d somehow managed to avoid each other in the smallest of small towns was enough to make my head ache.

I looked at Phin. He was sound asleep; he wouldn’t notice if I slipped out for a little while. Or, at least, I wanted to believe that it would be fine. I knew that if he woke up and I wasn’t there, he’d probably freak out. But I had to do this, I had to talk to Tristan.

Letting myself out into the hallway, I closed the door behind me with a soft click. I could barely hear Phin’s soft snores after the lock was turned. I heard voices in the hallway and I tensed. It was Tristan, and that other big thug he’d had watch me when he went out. I giggled nervously; I hadn’t seen the guy since I’d escaped from under his nose. I hoped he wouldn’t hold a grudge, even though I kind of deserved it.