Gravel (MC Biker Romance) (6 page)

“The uncle was a very paranoid man from
what I hear,” Ash said. “I don’t know all the details, but the club is
basically paying the uncle to let you and Tuck stay here.”

It didn’t surprise me. My dad would do
anything for his family, and desperate times called for desperate measures. Only
it felt like his information didn’t quite match up with Mary Jane’s…

“So how much longer do you think we’ll be
here?” I asked.

“No idea,” he said. “However long it
takes to send our message to them.
Hopefully soon though.
I hate not being with you.”

He reached over and pulled me by the
wrist into his lap, wrapping his arms around me.

“It’s only been a week,” I said. “I’m so
bored here, Ash. I want to go home.”

“Soon,” he said as I buried my head into
the crook of his neck.

The sun peeked through the curtains early
Sunday morning. The faint sound of birds chirping and fluttering through the
trees would’ve been perfectly fine if it weren’t for the fact that they served
as a reminder that outside the fortress, life was going along like normal. I
was almost jealous of them.

I rolled over and stared at Ash. He
always looked so peaceful in his sleep, and I could stare at him for hours if
he’d let me. Almost always, he’d feel my eyes upon his face and wake up.

“Marina,” he said, groggily. “You’re
watching me sleep again.”

“I know,” I sighed with a playful smile.

I leaned over and gave him a good morning
kiss before settling into the crook of his arm. We laid in silence, both
quietly vowing not to get out of bed until we heard Tuck stirring.

Moments later, the sound of crunching
gravel outside the window prompted Ash to go flying out of bed. “What the hell
?!
”

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Fear surged
through me as I wrapped the blankets around my body.

“Some Mercedes,” Ash said as he squinted
through the curtains, trying to remain hidden behind them. “It’s a lady in a
Mercedes. That’s weird.”

“Maybe she wants to buy the house?” I
said. I couldn’t believe I lied to my husband like that. If he knew I’d
befriended a stranger out here and jeopardized our safety, he’d be furious.

“It’s not on the market right now,” he
said. “No one knows this place even exists.”

“Ash…” I began to say. I had to come
clean.

“Huh,” Ash said, his eyes still honed in
on the lady outside. “Now she’s leaving.”

I squeezed my eyes and thanked my lucky
stars.

“If that car comes back, I need you to
get the plate numbers,” he instructed. “There’s a set of binoculars in the
drawer in the kitchen.”

Through the paper-thin walls of the old
mansion, I could hear Tucker calling my name. I threw my robe on and ran to
him, thankful for the much needed distraction.

I couldn’t help but wonder why Mary Jane
came and left like that. It didn’t make any sense.

***

“Is it time already?” I whined Sunday
afternoon as Ash grabbed his leather jacket. The keys dangling from his hand
meant only one thing; it was time for him to go back home. Hot tears filled my
eyes, but I blinked them away.

“I don’t want to go,” he whispered as he
walked over to me. He placed his hands on my hips and pulled me in close for a
kiss. “You know that.”

We bumped our foreheads together, and I
breathed in the musky, leather-and-woods scent that was Ash. Within minutes, he
would be gone and all that would remain would be the smell of him.

He pulled away and lifted my chin so that
my eyes met his. “You still have your phone?”

I bit my lip and nodded. I’d chucked it
that day against the tree when I couldn’t get a signal, and I had no idea if it
still worked or not.

“You’re might have to go out and stand on
top of a butte for it to work,” he said as he looked over my shoulder and out
the window. The closest butte was easily a quarter of a mile away.

I sniffed and turned my head to the side,
but Ash brought it back to face him. “Why are you taking this so hard all of a
sudden? This isn’t like you. It’s almost like you’re hormonal or something.”

Realizing what he’d just said, he shook
his head.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he said. He
knew damn well. He kissed my lips softly and tried to make up for the crassness
of his words. His fingers combed through my long, dark hair and brushed a few
strands out of my eyes. I glanced up at him and took comfort in his love for
me, because it was the realest thing I’d ever known.

“Remember when we first met,” I said with
a nostalgic smile. “That night when I walked in on a club meeting.”

“Yeah, you were what? Seven? Eight?” Ash
said with a smile. “The cutest thing ever.”

“And you’d just moved to the
neighborhood,” I said. “I knew you were one of us. I could just tell.”

“You were my first friend,” Ash replied
as he ran his fingers along my jaw and pulled me in for another kiss.

“I was crying because my dad had just
yelled at me, and I ran outside,” I said. “And you were there. Riding your
bike. And you stopped and asked me what was wrong.”

“Those tears,” Ash said as he placed his
hand on his chest. “They broke my heart. I couldn’t stand to see a little girl
cry like that.”

“And then you asked me if I wanted to
play Ninja Turtles with you,” I laughed. “We were inseparable after that.”

He leaned in and kissed me one last time,
rubbed Tuck on the top of his head, and turned to leave. “I’ll be back next
weekend.”

I watched Ash’s Ford pull up the long
drive and turn onto the gravel road, leaving a trail of dust behind him, and I
headed back to the kitchen to fix Tuck’s dinner.

I rifled through the pantry in search of
something he could eat. Ash had brought back a few groceries with him that
weekend, but grocery shopping was never his strong suit and several staples
were very much forgotten.

“Ouch,” I cried out as I reached for a
box of cereal on the top shelf. Stabbing pain seared through my lower abdomen,
just as it had the night before, and just as it had when I’d lost two babies.
The pain had left the night before, leading me to think it was a false alarm,
but now it had returned with a vengeance.

I hobbled over to
Tuck
and placed him in his high chair, grabbed the
Trac
Fone
and ran outside. The butte looked so far away, but I
had to make a call. I needed to catch Ash before he got too far away so he
could come back and take me to the hospital.

Through a quarter mile of grassy field
and prairie, I’d finally reached the butte. I yanked the phone out of my
pocket. One bar.
One lousy, measly bar.

I quickly dialed Ash’s number and tried
to stay upright when my body was begging me to lie down and writhe in pain. The
phone rang once. Then twice.
Then three times.
After
five rings it went to voicemail. I hung up and tried once more. Nothing.
Knowing him, the radio was cranked so high he’d never hear his phone.

I pressed my fingers into my aching
abdomen to try to counter the pain that was burning inside me. The warm wetness
in my panties came next, and I didn’t have to look to know that I was bleeding.

I buried my face in my palm and shook my
head. I was going to have to call Mary Jane. She was the only other contact in
my phone, and I knew she’d come running if I needed anything.

“Mary Jane,” I said with a strain in my
voice. It was obvious I’d been crying.

“What is it, Marina?” she asked. “Are you
okay? Is it Tuck?”

“I need a ride to town,” I said. “It’s
kind of an emergency.”

Mary Jane asked no questions. “I’ll be
there in an hour.”

I hobbled back to the house and quickly
fed Tuck, changed his diaper, and threw his diaper bag together. Ash would’ve
killed me to know that I was leaving in a car with Mary Jane, but I knew she
was harmless. She’d helped me with
Tuck
the week
before. She was a sweet, kind person. From the outside it probably looked bad,
but Ash would never let me explain anyway. It was pointless to make him worry
for nothing.

Mary Jane arrived exactly an hour later
and helped load Tuck into the car. “What’s wrong, Marina?”

Her brown eyes were kind and she placed
her hand on my back. In some ways, I felt like we were just two friends. Never
mind the complete randomness that brought us together and acquainted us in the
first place.

“I think I’m having a miscarriage,” I sighed.
Hot tears burned my eyes once again, but I wiped them away before they had a
chance to fall.

“Oh, my goodness,” she said. She reached
over and placed her hand on top of mine and squeezed it. “Let’s get you to the
hospital.”

We traveled down the country roads that
led to the nearest town, and she pulled into the same hospital we’d visited the
week before with Tuck.

“Do you need a wheelchair?” she asked
with raised eyebrows.

“No, I’m okay,” I said. “I just need to
take it slow. I’ll be fine.”

When we arrived inside, Mary Jane helped
me to my seat, placed
Tuck
on her hip, and went to the
front check-in station to let them know what was going on. She was an angel. My
angel.

“They said it shouldn’t be much longer,”
she said when she came back and took a seat across from me in the waiting room.
She grabbed a book from the table next to her and began paging through it for
Tuck. “Do you need to call your husband at all?”

“No,” I said quickly. “He doesn’t know
I’m pregnant. I haven’t told him yet.”

“Marina Decker?” a nurse called out from
a doorway by the front desk.

I stood
up,
nodded at Mary Jane to assure her I’d be fine, and hobbled to the nurse.

The nurse led me to a dark sonogram room
and helped me onto the table. She lifted up my shirt and I pressed down on the
waistband of my pants. I knew the drill. I’d been in that spot a million times
before.

I laid back and stared at the white,
tiled ceiling and braced myself to hear the news I’d been dreading. As the
nurse squirted warm jelly onto my stomach and began to move the wand around,
all I could think about was Ash. He’d always gone to every doctor’s appointment
with
me,
he had been there twice before to carry me
out of the clinic when I’d be sobbing like a crazy maniac.

The whooshing of the ultrasound filled
the quiet space between us until suddenly I heard a galloping noise coming from
the speakers.

“There it is,” the ultrasound tech said
with a smile. She turned the screen towards me. “See it?”

I leaned up, dumbfounded, and stared at
the tiny, wiggly thing moving around on the screen.

“Heartbeat is about 140,” she said.
“That’s really good.”

She clicked around and took some
measurements.

“We’re putting you at 8 weeks and two
days,” she said proudly.

That was further than I thought I was. We
were just weeks away from the “safe zone”.