I shouldn’t have worried (though I didn’t know that).
“Honey, God makes those decisions, I don’t,” Dad shocked the shit out of me by saying. “I just know it wasn’t him who stabbed you with a knife. I also know it was him who nearly got riddled with bullets to get you out. And I know he got you out alive. And last, I figure the path to redemption is thorny but I’m guessing that man will make it through mostly because he’s got a strong woman at his side. And I know that because I raised that woman.”
Seriously, it sucked I was laid up in a hospital bed because that meant I couldn’t give my Dad a big hug.
And, for your information, bawling while recovering from stab wounds hurts like a bitch.
I didn’t know if Mom and Dad came to Denver with open minds. I just knew they respected Tack’s honesty and they saw how Tack, Tabby, Rush and Chaos treated me so if their minds didn’t start out open, they ended up that way.
Tack and I got married in a vineyard.
I was wearing a simple but kickass ivory dress and not simple and more kickass ivory spiked heels. At my side was an immensely sad but faking it for me Lanie. Tack wore jeans and an unbelievably cool ivory shirt with subtle western-style stitching and not subtle totally kickass rocker-biker black embroidery across the upper chest and his shoulders at the back. Through the nuptials, Dog stood by his side. And when we were pronounced man and wife, a collective biker howl split the air that made me laugh and cry at the same time.
After I slid my wide gold band on his finger, he slid the thin, diamond-imbedded gold on mine, we partied hard and long and, as it raged on, rowdy. The owners of the vineyard luckily were game and joined in rather than taking the alternative of calling the cops.
Everyone left but Tack and I stayed a week for our honeymoon. Then we extended our honeymoon and rode the coastal road of California.
Only after we’d done that did we go home.
It wasn’t near enough time riding the roads with my man with the wind in my hair. But it still was time I savored.
Every second.
Both Lanie and I missed Elliott’s funeral because we were both still in the hospital. But she waited for me and my moral support and I took her to his grave when Tack and I got home from our honeymoon. I also held her while we stood at his grave and she sobbed in my arms. Not long after, she moved back to Connecticut to be close to her Mom, Dad and sister. I missed her every day but I understood her play.
Too much Elliott in Denver.
He was a f**k up, got himself dead and Lanie in the ICU. But even so, she loved him and still wasn’t over him.
She hadn’t dated since. Not once.
I was worried about her and planning a trip to go out and shake her shit up.
Life was too short and too precious to lay it down to grief.
My friend was beautiful, she was funny, she was loving and she needed to wake the f**k up.
She was breathing.
She needed to start living.
And she was going to do it even if I had to kick her ass.
Yes, I was a badass biker babe and if my friend didn’t sort her shit, she’d answer to me.
On this thought, the bathroom door opened and my eyes went to it in the mirror to see Tack walking in wearing nothing but faded jeans and my dogtags hanging around his neck.
Mm. Nice.
My eyes dropped to his chest to see my ink on his upper ribs, under Tabby, close to his heart. The dogtags rested right next to it.
He had my tattoo done before I got out of the hospital.
On the inside of his right forearm was another new tattoo. A set of scales, unbalanced. The top scale had the word “Red” inked in killer lettering sitting on it and dripping over the sides were rivers of blood. The bottom scale had the word “Black” and drifting up was a ghostly, hooded, skull-faced reaper with eerie blue eyes and a scythe in his skeletal hand. The support holding the scales was made of the words, “Never Forget”.
Every member of Chaos had this tattoo. The “Red” was me and a reminder that I got out alive, but barely. The “Black” represented their fallen brother (whose last name, incidentally, was Black) who went down when they’d first instigated plans to pull themselves off the path of evil to strike out toward redemption. The message of the tattoo was a reminder that if they weren’t smart, the scales could unbalance and it wasn’t worth the loss of what was at stake.
Brothers and blood.
Nothing more important in life.
Not one thing.
Even Arlo and High got that tattoo. One could say what happened that day was a wakeup call. No money or adrenalin rush was worth what happened to their brother or Tack and me.
So all was good in the Club.
No, actually, all was good with everything.
Absolutely everything.
And it was about to get better.
My eyes lifted from my ink on my old man to catch his as he made his way to me. He held my gaze as he fitted his front to my back, one of his hands gliding along my arm to rest on mine at my belly. His other hand came up and wrapped around my throat.
He did this often. In fact, all the time. I knew what it meant and as the weeks wore into months and he kept doing it, it troubled me so I’d gently approached him about it.
“Don’t question it,” he’d replied just as gently. “Just give it to me when I think I need it.”
What could I say? They were his demons and he had to create his methods of coping. And this was one.
So I agreed and let it go.
As for me, the first thing I saw after waking up in the hospital which was also the last thing I saw every night before going to bed and the first thing I saw in the morning was my coping mechanism.
It was a hellish six hours and I couldn’t say I didn’t have dark moments when those hours drifted into my brain and haunted me.
What I could say was, once I made my way to Tack, he let in the light.
I watched him tip his head and felt the tickle of his goatee whisper against the skin of my shoulder before I felt his lips touch there and I melted back into him.
He lifted his head and again caught my eyes in the mirror.
“You’re quiet this mornin’,” he said softly.
“I’m pregnant,” I replied and felt his body go still behind mine but his fingers at my throat flexed and his hand over mine at my belly pressed deep.
We held each other’s gazes in the mirror for long moments before he whispered, “Say again?”
“I’m pregnant, handsome.”
His hand again pressed against mine at my belly as I watched his eyes flare.
Then both of his hands moved so his thumbs could hook into the sides of my panties and he yanked them down.