Tex’s Angel (Savage Legion MC #11)

Chapter 29

Clara

I wake up expecting to be in pain, but instead I feel as though I’m floating. I also feel a little lightheaded, dizzy, and extremely thirsty. When I open my eyes, I’m accosted by a brilliant white light and before my eyes can adjust, a sense of disappointment washes over me because the white light along with the floating feeling must mean I didn’t make it. Damn, I really wanted the life Tex dangled in front of me, one where I could finally have a little of the love I always wanted.

Suddenly, a warm hand smooths over my arm and takes my hand. “You awake, sugar? Thought I’d lost y’all for a hot minute.”

I’d recognize that voice anywhere. I squeeze his hand and try to talk. “You’re here,” I say but it feels like my tongue is huge and the words are garbled. When he snaps into focus, I see that he’s reaching for a glass with a bendy straw sticking up.

“Here, try to drink. Y’all probably feel like your mouth’s as dry as a powder house.”

When the straw touches my lips, I suck a small mouthful and then a larger one.

“Slowly,” he urges. His voice is tender and calm. It helps me relax while I try to figure out where I am. I slow down, just like he asked, and he just holds the glass for me, allowing me to take as long as I like.

When I lay back, I realize my surroundings look like a hospital room. I crease my brows trying to remember how I got here.

“Take your time, sweetness. It’ll come back.” After a brief pause, he asks, “How are y’all feeling?”

“Okay, I guess.” Giving him a small smile, I add, “Less thirsty at least.”

“You’ve woken up a couple of times already but went back to sleep. The nurse says it’s the medication they gave you when y’all had your nephrectomy.”

I squint my eyes trying to figure out what in the world he’s talking about. “What the hell is a nephrectomy?” I ask, feeling pretty sure I’ve never heard that word before.

“You had one of your kidney’s removed, sugar. That was last night, about fourteen hours ago.”

“Good thing I have two, right?” I’m not trying to make light of my situation. I’m just stalling for time as I’m still trying to remember what happened, what brought me to the hospital. I don’t remember coming here.

A moment of silence spins out between us, and he gently squeezes my hand and brings his other hand up to cover our joined hands. It seems like a familiar gesture, one he’s done before. When I gaze into his eyes, I see a flash of alarm, like he thinks I might not remember. That look of panic seems familiar as well, so much so that it triggers a memory of him kneeling beside me, holding my hand just this way with a look of panic on his face. That’s all it takes for everything to come flooding back. When I remember being abducted by Mister Crazy Pants, I begin to tear up.

Tex moves closer and kisses my temple, murmuring, “You’re safe now, sugar. That asshole can’t ever hurt y’all again. I made sure of that.”

My abductor’s dead eyes flash through my brain and I only feel relief, relief that he can’t get to me again, can’t hurt the people I care about. I bring up one hand to grab onto Tex’s shirt. It shocks me to see how much my hand trembles and how big the IV in the back of my hand seems.

Pulling back he moves a strand of hair out of my face before asking, “Do y’all want to talk about what happened or shall we put that conversation off to later?”

Fighting back tears, I tell him, “Later, maybe. How long until I leave the hospital?”

He smooths out my wild red curls and gazes down at me. “Your doctors say if all goes well, you’re looking at getting discharged in two weeks, maybe sooner. Y’all have to be eating, drinking and voiding.”

A tiny smile creeps onto my mouth. “You said voiding. You aren’t the kind of guy to say void. You say things like pissing and drain the lizard.”

A smile lights up his handsome face. “Yeah, I’m being on my best behavior while you’re in here.”

“Why? I like your colorful personality.”

One corner of his mouth quirks up into that lopsided smile I love so much. “I’m glad to hear that because you’re looking at the guy who may or may not have shamed your parents into signing up for family therapy.”

I’m part curious, part gleeful, and part weirded out that he’s been talking with my parents while I’ve been out of it. “That story sounds like it might be filled with chaos and drama, so let’s save it for later too.”

“I’ve always liked how decisive y’all are when it comes to cutting toxic things out of your life.”

“Yeah, if I didn’t do that, I’d end up in therapy myself.”

“About that, your doctor wants you to see a PTSD specialist to help you cope with what happened to you.”

I try not to be annoyed but truthfully, I am. “How about we hold off on that and see if I need professional help in order to deal with getting abducted by that lunatic.”

His hands come up in a surrender pose. “Y’all won’t get any pushback from me. This is your recovery and as far as I’m concerned, y’all are running the show.”

“No, I’m not. Because if I were running the show, this bed would be big enough to hold both of us.”

He gets a sappy expression on his face and asks, “Does my sweetie pie honey bunch need a little cuddle?”

I start to giggle at his over-the-top words but wince. “When you put it that way, I guess not.”

He leans over and kisses the tip of my nose.

“How’s Levi taking this?” I ask.

“He’s been here the whole time. Poor kid’s currently molesting the vending machine for the third time today. I’m sure he’ll pop back in when we least expect it.”

“So what’s going to happen when I get discharged?”

Tex gives me an easy grin, “Don’t y’all worry about that. Levi and I have it all planned out. You’re gonna be staying with us. We’re gonna do all the cooking and cleaning and keep y’all company until you’re back on your feet. Levi has this ingenious plan to sneak all your possessions into our house one piece at a time, so y’all don’t notice that you’re living with us until it’s too late.”

“All that sounds pretty amazing,” I say with a yawn. “Maybe, instead of me living with you, the two of you could live with me? Since I own my house, you wouldn’t have to pay rent.”

His expression turns amused. “Levi and I aren’t poor. Y’all do know that, don’t ya?”

“Yeah, but we’re not spending any of that money because it’s for Levi.”

Something in his expression changes, becomes more contemplative. “Y’all just said we, right after y’all invited me and my son to live with y’all in your home. It almost sounds like y’all want us to be yours.”

“Yes, I’d be happy to be your old lady and eventually, your wife. Thanks for asking.”

The last part of my sentence sounds sluggish.

Tex chuckles, “I’m gonna tell this story at our wedding when they ask how I proposed. I’ll say my drugged-up old lady started propositioning me from her sick bed.”

“I’m not that out of it,” I protest. But then add, “Maybe best to tell them to dial back the pain medications. I’ve never been able to tolerate normal doses. It’s probably what’s making me drowsy.”

He tugs the blanket up over my chest and leans down one more time to give me a kiss on the forehead. This time when I drift off to sleep it’s with visions of Tex and Levi living in my house, making it a home at long last. I don’t look too hard at why I’m ready to take a gigantic leap forward in our relationship.

***

When I wake up the next day, Levi is standing beside my bed. I glance around to find that Tex is nowhere to be found. Levi grins at me like me waking up made his day.

“My dad said you wanted us to be yours and move in with you.”

I start for a moment, vaguely recollecting a dream I had yesterday. But then I relax back down against my pillows and smile, “Yeah, I think that would be nice. What do you think about it?”

“I like having you around and you’re good for my dad.”

“I like having you around too, Levi,” I say.

I glance around the room, looking for Tex.

Levi tells me, “Don’t worry my dad will be right back. He went to the bathroom down the hall to take a piss.”

I gesture to the open bathroom door. “There’s a bathroom right here. Why did he run off to find another one.”

“He says it’s rude to stink up your bathroom.”

I smile up at the teen who’s almost the mirror image of his father, or probably will be once he’s fully grown. “I guess, he’s being extra nice because I’m recuperating, right?”

“Naw, he says we have to take special care of you because you’re a lady.” Rolling his eyes, he tells me. “My dad has a long list of new rules. Not smelling up the bathroom you use is like fifteenth on the list.”

Suddenly, I’m feeling more lighthearted than ever before. “Let me guess, you have the whole list memorized, right?”

“You know that I do. That’s the way I roll.” He fixes me with a big grin, “You want me to recite them to you?”

I nod and gesture for him to bring it on.

“Rule number one is ask, don’t assume. See that one came in handy just now.”

I have to admit that was a good rule.

Levi begins racing through the rules. The list is full of things like ‘don’t talk with your mouth full’, ‘never eat the last piece of something without asking if I want it first’ and my personal favorite ‘always say my outfit looks good even if it doesn’t because it probably does look good, just not to men’. I’m still trying to get my head around this new set of rules the two are planning to live their lives by, when Tex walks back into the room.

Shooting his son an annoyed look he tells him, “Rule number one should have been don’t talk about the rules with her.”

Levi responds with a grin, apparently loving this new game. “How does not telling her about the rules stack up against rule number twenty-seven which forbids me to tell her lies. You taught me what a lie of omission was when I was five.”

Tex just chuckles, “Damn me and my good parenting.”

“You have a lot of contradicting rules. Like some thoughts are supposed to be inside thoughts and the other rule about talking about my feelings so my anxiety doesn’t build up.”

“We’ll have to work on learning about situational context, so y’all know what rule to apply to different situations.”

Levi rolls his eyes again. “That doesn’t sound tedious and boring, not at all.”

Before Tex can respond, Levi’s phone pings. He reads whatever message popped up and his smile gets bigger. “Sorry, I have to go. Evan’s picking me up. We’ve been tasked with our most complicated mission yet.”

“It’s not dangerous, I hope,” I say.

He looks at me like he’s keeping the world’s biggest secret. “We’re procuring nutrition and hydro for the club’s weekly needs.”

“Is that a fancy way of saying y’all are doing the club’s weekly grocery shopping?” Tex asks.

“Roger that. Evan and I decided to create resumes with all our duties on it. We’re not looking for jobs yet but if and when we ever need to, we’ll be prepared with outstanding resumes.”

He says his goodbyes and heads offs to meet up with Evan in the parking lot.

Tex comes to sit beside me. “Most people hire someone else to write their resume because it’s such an annoying chore. My son and his friend do it for funsies. I don’t know whether to be impressed or worried.”

I gently sit up using the bed’s motorized lift to raise the end. “I’m gonna go with impressed. It feels like even he’s got too much brain power and not enough interesting things to do with it all.”

Coming closer, Tex picks up a box off the table and hands it to me. “Yeah, he’s a brainiac. He sure don’t get that from his ole pop.” He shoves the box towards me, “I picked you up some of those pecan cookies you like.”

I hesitate for a second, wondering if I should eat so soon after surgery. Tex sees my hand hovering and says, “the doctor said you could eat as tolerated.”

I quickly snatch one of the cookies and nibble on it as he closes the box. “Alright, if it’s doctor’s orders,” I tell him. The doctors haven’t been in to see me yet, I guess they’re waiting until I wake up properly. As I’m feeling quite alert, I turn to Tex, “I guess it’s time to talk about what happened. Do you want to go first or should I?”

“Ladies first, always,” He responds. Somehow, I can tell that he’s totally serious. It’s stuff like this that’s part of Tex’s charm.

“As you’ve probably already realized, Daniel Davis wasn’t associated with any of the reports I made to CPS.”

“Yeah, Wade was the one who figured out that he was a possibility. When you turned up missing, I made a beeline for the other family, but it became pretty obvious that they didn’t know squat about your disappearance and weren’t all that bothered by CPS taking what they saw as a problem child off their hands.”

“Anabel was such a sweet kid. I can practically guarantee whatever was going on wasn’t related to her in any way.”

“Anyway, Wade went to talk to your parents and then tried to squeeze information out of your ex and your sister. He ended up squeezing a little too hard on your ex and your sister began panic talking about all the crazy things that went on when you tried to help your college friend get away from her abusive boyfriend.”

“Thank God, she did. If you hadn’t come when you did, I’d be dead right now.”

“I’m sorry y’all had to go through that. As much as I’ve thought it over, I can’t imagine how one man can carry such a strong grudge for so many years.”

“Want to know the weirdest part of this whole situation?” I ask.

When he jerks his chin for me to continue, I do, “When he abducted me, he was particularly offended that I had ruined his entire life and didn’t recognize him at first. He kept insisting that if I’d just given him a sincere apology for helping his girlfriend escape, he would have been able to let it go mentally.”

Tex frowns at me. “I’m going to go ahead and call bullshit on that whole train of thought. It seems to me like that was simply the lie he told himself all those years because he was too much of a coward to accept that he fucked up the best thing in life by being an abusive asshole. If he’d been able to get his head around that, maybe he could have gotten help and eventually ended up in a relationship. Any moron knows hitting a woman is not going to make them like you.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right about that. Daniel Davis was a strange character. I can almost see why Gemma ended up putting up with him for so long even after he became abusive. He had a way of sounding so reasonable one moment and then going batshit crazy the next.”

“Well, he’s not going to be abducting and abusing any more women.”

My bottom lip trembles as I speak. “I know this sounds crazy, but I honestly don’t think he would have stopped at me. I truly think that after killing me he would have kept going after his ex until he found her. Even I don’t know where Gemma lives—other than somewhere in Florida—we keep in touch occasionally by text and email, but she was too scared to say anything more. I think in his mind, he always thought that if he could just get back with her then everything would be okay because he learned his lesson about abusing her. But the thing I noticed was that no matter how hard he tried to act normal, the crazy was always there, bubbling just beneath the surface.”

I wrap my arms around my stomach, feeling miserable to have been at the mercy of such an unhinged and violent man. When my eyes lift to Tex’s, I can see the longing in his face. He wants to hold me and console me. I carefully scoot over until my hip is touching the safety railing and pat the empty spot I made for him. “Come and hold me.”

He’s out of his chair and moving towards me almost before I get the words out of my mouth. He gingerly scoots onto the edge of my bed and settles in. The next thing I know he’s moving so close that all I have to do is lean over slightly and let him wrap his arms around me. Once we settle down, I begin to calm down.

“This is where I belong,” I murmur.

“You’re good at saying the kinds of things that men love to hear, sweetness.”

When I look up at him, he dips his head and gives me a tender kiss. I slide one hand up his chest because lifting my arm higher pulls on the stitches.

When he pulls back, he cups my cheek with his hand. “I’ve been thinking a lot about us living together. I just wanna make sure y’all were serious about that rather than it just being part of some drug-fueled fever dream on your part.”

“I want you and Levi to come and live with me.”

“In the same house you lived with your ex?”

“Yes. No. Maybe,” I tell him feeling all kinds of confused about the question.

“How do y’all feel about selling your house and me kicking in the same amount to buy something larger, something that might accommodate the family we might want one day?”

“Family? Where did that come from?” I ask.

His hand drops away and I see something flash across his face, “Did the doctors come and speak to y’all yet?”

I shake my head worried what he’s going to say, the expression on his face is so serious. Oh God! Did the injury mean I can’t have kids?

“I don’t want y’all to be mad at me or at Rage. But he heard something when the docs were stabilizing you. He thought I should know. He’s got this hang up about secrets given what happened between him and his old lady. Anyway, I want you to know that I’m here for you whatever you decide.”

He pauses for so long I’m worried he’s forgotten what he’s about to say.

“Decide what?” I ask.

“You know that when you’re admitted to the hospital the doctors will order certain tests to make sure you’re prescribed the proper medication and aren’t subjected to tests that could hurt an unborn child, right?”

My hands fist in his shirt and I stare up at him barely daring to hope that what he’s alluding to is true. “Are you saying that I’m pregnant?”

He looks into my eyes. “That’s what Rage said. I don’t know why the docs haven’t spoken to you yet. Maybe it’s early, or maybe it’s not their priority. This is a Catholic hospital, so they’ll be assuming you’re keeping it.”

I’m lying there speechless, but my hand starts to creep towards my belly.

Tex wraps his arms around me and whispers, “I get it if y’all don’t want to be pregnant right now. It’s been a rough few months. I’ll support y’all whatever you decide.” Despite his words, I do detect the uncertainty in his voice. I freeze in place trying to work out what he’s worried about. He can only be worried about one thing, so I quickly alleviate his fears.

“If I’m pregnant, I’m definitely keeping the baby. I would never even think of getting rid of our child. I’m twenty-eight. Now is the perfect time to have a child and I would be so proud to have your child.”

His relief is palpable. His hug is more like his wrapping his arms around me and resting his hands on the bed rail behind me, so he doesn’t accidentally touch one of my injuries. This is the sweetest man in the world and he’s all mine. Maybe it’s not how I thought our future would go, and maybe being stuck in the hospital recovering from my injuries isn’t how I want us to start our new life together, but what matters is we’re together and that’s the way it’s gonna stay. Me, my big, strong Texan biker, his awesome, too clever for his own good son, and our baby.

I feel like I’ve finally got my happy ever after.