Chapter Nineteen
Tess
I’d been calling Mustang to check in between every patient visit throughout the night.
Mary-Kate’s vitals were improving. She was stable, but she hadn’t opened her eyes.
The adrenaline which had coursed through my veins and spurred me into action the previous afternoon had long since left my body. I felt dead on my feet.
Still, when I finished my shift at six A.M., I hadn’t spared a single thought to going home and climbing into bed.
There was only one place I wanted to be.
One place I needed to be.
Mustang wasn’t the only one I’d been communicating with through the night. When I arrived at the hospital, instead of heading to the pediatrics clinic, I went looking for Jenna at the nurses’ station in the emergency room. I found her leaning against the outer lip of the desk, a paper cup of hospital coffee in her hand as she stared unseeingly into the distance.
She looked about how I felt.
“Tell me you get to go home soon,” I said instead of hello.
Jenna shook her head clear as she looked my way. “Uh, yeah. I’m actually already off the clock. I knew you’d be in soon, and I wanted to see you before I left.”
She set aside her coffee and came toward me with open arms. I accepted her embrace and returned it with more gratitude than I could ever put into words.
“Thanks,” I breathed.
“I stopped by as often as I could throughout the night,” she began as she pulled away. “I gotta say—when I told you I couldn’t wait to meet Mary-Kate, this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”
“Yeah, no shit,” I muttered, pulling my fingers through my hair.
“Tess, I’ve seen a lot of things come in and out of this hospital, but I’ve never seen so many bikers show up, and all for a little girl.”
I gave her a tired smile. “That doesn’t surprise me. They’re badasses, but they're each other’s family. In Mustang’s case, his only family. I’m glad to know he wasn’t alone after I left.”
“So, the part about them being badasses?” She looked around then took me by the elbow, drawing me further away from the nurses’ station before she continued in a hushed voice. “Obviously, when a child comes in overdosing on edible weed laced with LSD, the cops show up, as does CPS. And I don’t know what kind of connections these guys have, but the officers were in and out of here in five minutes. It was almost like they showed up just so they could make a record of it. After what happened with Lance Jones, and how he didn’t press charges following the public beating that broke more than a couple bones, I’m beginning to think the Stallions and the cops are more friendly than makes sense.”
Staring into her hazel-green eyes, I tried to absorb all she’d said. Mustang and I had never discussed the Stallions' relationship with law enforcement, and I hadn’t given it a ton of thought. What I knew was what I had always known from afar—the Wild Stallions didn’t make headlines; and now that I was thinking about it, it made sense that in order to avoid making headlines, they couldn’t get caught.
But no matter how careful they were, I knew things sometimes got messy. Lance being the perfect example. So, if they did get caught, there must have been some way for them to get out of it.
“I know we’re both exhausted; but, honey, you don’t look at all surprised by this,” murmured Jenna with a concerned frown.
I didn’t like keeping things from my best friend, but the Stallions' secrets weren’t mine to share. Rather than lie to her, I came at the truth from a different angle.
“Look, I’ve met Mary-Kate’s mom. Well, sort of. What I mean to say is, when Mary-Kate is with Mustang, she eats up his attention and his affection like she’s starved for it. I don’t have to be a social worker to see Trix isn’t going to be nominated for mother of the year—and what happened yesterday was awful but not altogether shocking. If CPS is going to revoke her parenting rights, good. Whatever handshakes were exchanged were not in vain. The safest place Mary-Kate could ever be is with Mustang.”
Jenna’s frown still tugged at her eyebrows, but she nodded as she folded her arms across her chest. “That I believe. He hasn’t left her side. I don’t think he’s slept, either. And in spite of our reassurances that she appears to just be sleeping it off, he’s as worried now as he was when you first showed up.”
“I should go check on him,” I replied, now more anxious than ever to be with him.
“Hey,” said Jenna, her brow finally relaxing. “He’s a badass, and I wouldn’t want any of my friends to go up against him in a fist fight, but I can see he’s a good man underneath that leather vest.”
“He is,” I agreed on a whisper.
“Text me when she wakes up?”
I nodded, and she offered me a tired smile of her own.
“We’ll reschedule that pedicure for when she’s all better.”
“Absolutely.”
We parted with another hug—her finally heading home, and me headed to the pediatrics clinic. It wasn’t that far of a walk, but it felt like it took me forever to get there. When I came upon Mary-Kate’s room, Mustang sitting alone in a chair pulled up close to the bed, my heart swelled with love.
He looked my way as soon as he heard me open the closed door.
“Hi.”
“Hey, sugar.”
I didn’t stop until I was standing next to him. He reached out and curled an arm around my hips. As I combed my fingers through his hair, he propped his forehead against my abdomen, and that was all the sign I needed. Using both hands, I repetitively made my way from the top of his head down to his neck, gently scraping his scalp with my fingernails.
“How you doin’, babe?”
It was a question I asked so often with my patients, always willing and hoping I could help. Never before had I wanted so badly to be of use, all the while fearing I’d fall short.
“Tired of waitin’, Tess. It’s been sixteen hours.”
In an effort to be encouraging, I reminded him, “In a non-drug induced sleep, she could easily be out for ten. She’ll wake up, sweetheart. I know she will.”
He didn’t get a chance to respond before my stomach growled. On an exhale, he lifted his head in order to look up at me.
“You haven’t been home,” he muttered, as if he’d just noticed my scrubs.
“Not yet.”
“You should go get some food in you. And you haven’t slept.”
I moved my hands until they framed either side of his face and replied, “Rumor has it, neither have you.”
“I’ve been sittin’ here all night. You’ve been workin’.”
“Mustang? I’m not going anywhere. Not without you. Both of you.”
For a long moment, he said nothing, his hazel-blue eyes—tired and worried, but vibrant as always—fixed steadily on me.
Finally, he said, “She’ll be with me full-time now.”
“I know, sweetheart.”
He paused once more, his grip at my hips tightening before he told me, “Like my house just fine—but you want to change any of it, run it by me. I’ve got to say, baby, I’ve got better cookware than you. Better dishes, too. But I do like your couch.”
I knit my eyebrows together in confusion, my hands slipping away from his face.
“What?”
“I know you barely had a chance to do anything with your place after we painted it, but fresh paint will make it more attractive when you put it on the market. You want to sell it, great. You want to rent it out, I’m good with that, too.”
My exhaustion was temporarily assuaged as a tremor of shock raced up my spine. What he was implying was suddenly starting to make sense.
Except, even though I understood what he was getting at, I couldn’t believe it.
“What?” I managed on a breath.
“Tess, I got MK full-time, my ol’ lady can’t reside at an address that’s not mine. Especially with the schedules we got. Not sayin’ that because I need you to be my backup. Not puttin’ that on you. But I gotta mind my girl; and I can’t mind my girl and take care of my ol’ lady if they don’t—”
I cut him off with a kiss.
I couldn’t take anymore.
If he kept talking, I knew I’d burst.
Ol’ Lady. He’d called me his ol’ lady.
I felt my face scrunch as I fought back tears even while I parted my lips, inviting my man inside of my mouth.
He accepted. Generously.
As I kissed Mustang long and hard, I did so with the knowledge that I had more than met my match. I’d met a man who was ready to shift gears before I was.
I’d never find another like him.
Seeing as I’d already planned on never letting him go, that was perfectly fine by me.
I broke our kiss, pulling away only as far as I needed to touch my forehead to his as I promised, “I’ll be your backup, babe. I’ll be whatever you need. We’ll work it out. I want all of you, Mustang—and all of you includes that little girl.”
Tilting my head until my lips grazed his once more, I whispered, “The Wild Stallions, Steel Mustang, banana pancakes with Mary-Kate—the open road, with you and that blue Harley—that’s all you, sweetheart. And I love every bit of you.”
This time it was Mustang who crushed his lips against mine, punctuating the end of our conversation with a deep, greedy kiss.
It was everything.
Well, almost everything.
Twenty minutes later, Mary-Kate finally opened her eyes.
It was late Monday morning when I saw the news.
Elaine was a bit of a news junkie. I was used to conducting my visit with the local news playing softly in the background. Even though she was getting close to the end and was losing her cognitive ability to remember any of it after it was over, I understood the comfort of familiarity and why her daughter, Sarah, turned it on routinely.
Usually, I didn’t pay much attention to it.
That morning, a casual glance at the television had me stopping in my tracks.
They flashed her photograph on the screen, identifying her as Beatrix De la Cruz.
She’d been killed in a tragic motor vehicle accident in the middle of the night.
With the volume turned down, I couldn’t catch everything the news anchor said, but I did hear brake failure .
My stomach sank and I had to concentrate on my breathing as I wrapped my head around this news.
Mary-Kate’s mother was dead.
They’d said her brakes had failed, and I believed that.
I also knew, I knew it wasn’t an accident.
The Wild Stallions were in the business of protection.
They were also professional mechanics.
Mustang told me they weren’t assassins. He also said in a kill or be killed situation, they did what they had to do. It didn’t take much for me to figure out that wasn’t a logic which applied exclusively to the men in the club.
Trix’s negligence had threatened Mary-Kate’s life. The Stallions did what they thought they had to do.
A month ago, this realization would likely have freaked me out majorly. In all honesty, it was a bit terrifying to think about it even then—but I knew these men. They were outlaws, but they weren’t monsters. What I saw on the news was only half the story. The full story was a tale of vigilante justice.
I was well aware that any justification of their actions was an acceptance, on my part, of their criminal nature. But I was in love with a Stallion. I trusted him with my life. I trusted him with his daughter’s life.
Winnie had told me the most valuable piece of advice she could ever give me was to never doubt my man. Not ever.
It might have made me a stupid woman, but I was too far gone.
I was going to heed that advice.
I loved him too much not to.
“Did you know her or something?” asked Sarah from where she sat in a nearby armchair, her gaze cast in my direction.
I inhaled deeply and let it out in a calm exhale as I nodded. “I did, actually. Well, I met her a couple times. We weren’t friends or anything.”
“It’s too bad, what happened to her. Only thirty years old.”
I nodded in agreement.
There was no denying it was too bad.
But as it always did after death, life would go on.