Chapter 14
Asher
She fucking moved.
She. Fucking. Moved.
And I fucking needed her.
Fucking hell.
Remember when I said when her temper was riled, I loved the fuck out of it?
I still did.
But this woman was a pain in my ass.
But she was mine.
And she would be mine until the day I took my last breath and the world turned to ash.
However, I had to get her to hear me out. To explain.
Chloe was smart.
She was the smartest woman I knew.
And she would get it.
I had no doubt about that.
If only I could get her to listen to me for five minutes.
I laughed to myself.
Here I was, trying to get my woman back, the only woman I’ve ever loved, and I was technically still a married man to another woman.
And that woman...
Almost twenty-one years ago.
Fuck, but he loved the open road.
There was nothing like riding a bike down an open road.
Feeling the breeze on your skin.
Nothing out in front of you but asphalt, scenery, and your bike’s front tire.
I didn’t have any entanglements. Nothing was holding me down.
Nothing was tying me down.
Until I heard about a sex trafficking ring.
And thankfully, I had made friends in my life. Good friends.
Those good friends were all for starting a one-percenter motorcycle club and putting a stop to it.
However, what I never planned for, and didn’t want, was for the woman I had fucked months ago to come find me and tell me she was pregnant.
Now, I was raised to be a good man by my parents before they were killed in a car accident by a drunk piece of shit.
That was my first kill.
How the fuck he got off with killing two people while being intoxicated with a slap on the wrist, I didn’t know. But I set out to make it right.
So being the good man I was raised to be, I married her, and in name only, so I could put her on my insurance, it was a bitch, but it was better than nothing.
Even though I loved the open road, I came to learn that I loved my club and my daughter more.
Because the day she was placed in my arms, everything felt right.
The location I was in. Everything.
She was the apple of my eye.
Even though the marriage was on paper only, I tried to make it work for my daughter’s sake.
However, that stopped working when I got home from a run, heard my four-year-old daughter crying in her room, and heard sounds coming from my bedroom.
Sounds that shouldn’t be coming from there.
At fucking all.
Not unless I was in that bedroom.
Therefore, after I made sure my daughter was okay, I tucked her back into bed, turned her little music box on, closed the door, and stalked to my bedroom.
They were still going at it.
Nothing would have surprised me at this point. Absolutely nothing.
Which was why, for the life of me, it didn’t bother me seeing my own flesh and blood, my uncle not by blood, pounding into my wife.
I stood there, and when he hit a particular spot in her overused cunt, I started clapping.
But I stopped clapping when that mother fucker looked over his shoulder, smiled at me, and said, “Now that I’ve fucked your wife. When your daughter is old enough, I’ll be railing inside of her. It’s the least that you owe me. Their money should have been mine.”
I didn’t recall pulling my piece out.
I didn’t recall putting the silencer on.
I only recalled not wanting to wake my daughter.
I didn’t recall the way his brains splattered all over the wall.
I didn’t recall my bitch of a wife screaming.
No, the only thing I recalled was telling her to get the fuck out of my sight and to stay gone.
My brothers showed up: Stoney, Priest, Ox, Whit, and Trigger.
They helped me clean the bedroom and got rid of the evidence and her shit.
And that night, I slept like a fucking baby.
Everything was going to shit.
See, when Priest had come to me a few months ago, it was to tell me that he found some shit out about his wife, Trudy.
I would get to that when I spoke to Chloe.
Because if I thought about it now, I was liable to find a woman who didn’t mind beating the shit out of another woman and letting her go to town on that bitch.
Now, I needed Chloe.
I needed to talk to her.
I needed to get some of this shit off my chest.
I only hoped like fuck she still felt that she wanted to be my quiet place in a crazy storm.
And it was also time for me to explain everything else to her.
The love of my life, the other part of my soul. And hope like fuck she forgave me.
But I wasn’t so sure she would.
I knew about her beliefs.
It turned her stomach for a person not to be faithful to their partner.
It was stupid, immoral, and downright nasty, her words.
And fuck of it all, she was right. One hundred percent right.
That was why when Pagan told me she was home after a day of her running her ass off at work, I called her.
As soon as her voicemail came on, “Hi, you’ve reached Chloe. I’m not available right now. Leave me a message,” I spoke the moment the beep sounded.
“Doll Baby, need you to call me back. It’s fucking important. I know you're pissed at me, but I fucking need you.”
I hung up and then stared at my phone.
Stared at the picture on my lock screen.
I had said something that had caused Chloe to close her eyes and smile, and my lips were pressed to her forehead.
Damn, but I loved this photo.
My daughter had taken it, just at the right moment, and sent it to me.
I dropped my head back and sighed.
Just then, my daughter came walking over, and she had told me what Chloe said to her.
Honestly, I was at a loss on what to do.
And I knew she felt torn, but she was still her daddy’s little girl, and she proved that when she asked, “Dad, what can I do?”
I looked over at my daughter and shrugged because I didn’t know what she could do.
What could any of us do?
This whole situation was so beyond fucking up that I couldn’t even wrap my head around it.
Two hours later, I was pulling Priest off Trigger and out of the ring we had out back when my phone rang.
When I heard the ringtone, I released Priest and didn’t even pay attention to whether he went back into the ring or not because I was walking away while pulling out my phone and hitting that answer button in the next second.
I answered the call and breathed out, “Chloe.”
She sighed, then she said, “What is it?”
I didn’t smile, even though I wanted to, that fucking temper of hers, “I need you to come to the clubhouse. Please?”
She sighed, “Asher...”
I ran my hand through my hair and then put every ounce of remorse in my tone and said, “Chloe. Please?”
She sighed again, and then she said, “Okay.”
She hung up before I could tell her to be careful.
Something we always said to one another.
And if I hadn’t known that I was going to have a long way to go at getting her to forgive me, that alone would have told me as much.
But I sat there, the shot glass of whiskey still in front of me, fifteen minutes later, when the door opened.
I looked at it and felt everything in my word suddenly still.
She was the most gorgeous creature to ever grace this world.
Chloe scanned the main room, and when her eyes locked on me, she slowly made her way over to me.
My eyes trailed her as she did so.
And the moment she got close enough to me to read whatever she saw in my eyes, she stopped next to my chair and then offered me her hand.
And like the dutiful puppy, I was where she was concerned, I stood up, placed my hand in hers, and allowed her to lead me wherever she wanted to take me.
She led me out of the clubhouse, through the back courtyard, and to the gondola I had built so the girls could be outside when it rained.
Knowing what she wanted, I smiled inwardly.
I sat down on the swing and then waited. I didn’t have to wait long as she settled on the other end.
That was too far away from me for my liking, but I didn’t say anything.
No, all I did was inhale.
Vanilla and strawberries.
It was long moments before she asked, “What’s going on?”
I swallowed, then head hanging low, I said, “Remember when Priest came to me after I had painted your toes on your eighteenth birthday?”
I looked up at her then and watched as she stilled, then hesitantly, she asked, “Yeah?”
I nodded, “Well, it was because Priest found evidence of her cheating on him.”
Her body locked.
But I continued. “They worked it out. He loved her. But recently, he started seeing the same signs. So, he followed her. Found out she was selling her body for blow.”
“What the heck?” Chloe murmured.
“She was the one who asked for a divorce when he made a so-called scene. And that was by grabbing up all the blow he found and flushed it down the toilet.”
“Right on, Priest,” she whispered.
“Yeah. However, he received something in the mail this morning. From a clinic.”
When Chloe didn’t respond, I continued, “They are under new management. And somehow, that bill slipped through the cracks.”
Hesitantly, she asked, “What was it for?”
“One bill was for a DNA test. And the other was for an abortion,” I said.
And I waited.
I didn’t have to wait long.
Her body jerked so fast that it was a miracle the swing didn’t move too much. Then her eyes swung to mine, and she gasped, “Are you telling me what I think you're telling me?”
“If you think I’m telling you that once she found out it was Priest’s baby, she aborted it? You would be thinking the same thing I’m telling you.”
“Ese no es un buen pedazo de basura humana.” She snapped.
I lifted a brow, “Say that in English for me, yeah?”
“I called her a no good piece of human trash,” she snapped.
Her temper was in full force.
I wanted to have the right to pull her into my chest and kiss the hell out of her. This fucking woman.
And she proved her point when she growled, “I want to find her and beat the snot out of her.”
“I’ll have bail money ready,” I said with a wink.
Just then, I opened my mouth to explain the next part of why I wanted to talk to her, however, before I could, Priest stomped out of the clubhouse, a bottle of tequila in his hand.
“Oh shit,” I muttered.
Chloe looked at Priest, nodded, and said, “Go to him. Keep him safe. Okay?”
And before I could tell her not to go, that I was thinking the hell with all the bullshit because she was the only one who mattered, she got up and walked away.
Fuck. Me.