Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
River
I stood to the side of the section we were assigned on the fairgrounds. It’d taken a little less than thirty minutes to unload all the tables and grills and get them set up. The club had jumped in to help, and some of the men even scolded Adelaide and Reina when they tried to help us set up. Some had gotten their heads bit off by my woman, but when one of them ran and grabbed her a corndog, she settled down.
Women were a different level of crazy when they were hungry… and pregnant.
I watched as Adelaide and Reina talked to the people in our town that came up to the table to buy burgers and hot dogs. Sam and I were manning the grill, leaving the two women to deal with everyone else. Neither of us were particularly friendly, nor were we people-pleasers. And while Adelaide definitely wasn’t either, she was damn good at putting a mask on. She could fake her bullshit with the best of them, and everyone that came up to buy food was eating out of the palm of her damn hand.
It probably didn’t hurt that the people in this town looked up to the Fathers of Mayhem MC. We didn’t bring trouble here, and we helped out when we could by doing things like this for the community. Though my club dealt with illegal shit, never, not in the thirty-something years this club had been established, had shit ever hit home.
And it was going to stay that way because I wanted this community to continue to be able to rely on us and trust us.
I looked over at Sam, only to find his eyes locked on Reina, his expression unreadable as he watched her. “You would be good for her,” I commented, making him drag his eyes off of her to look at me.
He arched an eyebrow at me. “What the fuck are you talking about now, River?” he demanded.
I shrugged, gesturing toward Reina with the hand holding my water bottle. “Her.” He grunted. “I caught you staring at her, Sam. You know shit doesn’t slide past me.”
He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “That woman is going through too much shit right now to want anything to do with a man,” Sam told me. “Gregory made sure he fucked her up good.”
I walked over to the grill to flip the burgers and turn the hot dogs. Sam followed me. “You won’t know unless you try. Adelaide went through her own shit, and she still let me close.”
“Adelaide is different from Reina, River.”
I looked over to where the two women were laughing at something together. Adelaide placed her hand on her belly right as I saw Jaxon move, and a small smile twitched at my lips. She had a second sense for when he was about to kick or hit her belly.
“Just give it a try, Sam,” I suggested as I closed the lid back on the grill and moved over to check on Axel, who was sleeping peacefully in his pack ‘n’ play.
“River!” a woman loudly exclaimed, making me jerk my head up. A blonde woman was making her way over to our table, her heels sinking into the soft dirt. She launched herself at me and wrapped her arms around my neck as soon as she was close enough. I narrowly avoided her trying to kiss me.
Of course, having a moment of fucking peace was impossible.
With a growl, I pried her off of me, scowling down at her. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I snapped at my ex-wife as I crossed my arms over my chest, glaring down at her.
“I told you that I was coming back to town to make things right between us, River,” she told me with a pout. I only arched an unimpressed brow at her. I had never gotten a text or a phone call. If I had, I’d have told her to keep her ass wherever the fuck she was at. “You told me okay, so here I am.” She waved her hands around her with a beaming smile.
I shook my head at her. “You had the wrong number, Lindsey,” I informed her. I jerked my head in the direction of Adelaide, who was helping a customer, but I could tell she wasn’t really paying attention to them. Her body was tense. Clearly, she was aware of what was happening behind her, and I hated that my fucking crazy ex-wife was the reason why my woman’s mood soured. “Because even if you’d had the right number, I would have told you to keep your ass right wherever the hell you ran away to when you signed your name on those divorce papers.”
Hurt flickered across her face at my words, but I was unbothered. Lindsey and I had been a young-and-dumb mistake—nothing more.
Adelaide stepped up beside me, looking Lindsey up and down, taking in her dyed, blonde hair and make-up-caked face. Lindsey was slim, and she had obviously toned up over the years. She looked a hell of a lot different from the young, eighteen-year-old girl that I had married all those years ago.
But she didn’t compare to the woman at my side—never would be able to. Adelaide was it for me.
“Who the fuck are you?” Adelaide demanded, her beautiful, brown eyes flashing dangerously.
“River’s wife,” Lindsey smugly retorted.
I opened my mouth to correct her, but Adelaide beat me to it. “Lie one more time, and I’ll knock your teeth down your fucking throat,” Adelaide snapped at her. Lindsey’s eyes widened at her words, fear flashing in them as her face paled. I smirked, my cock gaining interest in the confrontation now. It was so fucking hot when Adelaide made people afraid of her. “Now, who the fuck are you?” Adelaide repeated.
“River’s ex-wife,” Lindsey corrected herself. I wrapped my arm around Adelaide’s waist, leaning down to press my lips to her temple. She relaxed a little.
“River doesn’t want you here, and I sure as hell don’t, so turn the fuck around and go back to wherever the fuck you came from,” Adelaide told her.
“And who the fuck are you?” Lindsey demanded, surprising me with the curse word that came out of her mouth. The old Lindsey would have never even dreamed of speaking like that, and she had always hated that I did. It was one of the biggest causes of our fights. She wanted me to change, to be a gentler kind of man, and I refused to.
The woman I fell in love with wasn’t supposed to make me change my entire personality. She might change me just enough to make me a better man, but not an entirely different person. Lindsey wanted me to be someone new, someone that wasn’t me.
Someone Adelaide would never ask me to be. She took me as I was.
“Adelaide is my woman, and she’s the mother of both of my kids,” I told her, thinking of how much of a mother she was to Axel, even though she wasn’t even blood-related to him.
Lindsey looked down at Adelaide’s belly, and her face went pale again. Me never wanting kids had been one of the many reasons we’d divorced. We both had so many conflicting views after we signed our marriage certificate that our marriage hadn’t lasted very long at all. She wanted kids, a happy marriage with a house surrounded by a white picket fence, and nine-to-five jobs.
I was never that kind of man, and I never would be, though Adelaide had changed my mind about never wanting kids. I wanted a house full of kids with her , and I was already on the hunt for a house big enough for the number of kids that I wanted with her.
Another thing Lindsey could never wrap her head around was that I lived and breathed the club. I was an outlaw through and through. Adelaide understood that, and she took to her role well as my old lady. She was a fucking natural at it all, and my club loved her, fucking worshiped the ground that she walked on.
“River…” Lindsey spoke up, her voice trembling, and I saw her blink back tears. “I—I thought?—”
“People change, Lindsey,” I informed her. “And you and I would never work out, even if I gave you everything you wanted because then, it would have just made me miserable. You could never embrace this life. You hated it way too much. You were demanding too much from me, and I couldn’t give you everything that you wanted.”
“I just wanted some of your time, River,” Lindsey choked out.
I shook my head at her. “I couldn’t give you as much as you wanted,” I reminded her. “You wanted all of it, and my life revolved around the club. Hell, it still does.”
Adelaide reached down and gently squeezed my hand before she went back to the table, where a small line was forming for food. I watched her as she smiled and laughed with the customers, her pretty face lighting up. “Her, River?” Lindsey asked, drawing my eyes back to her bitter face. “She’s nothing like the kind of women you normally settle for.”
I looked back over at Adelaide for a moment before I looked back down at Lindsey. “She’s everything I want in a woman and more, Lindsey. She’s fucking remarkable. She knows the club life, and she embraces it. The guys love her, and they worship the ground that she walks on. She understands the role I play as the president. She’s strong, and she doesn’t crumble under the pressure that’s put on her as my old lady.” I shook my head. “You could never be even half of the woman that Adelaide is in my eyes.”
Because Adelaide was my entire fucking world, and Lindsey had hardly even been part of it.
Lindsey shook her head and swiped at her cheeks as tears fell down her face. I just watched her, not feeling anything at how upset she was. “I had so much hope, River,” she said, her voice breaking.
I stuffed my hands in my pockets. “I don’t know why you did, Lindsey, because even if I wasn’t with Adelaide, I still wouldn’t take you back,” I bluntly told her.
“I can handle it this time, River,” she pleaded with me.
Nothing was going to change my mind. Even if Adelaide and I weren’t together, I still wouldn’t take Lindsey back. We were oil and water. Toxic and never mixing.
“Really?” I demanded, not believing her for a second. “You would crumble at the slightest bit of fucking pressure,” I reminded her. “You always have.”
She shook her head and turned on her heel, walking off. Blowing out a harsh breath, I turned toward the grill, where Sam was taking the burgers and hot dogs off. “Well, that was definitely unexpected,” Sam commented.
I grunted. “I don’t know why the fuck she thought I would have wanted to work shit out with her,” I told him. “When we signed those divorce papers, we fucking hated each other.”
Sam snorted. “Hate is a nice way to put it,” he stated, obviously remembering the shouting and the destruction that happened almost daily between me and Lindsey. I broke so much shit when she and I argued that it was a miracle I ever had furniture in our damn room at the clubhouse—another place she fucking hated living in.
There were so many damn times that Sam had to drag me out of the clubhouse and away from her before I did something I would have regretted.
Granted, I was a lot calmer now than I was back then, but I knew that Lindsey had a way of pushing all of my buttons.
“So, your ex seems…” Adelaide trailed off as she came to stand next to me, trying to find the right word to use.
“A stuck-up bitch?” I asked as I wrapped an arm around her waist, turning to face her as I wrapped my other arm around her so her belly was pressed against my abs. Jaxon kicked her belly, and I smiled. I loved that feeling.
Adelaide shook her head. “More like a fucking crybaby,” she corrected me. I barked out a laugh. She arched an eyebrow at me. “You actually went for a woman like that?”
I snorted. “Both of us didn’t start showing who we really were until we were married,” I explained. “Shit happened too quick between us. But we were both young and stupid.”
“Yeah, those two were toxic as fuck,” Sam commented as he walked past us, going to take the hot dogs and hamburgers up to the table where Reina was at.
I leaned down and kissed Adelaide, groaning softly as she opened her lips beneath mine, allowing me to slide my tongue along hers. She moaned quietly, her hands sliding under my shirt and running up my muscular back, making my muscles quiver beneath her touch.
I slowly pulled back from her, not wanting to end the kiss. But we were in public, and we also had people to feed. I pressed a kiss right beneath her ear, my blood running hot at her sweet moan. My cock twitched in my jeans. “I’ll finish this tonight,” I whispered into her ear before I pulled back from her, watching as her eyes slightly glazed over. She aimed a slow, sexy smile in my direction that made my blood pound for her.
Fuck. When would this damn event be over?