Chapter 19
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
RYAN
Grover leaves.
He slams the front door. He doesn’t say goodbye. He doesn’t kiss me. He doesn’t even look at me. I should not be surprised. I’ve earned his anger, his distrust, all of it. I’ve earned more, too, I’m sure. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.
Because it absolutely does, to the marrow of my bones.
I thought I was as over him as I could be. Being apart for six years, I had resigned myself to a life without him. He was my past. He hurt me in more ways than one, and I was going to do the best I could raising our son, and that was that.
Except that isn’t that.
It never was.
Being around him again, feeling him move inside of me, it’s clear to me I am indeed not over him. Not even a little bit. I hate myself for that. My stupid heart. My stupid, stupid heart.
I still love this man. Every piece of him. Even the bad. And I feel like the bad person in this relationship. I know we have both played the part more than once, but right now, it feels as if I am the lead.
“Don’t worry about it too much. It’ll get worked out,” Nash announces as I stare at the closed front door.
I’ve almost forgotten that he’s here. Shifting my attention over to him, I watch as he leans back in the small dining room chair. He gives me a grin and a wink. I can’t believe it, but just looking at him, I don’t know how he looks better than he did six years ago.
I’m not sure how it’s possible.
“I’m semiretired, or at least I was. Living by the beach and being semiretired does something to a man. Maybe it’s the salt water,” he states.
Pressing my lips together, I roll them a few times. I can’t believe I said that out loud. “Although it’s probably all the sex.”
He winks, and I roll my eyes to the ceiling as I make my way over to him. Sinking down in the chair across from his, I let out a heavy sigh. Nash is unaffected by my worries. He’s clearly living his best life with zero of his own concerns.
“Trust me, it will all work out,” he states.
Will it, though?
I can’t believe that.
I’ve seen things not work out more than once, more than a dozen times. My parents, my sister, and her stupid pimp proved that point—driving it home. It doesn’t always work out.
“What am I supposed to do now?” I ask.
“Start your life again.”
Nodding once, I clear my throat and lean over the table slightly. I haven’t had the chance to really take in the furniture, and I notice that the table is scarred but still really solid and pretty.
At first glance, I think I could spruce it up and make it look brand new. I think I could do that with everything here, then add in pieces from the secondhand store and make it a home.
But that’s not what I should be focused on right now.
I have a child to take care of and a pimp to hide from.
Because it’s clear to me that he knows where I am.
As much as I want to believe that my sister is smart enough to find me on her own, she’s so strung out I doubt she even knows what year it is.
“I want to,” I whisper. “But I want to go back to the past.”
He jerks his chin, his eyes focused on mine. “You can’t go backward, babe. You gotta move forward, and if that means taking a piece of your past with you, namely one being that man, then you do that. But you can’t go backward, and you got more than just yourself to worry about on this occasion.”
I do.
I have my main priority.
My son.
Adam.
He’s always been my priority. But I have to admit, the past couple of days, I’ve been not only lost inside of my own head with everything that’s been going on but also lost in Grover. I need to get back to my son.
“You’re right,” I whisper. “My son and I need to move forward, however that looks. You busy?”
Nash arches a brow, his eyes searching mine for a moment.
I’ve decided that it was really stupid of me to go out yesterday with just me and Adam.
I should have waited for someone or gone to the clubhouse and demanded a guard.
It’s not like I don’t know exactly where it is and that there are always men loitering around there with nothing to do between jobs.
“Depends on what you want from me,” he mutters.
I almost laugh, but he’s hot, so it does not surprise me that women throw themselves at him. I’m sure they do, and often. My lips curve up into a smile before I speak.
“I need to get Adam enrolled in kindergarten here. I also need to get some toiletries for both of us. We kind of just packed what we could throw in the back of my car and hauled ass out of town.”
“You puttin’ him in school before this fucker is caught?” Nash asks.
Pressing my lips together, I think about his words. I want to keep Adam with me always. Screw school. If I could keep him by my side forever and ever, I would. I love him so much, and I just want to be around him. But the reality is that I am no teacher, and he loves school.
“I can’t sit around and wait for something bad to happen. He’s probably safer locked up in that school than he is here in this house with just me.”
Nash dips his chin in a single nod. “Then let’s do it. Toss me your keys. I’ll drive.”
ATOMIC
I’m angrier than I should probably be, or maybe I’m not. I don’t really know. Riding to the clubhouse, I decide I’m going to spend the day working. I have some serious shit to handle with the warehouse pickups and deliveries. I also need to find that goddamn pimp and that fucking sister of Ryan’s.
Plus, I have to talk to King about this strip club, although I’m pretty sure it’s a good idea.
As long as they can run it on their own without bringing me any shit to deal with.
And I trust Nash as much as I did my own father.
He will take care of his shit. He handled this club for decades. He’s a good man, a better leader.
When I walk into the clubhouse, I ignore the two whores who are going at it in the middle of the bar at ten o’clock in the fucking morning while two of the guys sit in chairs watching them. Holy fuck.
“It’s Guts’s birthday,” Rim calls out from one of the chairs.
Guts lifts his hand in a wave, no doubt unable to tear his eyes away from one whore licking the other’s cunt.
“Party tonight for your birthday,” I shout as I walk down the hall and toward my office.
If that fucker will be able to walk later. I have no doubt that he’s going to be fucked up the whole day and passed out before dinner. I unlock my office, slip inside, and flip the switch on before I walk over to my desk.
Sinking down in my chair, I let out a sigh as I lean back and stare at the ceiling for a moment. I’m not sure what the fuck I’m going to do. I want to throttle Ryan. I want to punish her, but at the same time, I get it, and I want to fuck her.
The door opens and closes. I straighten and watch as King walks toward the chair across from me and flops down.
“Party tonight for Guts’s birthday,” I state before we get started talking about club business.
“Nice. We’ll be here. I’ll send Shawn a text. Tell her to pack up some desserts.”
I let out a chuckle. “Don’t expect him to be coherent enough to blow out the candles. He’s already getting started with the celebrating,” I say.
King jerks his chin as his fingers fly across his phone, no doubt texting his baker wife to bring some amazing-as-fuck cakes and cookies of some kind. I won’t turn them down, so I don’t tell him not to do it.
“Adam is mine,” I state.
King’s gaze flicks up to meet mine. I watch as he places his phone on his knee, but his gaze doesn’t leave me. “You thought he wasn’t?” he asks.
“Ryan told me he wasn’t. Said he was a Nomad King’s kid, but that she raised him alone.”
King clears his throat, his lips curving up to a grin. “Brother,” he murmurs,
“What?” I ask.
“She named him Adam. Your road name is Atomic, the only name that she knew you by then. She knew he was yours. I can’t believe you believed that shit.”
I can’t either. He’s right. Plus, Adam does look like me, even if it took Nash to point it out, which I fucking hate. I knew it, though. From the moment I laid eyes on him, I knew he was mine. I might have fucked around on Ryan a lot, but she never did.
But it was easier for me to believe the betrayal than it was the truth. Because the truth meant that she didn’t want me around my own fucking kid. That she thought it would be better to struggle than for me to be part of his life.
“This whole thing has me fucked up,” I admit. “I wasn’t a teenager when she had him. He was only born five years ago, and then to fucking lie to my face about this shit.”
King is quiet for a moment, but I know he has an opinion on the whole scenario. “Atomic,” he says, his voice low, and I know he’s going to say something that I may not like.
“Honest to fuck. If you say that I wasn’t ready for a kid, I’m going to beat the shit out of you. I was thirty-seven when he was born. I wasn’t a fucking teenager. She fucking lied to me. To my goddamn face, after taking fifty grand of my money and running off with our rival club.”
He nods his head to each point I make, his eyes searching mine as he does. Then he clears his throat and places his forearms on his thighs as he leans over. He’s going to give me some real talk. I’m just not sure if it’s what I want to hear or that I’ll agree with any of it.
“You need to talk to her about this, but my guess is that she’s had a lot of demons inside of her from her parents and her fucking sister that caused her irrational decision-making.”
“My fucking kid,” I grind out. “The rest doesn’t mean dick, only my fucking kid.”
“Talk. To. Her.”
Throwing my hands in the air, I spin around in my chair, facing the wall and seeing nothing.
I’m not sure what the fuck I think about any of this.
What I want to say, what I need to say. All I know is that I missed five years of my kid’s life, and I’m fucking pissed off about it and growing angrier as every minute passes.
“Whatever you decide. Remember how she makes you feel. Down to your dick.”
I hear my office door open and close. We didn’t even talk about club shit, but I can’t think about that, not when I have personal shit to work through.
The guilt I carried about not helping Ryan has disappeared, and now this festering anger has replaced it, but at the same time, there is an underlying happiness there.
Ryan’s back and she’s mine. She will never leave again. I won’t let her. If she tries, I will drag her ass back here.
She’s mine.
Adam is mine.
I have a family again.