Chapter Sixteen
Mimic
We’d been here for hours. My mind switched back and forth between concern for Sam and worry that Indie would slip away while I was here. I should have woken her up and made her come to the hospital.
The only reason I didn’t was that I knew I would be distracted, worrying about Sam. At least at the clubhouse, she had the prospects watching over her.
I searched the room for Nav. He had his head buried in his computer. He took that thing everywhere. Which, right now, I was thankful for. If anyone, Indie included, tried to scale a wall or if she tried to slip away unnoticed, he would get an alert. She was safe as long as she stayed put.
Brothers and old ladies filled the waiting room.
All here to support Sam and Jack. My sister sat in the corner on Cash’s lap, the two of them whispering quietly.
I sat in my chair with my arms resting on my knees, watching Rose as she spoke animatedly to Cash, wondering what they were talking about.
We’d been spending as much time together as we could, getting to know one another again, and working on a plan to take out Dakota. Rose was hesitant about us doing it alone, and I wondered if I should be including her at all.
I’d thought bringing her in would give her closure for all the shit she had endured, but watching her smile at my VP, I realized maybe she’d already gotten her closure. The woman who abused her was dead. She still had Val in her life. And now she had Cash.
She was happy.
I didn’t want to take that happiness away.
Cash caught me watching them and whispered something to Rose, who gazed in my direction. She spoke to Cash and then stood from his lap. I knew she was headed my way before she took her first step.
I sat up in my seat and leaned back as Rose sat in the chair beside me.
“How are you doing?”
“I’m good.” I wasn’t good. I was worried about Sam and wondered why this was taking so long. Granted, I knew nothing about giving birth, but I wish I were in there with her, protecting her.
“You can’t protect her from the pain of childbirth, you know.”
I stared at my sister. “Stop doing that shit.”
She smiled at me and leaned her head on my shoulder. “It always freaked you out that I could read your mind.”
“You’re not reading my mind; you don’t have superpowers.” I shook my head, but the corner of my mouth twitched.
“When it comes to you, I do. Doesn’t matter how long we were apart, I know you. All those years, I knew you were alive. Val tried to help me accept that you might be gone, but I knew. I would have known if you’d died.”
“There were times I wanted to,” I whispered, looking around to make sure no one was listening. “You kept me alive.”
“Same,” she sighed. “So, Indie, huh?”
“Don’t, Rose.”
She lifted her head and smiled at me. “She likes you too, you know.”
I ran my hand over my face. I wasn’t doing this with my sister. If I opened the door to discuss me and Indie with Rose, she would want to talk about her and Cash, and that was something I preferred to pretend didn’t exist.
I didn’t begrudge her being with him. The truth was, I liked that she had him. I knew he’d protect her with his life. But the idea that my VP might be doing things with my little sister—the same things I wanted to do to Indie—made me want to puke.
“There’s nothing between her and Johnny.”
The growl was involuntary. I couldn’t have held it back even if I’d tried.
The rage that surged through me at the very thought of him touching her felt dangerous.
It ran faster and hotter than anything else I had experienced.
Memories of what George and Dakota had done to me didn’t come close to eliciting the reaction I had at the idea of anyone but myself touching Indie.
Kissing her.
Fucking her.
Loving her.
She was mine. I didn’t care what anyone said. King could go fuck himself.
“Hey.” Rose poked her finger into my ribs. The ache in my hands from clenching my fists when she mentioned Johnny subsided as Rose took one of my hands in hers.
My eyes closed, and a vision of Indie filled my mind. The look on her face when she snapped out of the trance. The fear, the panic. The humiliation. I wanted to know what had happened to her. I wanted her to open up to me.
I wanted to kill whoever hurt her. Whoever put that fear inside her didn’t deserve to live. I just knew she wasn’t the only one. Just like Rose wasn’t the only one.
“I can’t be in two fucking places at once.”
“She’s okay at the clubhouse. No one can hurt her there.”
“You don’t know that. We’re all here. Everyone but the fucking prospects, who can’t do shit to protect her,” I argued.
“King trusts Johnny to protect Grace.”
“King trusts Johnny to stop Grace from going home with some random dude.”
“Still, he seems capable.”
I grunted, not wanting to admit she was probably right. I’d seen him in the ring with Archie and with Keys. They all knew how to fight. But none of them were good enough to protect Indie.
“Mimic and Kytten.”
I stood the second I heard Jack’s voice. The smile that spread across his face told me Sam was fine, but I needed to hear the words.
“Is she okay?”
“She’s fine. The babies are both fine. She wants you both to be the first ones to see them, with Charlie.”
“Me?” Rose asked.
“Come meet your baby sisters, you two.” Jack waited for us to move. Charlie had run to him as soon as he’d walked into the room.
Rose took a step and looked back at me. “You coming?”
“You’re sure she’s okay?”
Jack took a few steps until he was standing right in front of me. He handed Charlie off to Rose and placed his hands on my shoulders.
“She’s perfect. She’s done this before, and she was amazing. Now she wants to see you.”
My nose burned with tears I refused to shed in front of my brothers. I wasn’t a fucking pussy, but the worry I’d had for Sam had taken over more than I realized. My shoulders slumped with relief, and I nodded before following Jack, Rose, and Charlie down the hall.
I didn’t know what to expect. I’d visited Ellie when she had Sebastian, but this was different. Ellie was an old lady, just like Sam. But Sam was my momma. She was more important to me than anyone else. At this moment, I realized she might even be more important than Rose.
I knew it was some fucked-up notion that I needed a mom. I’d been without one for so long. And the one I did have, had betrayed me—according to Dakota. He’d told me she’d been the one to tell him where I was and how to find me.
He’d brainwashed me into believing she didn’t want me. That she’d never wanted me. Every memory I had of my mother, all the times she’d sung me to sleep and kissed my scrapes, were destroyed by Dakota Stone and his countless barbs against her.
He’d told me she was a whore. That she’d given me up for money. He’d said she was tired of living like a pauper and had finally taken the money George offered her and gotten rid of me. He’d convinced me she was a selfish bitch who didn’t care about anyone but herself.
Then I found Rose.
And she reminded me of how our mother protected us. How she’d hidden us away from everyone to keep us safe. How she’d fought against him the day she disappeared.
Everything Rose said about our mother contradicted everything Dakota had said.
I didn’t want to believe him, but I wasn’t sure what was true anymore.
My own memories warred with the information that had been beaten into me.
In my mind, I knew Dakota was full of shit.
But years of conditioning, of being told the same thing over and over—that the woman who was supposed to give her life for her children had turned and sacrificed them for her own selfish wants—it was hard to just walk away from.
And knowing she was gone. Knowing I would never get to hear her side of things. What really happened that day and every day since. Never having had an explanation about how she could just leave us didn’t help with the battles I fought in my mind.
Jack disappeared through the door of Sam’s room, taking Charlie with him. Rose paused, her hand on the door, and looked at me.
“Are you okay?”
I shook my head. Rose let the door close softly and came to stand in front of me, wrapping her arms around me.
“It’s okay to love Sam. I was wrong when I got here.
I didn’t understand. Val isn’t like her.
Val raised me, but she was never really a mom.
Not like Sam. I know it hurts. I know you feel like you’re replacing her, but she’s gone.
If it helps, I think she’d really like Sam.
I think she would be happy there was someone to stand in her place and do all the things she didn’t get to do.
She would be happy we have someone in our lives who will love us the way she would. ”
I clung to my sister. She was trying to help.
There was no way she could know she was making things worse, and I would never tell her that.
I would never tell her that I didn’t believe a word she said.
That I didn’t believe our mom would be happy we had Sam.
Because I believed—no, I had been conditioned to believe that our mother was a selfish bitch.
I could never tell Rose that I wanted to replace our mother. That I wanted to stop thinking about her. Stop wondering what the truth was and just accept what I had believed for the last decade.
She would never understand how the memories of our childhood and the woman I knew loved us had been replaced with what might be lies or might be the truth.
We would never know, because Dakota Stone had taken away the only person who knew the truth. There was a saying: there are always three sides to every story.
His side.
Her side.
And the truth.
The truth was somewhere in the middle. Only the middle didn’t exist. George let me go when I was sixteen. He’d given me a job to do, and I did it without question. Every week until he died, I’d called him and reported back what I had learned about Amber. Who she spoke to, what she knew.
It wasn’t much, because she had no idea who she was.
But every week he would give me a little more information about my mother.
Sometimes he told me about the woman I knew.
The woman who gave birth to me and loved me.
Sometimes he told me about the woman Dakota said she was.
I’d been convinced Dakota was right, because George had given me enough truth of what I’d thought I’d remembered about my mother, mixed with what Dakota had told me, that I believed it must have been real.
But now, here in this moment, did it really matter anymore?
Did I need to know the truth? The truth would confirm one of two things.
My mother was the woman I remembered, in which case I would feel guilty for all the horrible things I had believed of her.
Or she was the woman Dakota convinced me she was, in which case I didn’t want to remember her at all.
I didn’t have the answers. I never would. My mother was gone. My father was gone. All that was left was me and my sister.
And Sam.