Rex #2
His grin turned cheeky. “Gotta be some perks to being your brother-in-law.” To be on the safe side, clearly wary, he retreated a couple steps. Which amused the fuck out of me. “Genuinely though, I know you’ll…” His smile abruptly died. “If anything happens to me, I know she’ll never be alone.”
Any amusement I’d felt, much like his, disappeared. “You ain’t going nowhere, kid.”
“People die all the time. It used to worry me. Her being so alone, you know? She only really talks to Parker and Susana, but Susana drives her batshit, and Parker’s in Pennsylvania and she’s kind of a hermit so—” He shrugged.
“I dunno. I just, I knew that when I left, she’d be alone.
I’m glad you got your ass in gear in time. ”
“Always did have good timing,” was all I said, even though I got where the kid was coming from. More than he probably realized.
Rachel didn’t know it, but as much as she’d been looking out for him since Axel’s death, Rain felt like he’d been doing the same for her.
That was what family did.
“You don’t have to worry about her anymore. I got a handle on things.”
Rain stared at me. “That’s not how it works when you have a sister, but I appreciate that you’ll protect her.
” His gaze went to the ceiling again. “Someone hurt her, really bad along the way. She never said anything, but I know my sister. You’re lucky I also know that you love her too much or I wouldn’t have let you live. ”
I didn’t disrespect him by so much as smirking at his threat.
As he nodded at me, his warning delivered now, he began to head for the kitchen.
“How would you have done it?” I asked out of curiosity once he’d taken one step through the doorway.
He peered at me over his shoulder. “I’d have fucked with your bike.”
At that, my lips curved. “Axel taught you how?”
“What do you think?” he replied with an arched brow before he disappeared into the kitchen.
Letting him go, I filed the situation with Lever and Harlow away and strode up the stairs.
“About damn time,” Giulia sniped, her hand on her belly as she waited for me in the doorway to Rachel’s room.
“Rain ambushed me,” I excused, glancing around and spying that the whole Posse had taken up residence in here. I frowned when I didn’t see Rach. “She’s supposed to be resting.”
“She needed to shower.” Lily moved over to me, and her hand went to my arm. “She’s not doing so good, Rex.”
Understatement.
“Leave her with me. You can all go.”
Giulia grunted. “Men. She needs her friends around her—”
“That what you are, Giulia? Friends?”
She squinted at me. “You asking for some Ex-Lax in your dinner tonight, Rex?”
“No, just wondering what’s going on here.”
She stacked her hands on her hips. “The second she let us stay at her place after the blast, even though she values her privacy, despite the fact she hated having us around, was the second she stepped up and acted like a leader.
“An MC needs more than a Prez. Needs more than a council. It needs their women too—”
“Are you really gonna stand there and tell me what my MC needs, Giulia? When I’ve been a Sinner since I was fucking born and you’re goddamn younger than me?”
“Well, I’m talking slow because clearly, you don’t understand what’s going on here. We’re her people. That’s why we’re here.
“Even if we didn’t like her, she’s your woman—even if you haven’t fucking branded her yet—” Her sniff was dismissive.
“—and she’s the First Lady. But we do like her.
She’s good people. And she’s hurting. And this was supposed to fix that hurting.
It was supposed to make her feel better, empowered—” Giulia burst into tears at that.
I wasn’t sure who was more surprised—her or me.
Lily clucked her tongue and immediately moved over to her, tucking her under her arm and hugging her. Over her head, Lily murmured, “It’s a very emotional time right now, Rex.”
“I know, Lily. Trust me, I know.”
Giulia wailed, “I wanted her to feel good and now she feels worse—”
I scowled at the bizarre tableau that was going down in my bedroom, and I rumbled, “Giulia, I agreed with you. We had no way of knowing this would veer so far off course we’re in downtown Montreal.
” I heaved a sigh. “Look, I get it. She’s your…
” I hitched a shoulder. “First Lady. Your friend. She’s my woman though. I’ll fix this. Just leave her to me—”
“How can we though?” Giulia questioned around her tears. “You’re useless—”
My scowl made a reappearance. “Giulia, I’m making allowances for the fact that you’re very pregnant, but don’t push me. I’m not useless. I’m Rachel’s Old Man. I will fix this.”
Amara grunted. “She has point. You waited long very to make her yours and even now, no ink. Where is ink?”
Tiffany cleared her throat. “What she means is that you haven’t claimed Rachel yet, and that it took you a long time to even reach this phase in your relationship.”
“Look, this isn’t an episode of Jerry Springer. I don’t need to excuse myself to any of you. Rachel and I took a long time to come back to each other, and I don’t need you fucking critiquing our relationship.
“I haven’t branded her because, one, she’s pregnant.
No ink when you’re pregnant. Two, she wasn’t ready for that—” I clenched my fists.
“—I recognize that you care. In fact, I’m grateful you do.
Rachel’s always found it hard to make friends and to hang around with people, so I appreciate that you’re looking out for her more than you know, but leave this with me. ”
It wasn’t a request.
Giulia sniffled and wiped at her eyes. “If you fuck up, you’ll have more than a laxative in your dinner, Rex.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “I’ll know the first place to send the cops if I’m poisoned over my pasta, Giulia.”
She sniffed. “Come on, Posse. Let’s leave the man to work some miracles.”
Shooting each other looks, a mixture of begrudging and unhappy ones, Stone and Indy were the last to leave the room.
Indy’s shoulders hunched. “She might think she’s too civilized to appreciate the fact that Grizzly and Dog were supposed to be dead, but there’s comfort in knowing that your personal boogeyman can’t come after you.”
“I know, Indy. I know.”
Stone studied me. “You need to get her to eat something.”
“I will.”
“Has she mentioned when her next OB/GYN appointment is?”
Shit. She hadn’t.
“I’ll take that expression to mean she hasn’t.”
“The last one got rescheduled,” I excused, “but I don’t remember the new date.”
Carefully, she said, “I get the feeling she’s scared of medicine.”
“She’s wary of doctors. I’ll be with her for the next appointment.”
Stone nodded. “Good. If this high stress continues as it’s been doing since before you got back, you might need to take her there at some point.”
My brow furrowed. “You’re worried for the baby?”
“And the mother.” Stone reached up and patted my arm. “Just watching out for her, Rex. No need to worry just yet.”
Just yet.
Those words were like a death knell that I really didn’t need to hear.
I blew out a breath in an attempt to remain calm, but Storm’s words came back to bite me in the ass.
"The U.S. maternal mortality rate is the worst of any developed nation."
For the first time, I understood his terror.
As wonderful as this new life was, it wasn’t worth losing Rachel.
“Hey, I didn’t mean to frighten you,” Stone said softly. “Just wanted to impress upon you the importance of monitoring her, making sure she takes the prenatal pills she’ll have been prescribed, that she’s eating plenty and getting enough rest.”
I rasped, “I’ll…” God, I’d barely been here the last couple days. “I’ll do better.”
Stone blinked, then her smile, when it appeared, was a genuinely warm, loving curve. She squeezed my arm again. “Just tell me if there’s anything I can do.”
When they left the room too, I closed the door behind them, locked it, then knocked on the bathroom door.
It opened.
I knew she hadn’t been showering because I hadn’t heard the pipes creak. But seeing her standing there, half-naked, like she’d been too weak to finish undressing, rattled the fuck out of me.
I took in her slender form, the bulge of her belly that was starting to thicken in earnest, the soft curve of her tits with the nipples that were starting to darken in color, all before she hurled herself at me.
Wrapping her in my arms, I held her as she sobbed, and I didn’t say a word. I was just there. She needed to let this out. She needed to remember that she wasn’t that same seventeen-year-old girl anymore.
This was not the past.
I didn’t even allow myself to worry that all the great strides we’d made would be for nothing, that this would knock us off track.
She was letting me in. This was the new us.
So I hugged her as she cried, and afterward, I finished undressing her. She stood there, pale and wan, her gaze on her feet as I stripped off too.
Guiding her into the shower, I let the cold water blast onto me, using it to wash down my hands and arms first. I grabbed some soap, cleaned them up some more, which timed perfectly with the water getting warm.
I turned to her, saw she was watching me with rounded eyes. I didn’t know why she was looking at me like that, and I didn’t wait around to ask. Just gently tugged on her elbow and guided her under the spray.
Methodically, I reached for the loofah she used, splatted some of her soap on it, and carefully got to work. I smoothed it along her arms, over her shoulders, down her chest. Kneeling on the shower floor, I washed her legs then scrubbed her feet.
When she was clean, I stood up once more and went to work on washing her hair.
We did this in silence.
She just let me shuffle her around, and I took comfort in that level of trust.
I didn’t feel frozen out; more like I was still inside that wall of ice, and she was just too out of it to communicate with me.
As I gently sluiced the shampoo through her hair, then conditioned it, I massaged her scalp.
When her eyes were closed, her head tipped back under the water flow, I tilted her face forward and pressed my lips to hers.
It was soft. Gentle. No urgency about it. Just a reconnection.
She didn’t startle in shock, jolt like I’d hit her with a cattle prod. She sighed into the kiss, her hands coming to my chest—not to push me away—just to touch me.
I pulled back and made to turn off the water, but her eyes popped open and she snagged my hand to stop me.
Grabbing the sponge I’d used on her, she poured some of my soap onto it. It didn’t take a mind reader to figure out her intentions, but that didn’t mean they came as any less of a surprise.
Much as I’d done, she traced the loofah over my body, taking care to wash my arms and hands so they were cleaned to her satisfaction. She even angled my fingers into the light to check for dirt in my nails.
When she was done, she reached behind me and turned off the water.
“Luciu Valentini set fire to a coffin in Greenwood Cemetery.”
My mouth opened, closed, then, and I had no idea why I said it, but I muttered, “Must be the season for exhumations.”
Her lips twitched.
“Wait. Is that why you jumped in the graveyard when Giulia was talking about—?”
“Yes,” she said simply.
Putting two and two together, I asked, “Are those the charges you had to get him off of when I was in LA? The one that the DA was being stubborn on?”
She swallowed. “Yes. I-I shouldn’t have told you.”
I shrugged. “Why did you?”
“I don’t know. It was on the tip of my tongue.”
“Anything you tell me is between us, and it’s not like this breaks client privilege. Charges are public and you’re on record for bailing him out. If I wanted to, I could have gone looking.”
“It’s just not something I should be talking about in the shower, after we just…”
“You can tell me whatever whenever, baby girl.”
Her shiver had nothing to do with being cold.
Blinking up at me, her eyelashes all spiky from the water, she asked, “Do you think he’s still alive?”
I didn’t want to give her a trite answer so I opened the shower door and reached for a towel from the rail. Gently toweling her off, I murmured, “I think it’s unlikely.”
“Why?”
“I think bones weren’t as easy to dispose of back in my dad’s day. He didn’t have a Cruz, and his men weren’t the kinds of people who knew how to use chemicals to dispose of bodies. We had the pig farm, I guess, but…” I inhaled, annoyed at my rambling. “Dad wouldn’t have fed Grizzly to the pigs.”
“Did he never punish Sin for beating on him?”
Uneasily, I mumbled, “Do you know what happened?”
“I thought Sin beat him to death. He caught him in bed with his wife when he got back from a deployment, didn’t he?”
I grunted. “Dad… had his own methods of punishing Sin.”
“How?”
“Sin’s my cousin, Dad’s nephew. That comes with perks, favoritism. Dad never gave that to Sin. He had to get promoted the hard way.”
“That’s it?”
“By the time Grizzly died, I think Dad knew he was a liability.”
Her hand snatched out to grab mine, and her nails dug into me. “If he is dead, why isn’t his body in the graveyard?”
“I have no answer for that, sweetheart, and I wish I did. I just… Grizzly would have come back around by now if he were alive. You know the club was…” I didn’t really know how to verbalize it.
But she did.
“It was his world.”
I nodded. “Guys like that don’t just walk away from everything. Even if it’s the wise thing to do.”
A shaky breath escaped her. “That’s logical.”
“We may never find out what happened to him, Rachel,” I warned her.
“No. But you’re right.” She shot me an ashen smile. “I’d like to go to bed now.”
I finished drying her, handed her one of the towels she put her hair in after washing it, and after I was dry too, I guided her into the bedroom.
As I tucked her between the sheets, she closed her eyes and whispered, “Don’t leave me.”
Hope and relief hit me like a bullet to the brain.
“I’m going nowhere.”