Chapter Ten
S till watching his woman sleep, Trouble couldn’t stop the trainwreck of his thoughts, especially the memory of when he’d seen Liz for the first time since he’d broken both their hearts in that fucking bar ten years ago.
“Shit, brother, Skathi’s hurt bad,” Odin croaked over the phone line, the fear and pain evident in his deep, raspy voice. The man had fallen fast and hard for the large, badass woman.
“You headed to the hospital?” Trouble asked, already mounting his mint, matte black 1986 Harley FXR Super Glide to head to wherever his brother needed him.
There was a moment of strained silence before Odin replied, “We’re at the clubhouse, I got someone coming to take care of her.”
That made Trouble’s brows furrow. “Like a paramedic?” That was unusual because whenever a club brother got himself shot, stabbed, or sliced, they’d either patch him up using the scraps of their field training, or they took him to urgent care, where the overworked docs didn’t mind a few extra hundreds in their pocket to keep their mouths shut. If Odin was bringing in a professional, things were bad.
“No,” Odin replied, “I’ve got a doctor coming in. I arranged for the doc to be on retainer for when we need a more delicate hand with the needle.”
That made Trouble snort, because he had plenty of jagged knife wound scars because Hound and Grimm had the sewing skills of a hundred-year-old blind sailor.
“Right.” Trouble shook his head. “I’ll be there in twenty.” He hung up the phone, shoved it into the back pocket of his jeans, then gave a salute to the woman whose bed he’d shared the night before, who was standing on her porch wearing a barely long enough silk robe. She’d been a good fuck, but the relief hadn’t lasted for longer than the time it took to get dressed and walk out the door.
It never did.
Not since her .
He got to the clubhouse in record time and headed inside. He knew Odin would have Skathi in his room, and he wanted to be there with his brother while his woman was hurt.
Walking into the room, he stopped in his tracks, his heart flying from his chest to slam against each of the four walls, before it crawled back into his chest.
“Skizzy?”
The woman standing over a battered and bruised Skathi turned to look over her shoulder at him.
It was her—her body was fuller, her ass in her tight pencil skirt was bigger but still just as fucking mouthwatering. Her hips were rounder, and her tits were bigger—overflowing handfuls he wanted to plant his face in and never come back up for air.
She’d been a fucking knock out when they’d been together, but now…she was a fucking goddess, one he longed to worship on his knees, as he claimed her pussy with his mouth, then his hands, then his very hard and aching cock.
Her blonde hair was up in a professional looking updo, her hair pinned back from her face—a face he still saw in his dreams at night and his thoughts during the day. Her eyes were still a remarkable cornflower blue that kicked him in the solar plexus every time he looked into them. Eyes that had once shined with so much love, he’d basked in it.
Now, however, those eyes shined with hate so vicious and deep, it made what was left of his soul writhe in agony.
“Erik Skaarsen….” He’d flinched at the abject disgust in her voice, a voice that once spoke to him in whispers warm with happiness, now hit with the force of a sledgehammer.
The woman he loved was back, and fuck did it hurt when she walked right by like he meant nothing to her.
And from that day, he’d determined to act like she meant nothing to him, either, because it was easier to be the careless asshole than to let thoughts of them together fan the ember of hope that flared to life when he saw her again.
Liz’s return to Vegas was both sweet and sorrowful, but he took comfort in knowing that his Liz was still in there, still kicking and screaming and living life to the fullest.
And to think…she actually did it, became a doctor, while being a single mom to Erika. She was a motherfucking boss. Brilliant, driven, compassionate, sexy as fuck, and from what he’d seen so far, an amazing mom to their daughter.
He pinched his eyes closed at the memory of those bright, wide eyes of his daughter staring up at him from the kitchen floor. There’d been fear in those eyes, but also relief. From her first sight of him, there’d been trust. She trusted him. And he’d never break her trust.
Not like I did her mama’s.
Fuck. He should have been there for his little girl from the beginning—all the thing’s he’d missed….
He grunted, refusing to name the emotion that blasted through him at the thought of Liz and Erika, without him, for ten fucking years. Ten years without his protection, his support, or his love. And he would have given them everything he had and all he was…. But he didn’t. Because he hadn’t been there. By choice. It had been his choice to cut Liz out of his life, unknowingly cutting out his own flesh and blood, too.
And it was his choice now to salvage the pieces of the life he could have had with them, and suture them back in to where they’d been torn from his life.
The last text from Skathi told him that Erika was fine with her, and that she was eating a healthy meal with only two cookies for dessert, even though she’d begged for more. When he read that, he smiled. It wasn’t a surprise that his daughter had a sweet tooth—both he and Liz loved anything sweet, and there were a few times when they’d licked whip cream off each other’s naked bodies. Nothing had ever tasted as sweet, or satisfied his sweet tooth since.
His Skizzy had always been his favorite sweet treat.
What wasn’t so sweet was her keeping their daughter from him. Seething at this thoughts, glaring at the woman in the bed, he didn’t immediately realize someone else had entered the room.
A nurse, one he hadn’t seen before, came further into the room, her wide eyes taking him in and probably shitting her scrubs at the glower on his face.
Fuck. The last thing he wanted to do was chase off the people there to help Liz.
“Sorry,” she muttered, “didn’t mean to interrupt. Need to check her vitals.” She cast a glance at Liz and gasped.
“Liz?” the woman blurted. “Holy shit.”
Confused and wary, he slowly stood up and pinned the strange woman with a look that was all MC VP.
“You know her?” he asked, his tone hard but his voice soft. Again, he didn’t want to chase her off, especially if she was one of Liz’s friends.
The nurse, whose nametag read Nancy, nodded.
“Yeah, from school. Shit, I read the name on the chart, but I never in a million years thought it was the Elizabeth Simpson—the one I knew, anyway.” The nurse was babbling, no doubt nervous because of the “don’t fuck with me” vibe he was putting out.
Fuck. Sucking in a breath, he pulled back on the menace, and offered the small woman a smile.
“You weren’t interruptin’ anythin’ but my troubled thoughts.” He winked, and she blushed so hard, so fast, he thought she’d pass out from the blood rush to her face. “You do what you gotta do for our Liz.”
Nancy blinked, her blush deepening, before she hurried to the bedside, did whatever she needed to do with the equipment, wrote stuff on the sheet of paper on the clipboard near the foot of the bed, then paused to stare down at Liz’s sleeping face.
The woman sighed, shaking her head.
“I heard about what happened to her—the nurses chat like a knitting circle. I just didn’t think….”
Taking pity on the woman, and surprised at the coincidence that a student who attended Stanford with Liz was also working in Vegas, he inquired softly, “You said you know Liz from school?” He sat back down, crossed one leg over the other, and fought to push her to answer. There were things about Liz he didn’t know—so many things, like how she was in school, especially with a baby in tow. Was she happy? Was she safe? Did she make friends? Had she found anyone to replace him?
Nancy smiled sadly.
“Yeah. We met during first year med classes. She was so damn smart, but so humble about it. When I was bumbling around, trying to find my ass, and feeling in over my head, she was there to talk me down from the ledge. She made me realize I didn’t actually want to be a doctor, that I just wanted to use medicine to help people. After a lot of thought, and a few nights of tequila haze, she helped me enroll in the nursing program.” She laughed, grinning. “And here I am.” She raised her arms, then let them drop, just as her smile did. “She raised that baby all on her own, going to classes, doing clinicals, working part time—she was a fucking machine, but she still was a friend to everybody.”
Swallowing hard, his gaze slid to Liz. In the short time they were together, he’d experienced the warmth and persistent kindness that was all Skizzy. No, she hadn’t had the best life, but she’d made the best of what she’d been given. She pushed, and persevered, and was determined to make something of herself. Her tenacity, grit, and beauty in strength were some of the reasons he’d fallen so hard for her. They were also one of the reasons he’d let her go. She’d needed to shoot her shot at her dreams, and she couldn’t have done that from her shitty apartment, tied to a piece of shit biker with no life goals except to ride his bike, down a few beers, and build his MC.
And, fuck, letting her go hurt like hell. But it had worked. She’d left him in the dust, and from what Nancy said, she’d taken Stanford by storm. There had been nothing left for her in Vegas, so he was glad she’d made a new life for herself—and their daughter in California.
Fuck. He had a daughter. Sighing, he scrubbed a shaking hand down his face and almost missed what Nancy said.
“…take out from Gino’s. She loved that place. Does she still order three pies just to have leftovers for the week?” Nancy asked, not understanding she’d just scrambled Trouble’s brain.
He coughed, unable to breathe or swallow or think.
Finally, his body came back online—as did the rush of thoughts.
“Gino’s? Gino’s on Forsythe?” he asked. Gino’s was a local pizzeria run by a family going back generations. As far as he knew, the only Gino’s worth knowing was the one in Vegas.
Nancy’s brow furrowed. “Yeah, is there any other Gino’s?”
His heart raced, then shuddered, then limped. She couldn’t be saying what he thought she was saying.
“Liz…Gino’s….” The words weren’t coming, and he could tell by the look of concern on the nurse’s face that she thought he might be experiencing a stroke.
“Um. Liz ordered Gino’s all the time. She joked that it was a pregnancy craving that never went away. She ate it all the time, so much so that she had pepperoni on her shirt when she came into labor and delivery—where I was going my rotation—the night Erika was born. We even had her med school graduation party in the banquet room in the back of the restaurant.”
Trouble slumped into the seat.
It couldn’t be true.
Med school graduation party. At Gino’s. In Las Vegas. His brain was slowly piecing the truth together, bit by bit, and his heart was failing to pump enough blood to make it make sense.
Until it did. It made horrible, terrible, soul-crushing sense.
Clearing his throat, Trouble asked a question that would make or break his entire being.
“Wh-where did you go to school?”
Again, Nancy’s furrowed brow met his question.
“Right here, at the University of Nevada,” she answered, her words, so easily spoken, ripping a hole in Trouble’s world.
Liz never left.
She stayed in Vegas.
Unbidden, flashes of memory materialized behind the sudden blurriness in his eyes.
Him reading the letter from Stanford, him heading to the bar, him calling Bonnie into the back office…. He shuddered, the memories piercing him like shards of glass. Him telling Bonnie his plan…him texting Liz…. The text from Hell Hound at the door, telling him Liz was there…and then all those words…those ugly, heartbreaking words he’d spewed, knowing she was standing just outside the door, knowing what she was seeing, what she was hearing, what she would think.
And then…nothing. He’d called her, wanting to carry on the ruse, wanting to make sure she knew they were done. But she never answered. It wasn’t until two weeks later, when he’d shown up at the apartment, that he’d realized his planned had worked. That she’d left. She’d left him. Left Vegas.
Oh God…but she hadn’t. For ten years, she’d been right there…succeeding without him. Living without him. Raising their daughter without him.
He’d broken them for nothing.
Just like dear ol’ Dad….