Chapter Twenty-Seven
Morgan
Seven years ago...
I couldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t eat; I couldn’t sleep. I missed him so much. He’d only been gone four days, but it already felt like forever. Knowing he was never coming back, and he’d never meet his son.
I placed my hand on my belly. I was barely nine weeks pregnant. I’d found out the day of the explosion that we were having a boy. We had chosen to do an at-home gender test as soon as we found out I was pregnant. Jude and King were off on a run the day the results were delivered.
He never came home.
I sat on the couch in the apartment we shared and cried. Every day had been the same. King stopped by in the evening to make sure I was eating something. As I looked at the clock, I realized it was almost time.
I hadn’t been feeling well today; the morning sickness had finally kicked in. Along with dizziness and some lower abdominal pain. All the books said it was normal. Ligament pain, they called it—from my uterus growing.
I stood up to wash my face; I didn’t want to see the pity on King’s face when he knocked on the door. The world tilted again, and I caught myself on the arm of the couch. I’d never survive seven more months of this.
Once the room stopped spinning, I made my way down the hall, holding the wall for stability. I washed my face and had just made it back to the kitchen when the earth shifted and the world went black.
I woke up in the hospital, the rhythmic sound of beeping playing in the background. I looked around the room and my eyes landed on King.
“What happened?”
He moved closer and took my hand. “I came to check on you and found you unconscious.” His eyes dropped to our clasped hands. “You were bleeding, Morgan.”
My hand went to my stomach, and I knew without being told that my baby was gone. The last little piece of Jude I had was stolen from me.
The door opened, and the doctor walked in. He didn’t look up from the chart in his hand. “Mrs. Peterson?”
“Yes,” my voice rasped.
Hearing his name broke me as tears slipped down my cheeks.
“I’m Dr. Howard. When you were brought in, you were unconscious. We ran some tests.” He stopped and finally looked me in the eye. “Did you know you were pregnant?”
“Yes, nine weeks,” I confirmed. King held my hand tight.
“We don’t have a doctor listed. Were you planning on seeing one?”
His question threw me for a loop. “Of course,” I insisted.
“Can you tell me why you haven’t yet?”
“Because they said it was too early. I had an appointment in two weeks.”
“Well, maybe if you had advocated for your health, you wouldn’t be here.”
“What the fuck did you just say?” King growled out. He tried to release my hand, but I held his tight in mine.
“Prenatal care is very important.”
“And she just told you she had an appointment. Are you blaming her?”
“Mr. Peterson, please,” the doctor stammered.
“My name is O’Rourke. Not Peterson.”
“I see,” the doctor said. “Would that appointment happen to be at an abortion clinic?”
“You motherfucker!”
“King, please,” I begged, holding on to his hand as tight as I could. He turned to look at me and his angry eyes softened. “Please,” I repeated.
He sat on the bed beside me and put his arms around me. I didn’t want to be alone right now and if he hit the doctor, he’d be in jail. I wasn’t sure even his brother could get him out of that kind of assault.
“Go get another fucking doctor, right now.”
“I am the physician who treated Mrs. Peterson.”
“I don’t give a fuck if God himself gave you that diploma. Get another doctor, now!” His voice got lower with every word, and the doctor huffed before walking out.
A few minutes later, another doctor walked in.
“Hello, Mrs. Peterson. My name is Dr. Adams. I am so terribly sorry for your loss.”
I didn’t say thank you.
I didn’t say anything.
I laid there wrapped in King’s arms, safe against his chest.
It should have been Jude sitting here with me. Except, I shouldn’t be sitting here at all. I should be at home, making dinner, waiting for Jude to come home.
But he wasn’t coming home.
Ever again.
“Dr. Howard said you asked for another doctor?”
“Yes,” King confirmed.
“Can I ask why?”
“Because the man is an asshole with absolutely no fucking bedside manner. Not only did he imply that Morgan was at fault, but then he accused her of cheating on her husband without asking a single question.”
“Are you Mr. Peterson?” Dr. Adams asked King.
“No, Kingston O’Rourke. Chasm...” King stiffened against me and more tears fell, knowing he was hurting as much as I was. “Jude was my brother. He died a few days ago.”
“I am so sorry,” Dr. Adams said with genuine sympathy.
“Morgan… may I call you Morgan?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Morgan, I am so sorry to have to tell you that you lost the baby. You had what is called an ectopic pregnancy. The embryo didn’t travel into the uterus the way it should have; something held it up, and it attached inside the fallopian tube.”
“And you couldn’t save the baby?” King asked for me.
But I’d been reading every book I could get my hands on since the moment those two pink lines appeared. I knew what an ectopic pregnancy was. Knew there was nothing they could do.
“Unfortunately, no. The baby continues to grow inside the tube until the tube can no longer contain it, and it bursts. That was what caused Morgan to pass out and also the bleeding.”
Dr. Adams looked at me.
“If Mr. O’Rourke hadn’t found you when he did, you would have died.”
“I wish I had,” I whispered.
King tightened his arms around me and kissed the top of my head. “He wouldn’t want that, Morgan.”
“I didn’t want this, King. I didn’t want him to be killed. We don’t always get what we want.”
King kissed my head again and said, “Thank you.”
“There is more,” Dr. Adams announced. “The tube was damaged beyond repair, and we had to remove it. This doesn’t mean you’ll never be able to have another child, but having only one tube does lower the chances. There is also a greater risk it could happen again in the other tube.”
“It doesn’t matter. My husband is gone. I won’t be having more children.”
“Don’t say that, Morgan. You were so excited about having the baby. He’d still want you to have that.”
“I was excited about having his baby, King. And I can never have that again.”
He didn’t argue with me; he just looked at me with those sad eyes. The same way he’d been looking at me every night when he came to check on me.
“Morgan, decisions shouldn’t be made in times of mourning,” Dr. Adams said. “I would like you to come to my office for a follow up in three weeks.” He looked at King. “I apologize for my colleague’s behavior; I will speak to him about it. And you are well within your rights to file a report.”
I got the impression that this wasn’t the first time Dr. Howard had been inappropriate, and I was willing to bet it had a lot to do with that cut King wore.
Dr. Adams handed King a card which he put in his cut.
“Morgan, again, I am so sorry for your loss. Come see me in three weeks.” Dr. Adams nodded at King and left the room.
“You aren’t going to report Dr. Howard, are you?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Fuck no.”
I lowered my voice to barely a whisper. “Please don’t kill him.”
King chuckled. “And here I thought you weren’t old lady material.”
“Really?” I asked, looking up at him.
“You’re too fucking sweet, Morgan. Too pure for this life.”
If he only knew who my father was. He wouldn’t think I was too pure. I might not live in my father’s world, but I was familiar with it. Not to mention the MC world.
I could have told him then. Could have told him he was my uncle, but I stayed quiet. My father hadn’t told me about his brothers; my mother had. When I called her to tell her I got married, I told her everything about Jude and his brothers.
When I mentioned King, she got quiet. That was when she told me about Declan and Kingston O’Rourke.
My uncles.
I should have told Jude the truth, but I hadn’t told him about my father. And I wasn’t even sure King knew about his brother. Neither Jude nor he had ever mentioned Braesal O’Malley.
The head of the Irish Mob.
So I didn’t bring it up. And now that Jude was gone, I would move back to Rosewood. I couldn’t stay here, not without him.
Three weeks later, King took me to my appointment with Dr. Adams. He stayed in the waiting room while the doctor examined me and gave me a clean bill of health.
Then King helped me go through my apartment, getting rid of Jude’s things. Condensing mine to fit in my car. When I sat on the floor of my bedroom and held the cut in my hands, King sat down beside me.
“You’ll always be an old lady, Morgan. You’ll always have me and the brothers at your back. No matter what you do or where you go. You call and we’ll ride.”
I packed the cut away in the box and turned to him. “I’m not an old lady, King. I never really was. Jude didn’t want me at the clubhouse. He didn’t want his president to even know about me.”
“There was a reason for that, Morgan. Things haven’t been the same since Titan died. He was trying to protect you.”
I nodded as if I agreed with him. As if I understood why I had been kept a secret. The truth was, I never thought about it. Never cared until I couldn’t go to his funeral.
King never knew about the man who came to see me. I never told him about the man with eyes I recognized, eyes that haunted my dreams, who shattered my world even more.
Jude’s brother showed up on my doorstep two days after he died. Justin told me to stay home. He said Jude wouldn’t want me there. So I never got to say goodbye.
To my husband or my son.
I sat in the truck, waiting for Jude to process everything I told him. He’d been so quiet as I told him about the baby, the miscarriage, his brother.
“I asked him to go see you.”
“What?”
“Justin. I asked him to keep you away from the funeral.”
“Why?”
His hands tightened on the wheel, and he turned his head away from me. I waited for him to answer, and when he looked my way, there were tears in his eyes. Tears I’d never seen.
“I couldn’t risk you being there. I couldn’t risk Steele finding out about you. I knew he was behind the explosion. I thought King was in on it.”
“King wouldn’t do that,” I snapped.
It wasn’t just that he was my brother; King was a good man. He’d never have turned his back on Jude.
“I didn’t know that then, Morgan. All I knew was that he wasn’t there with me. He’d stayed outside talking to Steele on the phone, while I went into the warehouse Steele had sent us to.”
Jude started the truck, and I said, “Take me back to the clubhouse.”
“I promised you lunch.”
“I don’t want to have lunch with you. Take me back to the clubhouse.”
Jude studied me for a moment, but I didn’t dare look at him. I didn’t want him to see the hurt. After a beat, he let out a heavy sigh and drove back to the clubhouse.