Chapter 5
Jasper
It’s been two weeks since I got the call from the Medical Director at New Horizons Fertility Clinic over in Vacaville. It’s the nearest big city to Cedar Falls, and apparently where my frozen sperm was sent five years ago.
Memories rise in my mind of my time in the Marines as I ride to the outskirts of Vacaville. I was part of a Marine squad sent to destroy a lab the enemy was using to develop bioweapons during the Afghan war. They warned us that toxins were being used that could render us infertile.
The men in my squad got a little freaked out about the possibility of never being able to father children.
I have to admit that at the time, it worried me as well.
Someone came up with the idea of freezing our sperm, in case the worst happened.
We pooled our money and hired a private lab to accept, cryogenically freeze, and store it.
I remember getting an email that the storage facility was closing a couple of years back.
They asked if I wanted my samples to be sent to a local lab.
I checked off yes on their form, since we had all paid for a twenty-year storage program in advance.
After that, I forgot all about it. Since it turned out the enemy bioweapon lab was false intel, it seemed like a moot issue.
That strange mix-up at the fertility clinic turned out to be the luckiest day of my life. And I have no intention of letting this opportunity to have a child of my own slip from my grasp. That’s why I met with our club attorney and with our club’s IT specialist to find out who was carrying my kid.
It took Striker two weeks to figure out how to hack into the New Horizons system and pull up the surrogate’s information without tripping their security protocols.
Her name is Tessa Grant. We verified that the embryo had been created with my sperm by mistake and she’s now about three months pregnant with my child.
That’s assuming she didn’t terminate the pregnancy.
I hope and pray she didn’t so something quite that fuckin’ stupid, after I made it clear to Dr. Langford that I wanted a chance to work something out with her.
That’s why I’m rushing to pay her a visit right now. This is not something you text about or talk about over the phone. It’s a matter of life and death for my kid, so a face-to-face conversation is a must.
I didn’t tell anyone in my family, particularly my parents, because they would be over the moon.
The last thing I want is to watch them grieve their first grandkid if Tessa Grant refuses to be a surrogate for me, like she was gonna do for the other couple.
I didn’t tell a living soul. I don’t want anyone to know my personal business.
I roll the throttle back and let the bike idle at the curb as I kill the engine. I double-check to make sure I’m at the right address.
Yeah, this is it alright.
I sit there gazing at her house, and something shrivels up in my chest.
Her place is in bad shape. It looks like the house that time forgot—two cracked porch steps, a sagging gutter pulling down the right side of the house, and the mail stuffed in a crooked box.
The exterior paint is peeling, even the roof has seen better days.
It’s gonna take a lot to fix this up so it’s livable.
It’s the kind of house most people’s eyes would roam right over, but I can’t not see it—because the woman carrying my kid lives here. And that means that one day soon, my child will live here, at least part-time.
I’m about to get off my bike and knock on the door when my phone rings.
I answer, expecting it to be one of my brothers with intel on the Hyenas. “Yeah?”
A woman’s voice speaks, soft, wary. “Are you… Jasper Jackson?”
My stomach knots. “That depends on who’s calling.”
When she doesn’t speak, I shift my weight, eyes scanning the porch, the door, the windows. “You Tessa Grant?”
She clears her throat. “Yes.”
“Then yeah,” I say, low and steady. “I’m Jasper. I’m outside your house right now.”
She exhales nervously. “How did you find me?”
I don’t dare lie to this woman because I want to build trust with her. “It didn’t take much.”
I get a short silence from her end again. I don’t pressure her, because I understand that she’s in an uncomfortable situation and probably needs a minute to get her head together.
Finally, she says, “I’m not letting you in. If you’re here to fight about anything, you can go ahead and leave right now.”
“I’m not here to fight,” I say sincerely. “Not with you. I just want to talk this out.”
There is another long pause. Then she tells me, “Stay there. I’ll come out and talk to you.”
A smile lights up my face as the line goes dead. This is going much better than I expected. I pocket the phone, get off my bike, and come closer to her front porch. I hang back just enough to give her space when she opens the door. Not wanting her to feel crowded by me, I cross my arms and wait.
Thirty seconds later, the front door creaks open.
She’s smaller than I expected. Slim. Tired around the eyes. Wearing jeans that hang a little loose at the waist and a plain T-shirt that says Sunshine Is Free. It’s faded like it’s been through a hundred hard washes.
She’s holding two plastic bottles of water, ice-cold, with the condensation dripping down her fingers.
“I figured you’d be thirsty,” she says, handing me a bottle.
I nod once, take the bottle. “I am. Thanks.”
She doesn’t sit right away. Her eyes track my tattoos and the patch on my cut.
It’s been a couple of months since I got ran off the road by those Hyena assholes, so at least I can ride and move without limping my ass off.
I give her time to look her fill, knowing that I don’t present well to regular folks, especially women.
They sometimes give me a wide berth. I’m made for club whores more so than nice ladies in the community.
Eventually, she lowers herself onto the top step. I stay back and drop into a squat on the sidewalk.
We sit like that for a long second, sipping our water.
We’re strangers alright but linked together by someone else’s actions.
Neither of us planned for that baby growing inside her, but I sure as hell can’t ignore it.
I take another long drink and wipe my mouth on the back of my hand.
Then I ask the only question that matters.
“What do you want to do about the fact that you’re carrying my baby, Tessa?”
She doesn’t answer right away. Just keeps her hands wrapped around the water bottle like her life depends on it. She finally says, “I don’t know what I want.”
“Fair enough,” I say. “Can’t imagine this is the kinda thing you ever thought would happen when agreed to be a surrogate.”
She huffs a breath. It’s not a laugh so much as an expression of frustration. “You could say that. I thought I had life all figured out and then got hit with a curveball. I guess, we both did.”
She shifts a little, her legs curling up under her.
She’s trying to get comfortable. That’s a good sign.
It means she’s open to a long conversation.
I can’t help but notice that she’s all kinds of nervous.
Or maybe she just doesn’t know how to sit still with a biker popping a squat on her sidewalk and his baby in her belly.
“Are you scared of me?” I ask. Not trying to be mean or rile her up.
She jerks her head towards me. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” I shoot back, not willing to play games.
Her eyes narrow on me. “I don’t even know you.”
“I look rough, but I’m a decent man. Like you already said, I didn’t ask for this either,” I tell her. “But we need to be comfortable enough with each other to talk this out.”
“Yeah,” she tells me boldly, “This is just a lot to take in all at once. If you’d called before coming, we could be sharing a nice burger at local restaurant instead of having an awkward conversation in front of my house.”
“That’s a fair point. I didn’t come here to catch you by surprise or pressure you do anything you don’t want to do,” I say. “I came to see if you were okay and see if we can work something out. That baby in your belly means the world to me. I want to find a way for it to be born.”
She goes quiet again. I’m not surprised she doesn’t trust me. I look like a menace. If I were her, I wouldn’t trust me either. But she reaches into the back pocket of her jeans, pulls out her phone and unlocks it.
“Here,” she says, and slides it across the porch towards me.
I glance down. A thread of text messages.
If you won’t terminate now, we’ll just find someone who actually knows how to do her job.
We can’t pay you if there’s no contract in place anymore.
This is a job. Not your baby.
I hand the phone back without a word.
“That’s the husband. Mrs. Whitmore was much worse in person,” Tessa states quietly.
“Those types always are. Rich people like to throw their money around. It’s the way they leverage the rest of us into doing what they want.”
She sighs, tucking a lock of her hair back behind her ear. “I wanted to say yes. To make it all stop. But…”
“But you didn’t.”
She looks up at me for the first time. Really looks.
“No. I couldn’t.”
“Why?”
Her shoulders rise and fall. “Because I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
About this baby inside me. I mean, I’m already three months pregnant.
It’s more than just a clump of cells, you know.
It’s healthy and growing stronger every day.
I hate it that the Whitmores think this child, your child, is disposable.
Children shouldn’t be considered disposable simply because their parents aren’t rich. ”
“No,” I say. “They shouldn’t. In a perfect world, all children would be loved and cherished by their families. That’s what I’ve got to offer—two grandparents and three brothers who would be thrilled to welcome my child into the world.”
She looks away again, into the yard. The weeds are high along the fence line. There’s an old swing hanging by one chain off a low branch.