Chapter 8
D osia couldn’t remember ever being so pissed in her life, but beyond her anger, she was scared. Everything she’d feared had just come to pass. Pumpkin knew about JJ. Pumpkin was demanding paternal rights. Pumpkin was threatening to take JJ away from her.
She clung to her daughter, needing to hold onto her as tight as humanly possible.
Could she run? Would she get far enough? Where could she possibly go? A lawyer. She needed a lawyer. How could this have happened? This wasn’t the plan! She’d made a plan only that morning. How had it gone so wrong so soon?
Dosia did a deadpan to her aunt, and a cold wave washed over her.
Thank the gods, Calliope wasn’t standing there with a smile on her face or trying to make light of what had just happened.
Where had she even gotten JJ’s shirt from?
Dosia didn’t remember her daughter wearing it that morning.
It couldn’t have been possibly more on the nose.
Calliope’s face was solemn, like she understood the gravity of what she’d just done. Her hands were even raised slightly as if in surrender. “ I know we can’t talk right now.” Her eyes glanced down to JJ’s back. “And I know you won’t believe me, but I did what was best.”
“For who?” Dosia demanded. She was barely holding back the floodgates. Was it possible to cancel her flash sale? There was no way she’d be able to keep the store open now.
“For you,” Calliope insisted. Then she stepped back, making room between herself and the counter. “Go. I have the store. We’ll talk tonight.”
Dosia shook her head. There was so much she wanted to say, needed to say, but had no idea how to say, and certainly none of it was appropriate in front of her daughter. But at least Calliope and she agreed that Dosia couldn’t remain there right now.
She started forward, keeping a tight hold of JJ.
“Dosia?” She froze as Calliope called after her. “Your purse.”
Shit, she did need that. Especially because her car keys were in it. Dosia turned back around to find Calliope was holding out her purse and Pumpkin’s jacket. She reached to only take her purse, but Calliope pushed the jacket against her anyway, essentially covering JJ’s back.
“Trust me,” her aunt insisted.
Dosia glared daggers at the one woman she never thought would betray her. Calliope wasn’t just her aunt. They were best friends, as close as sisters. “I’ll never forgive you for this,” she said as quietly as she could so as not to alarm JJ.
The hurt on Calliope’s face was evident, and her smile was weak as she tried to reassure Dosia. “We’ll talk later.”
Dosia couldn’t guarantee they would. She couldn’t guarantee a damn thing right now. All she could do was hold onto JJ as she hurried from the store to her car parked out front.
A large, black SUV was parked on the other side of the road.
Pumpkin stood just beyond the hood, arguing with another man in a cut.
Dosia froze when his eyes landed on her.
They narrowed—until he visibly saw his jacket covering JJ in her arms. His look softened for a heartbeat before he turned his back on them.
Dosia remained where she was for a single second longer, afraid he’d turn back around, and then she hurried the rest of the way to her car.
Pumpkin was barely keeping it together. Darrin was insisting that he take Pumpkin to PT after Pumpkin had given him the slip, but Pumpkin was in no mood to deal with that.
When Darrin offered to take Pumpkin back to the clubhouse, Pumpkin declined.
The clubhouse with all their happy, wholesome families was the last place Pumpkin wanted to be right now.
Did that make him a bad father? Probably. But SJ was safe and happy with Frankie and his cousins, and Pumpkin just needed… Hell, he didn’t know what he needed. He needed to process what just happened, what he’d just discovered.
“Take me to the dealership,” Pumpkin ordered before climbing into the passenger seat.
He needed to go somewhere, and the club’s Harley-Davidson dealership was some place Darrin wouldn’t argue about taking him, or worse, call Steel to verify it was “okay” to take him there.
Christ, he fucking hated not being independent.
He was a grown-ass man, yet everyone kept checking with Daddy Steel that he could go places or do something.
His game of seeing how long the club would let him get away with shit was wearing thin fast.
He had a daughter!
Pumpkin closed his eyes as Darrin headed down Main Street at too fucking slow a speed. Couldn’t the man pick up the pace just a little?
He didn’t remember much from his patch-in party, but the one thing he’d always been sure of was that they’d used protection.
There’d been two used condoms on the ground next to him when he’d woken up.
Had they had sex a third time, only unprotected?
That didn’t seem like him. He might have been drunk, but still.
A daughter. He had a fucking daughter. How the hell had this happened?
Pumpkin thought of SJ, back at the clubhouse with all his cousins.
Families. He’d come from a broken home, raised by a single mother after his selfish father had abandoned them.
As a preteen and then a teen—once he’d learned how babies were made and puberty had hit—Pumpkin had sworn to himself that he’d never have kids outside of wedlock.
That he’d love his children’s mother with everything he had and everything he was.
That he’d be to her and their children everything that his father had never been to him.
How the fuck did he have two kids out of wedlock? By two different women! He’d forgo the ‘wedlock’ bit if he was in a committed relationship with the same woman and she’d gotten pregnant. They’d still be a family, ring or no.
Cheryl had been a step above a sex worker.
He didn’t like the word ‘prostitute’ and calling her a ‘whore’ was beyond degrading.
He’d never disrespect her so, even after what she’d tried to do to Cage.
Most of his brothers had been with Cheryl and the other Honeys.
There were a few exceptions. Steel was happily married and had never touched the Honeys.
Angel was a heterosexual woman and what the Honeys had to offer had never appealed to her.
Jumper’s severe PTSD had kept him from being involved with any woman for fear of hurting her until he’d met Jasmine and they’d worked through that fear together.
And Scar was… Well, Scar was Scar. Pumpkin was sure Tally was the only woman on the planet who could have gotten through to Scar.
Hell, even Lucky had been with a Honey a time or two when the loneliness of being a single dad of two had gotten to him.
Lucky’s story, though, was far different than Pumpkin’s, and it was humorlessly ridiculous to even attempt to compare them.
Lucky had raised his two much-younger siblings as his own.
He’d fought to ensure that they didn’t end up in foster care.
And while, yes, prior to meeting Harper, Lucky had been a single father too, Pumpkin felt their situations were entirely different.
Lucky’s was that of love and sacrifice whereas Pumpkin’s seemed to be a repeat episode of when Ross and Rachel discovered that condoms are only effective ninety-seven percent of the time.
Somehow he’d just hit that rare three percent twice. Twice !
But the worst of it? The absolute worst? Pumpkin’s eyes squeezed together in shame as he recalled Dosia’s look of fear. Fear of him . It was the one thing that was rivaling his anger at the moment.
At least he’d gotten out of there. As much as he wanted to stay, to get to know his daughter, he knew he couldn’t. He was not in the right mindset, and frankly, neither was Dosia.
Dosia. Holy fuck! What the fuck was he supposed to do about her ? She’d lied to him. She’d kept a child from him! For six fucking years!
It wasn’t like they met in some random city and neither of them knew the other’s name. Her family was from Mount Grove. He didn’t know if she’d grown up here too, but she knew Mount Grove, and she knew about the club. Hell, they’d had sex half a football field away from his clubhouse apartment.
She knew where to find him. And she hadn’t.
The cage braking had Pumpkin opening his eyes.
They were outside the dealership. Darrin had pulled right up to the sidewalk outside the large, glass front doors.
The fifty-six thousand square-foot building was half storage and retail space and half service department.
When the club had bought the business, they’d devised a work schedule so each of the patched members had rotating shifts on the sales floor.
Some had more than others because they’d discovered they’d enjoyed the work.
Others, like Scar and Jumper, rarely took a shift.
But their best salesman was Scotty. The goofy teen loved wearing his denim kid’s cut and coming to work with his daddy. He especially helped to calm some of the women who were still on the fence about their husbands buying a motorcycle.
The teen was known to tell customers, “Just tell him to drive slow, like my daddy. He drives like an old granny!”
Pumpkin had liked working the floor, but he didn’t excel at it like some of the others.
As a mechanic, Grumpy was very knowledgeable and was often called upon for the more hardcore enthusiasts.
It was hilarious watching Angel work the floor, especially when they had a real ‘manly man’ customer who tried to throw his weight around or had inaccurate information.
Watching said customer try to mansplain to Angel would never get old.