Chapter 18b CJ #3
“Celia came to the club,” he went on as if Aunt Meggie hadn’t spoken.
“Last night. I wish you was there to meet her. She got black hair and green eyes like me. She came to ask me to spare Bash. She swore he ain’t wantin’ to hurt you and…
Megan, baby, please. Please, I’ll do anyfuckinthing.
I’m beggin’ you. Don’t…please. I can’t breathe without you.
I just feel like I’m fuckin’ drownin’. If I gotta go another fuckin’ night, I ain’t… I might die.”
“Just think of it as a vacation–”
“Megan, baby, this not a vacation for me. This sheer fuckin’ torture. You fuckin’ win. You win. I ain’t carin’ if you fuckin’ Godzilla–”
She laughed, and some of Uncle Christopher’s tension floated away.
“I love you, Megan.”
“I love you too, Christopher. But sometimes it isn’t enough, especially without respect and loyalty.”
“I might’ve lost my way and ain’t had your back like I should’ve, but I never broke our vows. I swear to you.”
“I believe you. If I thought otherwise, I would divorce you.”
Uncle Christopher covered his face. “So you really did think about divorce.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I’m scared to come home.
I’m scared that you’ll be my Outlaw for a few days and then revert to the man you’ve become.
Life is about change, but it’s how we change.
The evolution of our marriage, of us, over the past few months hasn’t been good.
I don’t want platitudes or pretense. I want us to be better, stronger, together.
But if we continue on this road, what’s next?
You actually cheating? I’d prefer to never know that type of betrayal from you. You abusing me? Actually hitting me?”
Diesel and the rest of the boys stiffened. Even Kaia, but before either of them defended Uncle Christopher, he bowed his head.
“Baby, I’m so fuckin’ sorry.”
A little sob floated through the phone and Diesel’s gut clenched.
“You picked me up and shook me.”
Shame crossed Uncle Christopher’s face, while gasps echoed through the room and matched Diesel’s.
“Dad did what?” Axel blared in the background, the exact words running through Diesel’s mind.
“I ain’t meant–”
“You dropped me down afterwards,” she said miserably. “You meant it.”
“Did that motherfucker lose his mind? You got to increase my allowance. I need another bomb.”
“You can’t bomb your father, Axel,” Aunt Meggie gritted.
Wincing, Uncle Christopher met Diesel’s gaze. CJ’s. Ryder’s. Ransom’s. Bishop’s. And finally Kaia’s.
They all gave him a death stare.
“You abused Mom!” CJ snarled. “You! A man who prefers to shoot a woman rather than hit her and you put your fucking hands on Mom?”
“CJ—” Aunt Meggie started.
“I ain’t hit your ma,” Uncle Christopher snapped. “And I ain’t fuckin’ abused her.”
“Yeah, Dad. Whatever helps you to fucking sleep at night,” CJ spat.
“Payback is coming,” Axel screamed.
Uncle Christopher scowled. “You ain’t even fuckin’ here, Axel. You left us to go with her.”
“What do you mean her?” CJ demanded. “That’s my mother. Your wife.”
“I got this, C.,” Axel said, his little voice trembling. “Put some fucking respect on Mom’s name, Dad. I hope when I’m fifty-thousand years old, I don’t act like you toward my woman. Mom got a name, fuckhead. Use it or else.”
“I got a motherfuckin’ name, too. And I’m your old man. I expect you to respect me.”
“Fuck you. You don’t respect my mom, I’m not respecting you.” Axel huffed. “Here, Mom. Talk to this motherfucker. I’m about to catch a fucking case and I’m too fucking busy being the man of the house to have to deal with his level of senileness.”
“You due an ass whippin’ boy.”
“You will not touch Axel,” Aunt Meggie said, back on the phone again. “Besides, he isn’t doing any more than what you taught the kids to do. Defend me.”
“You ain’t needin’ defendin’ from me! What the fuck’s wrong with you?”
Aunt Meggie huffed. “I will talk to you later, Christopher—”
“Megan, wait! Just listen to me for a second. The night you and Reb came home, I’d just found out about Rule jumpin’ out the window. The rectory had just burned down. I was a fuckin’ wreck–”
“I’d just been released from the hospital, Christopher. My hand is still in a cast. I had the orthopedic boot on. I was crushed over Rule and worried about you and the kids. You don’t think I wasn’t a wreck? You don’t think I needed you to tell me everything would be fine?”
“You want Mort to beat me up? He the closest thing you got to a big brother.”
“No, and I don’t want you, Diesel, or Axel to repeat what I said to anyone.”
“Too late, Mom. I’m already composing a text to my men.”
“I’m talking on your phone.”
“It’s in my head.”
“We will talk,” Aunt Meggie said.
“My ass so fuckin’ ashamed–”
“Don’t be ashamed, Christopher–”
“That motherfucker should be,” Axel yelled. “He’s fifty-eleven thousand pounds and ten feet. You’re two feet and five pounds.”
“I’ve been on the phone longer than I intended.” Unlike when she first came to the phone, she sounded heartbroken. “We’ll talk soon, Christopher. I love you, Diesel. Tell the boys I love them. Kiss Jo for me–”
“Megan, baby, wait. Please?”
“What, Christopher?” she said tiredly.
“I did you so fuckin’ wrong and I ain’t got an excuse for that.
Ain’t no other woman compare to you. You the best fuckin’ thing that ever happened to me and I got my fuckin’ ass on my shoulders, thinkin’ I knew best when you been holdin’ me the fuck down since you was eighteen-years-old.
You demand the best from me whether you see me as Outlaw or as Christopher.
You keep me grounded. In line. On my fuckin’ toes.
The day I met you was the day my entire fuckin’ world flipped upside down and that ain’t never fuckin’ changed.
I’m so fuckin’ lost without you. Please, just give me another chance.
Please, baby. Please. I fuckin’ swear Ima listen to you.
Let me know every motherfucker who disrespected you and Ima beat the fuck outta them.
I don’t know what the fuck I was thinkin’ ‘cuz you ain’t ever been no pushover.
I wouldna respected you if you let me walk the fuck all over you.
I ain’t been listenin’ to you cuz you been tellin’ me I was fuckin’ up.
Baby, please. I fuckin’ swear…I swear, Megan, I ain’t ever handlin’ you so rough again and I ain’t ever fuckin’ puttin’ another woman ahead of you. I ain’t meant to with Torie.”
“You need to remember I’m me. Not her.”
“I know that, baby!”
“I’ve considered dinner with Easton DeLuca,” Aunt Meggie announced.
Uncle Christopher choked.
“I don’t know how to make you see me again, Christopher. Matter to you.”
“Megan, I fuckin’ swear if you look at that motherfucker, Ima kill him.”
Everyone blinked. Uncle Christopher looked and sounded like an unhinged wild man.
“Not if we’re separated.” Aunt Meggie’s words shut him up immediately. “That would be my choice. If you hurt someone I was dating, I’d never talk to you again.”
Uncle Christopher paled.
“But I don’t want a legal separation and it would be gross to go to dinner with a man just to make you jealous.
I’m just stuck because either I have to live with me not mattering to you or live without you.
Or with being a laughingstock, a joke, or worse at the club.
” She started to cry again. “There are so many rumors that I’ve slept with different bikers, so I can’t even show you how it felt to have you put another woman ahead of me.
They’d just call me more names. A whore. A slut–”
“Who, Megan?” Uncle Christopher snarled, jumping to his feet.
“Mom, don’t cry,” Axel said, beginning to sniffle himself.
Diesel had never felt so helpless. Even when he’d come home and found his mother gone, it was a different type of powerlessness. She was already gone and he’d hoped she returned. By the time he realized she wouldn’t, he’d looked the few places he suspected she’d go and had come up empty.
That had been a slow, painful experience. Unlike now, when he was watching his family fall apart in real time. When he was an adult, as complicit as Uncle Christopher in driving Aunt Meggie away.
“It’s okay, Mom,” Axel said, his tone reminding Diesel he was just a little boy faced with adult issues.
So unfair that his childhood had been robbed.
“Megan, if you don’t fuckin’ tell me–”
“It doesn’ matter–”
“Ima start shootin’ every motherfucker I fuckin’ suspect.”
“I don’t care, Christopher. They stopped caring about me. My sons. My husband. Why should I care if they live or die? Kill them all. Kill none of them. I don’t care anymore.”
“Megan–”
“Mom gave the phone back to me, Dad,” Axel said tearfully. “I got to check on her, but I’ll give you a list of motherfuckers when I get home. Bye.”
For long moments after Axel hung up, Uncle Christopher stood, frozen in his spot as if he couldn’t believe what had just taken place.
No one moved or spoke for a minute. CJ had known the argument was bad, but he didn’t know what happened before they went to Rule’s room and found Mom sobbing and Dad fucking crazy.
“You put your fucking hands on Mom?” CJ asked incredulously, still reeling from that information.
He’d had a flash of disbelief, where he thought she’d embellished. Then Dad…Dad apologized. He actually…
CJ jumped to his feet.
“Sit the fuck down now, CJ,” Dad ordered.
“No! Fuck you. We’re here living in goddamn hell because you lost your fucking mind. I’d leave you, too. Mom always said she wouldn’t tolerate cheating or abuse. What the fuck have you done in the last few weeks?”
Dad got to his feet and barreled to CJ, his green eyes narrowed and cold with warning.
“Back the fuck off, boy. This between me and your ma. You ain’t got a fuckin’ thing to say to me.”
CJ shook with anger. He’d been so fucking crushed that Mom left him behind, but of course she would. She wouldn’t think he’d support her.
“Dad?” Ransom called.
“What?” Dad snarled, not taking his angry gaze from CJ. “I ain’t takin’ no fuckin’ disrespect from none of you lil’ motherfuckers.”
“Yeah, no, Dad,” Ryder said with disapproval. “We stand behind you and support you, but that’s our mom. We’re her sons, and we’re not letting a motherfucker alive lay hands on her.”
“I didn’t fuckin’ hit your ma. I just shook her and dropped her. She landed on the motherfucking bed.”
“Did you use your fucking teeth to pick her up, Dad?” CJ asked irritably. “You had to use your goddamn hands to engage in that fucking travesty.”
“That’s my fuckin’ wife.”
“Then you need to fucking act like it,” Ransom retorted.
“Go to your fuckin’ rooms right the fuck now.”
“Fine, Dad,” Ryder said “But if I were you, I’d start praying. Axel’s coming home.” Smirking, he followed Ransom out the door.
“You too, CJ,” Dad ordered as if he hadn’t just been threatened to within an inch of his fucking life.
Axel would try to fuck him up. If Dad didn’t know that, CJ did. He wouldn’t tell his little brother one fucking thing. If Axel wanted to bury Dad in lava, CJ would shut the fuck up and step out of the way.
CJ glanced at Diesel, who chose the worst fucking time to have a poker face. Instead of leaving, CJ sat back down.
“I said to go.”
“You have a bad fucking habit of shaking Mom,” CJ said. Dad had done it out of anger for as long as CJ remembered. “But that shaking has fucking graduated.”
“Stop talking.”
“In the span of three and a half months, you’ve broken almost every fucking promise you ever made to Mom, and you wonder why she left? Why she won’t come back?”
Dad paled.
“That’s enough, CJ,” Diesel said sternly.
“Bitch, fuck you. That’s our mom. You should be defending her yourself.”
Diesel started for CJ. If Dad hadn’t snatched him, they would’ve been fucking fighting.
“I have never been so fucking disappointed in you in my fucking life, Dad,” CJ went on. “And you know who else is probably disappointed and fucking betrayed? Your wife. My mother.”
“You disappointed in me?” Dad asked.
“Very,” CJ said honestly, hurt in more ways than one, wishing Mom had told him.
Dad sat heavily down. “I hurt her.”
“Not physically. Luckily,” CJ added darkly.
“I told her I’m sorry.”
“That’s not good enough, Dad,” CJ said. “You have to prove it to her and mean it.” He glanced at Diesel. “We all do.”
“I…you think she’ll like it if I take her to the cabin?” Dad looked at Diesel. “I need you to run an errand for me tomorrow. Pick up a piece of jewelry for your ma. You got any urgent cases?”
“No, Uncle Chris. I can rearrange my schedule.”
“I think she’s staying away because she’s thought about divorcing you, Dad,” CJ said dully.
Dad bowed his head. “That’s my thought too.”
“Get your fucking head on straight,” CJ urged. “This isn’t a joke anymore. Our lives are at a critical point.”
“I know, son.”