Page 5 of Rome
“Daddy is having Lucky Charms with me, Mommy,” he told her as she leaned over to give him a hug. She straightened, and he reached out to rub her belly. “Good morning, Sissy,” he said, making me grin again. Abby gave him a sweet smile and cupped his cheek, tilting his head up to look at her.
“Good morning, honey. Only four more weeks or so to go, and then Everly Rose will be here. She can’t wait to meet her big brother.” He grinned up at her, then leaned forward and delivered a big, smacking kiss to her belly.
Abby was a big believer in talking to babies in-utero and was convinced that Ethan had come out of the womb knowing the sound of our voices. I wasn’t sure about that, but hehadalways seemed to calm down whenever Abby or I had talked to him as a baby. So now, we all – including E-man – made it a point to talk to the baby in her belly. He even helped Abby read stories to her, describing the pictures to her and carefully sounding out the few simple words he had learned already in kindergarten.
He loved school and loved his teacher even more – almost as much as my twin brother did. It still made me laugh when I thought about how Jagger got dumped on his first date with Molly, after she’d seen Abby and me picking Ethan up at school. She had mistaken me for my twin and had ghosted his sorry ass, thinking he was a cheating dirtbag. Luckily, they had worked it all out pretty quickly. She and my brother were made for each other, and I was happy life was returning to normal for them after Molly had been held at gunpoint by the drugged out, crazy-ass mother of one of her students. I was still worried about Jagger, though. He’d had no choice but to kill the bitch before she shot him or Molly, but I knew it still weighed on his conscience.
Our MC wasn’t made up of angels, but we weren’t hardcore one-percenters either. We were used to delivering an occasional beatdown at most. I’d pulled my knife a time or two over the years, but it wasn’t like we went around killing people on the regular. That kind of thing had to fuck with a man’s mind.
The shrill whistle of the tea kettle brought me out of my thoughts, and I quickly moved to the stove to turn off the burner, then picked up the kettle and poured the hot water into the waiting mug. I popped a coffee pod into the machine and stuck my cup under the spout before hitting the button to brew the life-giving beverage I needed to start each morning.
Abby got her own breakfast while I took care of mine and Ethan’s cereal. Twenty minutes later, I loaded our dirty cereal bowls into the dishwasher, and dashed upstairs to shower and get ready for work while Abby and Ethan discussed their plans for the day. Ethan wanted to visit Pop, otherwise known as Sinner, my grandfather and the now-retired founder of our MC.
Sinner and Grandma Frankie had helped my dad, King, raise Jagger and me after our mom flaked out on us when we were seven. Grandma Frankie died almost five years ago, and Sinner had been lost without her at first. Only Ethan, just a baby then, had managed to bring him out of his depression, and gradually, Sinner had rejoined the land of the living.Now, they were best buds, with Sinner doing his goddamned best to teach Ethan to raise enough hell to have fun, but not quite enough for Abby to kill them both.
After the incident at the park over the summer, when Ethan had called another kid a “fucknugget” – a word learned at his Pop’s knee – Sinner had realized he’d needed to clean up his act around his pride and joy. He’d taken to using words like “fudgenugget” instead when Ethan was around, which just made me laugh at the fucking absurdity of it all. The tough bastard was getting soft in his old age, not that I’d tell him that. Not only did I have a hell of a lot of respect for the man, but I was also pretty sure he could still land a punch or two if he were so inclined. I didn’t care to find out.
Abby had invited Sinner for dinner a few weeks ago, and the grizzled, old biker had shown up with a toy for Ethan, as usual, but had also brought a tiny little pink leather vest that he’d had custom made for Everly, that looked damned similar to the cuts we wore. It came complete with a little patch on the front proclaiming her road name as “Sweet Pea”, which is what I’d taken to calling her as soon as we’d found out she would be a girl. He’d had a black one made for Ethan when he was born, too, with his patch reading “E-man”. Every year on his birthday, Ethan was presented with a new cut since he’d outgrown the old one, and he couldn’t wait for the day he got the real thing. I was proud as fuck watching him strut around in it all the time. It made Abby roll her eyes and smile at us both.
My wife tried, but she didn’t completely understand the attraction of the club. She hadn’t been raised in the life. Her childhood was the complete opposite in fact, since her dad was a cop. She whole-heartedly supported the club anyway, and I couldn’t ask for more than that. She even helped my dad and the other officers with some of the administrative shit, although she was only working part-time these days. I wished she wouldn’t work at all, but she’s too independent for that.
“I’m not going to sit around on my ass, Caleb,” she’d told me sternly after my last attempt at getting her to stay home. “What am I supposed to do, watch it get bigger every day? No fucking thank you, I’d rather keep working.” She’d stood there glaring at me, hands planted on her curvy hips, and I’d resisted the urge to tell her I’d be happy to watch it get bigger for her. Some sense of self-preservation had told me to keep my mouth shut if I valued my balls, which I most certainly did.
Abby had always been a little self-conscious about her curves, especially back in high school when she was one of the few girls with such a lush, hourglass shape. After her pregnancy with Ethan, she would sometimes complain about not losing the last bit of baby weight, especially the little pooch around her middle. There had been a club bunny back in those days who had given her shit about it. I wasn’t proud of it, but she had been one of the bitches that I’d fucked sometimes, in the lonely years before Abby and I had gotten together, when I’d been waiting for her to come of age. As soon as I’d heard what that fucking cunt had said to my wife, I’d had her banned from the MC.
Abby had gotten more comfortable with her body over the last few years, but I had noticed her making comments about her weight a little more often again with this pregnancy. When she got that way, nothing I said seemed to reassure her that I loved her body and fucking drooled over the extra curves she had now. The only thing that seemed to work wasshowingher how much I loved her body, how hard she made me, and how I couldn’t get enough of her. And fuck me if I didn’t love showing her every chance I got.
After pulling on a clean pair of jeans and a black T-shirt with the name of the shop emblazoned across the front, I picked up my phone and unplugged it from the charger next to the bed. I glanced at the screen to see a missed call, a voicemail, and a text, all from Christy. I refused to refer to her as my mother, and actually had her listed in my phone as “Egg Donor”.
Some people might think that was harsh, but it wasn’t nearly as goddamned harsh as a seven-year-old boy, overhearing his mom bitch to his dad that having kids was the worst thing that had ever happened to her, that she wished she had aborted us when she’d found out she was pregnant, and that he could have us because we were dragging her down. Her new boyfriend didn’t want another man’s brats hanging around, and she’d decided we had to go. Yeah, that was a special fucking day. I’d never let on to King, or even to Jag, that I’d heard that shit. The only person I’d ever told was Abby, right after we found out that Ethan was on the way. I swear to God, that woman had made all those old hurts disappear when she’d wrapped her arms around me and cried for the disillusioned and heartbroken little boy I’d once been.
I didn’t even hesitate before deleting both messages. I didn’t give a flying fuck what she wanted. Probably money, if I had to guess. That was just about the only time she contacted me, or Jagger. The only reason I didn’t block her number was because the last time I did that, she showed up on my damned doorstep. There was no way in hell I wanted to chance my son witnessing a scene like that again.
I shook off the bad mood that had descended on me and headed downstairs. I gave Abby a quick kiss on my way out the door, copping a feel of her ass in the process.
“Love you, baby girl,” I said, burying my face in the crook of her neck. I let the familiar scent of cherry blossoms wash over me, centering me and calming my soul as it always did.
I scooped Ethan up off the stool and swung him around before I set him back on his feet. I gave him a high-five and a reminder to behave himself today and look after his mama.
“I will, Daddy. Pop will kick my butt if I don’t.” I barked out a laugh, and wondered how long it would take him to realize that Sinner was all bark and no bite when it came to him.
Chapter 2
Abby
I winced at Ethan’s shrill shout from the backseat when he spotted the two other motorcycles parked in front of Pop’s garage door as we pulled into his driveway shortly after lunch.
“Grandpa and Uncle Jag are here!” I barely got the car turned off before I heard the click as Ethan unbuckled himself from his booster seat. Thank God for the child locks, or else he would have been halfway to the front door by now.
“Hurry up, Mommy,” he bounced up and down in the back seat impatiently as I swung open my car door and hefted myself out from behind the steering wheel.
“Give me a second there, Mr. Impatient. It takes me a little longer to move around these days, remember?” He stopped bouncing long enough for me to open the back door to let him out of the car, then zoomed around me and ran up the walkway to the front door. He flung it open, and I heard him yelling “I’m here!”, as if the three men inside hadn’t heard him coming.
I grabbed the small reusable grocery bag I’d brought and made my way to the door at a much slower pace, only to be greeted by my father-in-law holding the screen door open for me.
“You’re looking beautiful, sweetheart. Still feeling alright?” King leaned down to kiss my cheek as I stepped into the house.
“Thanks. I’m feeling OK, aside from massive heartburn and those damned Braxton-Hicks contractions. My blood pressure is up a little, so my doctor wants to keep a close eye on me.” He followed me into the kitchen where I set the bag on the counter.
