Dax
“What are you doing for dinner?” I looked down into her eyes as I released her from our embrace.
“I don’t know. I’m probably going to order in, why?”
“Okay, what are you in the mood for? My treat.”
“No.” She shook her head, but then she stopped and looked at me like she didn’t hear me clearly. “What?”
“I’m buying. What do you want?”
“Something we can have delivered. I don’t feel much like going out,” she said, and understandably so. She’d had a long day, and she already didn’t feel that great.
“Okay, so pizza? Chinese?”
“Mmm, Chinese sounds good. I could kill some sweet and sour chicken right now.”
“Fried rice?”
“You know it.” She still looked at me like she couldn’t believe I was really going to order food for her – for us, really, but I didn’t know if that was clear to her yet. We needed to talk, and food provided the best vehicle I could think of for a conversation like the one we needed to have.
“Go ahead and get changed then. I’ll order our food.” I nodded up the stairs.
“It’s like that?”
“Yeah. I figured after this morning, we could use the opportunity to talk. And after what you put up with today at work, you could certainly use some pampering. So, leave the food to me, and handle whatever you need to handle while we wait.”
Her smile lit up her whole face, and the glow I’d seen on her that morning returned, shining through the stress and exhaustion she must have been feeling. She looked happy, genuinely happy. That was everything I could have asked for at that moment.
“Go,” I urged her as I took out my phone to make the call. I was going to make sure I ordered enough food so she would have some left over for a couple of days. I didn’t want her to have to worry about cooking or ordering in, or anything like that.
She made her way back downstairs a few minutes after the food arrived. I was in the kitchen, sorting out what had been in the bags the delivery boy brought to the door. We had enough to feed a small army. I didn’t know anything about pregnancy, but I did know that at some point, she was going to be hungry. She was going to be eating for two, and regardless of where I stood in her eyes, I was going to make sure neither one of them went hungry.
“Right on time,” I announced as she came into the kitchen.
“My god, Dax, how much did you order?” She looked around at the food like she was in heaven.
“Enough, I hope. You’re probably going to have some leftovers.”
“I’ll say. Where do I start?”
“Wherever you want.” I stepped back and held my hand out, gesturing at the spread on the counter and the stove. I grabbed a plate from the cupboard and handed it to her.
“Thank you, Dax.” She hugged me and planted a quick little kiss on my cheek.
“Not a problem. It’s what family does, right?” I didn’t say anything until she was already getting her food, and then I spoke under my breath.
I sighed while I watched her get her food and go to the table. I’d been thinking a lot all day about everything we’d talked about that morning, everything we didn’t talk about, and all the questions swirling around in my head. Luckily, there hadn’t been a whole lot to do around the clubhouse, because I’d spent the day busy in my head.
I sat down at the table with my plate and dove in with a fork while she used her chopsticks. She laughed at me and covered her mouth while she ate. She pointed at my fork with the chopsticks in her fingers.
“What? I’ve never mastered chopsticks. So what? Worry about your food.” I pointed with my fork at her plate, but she didn’t stop laughing. It was infectious, and a moment later I was cracking up with her.
“I can show you.”
“You have shown me before. You and about a hundred other people. Let’s just eat and enjoy our meal.” I tried to affect a mellow tone, even putting my hands out to the sides like I was meditating.
“Nah, you’re not getting off that easily.” She got up and grabbed another set of sticks from the bag.
“Fawn, c’mon, man.”
We kept having these little episodes where everything was so utterly normal between us. It was like she’d never left. There’d never been a Frank or a Lilian. In the morning, when I showed back up at the clubhouse, my dad would be there, fresh off his morning run with Micah, the three of them taking a shot of whiskey to start the day – my dad, Micah, and Dan. Unfortunately, that was only how it felt. We weren’t really back there. All those things had happened, but when it was just us, being us, it was like none of it mattered. And maybe that was the point.
I tried again, for the millionth time, to use the chopsticks, but it ended in disaster. There was rice all over the table, a piece of chicken on the floor, and one in my lap. Fawn sat back in her chair, laughing so hard tears were streaming down her face. I wasn’t even frustrated. If it made her laugh, it was good in my book. Finally, though, she gave in and let me go back to using a fork.
“Thanks for that. That was a good laugh.” She nodded and went back to her food, using her chopsticks as naturally as I used my fork. Oh well.
We ate in silence for a few minutes after that, enjoying our food. But the longer the silence settled between us, the less comfortable it felt. The laughter faded, and what was left were words that had remained unsaid for too long.
“Look, there’s a reason I’ve been talking about family a lot this evening.”
“I figured as much.”
“Yeah, I spent the day thinking about us and the baby.” My heart slowed down, as if scared to beat too quickly or too hard. It paused like it was waiting to hear what I had to say.
“Did you come to any conclusions?” Fawn took her time eating, letting our conversation take precedence over the food. She didn’t look up from her plate, though, the expression on her face easily a physical representation of my slowed, cautious pulse.
“Yeah, I’ve decided I like the idea of having a little tyke running around.”
She coughed, covering her mouth again, like she was choking. She looked up at me and cleared her throat. I could see the same sparkle in her eyes she got whenever she smiled or laughed, though she wasn’t doing either.
“You sure?”
“Yeah, a little mini-me, or mini-you.”
“God that’s terrifying,” she blurted out.
“Which one?” I chuckled.
“Both. Can you imagine? I mean, really. Imagine it.” Her eyes grew wide with exaggerated mock-terror.
“Yeah, I’ve been imagining it all day. But what I can’t imagine is having them running around the clubhouse. That’s no place to raise a kid.”
“Don’t we know it? And thank you.” She reached across and rested her hand on mine, giving it a gentle squeeze.
I figured she would have agreed with me on the clubhouse. We’d both grown up there, and even though we had turned out mostly fine – I didn’t see where any of our problems stemmed from growing up in the Carolina Devils – we both would have agreed that our childhood hadn’t been the most appropriate or conventional. Of course, if I was going to be involved in my child’s life, I was going to have to find an alternative to the clubhouse.
“I’m thinking about looking into getting a condo here in your neighborhood,” I told her.
Again, she shot me that same dumbfounded look, like I had thrown her a curveball. Surely, she had to know me better than to be surprised by my willingness to make changes when necessary. Her face was animated enough, however, to make her reactions comical, at least.
“That’s not a bad idea, but I can’t ask you to make any changes like that, Dax.”
“You’re not asking, and I haven’t made any changes yet. These are things I’m thinking I should do so I can be there for our kid. So I can be here.”
“Still, that’s huge.”
“That’s why I’ve been thinking about it all day. That’s why I didn’t say anything about it this morning. Yeah, it’s a big change, but when you really stop to think about it, it’s not much to ask when we’re talking about getting ready for a child to enter our lives.”
I looked away and took a deep breath. This was pretty heavy stuff, and I felt like I was diving in head first. I needed to take a moment to collect my thoughts before continuing, and maybe give her a moment to say something about it.
“Thank you, Dax. That takes some maturity.”
“You’re telling me.”
We chuckled a little, and she sat with her hand in mine in the middle of her kitchen table. We both turned away and went back to our food, pulling our hands back so we could eat. Our motions were slow and reluctant, however, like there was still something else that needed to be said.
The thing was, there was so much that needed to be said. There were eight years’ worth of things that needed to be said. Honestly, there were probably some things from before that as well. Even before she left, we’d been pretty good at glossing shit over and ignoring things. But as we chipped away at the immediate issue of the baby, it was only a matter of time before we put all the cards out on the table.
“Listen, I’m sorry I wasn’t around much while I was out of town.”
“You were out of town, like you said. How much could you have been around? You were off in Cincinnati, living the dream. As long as you were okay there, we were all okay here,” I tried to assure her.
“That’s not really what I mean, though. I could have been available more. You know, to you.” Tears welled up in her eyes and threated to spill onto her cheeks.
“What about Frank?” I opened my eyes wide and raised my eyebrows, going for the cheesy, ominous look of someone hosting horror movies on TV.
“Please. He knew his place when it came to the MC.”
“Yeah, but did he really? Did he even know about us?” I asked in a teasing voice, but it was a serious question. Frank hadn’t come down when she came to my dad’s funeral, and if I had my timelines straight in my head, they should have been together then.
She sighed and slowly shook her head. “No, he didn’t know about all that. I was trying to put it all behind me. That was stupid of me, but when I came back for you dad’s funeral, I simply told him it was a death in the family and I needed some space to handle it.”
Her tone lowered while she talked about that period. Sometimes it was easy for me to forget how it affected other people when my dad passed away. Dan and Micah – especially Micah – mentioned it from time to time, but I often felt like I was the only person walking around with the weight of it on my shoulders.
Sure, Fawn had shown up for it, but she’d only been there for a few minutes. She hadn’t been there for me, for her dad, or even for herself. The way I had seen it, she made an appearance and dipped out before it could get too real for her, before she could have been reminded of who she was and where she was from. I never thought about how that would eventually affect her.
“I should have stayed longer when I came down.” She nodded, looking away from me again. Then she added, “And I didn’t even know about Lilian. I had no idea until you told me. I felt like such an ass for not knowing, Dax. You have no idea. If I had known, I would have been here in a heartbeat. I should have been here, by your side. That’s what family does, right? Regardless of distance or differences, we stick together.”
She took my hand again, and our fingers intertwined, tangling in each other. She looked at our hands. Then, she chuckled and looked me in the eye.
“If growing up at the clubhouse taught us anything, it should have been that we’re all family here.”
“You got it.” It was good to see her finally coming around. Fawn was finally home, finally ditching all the nonsense she thought made her headstrong and independent. Independence didn’t mean ditching us. It meant, as far as I could tell, doing her own thing with our support, with the MC at her back, because we were her family. And it was about time she realized that and stopped fighting it.
I felt like I should have stood up and dusted my hands off at that point. I could see myself pulling on the front of my cut to straighten it over my shoulders and declaring proudly, “My work here is done.” But I wasn’t about to get up and leave, not like that. There was still work to do, for the both of us.
She stared at me with expectation in her eyes, as if to say she’d opened up and it was my turn. I had hoped lightening the mood a little bit would have worked, but it hadn’t. I had to let her in, or let myself out.
“I’m not going to lie and pretend it was easy,” I told her. “I’ve been pretty closed off since Lilian’s accident. I know that. I own that.” I took a deep, shaky breath. “She was a target because of how close she was to me, and believe me, that’s weighing in my mind right now with the two of you.” I nodded toward her stomach.
She immediately put a protective hand over her belly. She knew exactly what I meant. When she did it, though, I felt a surge of emotion deep within me. It was a protective feeling. I’d been trying to avoid my feelings for her – and failing miserably – since I found out she was coming back, but I realized in taking the assignment to watch over her, I had walked into the situation I had wanted to avoid.
We were connected, and there wasn’t anything either of us could have done about it. We were still partners in crime, like we always had been, and we made sense. I was taking a chance by letting a kid into my life, an unborn child even, by the changes I was prepared to make for that child. I wondered if it was time to consider doing the same for the woman sitting across the table from me.
Not the girl, the woman. Fawn had grown into an impressive woman, in beauty as well as in strength. She was nothing like the girls I’d been running around with. She was a force to be reckoned with.