Fifty-Three
Eight weeks since the day of the crash on a New Orleans bayou road. Mercy had endured a second, successful surgery. Mayor Stephens and his cousin, William Archer, had been arrested. Slowly, through a diligent marketing campaign and an insistent charm, the club was gaining back the lost favor of the city. Knoxville was quiet, normal, untroubled. Football season was in full swing and out of town fans came in droves to cheer on the Vols, the scandals of before trampled down into the soft earth where they belonged.
Ava slid a spatula beneath each cookie on the pan with care, passing the warm chocolate-chip discs onto a waiting plate, not damaging one of them. Finished, she pulled off her oven mitts with a satisfied smile. This cooking business wasn’t so bad after all. If she kept this up, she’d be able to contribute to Christmas dinner.
When they were all arranged to her liking, she set the plate on the breakfast bar and went to the fridge for a Coke. She and Mercy had that in common: Why chase cookies with milk when you could rot your teeth a little more with a soda?
Her hand was on the fridge door when she heard the knock. She pulled back, startled. It was two o’clock on a Wednesday. Who the hell could that be?
There was a .38 in the ceramic canister beside the flour. Her eyes went there first, as a reassurance, before going to the back door and what she could see through its window.
A man stood on the back step, a young man with dark, close-cropped hair and one of those faces too-wide in the jaw for her liking. He had a bad case of football-player face.
Ava folded her arms and stared him down. “Can I help you?” she called through the window.
He pressed a badge to the glass. “Harlan Grey, FBI, Miss Teague. I wanted to ask you a few questions.”
Grey: the name Maggie had passed along to her with an eye roll. The same agent Layla Hammond had warned her about in a phone conversation they’d shared a week or so before. “Him?” Layla had said with a laugh when Ava asked about him. “Yeah, he was down here for a while. He was looking into that operation our boys” – both their respective husbands – “took care of in London. Incompetent fool,” she’d averred. “One of my dad’s employees cracked him over the head with a cast iron skillet and he missed the whole thing. I think he got demoted. Apparently, he’s looking to bag himself a Dog or two and get back on his boss’s good list.
“Don’t worry about him,” she’d said. “You could have him chewed up and spit out before he ever knew what hit him.”
Ava felt warm and bolstered at the memory of the conversation. She disengaged the locks and invited Grey in with a casual sweep of her hand. “I guess I have a few minutes. I made cookies, if you want one.”
“No, thanks.” He surveyed the kitchen as she shut the door, like he was searching for something that would pop out and scream outlaw at him. A brick of coke, a bloody knife, an AK with the serial number filed off, a dead hooker. The usual. He turned back to her finally, patting his flat stomach, his athlete’s face creasing in an insincere, jock-boy smile. “I try to limit my carb intake.”
She shrugged. “More for us, then.” She picked one up and broke off a bite with her fingers, popped it in her mouth. She almost smiled, pleased that her efforts had been fruitful. “Which reminds me,” she said, leaning back against the counter and propping one foot back against the lower cabinet face in an effort to look casual. “I need to check on my hubby. So it’d be great if we could make this fast.” Small, tight smile for effect, as she nibbled cookie.
He gave her another of his fake smiles. “Your husband. That’s right. It’s Mrs. …I’m sorry, how do you pronounce his last name?”
“Lécuyer.”
“That’s right. Congratulations.”
She stared at him. It was an old move she’d used on Aidan, growing up, and always managed to annoy him. She hoped it would work on the agent.
He was better-trained than her brother. “He had a motorcycle accident, didn’t he? In fact, you were with him, weren’t you?”
Her shoulder throbbed in remembrance. She’d come out of her sling two weeks before, but was using her exercise ball at intervals throughout the day, squeezing it, lifting it over her head, strengthening the joint.
She nodded. “I wasn’t hurt as badly.”
He lifted his brows. “And that happened in New Orleans?”
“Agent Grey,” she said with a nasty smile, “I’m not some poor dumb twenty-two-year-old. If you know anything about my family, you know how they raised me. Can we please get to whatever it is you want to ask me about?”
That set him back a step. His smile was more of a grimace, and the appreciative gleam in his eyes was tainted with anger. “Well,” he said with a shrug, “since you’re in such a hurry” – quick eye roll – “I won’t worry about being a gentleman. I’m trying to find Ronnie Archer, Mrs. …Ava,” he corrected, unable to manage the French. “And I think you know where I can find him.”
She lifted her brows. “Collier Hershel confessed to killing Ronnie. He’s been arrested for it.”
His ugly smile returned. “Right. Collier killed your ex-boyfriend. That sounds logical to me.”
She set her half-eaten cookie aside. “Okay, if you want the truth, I have to warn you that it’s not very flattering to me.”
His eyes brightened.
“You see,” she said, sighing, “Ronnie had his good points. He was a nice guy, really. But I…” She studied her feet, the little dot pattern on her blue socks. “Breaking up with Mercy was…it was like amputating a limb. Not to be melodramatic, but I didn’t really recover. It wasn’t fair to Ronnie to date him, when I wasn’t able to commit to him. I held on for a while. I guess I thought that if, given enough time…”
She shook her head, lifting her gaze again to meet his. “But then I brought Ronnie home, and Mercy was here.” She bit her lip. “It was like magnets coming together. It was like gravity pulling. Poor Ronnie. He knew I was unfaithful to him, and it hurt him badly, I think. But what was I supposed to do?” She shrugged. “I’ve only ever loved Mercy. Ronnie didn’t have a place here. When he stopped coming around, I figured he’d gone home to Georgia. I didn’t think he’d been killed. My God, what got into Collier?”
Grey snorted. “I forgot you were a writer.”
“I’m sorry?”
“That was a pretty story, but that’s all it was.”
She gave him the softest, most innocent expression she was capable of mustering on short notice. “Agent Grey, I don’t know what happened to Ronnie.”
“And let me guess. Mercy doesn’t either?”
“No,” Mercy’s voice sounded from the kitchen doorway, drawing both their attentions. “I don’t.”
Of all the times for him to get his ass out of bed, Ava thought with an inward curse. She was about three seconds from escorting Grey out the door, and here came Mercy, all scowly-faced, to complicated things.
He no longer used crutches, but still wore a clunky brace on his left knee. He was in sweatpants and a long-sleeved black shirt that clung to his skin, highlighting the weight he’d lost while he recovered. His high cheekbones had a hollowness to them, sharp shadows cutting down across the narrow planes of his face. His nose looked more prominent by contrast. His hair was tied back in a knot today, and that added to the harshness of his thunderous expression, his lips pressed into invisibility.
He braced a hand on either side of the doorjamb, aggressive, threatening. “You don’t have to talk to him,” he said to Ava, eyes latched on Grey. “He’s got no reason to be here.”
“No, he doesn’t,” Ava agreed, tone light. “I’ve been telling him that. I think he was about ready to leave.”
Grey didn’t respond. He was staring back at Mercy, his complexion a notable shade paler. He was afraid. Of course he was; everyone was. He’d heard about the towering Cajun biker with the heinous reputation among underground circles. As was always the case, the flesh surpassed the imagination.
Ava cleared her throat. “Agent Grey.”
He snapped around to look at her. “Uh…oh. What?”
“You were just leaving.” She smiled.
“I…right. Yeah.” He frowned. “Yeah, I guess I was.”
“I’ll walk you out.”
He let her shoo him toward the door, but paused halfway through, a hand on the frame. “My card,” he said, extending one toward her between his first two fingers. “If you think of anything.” Dimmed though it was by the sudden fright of seeing Mercy, his smile was still threatening. “I have a feeling we’ll see each other again, Ava. Give my best to your family.”
She slammed the door in this face and locked the deadbolt.
“You–” Mercy started as she turned around, and she waved him to silence.
“Wait.” She walked past him into the living room, then to the entryway, so she could watch Grey’s department issue Tahoe back out of the drive and recede down the street. When he was safely gone, she returned.
Mercy was sitting at the table, bum leg stretched out before him, but looked no less murderous. This time, his black gaze was turned on her. “You let that fucker in the house?”
“Telling him to fuck off would have only made me look guilty.”
“You are guilty,” he said through his teeth, “and he knows it. That’s why having a goddamn conversation with him is so dangerous.”
Eight weeks she’d endured his sour temper, and she didn’t think she could take it for another day. “How is it dangerous?” she asked, flapping her arms in a helpless gesture. “He’s got no body, no physical evidence, no witnesses, no video, no nothing. He’s got nothing on either of us.”
In a frustrated huff, she went to the counter, snatched up the plate of cookies and slammed them down on the table at his elbow, cookies leaping on impact. “I baked you cookies, asshole. Eat some of them so you’ll stop looking like the Crypt Keeper.”
She closed her eyes the moment she said it, tears burning behind them. How many old reruns of Tales From The Crypt had she watched with Mercy when she was nine and ten? Curled up like a cat at his side, his long fingers stroking idly down her back. Every time she became furious, some tender memory would sneak up and bite her in the ass, toying with her raw emotions.
When she opened her eyes, he was staring at her with a tortured blend of anger and deep, deep sadness, his face tight and spare, his eyes large, hard and soft at once. He swallowed, throat working. “Why are you doing this?”
“Baking cookies?”
“Throwing your life away.”
Ava blinked at him, uncomprehending. “What?”
He glanced away from her, eyes falling to the plate, his long lashes curled against his cheeks. Pretty lashes for a man. As black as the rest of his hair. “You’ve done nothing but take care of me for two months.”
“Well I wouldn’t say nothing. I do brush my teeth and shower.”
“You know what I mean,” he said, sharply, eyes cutting back to her. “Looking after me – that’s what you do now. That’s your life.”
She made an exasperated sound. “For right now, yeah. But not forever. Mercy, you got hurt, and I’m your wife. Of course I’m going to take care of you. Do you think I shouldn’t?”
No answer.
“Let me tell ya, honey,” she said mockingly, “you’ve made it as difficult as possible. Where the hell did this touchy, grumpy teenager come from? I want my lusty Frenchman back. Any chance he’ll make a return appearance?”
“I’m being serious.”
“So am I!” She shoved her hair back. “I have tried…God, Mercy, I’ve tried all this time, to get you well, because at this point, I don’t know what’s going to bring you back to me. You’re not you.” The tears welled again and she blinked them back. “Why is this happening? What did I do wrong?”
He blinked too, and swallowed again; the movement in his throat looked like it pained him. “Ava–”
“No, I want to know what the problem is. What is so wrong that you don’t even want to look at me? You haven’t touched me–” She couldn’t make herself say it because it hurt too badly to realize: He hadn’t touched her, not carnally or casually, aside from the most basic and necessary contacts. “Don’t you get it?” she whispered. “We’re free! Larsen’s dead. The Carpathians are finished. Mason and Ronnie are dead and Mason’s dad is gonna do so much time in jail. Mercy.” She dashed at her eyes. “It’s you and me now, and we don’t have anything to run from anymore. We’re free,” she repeated. “So why don’t you want to love me anymore?”
She watched the pain spread upward, from his throat to his face, pulling hard at all the sharp angles of bone, bringing a bright, glittering light into his eyes. “My little girl.” His voice was thick. “That’s not it. You know it isn’t.”
She lifted her brows, inviting him to explain.
Again, he glanced away from her, and then came back, gathering the words he wanted to use. “I have the same nightmare every night. Every night, when I throw you off the bike, you hit your head. Hard. And you’re unconscious. And then, after Larsen and his boys kill me, they come for you, and they…” He shook his head. He didn’t have to say what they did. They both knew what would have happened had she blacked out.
“But that didn’t happen,” she said, voice gentling, as understanding dawned. She stepped in closer to him, between his spread legs, and reached to brush a stray hair back along the crown of his head. “I wasn’t hurt that badly. And I got to Larsen before he got to either of us.”
He tried to smile, but it faded quickly, his expression anguished as he tilted his head back and stared up at her. “I’ve sworn, for years and years, to protect you. That’s what I do. Forget pliers and fingernails – what I do best is keep you safe. At least, it used to be.”
“Merc–”
“I killed those bastards the night they came into your room. I saved you when I needed to. I left you when I needed to,” he added in a whisper. “Mason and Ronnie – handled. It’s what I do,” he repeated. “It’s the best, maybe the only good thing I’ve done in my whole miserable life, keeping a special little girl safe.”
She felt the burn of tears again, as they fought for release.
“And then I took you to New Orleans,” Mercy continued, the pain raw and quivering in his voice, “and I introduced you to monsters, and I told you horrible things, and I almost got you killed.
“I don’t even begin to know how to apologize for that. To atone for it.
“I was supposed to keep you safe, and I failed.”
When he went to duck his head, she caught the hard planes of his jaw in her hands and tipped his face to hers again, saw the wetness of tears standing in his eyes. She wanted to collapse, fall against him and cry into his throat until there was no more anguish left to shed. But instead she sniffed and forced a watery smile and said, “But why does it have to be one-sided all the time? Don’t I get to keep you safe sometimes? Is it not okay for me to protect the person I love most in the world?”
His jaw clenched inside her hands. “No,” he said, but it was a weak, emotional protest, and she knew it.
She said, “ ‘Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.’ ”
His brows lifted, startled. “Brontë.”
“You were wrong about something,” she said. “About it hitting me later. About me being in shock.” She shook her head. “Killing Larsen wasn’t a horror. The idea of losing you was. Don’t paint me in such a pure light,” she said, one hand dropping to his chest, pressing over the tattoo of her teeth against his heart. “I’ve got some of that soul in me. There’s nothing too terrible to contemplate when it comes to you, my darling monster.”
His hands at her waist pulled her in tight, so that her forehead pressed down against his, so they could struggle against the tears together.
“I’ve got something else to tell you,” Ava said. Something she hadn’t wanted to tell him while he was stewing in his own guilt and anger. She reached down for one of his hands, guiding it beneath her sweater, and pressed it to the skin of her stomach, down low, urging his fingers into the waistband of her jeans, so they’d be in just the right place.
He sucked in a breath; his fingers flexed lightly against her belly, pressing, like he was searching for what was still too small for either of them to feel. It was his voice, the wonder in it, the way it choked, that sent the tears spilling over her lashes, finally, and down her face. “You are?”
“Nine weeks, the doctor says.”
“The cottage,” he said.
“On purpose this time,” she said, struggling with crying and talking at the same time.
He reached with his other hand and captured the back of her head, pulled her face close and fitted her tear-wet lips to his. That was when, amid the churning happiness and grief, a raw, basic lust came roaring up in her blood, making itself known, reminding her how many weeks it had been since they’d had one another.
She opened her mouth against his, flicked the tip of her tongue against his lips. She wanted her husband, needed him desperately.
His hand that rested against her belly shoved roughly down into her jeans, cupped her sex through her panties.
She pulled back with a little gasp. “Oh, Merc, do you think you can with your knee?”
He tangled his hand in her hair, pulled her into a crushing kiss, forced her down into his lap so she straddled the thigh of his good leg.
God, yes, she thought, as his other hand came out of her jeans and he used both to attack her sweater. Thank Jesus.
He made a growling sound of protest as their lips came apart long enough for her sweater to lift over her head. And then after, as her hair fanned back into place against her shoulders, his eyes went to her breasts, the white lace of her bra, the exposed stretch of stomach, still flat this early in her first trimester.
His eyes looked huge and ferocious in his thin, pale face; he breathed through his mouth, tendons in his neck straining, chest heaving as he took one tortured moment to drink her in.
Then, with leashed frenzy and extreme tenderness, he circled her throat with one massive hand and bent her back over his arm, pressing his mouth to the delicate skin above her breastbone, where her pulse fluttered in her chest.
Ava speared her fingers through the tight sheets of his pulled-back hair, loosening the knot, pressing her fingertips against his skull. Clinging to him as he buried his face in the hollow between her breasts and the fingers at her back sprang the bra clasp with one efficient movement. She felt the band go slack, the straps sliding down her arms. He nudged the cups aside with his nose, kissed her breasts, sucked briefly at each tightly drawn nipple.
She wanted hours of this. She wanted days and days in bed with him, nothing to do but get reacquainted.
But he pulled away and lifted her, kissed her mouth again, his tongue shoving roughly between her lips. “Later,” he murmured, between kisses. “Later…I’ll take real good care of you.” He cupped her breasts, squeezed them. They were tender and swollen with the pregnancy and the pressure of his fingers made her neck weak. “Jesus, I just…” He bit her lip gently. Teased her nipples with his thumbs. “I don’t know…”
“It’s fine,” she assured. “I know what you mean. I know, sweetie.”
It was too overwhelming.
She shoved up his shirt, smoothed her hands across the warm skin of his chest, fingers skipping lightly over the surgical scars where the bullets had done their damage. It was too much. She wanted to put her mouth on his chest, suck delicately at his flat brown nipples until he rolled her onto her back and paid her back in kind. But there was this urgency driving them. Too long apart, too much distance, too much emotion.
She reached into the drawstring waistband of his sweatpants and his cock fitted against her palm. She felt the strain in him, the acute pain of this sudden, super-intense need.
“Shit,” he said through his teeth. “Come on, we have to get on the floor.”
She curled her fingers around him and gave a hard tug. “I can take care of you right here.”
“No,” he gasped. “I need on top.”
He needed to be the man again. It was one thing to pull her astride him when it was his choice, another when he was an invalid.
With a silent, internal chuckle, she agreed, and in a clumsy, fevered rush, she pulled him down on top of her on the cold tile of the kitchen floor. Her skin was too flushed for her to feel the chill. And he slid an arm beneath her bare back, sheltering and shielding, while he supported his weight with the other.
Ava lifted her hips, shoved down her jeans, managed to kick them off. The panties she left on, sweeping the lace to the side as she guided him to her entrance.
He couldn’t be delicate, and she didn’t want him to be. He came into her with one powerful downward thrust, filling her, driving her hips down against the tile.
And then he held very still, and nuzzled the side of her face, and whispered to her in French. Relief. Joy. The dazzling return of this physical closeness.
Ava pressed upward against him, a surge like a wave, lifting hips, rolling spine, breasts thrusting into his chest.
And then his hips began to move, a ferocious driving rhythm, his breath striking hard against her ear. She helped him, danced with him, gasping and straining as she felt the spiral begin, the dizzy weakness pulsing through her blood as the pleasure wound tighter.
He held deep inside her as he came, crushing her hips to his, letting the small, involuntary flexing of his back move through both of them. The tears tracked down her cheeks. Her fast, fierce orgasm set the room to spinning. She clung to his shoulders, murmuring nonsense as the luxuriant pulses rippled through her again and again.
He didn’t pull away. He shifted to his side and bundled her into his chest, their bodies still locked together, the aftershocks still too staggering to fight.
“Fillette,” he said, kissing her forehead. “Christ.”
She rested her cheek against his heart, its familiar, reassuring gallop.
That was how Maggie found them five seconds later as the back door opened.
Ava heard the key in the lock, had time to say, “Oh, shit,” and then her mother was standing over them.
“Oh,” Maggie said. She didn’t sound surprised or scandalized. She turned her back to them, busying herself with closing the door and setting her grocery bags on the counter.
Ava hated rolling away from Mercy, but she did, scrambling for her jeans and sweater.
“Mercy, I take it you’re feeling better,” Maggie said, her back still turned to them.
He sat up and leaned back against the legs of a kitchen chair, adjusting his shirt and sweatpants. He stretched his legs out before him, wincing a little as the left protested. “Yes, ma’am. A lot better.” He sent Ava a wink as she clasped her bra and shoved her arms into her sweater.
“Good,” Maggie said. With perfect timing, she turned back just as they were both decent. She propped one hand on her hip and fixed Ava with a motherly look. “Please tell me you at least told him that you’re pregnant.”
Ava gaped at her. “How did you…?”
“Oh please. I’m a mother. I know these things.” She turned to Mercy, still sitting on the floor. “She told you?”
It was the first time he’d really grinned – impish twinkle, bright flash of teeth – in eight weeks. “Yeah. She did.”
Maggie glanced between the two of them a moment, expression softening. “Congratulations.”
**
“Are you happy?” he asked that night, in the enfolding dark of her – their – bedroom.
Ava sat against the headboard; Mercy lay on his side, his head at her hip, drawing aimless patterns across her bare stomach with his fingertips. His head shifted a little, so he could see some scrap of her face in the dark, the pillow rustling. Incoming light from the streetlamp painted him in shadows and triangles of orange. His face looked young, and wondrous, and hopeful.
“About the baby?” She was realizing he would always seek her reassurance on that front. His great worry was that she’d wake one morning thinking she was too good for him, and resent him. Silly man. “I’m elated,” she assured, soothingly, sifting her fingers through his loose hair, tracing the shape of his skull, the shell of his ear. “Our second chance,” she whispered.
His hand smoothed flat across her abdomen. From wrist to middle fingertip, it fit perfectly across the span between her hipbones.
“If it’s a boy,” Ava said, “I want to name him Remy, after your dad.”
She saw his lashes flicker. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. I think that’d be nice, don’t you?”
He nodded.
“We’re going to be okay,” she assured, finger-combing his hair. “I know it.”
He took a deep breath and let it out in a contented sigh, his breath tickling across her skin. “Do you know how much I love you? I mean, do you really know?”
She felt the thickness in her throat, the pricking in her eyes. “Yes. I know.”
“I’m going to do the very best I can for you. Both of you.” He wiggled his fingers on her stomach. “However many of us there end up being. It may not be worth a damn, but I’m going to do it.”
“I know that, too.”
He shifted, rolling onto his stomach, settling between her legs. The light carved deep shadows along the high wings of his shoulder blades, the ridge of his spine down his too-thin back. She felt his breath against her, warm and damp. And she gasped at the first touch of his lips, and then his tongue.
She threaded her fingers through his hair, eyes half-closing, as she watched the shadows move across his back and endured the exquisite torture of his mouth between her legs.
Maggie hummed to herself as she pulled an extra package of bacon from the fridge and peeled it open in the bright early sunlight of morning. Yesterday morning, Mercy had come to the breakfast table without his brace, eaten two bowls of oatmeal and then looked disappointed that there hadn’t been any more. Maggie and Ava had exchanged a startled, excited look. He was eating again. He was back.
“Shit, if that’s all it took, I’d have told him I was pregnant,” Ghost had grumbled, and Maggie had swatted his arm.
“Stop. And pick me up an extra pack of ground beef on your way home. If he’s going to come back to life, I’m going to feed him, damn it.”
This morning was a big day on two accounts. Ava was going to sort her school situation. And Mercy was getting back on his bike for the first time, going back to his first church meeting at the clubhouse. The boys had to vote in a new Vice President, and Ghost had waited until Merc was ready to sit at table again.
They did love each other, those boys, even if they fucked it up most of the time.
The sound of a bike heralded Aidan’s arrival before he entered through the back door. It felt good for things to be back to normal, without all the constantly locked doors and prospect escorts. They could all breathe again.
“Hi, sweetie,” she greeted as Aidan dropped a kiss into her hair and gave her shoulders a squeeze. “Breakfast?”
“Yeah, that’d be good.” He sounded tired and dull as he took a seat at the table. He’d been sounding that way a lot, lately.
“Did you come for Mercy’s first ride?” she asked, deciding to press on with her brightness as she laid the bacon in the skillet with a hiss.
“Yeah.” He reached to fiddle with the salt and pepper shakers, frowning to himself.
Maggie toweled off her hands and said, “Aidan, is everything alright?”
He glanced over, expression guarded. “Yeah. Why?”
Now she frowned. “No reason.”
Footfalls heralded Mercy’s arrival and she thought there was a certain air of a nervous kid on his first day of school about him, as he stood in the threshold a moment, without his brace, hair tidily knotted back, his flannel shirt looking a lot like Ava had ironed it.
Maggie tried to keep her smile small. “Morning.”
“Morning.” He went to the table with only the tiniest trace of a limp and exchanged a palm-slide with Aidan. “What’s up?”
Aidan grinned. “I hear you got your mommy to sign your permission slip so you can get back on two wheels again.”
“He doesn’t need permission to kick your ass, douche,” Ava said as she breezed into the room with a swirling of her knee-length sweater coat and a clicking of boot heels. She paused to kiss Mercy on top of the head which made him blush and didn’t help the whole mommy comparison.
“Where are you going?” Aidan asked her. “Dressed like a yuppie?”
“School.” She went for the coffee pot then retracted her hand, frowning.
“It’s decaf,” Maggie assured, passing over a mug.
Ava nodded, lower lip trembling in a small show of nerves.
“Are they going to take you back?” Aidan wanted to know. “After you dropped out?”
“I withdrew, I didn’t drop out,” she corrected. “So I hope so, yeah.”
“You’re taking your new story, right?” Mercy asked her.
“Yeah.” She sipped the coffee, made a face, and then set it aside. “Ugh. Maybe ginger ale instead.”
“Who did I hear throwing up earlier?” Ghost asked, joining them and completing the family portrait.
Ava raised a weak hand as she went to the fridge.
“Oh, right. Morning sickness.” He made a face that was part-concerned father, part-angry-father-in-law, and ultimately useless. “You still going to school?”
“I have to. I made an appointment. I’ll just…puke in a trash can, if I have to.”
“That’s my girl,” Maggie said with a laugh. She plated the bacon with a few flicks of the fork. “You want to try and eat something before you go?”
“Ugh. No, thanks.” Ava went to kiss Mercy goodbye. She had decided, Maggie noticed with an inner smile, that she wasn’t going to blush and slink around in front of her father and brother. She was married and she was going to kiss her husband full on the lips when she told him goodbye, no matter who was watching.
“Good luck today,” she told Mercy as she drew back.
“You too.” He made an apologetic face. “And you might wanna pop a Tic-Tac.”
“Shit,” Ava muttered. “Alright, I’m off.”
“Be careful,” Ghost admonished.
“Love you, good luck,” Maggie called.
Then it was just her and the three boys. She smiled as she brought the bacon to the table, earning three curious looks for it.
“What?” Ghost asked.
“Nothing. Just thinking what a cute picture you all make. Family togetherness,” she said in a false, saccharine voice. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
She laughed when they all rolled their eyes in perfect unison.
“You withdrew from all your classes,” Mrs. Waltham said, clasping her hands together on top of her desk blotter. Over on the file cabinet, the calico goldfish fumbled through their bowl, scales shimmering. They were more fun to watch than Mrs. Waltham’s questioning expression, but Ava forced herself to maintain eye contact, swallowing another surge of nausea. She clasped the arms of her chair with clammy palms and thought calm, cool thoughts, willing her stomach to quiet.
“Yes, ma’am. I didn’t want to, but my husband had a terrible motorcycle accident, and I needed to put my time toward his recovery. It wouldn’t have been fair to him or my studies to try and do both at once.”
“Hmm. I see.”
“So,” Ava pressed on with a deep breath, “I was hoping I might be able to sign up for spring classes. I would still very much like to earn my master’s and…”
Mrs. Waltham was smiling. “Relax, dear. This isn’t the Spanish Inquisition. I saw that there was some…drama…encircling your…family, and it didn’t surprise me that you’d withdrawn.”
Ava winced. “Is this the part when you tell me that the grad program has no need of biker wives?”
“No.” She snorted. “This is the part where I tell you that I read your new piece while you were out in the waiting room.” She leaned across the desk, eyes twinkling. “I love it.”
The burst of relief eased the tension in her gut. “You do?”
“With your last story, ‘Falling,’ you revive the Byronic hero. And with this new one, ‘Fearless,’ you manage to give him a happy ending. It’s interesting.” She propped her chin on a fist. “Most of the time, a hero like that doesn’t get the girl.”
Ava twitched a small smile. “I think that’s because they don’t have the right kind of girl.”
Mercy received the hugs and the back-slaps gladly from his brothers, grateful no one made a big fuss. Ghost rested a hand briefly on his shoulder, a quiet, inclusive gesture of support, before he said, “Alright, let’s head in,” to the group of them.
Mercy felt the anticipatory shiver as he stepped into the chapel, that old feeling this room had always inspired in him, almost like that little spark of energy when Ava’s hand hovered above his skin, right before she touched him. A sacred room, steeped in the immediate traditions of this century, and those of centuries past, an echo of Arthur and his knights pulling up chairs at the Round Table.
When they were all seated, even Troy, puffing away on what might be his last cigarette, Ghost settled in, and Littlejohn shut the door from the outside.
“First off,” Ghost said. “A little good news, I think, given the last couple of months. Merc, you’ve got two things to celebrate, yeah?”
All eyes came down to him at the foot of the table. He felt a faint fluttering of nerves as he lifted his left hand, touched his thumb to the new gold band on his fourth finger. Everyone nodded; they already knew he was married, but this was Ghost’s way of accepting it officially within the club. Ava was his old lady now. She was to be given the proper respect and homage as such.
“And,” Mercy said, “we’re expecting.”
Only Ghost and Aidan knew that part, and the group erupted in a burst of table slapping and sharp barks of congratulatory laughter.
“That’s some deal the courthouse is giving out,” RJ teased. “Buy one marriage license, get the first baby free.”
Rottie cuffed his friend playfully from the side. “Congrats, man,” he told Mercy. “You guys deserve that.”
“That poor thing,” Hound said, “is going to have to give birth to your giant offspring.”
“C-section,” Briscoe said. “That’s the way to go.”
Walsh sent Mercy a small grin, his well-wishes silent, but deeply felt.
Michael watched the rest of them with a robotic detachment, his expression unreadable as he regarded Mercy from down the table.
Whatever. The most important face was Ghost’s, and he was smiling.
“Alright,” the president said when things had quieted down. “We know why we’re really here.”
Mercy took a deep breath, taking in the scents of old cigarette smoke and wood polish, letting the chapel reach into him, take hold again.
He was back. Finally, after five years, he was back for good. And like Ava had said, he was free, too. All his life, and now, at this point, with his club stretched before him and his woman’s ring on his finger, he was free, and the taste was extraordinary.
Ava found Bonita visiting, when she stepped into Maggie’s office. The former queen seemed to be on her way out, flipping her hair over the collar of her jacket, and she turned a beaming smile on Ava.
“Mira,” she exclaimed. “Look, she’s glowing. Little madre.” She came to buss Ava’s cheek. “How do you feel, bambina?”
“A little green,” Ava said. And a little overwhelmed. Back off, woman!
“That will pass,” Bonita said with a wave. “What’s important is that you’re going to have a baby!”
“That’s where pregnancy leads, they tell me.”
The sarcasm lost on her for the moment, Bonita patted her face again as she breezed out. “We will plan you the most wonderful shower!” she called in farewell.
Ava sank down in a chair when she was gone. “She exhausts me,” she muttered.
“Me too,” Maggie agreed. She set aside the folder she was digging through. “How’d the meeting go?”
“I registered for spring classes.”
“Good.” Maggie propped an elbow on the desk, cupped her chin in her hand, and really settled in to stare at Ava. “You good?”
Ava smiled. She knew all the layers behind the simple question, and appreciated her mother’s unparalleled ability to cut to the chase in the gentlest way possible. She leaned back in her chair. “I am good.”
Maggie smiled back. “I know you know the ropes, but it’s a little different being married to one.” She made a gesture toward the clubhouse. “It’s riskier. You’ve got so much more to lose, and you’re more in the loop. It’s…” She sighed. “It’s nothing you haven’t already handled. But you’re my baby.” Her smiled twitched in one corner. “And you’ve been through so much.”
Ava said, “But that’s the thing, isn’t it? It’s always so much. And you couldn’t think of being anywhere else.”
“My smart girl.” Maggie blinked and her eyes looked shiny. “You were made for this. I just want you to be happy, too.”
“I am, Mom.”
“I know it.”
Five minutes later, she walked across the Dartmoor lot, in search of her man. It was a cold day, the wind biting and smelling of the river, the sky cloudless, a sharp blue that hurt her eyes, and struck unforgivingly on the acres of corrugated steel. The air was redolent with the old perfume of exhaust and pavement and motor oil. Ava pulled the halves of her long coat together against the wind and thanked heaven for the chance to return here, unscathed, to home.
She ran into Aidan in front of the clubhouse. “He’s working,” he said of Mercy. “I’ve got a buncha imports for him to take a look at.”
“Really?” She was surprised and pleased, and a little bit worried.
“I told him not to overdo it,” Aidan said. “Not that he’ll listen.”
“Thanks.” She started to turn, to double back to the bike shop, but paused, catching her brother by the sleeve. “Hey, Aidan. I mean it. Thank you.” For all that he’d done, since he’d headed to New Orleans for them.
He looked awkward, like he didn’t know what to do with her gratitude. “Just don’t get into any more bike crashes, okay?” he said, gruffly, tugging at a lock of her hair.
She smiled, eyes going to the front of his cut, the empty place where an officer’s patch would be stitched. “You didn’t get voted in as VP,” she said, quietly.
“Walsh did,” he said, and made a good show of looking like he didn’t care. “He was the obvious choice. I knew it wasn’t going to be me.”
She made a sympathetic face, reaching to brush dirt off the breast pocket of his cut, and he stepped back.
“I haven’t earned it yet,” he explained, his smile grim. He gave her a little salute as he walked away.
“Hmm,” she murmured to herself. No, he hadn’t earned it yet, but that didn’t mean the overlook hadn’t crushed him anyway.
She shook the thought away and doubled back to the bike shop.
Mercy wasn’t working anymore, but he had been, and looked happy as a clam standing in one of the garage bays, toweling grease from his hands, a black smudge along one high cheekbone. The way his face lit up when he saw her warmed her insides, left her smiling.
“Having fun?” she asked, after he’d kissed her. He smelled like bikes. Like a mechanic. She loved that smell.
He nodded. “Got my hands dirty again.” He held them out to her to demonstrate the dirt deep under his nails. “Feels good.” He went back to toweling. “Things go alright at school?”
“Yep. I start back in Jaunary.”
“She liked your story?”
“ ‘Fearless’? She loved it, apparently. She wants me to submit it for publication in a literary journal she recommended.”
His smile was full of pride, the husband and father roles getting all mixed up again. She didn’t care; secretly, she liked it, if she was honest with herself.
“Let me wash up a little,” he said, “and then we’ll get out of here. There’s something I want to show you.”
Nerves flared up in her stomach when it came time to mount his bike again. She shoved the butterflies down with a few deep breaths. There was no evidence left of the crash. Walsh and RJ had fixed the Dyna up while Mercy recuperated; she looked as beautiful and matte-finished as she always had.
“I know,” Mercy said quietly, giving her waist a little squeeze. “It happened to me, too.”
Which meant that if he could get past it, so could she. With one last deep breath, she swung her leg over behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist. It felt immeasurably good, holding onto him again like this.
She hitched her chin up onto his shoulder. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
The last of her worry melted away once they were out on the road. The bike felt solid and strong; so did Mercy. She settled in against the beating of the wind against her sunglasses and bare face and let the trip wash over her, the way the world seemed to be standing still from this vantage point, the two of them the only living things moving at the same speed, breathing at the same rhythm. Like it was just them, alone in a wilderness made for two.
A few signs remained, in the heart of town, sunk at haphazard angles into the winter lawns. A few last protests; a residual enmity that Ava knew would take months, maybe even years to fade. Knoxville wasn’t anti-Dog, but it was frightened, and the road to reconcile was a long one, paved with setbacks. For now, the scandal of the mayor was still making front pages and circulating through ladies’ luncheons. Next month it would be some other minor social uproar, and so on and so on, the Lean Dogs fading back into the tapestry of the city.
Mercy pulled over at the bakery, took the turn into the alley, parked in an old familiar spot that set Ava’s heart to pounding. Her eyes went up the iron staircase to the door at the top of the landing, the small apartment with the under-window bookshelves and the ever-present smell of baking bread.
“Your old place,” she breathed, as he swung off the bike and held it steady for her. “You didn’t–”
“I did,” he said. “For now. Until we can afford someplace big enough for a family.” He withdrew the keys from his cut pocket. “You wanna go up?”
“Yes.”
The steps rang under their boots in the old way that she remembered, clanging metallic sounds she knew so well. He handed her the key, let her unlock the door and send it swinging inward with a gentle push of her fingertips. Ava braced herself for change: some hideous wallpaper, vivid paint, an overhaul, badly patched holes in the wall, evidence of vandalism. She had no idea what the tenants during the past five years had done to the place. They might have ripped out the bookcases, renovated the old bath. They might have…
Sunlight streamed in through the bare window, lighting on the old warped boards, a helix of dust motes lifting as the incoming air disturbed the peace. It was the same. It was exactly the same.
The bookshelves, waiting for their collections of paperbacks, the claw-foot tub in the bath, the old kitchen stove, the white walls, the ancient wall sconce lighting. Empty, holding its breath, waiting for them.
The same.
Ava whirled to face her husband, his face golden in the wash of sunlight, his brows drawn together with concentration as he studied her.
“It’s like you just left it,” she whispered, tears coming up in her eyes that she didn’t understand. “It’s the same.”
“Ava.” He went very slowly down to one knee, the good one, grimacing as the bad one pulled with this ill-advised movement. She was thankful for the warmth of his big hands when he pulled both of hers into his. “There were other apartments, but I wanted this one for a reason.”
“What are you doing down there? We’re already married, you dork,” she said, laughing through the tight knot of tears in her throat.
“Yeah, but…” She saw his pulse flickering in the hollow of his throat, the strange earnest softness of his face. “The thing is, I wanted to marry you before. When you were seventeen. Before all the bad shit happened. It’s good you got to go to school – that’s what you deserved – but damn it, I wanted you then.”
“I know,” she said softly, sweeping his knuckles with her thumb. “We don’t have to go through it again.”
“We do,” he insisted. “Because I want us to have a chance to do it the way we wanted to, the first time around. I think it was always supposed to be this way, and I want to do it right.”
Ava tugged on his hands, trying to pull him to his feet, and when that didn’t work, she dropped down to his level, caught his face in her hands and kissed him. “In that case,” she said when she pulled back, still crying, smiling too, so full to bursting she couldn’t stand it. “Will you put me up against the wall, like you want me too bad and you can’t help yourself?”
She shrieked with laughter when he surged to his feet, swinging her up like she weighed nothing, lifting her under her arms and pressing her back to the wall. She wrapped her legs tight around his waist, her arms around his neck. Her mouth was open to meet the fall of his, the wet, demanding kiss. His lips forcing hers wide. His tongue plumbing deep, searching all the deep corners, as his hips pinned her to the wall. He moved against her, a light grinding, letting her feel that he was ready, that all she had to do was make a suggestion, and he would go all Cajun loverboy in a heartbeat, purring in her ear and making her limp as a doll.
They were both struggling to catch their breath when he pulled back a fraction. “One question,” he said, and his voice brought a low, desperate sound up the back of her throat that made him grin wickedly. “Those stories you write. Are they about me?”
“Every word.”
He said something dark and sultry in French, and kissed her throat, tracing her pulse with his tongue.
Ava gasped and arched up into him, nails digging into his neck. “What does that mean?” she asked.
He laughed a little. And then he kissed her once more, one of those languid, thorough kisses that tasted like delayed gratification. “It means,” he said, his lips brushing against hers,
“ ‘I think you’re wrong, fillette, because you’re the fearless
one.’ ”
He kissed her again, in their room full of sunlight, and treasured memories, and possibilities.
THE END
~*~
The Dartmoor Series will continue in Book 2, Price of Angels, expected Spring 2015.
Keep updated at:
hoofprintpress.blogspot.com
@lauren_gilley
facebook.com/Lauren Gilley – Author
[email protected]
To read more about the Lean Dogs, you can find them in novels II and III of the Russell series:
God Love Her
and
Keeping Bad Company
Other Titles From Lauren Gilley
Shelter
The Walker Series
Keep You
Dream of You
Better Than You
Fix You
Rosewood
Whatever Remains
The Russell Series
Made for Breaking
God Love Her
“Things That Go Bang In The Night”
Keeping Bad Company
“Green Like The Water” (Coming Soon)
Dartmoor Series
Fearless
Price of Angels (Spring 2015)
Hoofprintpress.blogspot.com
@lauren_gilley