Jack

 

“You made me do it once. I’ll do it again and again. For you. For us. Forever.”

 

I had read the note over and over so many times, I had it memorized. But I didn’t have it figured out.

 

I’m not sure why I hadn’t shown it to Ellie yet, or even told her about it. We’d had so much else going on, and that night when the rock got thrown, I had figured that we’d rocked each other’s worlds enough.

 

Speaking of…I started to get hard again, just remembering how incredible the sex was with her.

 

But we weren’t doing that anymore. Fuck. These six months were going to drag their asses by, second by tick-tocking second.

 

We now were down to just one day before the wedding. Life had whipped up around us over the past several days, and my MC brethren and their old ladies were proving their weight in gold.

 

Keith had also been a member of the club, and everyone understood what Peter’s appearance meant to me. The old ladies were now constantly bombarding me with hugs and gifts and soft looks, and the guys were beating me up with backslaps. Add to that, I was getting more than my share of cigars, accompanied with anecdotes of mistakes with babies. Life had definitely gone corkscrew.

 

Ellie was getting a dose of MC love from the old ladies as well, and I’m sure they were giving her more than she was used to—gifts and casseroles and baby supplies and what-have-you. The house was filled with boxes, tissue papers, bags, and baby stuff. Our lives had been blown into hurricane insta-family, and I can’t say that either one of us was completely comfortable with it.

 

Add to that, the wedding—which we weren’t talking about with the MC, but we still had to go and get the paperwork and blood tests and all the civil government crap sorted out. Thank fuck her grandmother hadn’t included a clause requiring a church wedding.

 

The past couple days had gotten a little weird with Ellie, though. She wasn’t talking to me much, seemed like she was trying to keep a distance. Pulling on her sleeve a lot, she seemed skittish and jittery. I figured it was just the stress of everything going down.

 

Hell, to be honest, I wasn’t talking much to her, either. It was like the less we spent time together, the less we had to deal with putting the kibosh on our physical attraction—which seemed not to be going away anytime soon. I couldn’t be around her—hell, I couldn’t even think about her—without wanting her. So, for the next six months, it looked like avoidance would be our mutual go-to modus operandi.

 

Aside from that, things had eased up with regard to the fuckwit stalker who had disappeared from radar since the installation of the security system—which could be either a good or a bad sign.

 

Biggest thing left over: I still hadn’t gotten to the bottom of the threat on the rock note. So, that needed sorting. ASAP. I just wasn’t sure of the best way to tap Ellie for the deets, whatever she knew.

 

“Yo, Grath, come back here when you got a minute,” I called out when I saw him escorting his latest client to the front of the shop.

 

He tipped his chin up to me.

 

I sat back down at my desk and waited, playing with the damn note between my fingers. I had a bad feeling about it, and wanted to run my theory by him before acting on it. Because if my gut was right…

 

“Whatchu want?” He was at my door.

 

“You remember this?” I flipped the dirty wrinkled note around to face him.

 

“Yeah.” He snagged it to refresh his memory of the words. Looked at it a moment, set it back down on my desktop. “You ever show it to Ellie? Ask her about it?”

 

“No, not yet. It slipped through the cracks, been crazy, last few days.”

 

“I hear you. But what’s stopping you now?”

 

“Just a feeling. This note…it makes it sound like she’s guilty of something, like something bad went down, and she was in on it. I don’t know. Pisses me off, reading it. She doesn’t seem like the type…from everything she’s said, I can’t believe…”

 

“…that she’d do something illegal, with or for this asswipe. I hear you, bruh. She talk to you much, about him? What’s her take?”

 

“Yeah, she talked. Sounded like she wanted nothing to do with him. Said they’d dated briefly, he got rough on her once—fuckin’ knocked her to the ground with a cheekbone punch. She been trying to lose his ass ever since. I don’t think she’d have been asking him for any favors, not since that. This note—it doesn’t add up.”

 

“Agreed. So why haven’t you asked her?”

 

“I got a gut feeling she wouldn’t tell me if there was something she did. I don’t think she’d outright lie to me, but she needs me, she’s walking on eggshells around me the last couple o’ days. Things are…they got kinda complicated…”

 

“You fuckin’ fucked her, didn’t you? Oh man, way to fuck it right up.” Grath had the balls to laugh right in my face. He was one of the very few human beings who could get away with that. And yeah, I totally deserved it.

 

Not that I would let him do it for long. I shut that shit right down. “Shut the fuck up.”

 

That only made him laugh harder. “She’s effectively your sister-in-law! She’s gonna be in your life forever, bruh. You know better. Oh, you are fucked.” He cracked up again.

 

“You don’t think I know that? I know. So shut it. We aren’t doing that anymore. Shut that shit down. I don’t need to hear it. It’s sorted.”

 

“Riiiight. It’s sorted.” He chuckled. “Watching you two together, it was inevitable. Obvious. That’s fucking hysterical!—Ah, I needed that laugh. That felt great. Thanks, man. Owe you.”

 

I side-eyed him, then got back to the point. “Thing is, she’s really comfortable with you, man. That thing you do with women, get them to talk…think you could give it a go, get the real story on what she had this Brian asshole do for her?”

 

He smiled slyly. “Honey, don’t be jealous. Can I help it that the women all just love me more? They can’t resist a gorgeous gay man. They are as moths to my flame.”

 

“Easy there, Ricky Martin.”

 

“Of course I’ll talk to her. You want me to go now? My next client isn’t due for a few hours. Is she still at your place?—Speaking of, how long is she staying with you? You gonna let her cramp your nasty-ass bachelor style for much longer? Seems out of character, sweetie.”

 

“Grath, cut it with the sweet talk. You had your fun. I’m serious.”

 

“You are so easy to rile. So. Hard. To resist.” But finally, he sat his ass down and got real. “Okay, I’m good. So talk. What’s the deal with you two? You putting up with her and the baby in your space for long?—I get that you wanna know the kid, but playing the little family is not your style, amigo. When are they moving out?”

 

I looked him dead in the eye a minute before admitting, “They’re not. Not for a while.”

 

His eyebrows shot up. “And how long is a while?”

 

“Six months.”

 

“Six months? That’s a very specific time frame. Why six months? Give me the scoop.”

 

I looked at the desk, knowing if the case were turned around and it were him and not me in the hotspot, I’d be pissed if he didn’t tell me what was going down. So I shared.

 

“Peter’s got some heart troubles, and he’s looking at a bunch of medical stuff coming up in the next few years. She has a trust fund she can’t get to unless she marries within a few days now, and she won’t get it until she’s been married for six months. We’re doin’ that. Then she’ll get the money, Peter can get all he needs, she won’t be up shit creek for it, and we get a divorce and go on with our lives.”

 

Grath’s eyes widened throughout the telling, and he blew out a long breath. “Wow. That’s intense. Peter—he’s gonna be alright?”

 

“Yeah. He is. He’s already had the worst of it sorted, had an operation a number of weeks ago. He’s doing okay. Gotta get bigger and stronger for the next stuff. But he’s gonna be okay.” My saying it would make it so. I willed it to be true, every time I thought about it. Peter would be okay. Any other outcome was unthinkable.

 

Grath totally got it. “Yeah, bruh, he is. I get it. No rocking the boat too hard with Ellie. Under enough pressure. Yeah, I’m more than happy to go talk to her. She home now?”

 

“Should be. We’re headed to the courthouse later, get the paperwork sorted.”

 

“When were you going to share with the MC, man? This stuff, it’s important, it gets shared.”

 

I shook my head. “On the DL. Since it’s temporary, just for her and Peter and the trust fund, I didn’t see any reason to make a big announcement. It’ll be over soon enough. We’re doing it under radar, you know? Not making a big deal.”

 

“Okay. Right. Not a big deal.” He smirked at me. “Check back in with me in six months. I’m starting a pool.” Then he winked at me, snagged the stalker note off my desk, folded it and stuffed it in a pocket, and turned to leave.

 

Before he even got out my office door, he turned back to me. “You do know I gotta share, right, man? Guys are gonna wonder, might lose some respect for Ellie if they think too long about her living with you for six months, baby-mama to your brother’s kid, no other official word from you on what’s going on. You gotta rep, my friend, and it ain’t of an angel. They’re gonna start thinkin’ a lot less of that lady, you don’t tell ’em what’s up. It’ll be better for Ellie, you share. Makes her an official old lady, be good for her. If you keep your hands off o’ her, that’s your business. Not that we won’t be paying attention. Because you know we will.” He laughed and winked again, and this time he got his ass out of my office.

 

“Get the fuck out of here.”

 

I watched him as he strutted to the front door of the shop. He clapped his hands once and rubbed them together, beaming at Trini. “Whoo boy, this is going to be fun!”

 

Not quite. “Whatever you do, do not ring the doorbell,” I called. He gave me an overhead thumbs-up.