Jasper

The media followed us everywhere we went. I’d wanted a new reputation, and Marin had certainly delivered on that. I was now the boyfriend of a kidnapping victim. Every image snapped of us where I was holding her hand, palm pressed into her back to direct her away from the photographers, had a caption above it that read something along the lines of:

Local Business owner, Jasper Black, Focuses on Helping Fiancée, Marin Wagner, Recover from Harrowing Ordeal

It had only taken a few days for the press to pick up on our engagement. Marin refused to take the ring off, so some plucky photographer caught a snap of it, and now, in addition to rehashing the harrowing details of Marin’s kidnapping, the gossip blogs were also talking about the price of the ring, whether it was made from blood diamonds, and how soon we would get married.

One blogger had even begun to speculate that Marin was pregnant. However, everyone in the comments loved Marin and berated the woman for making baseless accusations during what was already an incredibly stressful time for us.

Even though Angel was behind bars, Marin had nightmares most nights. She would wake up in a puddle of sweat, screaming. I would pull her into my side and massage her back as she slept, wishing I could take away the memory of what happened to her. Angel told her he had the police on his side, and Marin was terrified he would be able to command them from behind bars.

“What if he tells them about some of the things you’ve done? What if you go to prison? What if I go as an accessory?” She placed her hand on her stomach, eyes wide with panic. “What would happen to our baby?”

I massaged a finger down the bridge of her nose, smoothing the wrinkles from between her eyebrows. “We aren’t going to go to prison. Angel may have friends in high places, but so do I.”

It was true. I’d been in contact with several of the responding officers from that day, and many of them had been trying to bust Angel for months. Organized crime was a big problem in large cities, but Angel took it to a new level. He was crazy, unpredictable. He left a trail of chaos wherever he went. He was the kind of guy who needed to be put behind bars and never released. The fact that I was able to help the police do that earned me a lot of favors.

Really, though, I only wanted to use those favors to keep Marin safe. At one time in my life, I would have asked the officers to turn a blind eye to one illegal deal or another, but now, I wanted to live right for Marin and the baby. I wanted to get my life together and take care of them. I didn’t want my good reputation to be just a false front I showed to the world. I wanted it to be the truth. Marrying Marin was the first step in making that happen. The rest involved pulling back from the Hellions.

“But you love the Hellions!” Marin argued, mouth hanging open in shock as I laid out my plan to step down as leader of the MC.

“Of course I do. But I love you more. And you need a reliable husband and father for your child. You don’t need a biker who is tangled up in illegal business deals and MC wars. You need me to be entirely dedicated to raising our child and loving you, and I’m okay with that.”

“I don’t want to change you. I thought I did at first. I thought I wanted you to become this whole new person after you met me, but I realize now that I love you for who you are. You don’t need to change for me.”

“I’m not changing,” I assured her. “I’m improving. There’s a difference.”

I truly believed that. Seeing Marin tied up in that abandoned store, watching her suffer through nightmares and flashbacks was enough reason for me to leave that life behind. I never wanted anyone to use my family against me the way Angel had. I didn’t want anyone to have a reason to do something like that to me. I wanted to expand my business, start a few more Jasper’s Grills around the country, and support my family in a legal way.

When I told the Hellions about my plan to step down, they almost rioted.

“You can’t leave!” Tats screamed. He had been having an especially difficult time since Bear’s murder, and I knew my stepping down would upset him most.

“I’m going to have a baby,” I said. “I can’t stay involved with drug deals and theft and murder. I have to get myself on the straight and narrow for Marin and the baby.”

“We don’t have to be involved in those things, either,” Tats said. “We can clean up our act.”

Of course, Tats would say that. He would have said almost anything to keep me as leader of the Hellions, but surely the rest of the guys would disagree. They wouldn’t want to give up their lifestyle for me. However, I looked around the room and realized everyone was nodding.

“Spike and Tracks have been building up their construction business this last year,” Tats explained. “And you have the restaurants. The money we make from the illegal stuff would be easy to make up if we focused on the legal businesses.”

“I don’t expect any of you to give up your lives for me,” I said.

“Running drugs isn’t our life,” Tats said. “Being a part of the Hellions, being together – that’s our life. And we can’t have you running out and deserting us.”

If I hadn’t been standing in front of a group of tatted up, bearded, muscly men, I possibly would have cried. But, of course, I didn’t. I held it in, tightened my lower lip, and nodded. “Then let’s do it.”

And we did. Slowly, the illegal businesses were phased out, and the Hellions became a totally above-board motorcycle club. We still made a rather scary showing when we pulled up anywhere on our bikes with our kuttes on, but trouble no longer followed us like a shadow. There were still parties all the time – I couldn’t expect the guys to give up everything for me. They drank and got high and had their fair share of club girls, but they were upstanding citizens during the day.

It was the best thing that ever happened to my reputation. I opened new grills in Austin, Oklahoma City, and Phoenix, and made more money than ever. Marin’s charity budget doubled, and after months of research and planning, she got to watch as the construction crew Spike and Tracks owned broke ground on a new community center.

Marin wanted kids like her siblings to have a place to hang out during the day. And she wanted women like her mother to have a safe space to go where she could use the computers and find a steady job. The center featured two full-size basketball courts, an Olympic-size swimming pool, a computer room, an outdoor playground, and a soccer field. Marin called it the RJB Eastside Community Center.

We didn’t yet know whether the baby would be a boy or a girl because we decided to let it be a surprise, but we had chosen names already: Rose Josephine Black for a girl or Roderick Joseph Black for a boy.

Angel was convicted on every single one of the dozens of charges lodged against him – murder, kidnapping, assault, possession of illegal narcotics, intent to sell illegal narcotics, and a whole host of others. It was rare to ever involve the police in motorcycle club business, so the press had a field day running the stories – talking about the dark underbelly of the city and life inside a motorcycle club. Tats did a few interviews for local news stations, talking about his life before “reinventing himself”.

I went to the courthouse every day of his trial, so I could look him in the eyes and remind him that he didn’t win. That he would rot in prison while I was free to marry a gorgeous woman and raise my child. Marin only went on the few days she had to testify against him; otherwise, she wanted to pretend as if the whole thing weren’t happening.

She was gorgeous on the stand –composed and glowing, her pregnant belly a few weeks from popping. I could not have been prouder of her. She stayed strong while telling her story, though she broke down once at home. I cradled her in my arms and promised her it would be okay, that Angel would spend the rest of his life in prison, never able to walk free and hurt her.

A few weeks after Angel was formally sentence – seventy-six years in prison without the possibility for parole – Marin went into labor.

“Is this a false labor pain?” I asked, standing in the bedroom doorway, completely shell-shocked.

Marin leaned forward, clutching her round stomach and groaning. “Does this look like a false labor pain? My water broke an hour ago, Jasper! This is real. Stop trying to tell me it isn’t.”

“Sorry, sorry,” I said, spinning in a small circle, looking for the hospital bags Marin had packed the weekend before in preparation.

“In the hall closet,” she huffed out.

Her water broke during her afternoon nap – the last trimester of pregnancy had included plenty of naps and a lot of pink frosted donuts – but she’d wanted to stay at home and labor as long as possible before getting to the hospital.

“If I got to the hospital, I’d want an epidural, and I want to try and give birth naturally. So, the longer I stay here, the higher the chance is that it will be too late for an epidural by the time I get to the hospital.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said again. Marin had tried to explain her reasoning to me on multiple occasions, but every time I just shook my head. “If you’ll want an epidural, then why don’t we just take you to the hospital as soon as you go into labor and you can get one.”

She sighed and explained everything again, emphasizing how much she wanted a natural birth.

“But why?”

Finally, she gave up on me, and we agreed to disagree on the topic. As we drove to the hospital, though, Marin clinging to the handle in the ceiling, shouting at me to run through stop signs and red lights, I brought it up again.

“If you’d let me take you to the hospital an hour ago, this wouldn’t be happening,” I said.

She stopped groaning long enough to glare at me, her eyes deadly. “I want a natural labor!”

“Sure, because it looks so much nicer than a labor with pain medication.”

She was sweating, her face contorted in pain with another contraction. As soon as the contraction was over, she lashed out at me, punching me in the shoulder. “Just drive and stop commenting on things you don’t understand.”

As stressful as the drive to the hospital was, it finally felt like we were a normal couple. Me, the hapless man, and Marin, the in-control woman. It was like starring in a television sitcom. I loved it.

Half an hour after arriving at the hospital, Marin got an epidural. The nurse pushed me out of the room, insisting the needle plunging into her spine would be more disturbing than watching her give birth. I didn’t question whether that was true or not.

When I got back to the room, Marin narrowed her eyes at me. “Don’t say a word.”

I smiled. “I would never.”

“If men could give birth, you would have asked for pain medication three hours ago.”

I agreed.

Within the hour, Roderick Joseph Black was born. He had bright blond hair like his mom and blue eyes the same shade as mine. The moment I saw him and watched Marin hold him for the first time, I knew I would do anything to protect them both. They were my entire world.