MAC
Present Day…
I’m heaving into the porcelain bowl. My stomach cramps and purges but there’s nothing left. I’m an empty husk of my former self.
The bathroom door opens quietly. I don’t hear it, but I do hear, “Jesus, babe. You okay? How much did you have to drink?”
It’s Kelly, come to see me brought low. He sits on the edge of the bathtub and rubs my back in slow circles that are oddly soothing. “Nothing,” I moan, positive I’m about to die. How are women expected to survive this?
The door opens again and someone else steps in. This makes me happy because there’s nothing I want more right now than a budding audience to witness my torture.
“Kelly. Come here often?” It’s Grace. There’s irony in her voice because she was sick earlier tonight, and Casey’s brother found himself nursing her through it too.
There’s a long pause.
“Shit,” Kelly mutters.
“You’re pregnant,” Grace breathes in utter shock.
They’ve found the test resting on the bathroom vanity. The one I purchased on the Uber drive here.
Kelly snatches his hand from my back as if he just discovered I have leprosy. Newsflash, biker dude, pregnancy is not contagious. I want to voice the catty remark, but I simply can’t. All I can do is hold tight to the porcelain bowl and pray my end will come swiftly.
“Who’s the father?” he demands.
I lean back, using the backs of my hands to swipe at the ghastly mascara tracks on my cheeks. Kelly and Grace both stare and the weight of it is too much. “Jake,” I rasp, my voice hoarse from puking. “It’s Jake.”
Of course it’s him. It’s always been him. Asshead.
I swallow as my revelation sinks in. For the first time in my life, I feel I’ve lost all direction. I’m having a baby.
“Are you okay?” Grace asks me softly.
“No,” I choke out and then notice her face is as pale as the frosty paint on the walls. “Did I wake you?”
She shakes her head. “Your phone did.” Grace plucks it from the pocket of her blue silk pyjama pants. Her brows furrow on the screen before she holds it out toward me. “Henry has rung you three times.”
Kelly snatches the phone before I can reach for it. It rings immediately in his hand. He hits the green button and puts the device to his ear, using his other hand to bat away my feeble attempts to snatch it from him.
“This is Daniels,” he answers.
I can hear Henry’s voice but can’t make out what he’s saying.
“She’s right here beside me,” Kelly says into the phone.
He pauses as Henry speaks.
“No you can’t talk to her. She’s not well.”
“Put her on,” Henry roars loud enough for me to hear. And Henry never roars.
Kelly offers me the phone. “Your friend is a dick.”
“I heard that,” Henry says as I put the phone to my ear.
“All men are dicks, Hussy,” I tell him, my voice rougher than sandpaper. “You know this.”
“Well your man is the biggest dick of all.”
“He’s not my man,” I retort, sagging into the side of the bathtub behind me. “And why is it you rang me a thousand times to tell me something I already know?”
Henry huffs sharply. “To tell you that he’s gone.”
“He’s gone?” My fuddled mind tries to make sense of what he’s saying. “Who’s gone?”
“Jake.”
“Gone where?”
“I don’t know where!” A muffled thunk sounds through the phone as if Henry’s kicked an empty box clear across the room. “He rang, saying he was quitting the band and leaving.”
Denial shuts me down. “He’s not leaving. He’s just having a tantrum.”
“He rang me from the road!” Henry shouts with frustration. “I checked next door. All his clothes are gone.”
My stomach rebels with horror, and the phone slips from my fingers. “Mac?” Henry calls out. “Mac?”
I lean over the toilet bowl, blinded with fear. “Oh Jesus,” I breathe. “Not again.”
“Mac, are you okay?” Grace’s soft palm lightly grasps my shoulder.
Kelly must have picked up my phone because I can hear him talking behind me.
“Jake’s gone,” I squeeze out as my belly heaves.
Not again.
Not.
Again.
He pushed me away once when I was pregnant. And now it’s happening all over again. He’s leaving again. I can’t do this. I literally cannot do this again.
“Mac, breathe.” My lungs expel a huge rush of air at Kelly’s command. “Pull yourself together.”
“Kelly,” I hear Grace rebuke.
“She’s spiralling.”
He’s right though. I am spiralling. This is not me. I don’t spiral. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. I’m the tough. It doesn’t get any tougher than me.
My eyes blink open as a sense of purpose fills me. I scramble to my feet in an awkward, clumsy motion. Hands reach out to steady me and I bat them away. A brief check in the mirror confirms I’m still a mess. My hair is tousled, my smoky eye-makeup is smudged and my face pale. But I don’t care. All I care about right now is getting to Jake. I stare at my reflection, my mind racing. There’s only one way to catch him before he disappears from my life completely, and only one way I can pull it off.
Gathering what little strength I have, I race from the bathroom.
“Mac!” Kelly shouts. I don’t stop and turn. I also don’t notice his older brother, Casey, emerging from his bedroom in wild, shirtless glory, asking, “What the hell is going on?” in a raspy voice.
I head straight for the bowl. The very one all partygoers had to put their keys into at the start of the party early last night. One set remains. The keys to Kelly’s Harley.
What I’m about to do will likely get me killed, but I have no choice.
I grab them.
“Oh hell no!” Kelly bellows with a thunder so mighty the walls shake and windows rattle.
There’s no time to look back. My legs move of their own accord, adrenaline giving me speed. I open the door of the loft and I’m out, running down the hallway toward the exit. Waiting for the elevator is suicide. I hit the stairs, somehow capable of flight despite moments earlier feeling weaker than cooked spaghetti. My breath comes fast and my hair flies out behind me as I leap to the bottom landing. My feet hit with a bone-jarring thud that causes my teeth to clunk, but I don’t stop.
“Babe, stop or die!” Kelly shouts behind me, so close the threat feels like whiplash.
I’m out the door and hitting the pavement before he catches me. My bicep is grabbed with a mighty grip. I turn and swing on instinct with the same fist that holds his keys.
Kelly ducks. Then he straightens, eyeballing me as I stand white-knuckled and chest heaving. He’s waiting for my next move. My eyes slide to the bike parked by the kerb. Goddammit, it’s so close! They slide back.
Kelly’s glare is hard enough to fracture the pavement. “Don’t even.”
My gaze narrows. “You don’t understand.”
“I don’t need to.” He jabs a thunderous finger at his motorcycle. “That is my baby. No one rides her but me. No one.”
“Then take me,” I beg, the panic to reach Jake making me desperate.
Kelly shakes his head. “You’re not thinking straight. Wait until you’ve had some sleep. We’ll find out where he is tomorrow, and I’ll take you then,” he says, his voice taking on a soothing quality as if I’m a wild animal to be tamed. “Besides,” he adds, eyes dropping to my belly with a dubious expression, “you’re pregnant.”
“No shit?” I hiss, ire rising.
Kelly huffs. “You can’t ride a horse when you’re pregnant. The same goes for bikes.”
“What the hell do you know about pregnancy?” I shout, beyond frustrated.
“Clearly more than you,” he points out like a big fucking know-it-all.
“Who do you think you are? The pregnancy police?”
He folds his arms. “When it comes to you, babe, looks like I have to be.”
“I’m not your babe,” I spit out, “and screw this.” I start for the Harley, but Kelly grabs me and literally rips the keys from my hand. “Ouch!” I bellow. “That hurt, you fucking asshead!”
“Oh my god! You bitches are gonna send me fuckin’ bat shit crazy.”
Kelly stalks toward his bike. Swinging one powerful thigh over the seat, he settles. The machine lowers under his considerable weight. After turning the key, it rumbles to life. Then his head swivels to look at me and he huffs unhappily. “Well get the fuck on already.”
“Stop swearing at me,” I retort snidely as I walk to the bike and climb on behind him.
He shakes his head and honestly I can’t blame him. My mood is up and down like a crazy, pregnant woman, which is ironic, considering that’s exactly what I am.
Kelly hands me the one helmet he has with him. “Where are we going?”
“If I could be happy in only place for the rest of my life it would be here, at this very beach,” Jake said. He was sitting on the bonnet of his car, feet resting on the metal bumper, and his gaze on the Melbourne beach in front of us. Waves rolled in, one after the other. It was hypnotic.
I sat beside him, his heavy arm wrapped around my back. My head tipped sideways to rest on his shoulder. “Why?”
“Because the ocean is the great unknown. It holds all the answers, yet it gives none of them up. You have to venture out through wild seas, risking your life just to seek them. It holds you at its mercy and yet you always come back to it. Over and over. Always searching. Always wanting more.” Jake turned his head, looking down at me, his brown eyes dark and fathomless. “It reminds me of you.”
I remember it clearly. We were so young and stupidly in love. He likened me to something so vast and intrinsically beautiful it left me feeling like I truly mattered to him.
“Why this very beach though?” I asked.
“Because it’s here, with you, where I regained my faith.”
“In what?”
His eyes left mine and returned to the sea. “Life, Mac. In life.”
“Melbourne,” I say to Kelly with conviction.
To his credit, my answer doesn’t faze him. He simply nods and waits for me to pull the helmet over my head. When I’m done, I rest my hands on his waist and we pull out on to the street.
The air is cool on my bare arms. Dawn is coming. The dark horizon has begun to lighten, hinting at a clear blue day ahead. My mind is on Jake as we roll to a stop at a red light. I’m angry. Crazy angry. But I’m scared. The one thing I never wanted to happen has come to fruition.
Jake has left. And I’m having his baby.
The pain of the past twists my belly in a knot.
I’m not prepared to survive a loss like that again. I’m in this now. So deep there’s no coming out. And damned if I’m going to do it alone.
Kelly and I are half an hour along the motorway to Melbourne when he begins to slow the bike. The rumbling engine cuts back. I look over his shoulder. “What’s going on?”
Of course he can’t hear me.
We pull over to the side of the motorway. Cars drive past sporadically as I tug the helmet from my head. “Why did you stop?”
“Because of that,” he says, nodding ahead of him.
I’m running fingers through the snarls in my hair when I notice it. A 1979 Dodge Charger parked off the road ahead of us. The colour a candy apple red. The car unmistakeably belongs to Jake.
I climb off the bike, shove the helmet at Kelly, and run on unsteady legs toward the car. My senses are on high alert, my heart galloping in my chest. Something feels off and my fears are realised when I find no one inside. The Charger is empty. Jake would never abandon his car by the side of the motorway.
“Kelly,” I gasp once, painfully, loudly.
He snatches my hand and pulls me to the far side of Jake’s car, away from the oncoming traffic. We reach the large barrier that blocks the Motorway from suburban homes and local roads. Standing between the cement wall and the passenger side of Jake’s car, Kelly takes my shoulders and glares. “You’re letting your mind run away from you, Mac. It’s likely just an empty tank and he’s hitched a ride to get fuel.”
My lungs ease a fraction at the sliver of hope Kelly offers. But when I look over his shoulder at the car, I see blood. A large smear of it decorates the headrest of the driver’s seat. Panic surges. “Oh no.” The words emerge as a breathy moan.
“What?” Kelly turns, following my line of sight. “Fuck.”
The ground tilts. I fall against Kelly, and he grapples with my sudden weight. He turns me around and pushes me up against the passenger door of the car, propping me upright. “What kind of trouble is Jake in?”
My head is fuzzy as I sort through every dangerous altercation we’ve been involved in recently, which is a lot when I take the time to think about it.
“Mac!” Kelly barks.
I shake my head. “None. There’s nothing I can think of.”
“There has to be something.”
“There isn’t.” Every situation we’ve been caught in hasn’t directly involved either of us. “Not since, well, not since that one time at The Bar when we were being shot at.”
“Who was shooting at you?”
“The King Street Boys.”
Kelly steps back, my response a shock. “Babe, fuck. That’s the biggest gang in Melbourne. What were they doin’ shootin’ at you?” Then his blue eyes flare with horror. “Oh shit.”
“What?”
“Jonah,” he breathes.
“Jonah?”
“Jake Romero is Jonah, isn’t he? I fuckin’ knew he looked familiar. He ran with Fox back in the day. He’s a member of the King Street Boys.”
“Was,” I correct.
“Is,” Kelly disputes with a harsh word. “Once you’re in, you’re never out. They own you.”
“You’re wrong. Jake got out. He’s out.”
Kelly shakes his head as he tugs his phone from his back pocket. “Babe, don’t like repeatin’ myself. Jake is not out,” he says as he dials. “He might think he is, but the King Street Boys never forget.”
Someone answers on the other end.
“Fox,” Kelly barks into the phone. “Need you.” He rattles off our approximate location without waiting for a response and hangs up.
“That’s your big plan? Luke Fox to the rescue?” I huff and stalk around to the driver’s side of Jake’s Charger. “What, do you think—” I break off as I bend, looking again through the car window. The keys. They’re right there, dangling in the ignition. I straighten quickly, looking at Kelly over the roof of the car. “You think Fox might have some idea of where Jake is?”
Kelly’s massive hands come to rest on his hips. He has his mean face on, the kind designed to scare the big bad bogeyman in the dead of night. “Oh, he’ll know.”
“So why does he have to come all the way here? Ask him now.” My voice rises from frustration when Kelly starts shaking his head. If I can just get an idea of where he is, I can get in Jake’s car and drive there right now. “Just get Luke back on the phone and fucking ask him, you fucking asshead!”
“Cool it, Yosemite Sam,” he says and my eyes narrow. “You do realise you’re pregnant, don’t you?” It’s all I can do not to rip the side mirror from Jake’s precious car and peg it at Kelly’s head. “That thing can hear every word you say.”
“Thing?” My voice is a shriek and his brow lifts. “Thing? I’m not giving birth to an alien!”
He has the audacity to appear dubious. “I’ll guess we’ll have to wait and see.”
My hands curl around the side mirror. “Just call Fox,” I command with gritted teeth. “Now.”
“Babe,” he begins.
My eyes narrow.
“Fuck’s sake,” he mutters with an eye roll. “Fox is going to tell me where Jake is and then he’s going to take you home.”
My instinct is to protest with a tantrum so wild you could see it from space, but I lock it down, eyes flicking to the dangling keys in the Charger. I look up quickly, meeting Kelly’s piercing blue gaze as I find my calm. “You’re right,” I concede. “I’ll go with Luke. I need to think of the baby.”
He nods as if there’s no doubt he was ever wrong. Conceited tool. If he knew me as well as everyone else did, he wouldn’t believe a word I just said. But he doesn’t. More fool him.
“Come stand over here,” he orders, nodding beside him. Traffic is starting to build on the motorway but it’s still light. It’s Sunday. The usual early morning commuters are fast asleep, appreciating another day off, while I stand here on the roadside, tired, frustrated, scared, and about as pregnant as a girl can get.
It grates to do what Kelly says, but I do it. I might not know him all that well but if he’s anything like Casey, he’ll likely come over and drag me back where it’s safer. And if he does that he’ll see the keys and take them and that can’t happen.
Kelly is leaning against the concrete barrier, eyes cold and focused toward the oncoming traffic. I can literally see his mind ticking over. I reach his side and follow suit, leaning against the same barrier beside him and fold my arms. “The King Street Boys have him.”
It’s more a statement than a question, yet he answers regardless. “Yes.”
“What are they going to do to him?” I don’t want to know the answer, but it’s a question that needs to be asked. I need to be prepared. To know what I’ll be walking into.
“If he refuses to go back? They’ll kill him.”
Jake won’t go back. I know him better than anyone. He would rather die. “We’re wasting time. Standing around waiting isn’t helping him.”
“Wrong. It’s keeping you safe. And right now that’s what Jake would want above all else.”
Damn the man. He’s just like his brother.
Ten minutes later, Luke comes thundering down the motorway. The rumble of his engine roars to a crescendo as he pulls over, directly behind Kelly’s bike. He yanks out his keys, pockets them, and rips the helmet from his head, revealing mussed hair and grim eyes. “I already know,” he says before either of us can say a word.
“Leander?”
Luke’s answer is a harsh nod.
“Where is he?” Kelly barks.
With them both distracted, I start inching back to the Charger, my ears cocked for the location as my booted feet fall slowly on loose gravel.
“Somewhere along the Dockside Wharf,” he answers as I reach the car door. Almost there.
“You need to take Mac—” Kelly breaks off. He’s seen me. “What the fuck do you think you’re doin’?”
“I’m—”
“No.”
“You can’t—”
His arms fold across a chest as vast and as rippled as the ocean. “I can.”
“Screw you,” I hiss and grab for the handle. I’m inside with the engine growling to life before he can get around the back of the car. The car tears off on to the road before I even pull the door shut. Gravel and dust flick out behind me. The back tyres spin under the wild acceleration and rubber burns, leaving behind a cloud of smoke that envelops both Kelly and Luke. It clears in a heartbeat as I slam the car door closed and risk a glance in the rearview mirror. They’re not wasting time; both are already swinging legs over their Harleys.
I plant my foot, eyes searching for the next upcoming exit. The Dockside Wharf is back in Sydney. I need to get off this motorway and re-enter on the other side, heading north.