My blood went from boiling to solid ice at the sound of Jager’s yelling.
I was on my feet in a second, running for the door with the others.
When I saw the brother inside, I froze.
Ember was sobbing, holding baby Jamie to her chest. Jager’s hands were on the bald sides of his head, his fingers yanking on the undone line of hair that usually made up his Mohawk. Roadrunner was behind them, frantically yelling into the phone that his granddaughter wasn’t breathing.
Wasn’t. Breathing.
Everyone was horrorstruck by what they were seeing, until I felt myself shoved to the side.
Evie came barreling through, a woman on a fucking mission.
“What happened?” she demanded, no-nonsense and more in command than I’d ever seen her.
“She…she…she…” Ember tried to get out, struggling through her sobs. “She was eating and…”
Evie didn’t wait for anything else. Without apology or finesse, she reached out and grabbed Jamie from Ember’s arms. I saw Jager react and move on instinct to hold him back. I had no idea what to do, but I knew without question that my girl did.
Dropping to her knees with an unchecked thud, Evie turned the baby onto her stomach across her thighs and one arm. She used the heel of her hand to pump five times against Jamie’s back. A small spray of spit up came out onto Evie’s knees, but she didn’t hesitate. With careful, but efficient movements, she turned the baby over onto her back on the floor. After checking her over, she started pressing with her fingers on Jamie’s chest. Nothing happened.
Jager struggled against me, desperate to get to his little girl, but I held him back, Hook coming over to help me.
I watched, fucking terrified, as Evie started doing CPR. There was no hesitation, no fumbling at all as she cared for the tiny girl. After two rounds of breathing for her and chest compressions, Evie paused a little longer when she listened to her chest.
“She’s breathing,” she announced. Jager sagged against me until I was taking his full weight. Ember collapsed to the floor right where she was.
I heard Tank, who must have taken the phone from Roadrunner, filling in the 911 operator. “She’s breathing. How far off is the ambulance?”
Jager regained his feet, moving over to fall to his knees beside his woman and Jamie.
“Don’t move her,” Evie instructed as he reached out to his daughter who was now coughing and moving her limbs. “It’s best to get her checked out at the hospital first.”
Jager, his face still pale, looked at her. I braced to jump in, unsure where the fuck his head was at, but I didn’t need to. He shuffled forward a few inches and yanked my girl into his arms. I’d never seen him hold any woman besides Ember, but he wrapped Evie in tight.
“Thank you,” he rasped brokenly.
She hugged him back for a moment, though her expression had been shell shocked at first because that was my girl. Even after giving us all the greatest gift she could offer, she willingly gave more when she knew the brother needed it.
And right then, I knew without a shadow of a doubt. Even if it was too soon, even if I’d never experienced it before, even if it seemed fucking crazy, I’d never been more sure of anything.
I fucking loved this woman.
The sound of the sirens came after a minute, but what might have been too late if it weren’t for Evie.
As the paramedics rushed in and saw to Jamie with Evie explaining everything she could, I thanked every fucking force in the universe that I’d walked into that diner two years ago.
God fucking willing, I’d be saying those thanks for the rest of my days.
Hours later we were pulling up to the farmhouse.
The party came to an abrupt end with Jamie’s accident. After clearing out the yard, the actual Disciples family hunkered down for news about how the little one was. Roadrunner, Evie, and I went to the hospital where my girl went out of her way to speak to people she knew and get us updates.
We finally left when Jager came out, explaining that they wanted to keep her overnight as a precaution. Roadrunner, worried about his granddaughter and how the situation had impacted his own daughter, stuck around.
None of us had spoken much in that waiting room. Everything that had happened today weighing on us all. I’d thought about coming up with something to say as I’d walked Evie out to my bike, but nothing came out.
I’d learned a huge, unpleasant chunk of her history that I couldn’t even think about without my blood pressure sky-rocketing, I’d watched her save the life of someone I loved, and I’d handed my fucking heart over to her—whether she knew that yet or not. All this after Roadrunner filling me in when we got there that the Devils had sent a couple of their lowlife thugs into our turf that night like we’d expected. It was time to act, and Mayhem was with us.
I’d never in my life been so drained and high strung at the same fucking time.
Even as I stopped the bike and let Evie get off, words escaped me. She was still climbing off with big steps. I hadn’t had the heart to tell her she didn’t need to do that, just avoid the pipes. It was too fucking cute to see her do it.
I came around and put a hand on her back to lead her inside, but she didn’t move with me.
“Are you okay?” she asked instead.
Not exactly.
“Fine, babe.”
“I…um…well…” It took her a minute to put the words out there. “I’m sorry for telling you about Isaac that way. With everyone there, I mean. I meant to just tell you, but hearing how you’d handled that other guy just…”
Just made her feel safe.
Reaching out, I cupped her smooth cheeks in my hands. Fuck, she felt so fragile. How any motherfucking cunt out there could lay a hand on her, floored me. I was afraid I’d hurt her just trying to handle her with care. Yet, she was so fucking resilient. She left that shit behind, abandoned everything she’d been raised with, built a life for herself, and managed to be the type of woman that acted and saved a life when most people would panic.
“I’m not mad at you, bunny.”
“You’re not?”
Shit. She really thought I would be?
“No. I’m fucking furious that some asshole put his hands on you. That doesn’t happen, not with me around and not to my fucking woman. I snapped that chair because it was that or demand you tell me where to find him so I could snap his neck.” Her eyes widened in horror, but I didn’t take it back. She had to know the type of man I was, the man I would always be, if she was going to let me be a part of her life. “But I’m not mad at you. I don’t care how you told me. I’m just glad you did, even if I fucking hated hearing that.”
“Oh, okay.”
“I’m sorry you thought I was,” I said, leaning in to kiss her forehead. “There’s just so much shit happening all at once. I got into my own head, but it wasn’t me trying to hold back from you. Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
When she looked up at me like that, pure hope in her eyes, looking like a goddamn angel, I wanted to tell her exactly what I felt. Instead, I went over different ground we needed to cover.
“What happened when you told your parents what that fucker did?”
She pulled back, but not to deny me that. I watched her take a few steps into the dark yard, like she needed space to get her head together. I could grant her that…barely.
“They told me that if he was unhappy, I must not be fulfilling my duties to him well. I tried to tell them that he was pushing me sexually, thinking that would bring them around since they were vehemently against sex outside of marriage, but they didn’t believe me. They just said that the fact that I would tell such a lie about him was precisely why I had earned what he did.”
Not even imagining the sound of the cell door closing every day when I was inside lessened my desire to track that cunt down, and her fucking parents while I was at it, and teach a few lessons.
Evie kept on. “It was then I really let myself think about the way they had treated me. My whole life, I’d swept things under the rug. I blindly accepted it when they said I wouldn’t go to college, but become a pastor’s wife. I accepted the strict rules, the ‘woman’s place’ lectures, the constant criticism and belittling. But right then, when he’d hit me and they tried to make me feel as if it were my fault, I knew that I wasn’t the one that was wrong. They were. They always had been. So, I spent the next two days getting my things together when they were busy, and then I left.”
“Just like that?” I asked, my voice grating against the desire to fucking let loose about those pricks.
“Well…no. I made my statement first,” she evaded.
Coming up behind her, I wrapped my arms around her middle and said into her hair, “You wanna explain that?”
“I…um…I was in charge of making the pamphlets for each Sunday service at that point. They had all the names of folks who needed prayers, announcements, schedules for the week, stuff like that. I made them on Saturdays and put them in all the seats so everyone would have them Sunday morning.
“Isaac hit me on a Thursday. That Saturday, I went into the church office like I was expected to, and my father had left his notes about what to put in as usual. It even included the fact that Isaac would be giving part of the sermon the next day. I just…lost it. Instead of including anything I was supposed to, I made an entire flyer about what Isaac had done, and what my father said. I even got out the camera we had and took a picture of the bruise on my cheek to put in it. I printed it out and put one in each seat. That next morning, when my parents left for the service, I called a cab to take me to the bus station.”
I couldn’t help it, I started chuckling. I’d been thinking along the lines of going to the cops, not trying to reveal to all the church what a dick the fucker was.
“What?” she asked.
“Bunny, that shit sounds like it’s out of some stupid teen movie. Some guy’s a dick, and you made a damn flyer about it.”
She sighed. “It was stupid. It probably didn’t even matter, but I was so mad.”
“I piss you off, you gonna put up posters in the clubhouse about it?” I teased.
She turned in my arms, swatting at me with a ridiculous pout on those puffy lips. “You watch yourself, mister, or I just might.”
Christ, she was fucking cute.
I leaned down to kiss her. “I’ll try my best, baby.”
“See that you do.”
“Though, might put up some posters myself. Something to show how fucking proud I am to have a woman that could do what you did today.”
She melted into me. “It was nothing.”
“You saved her life. Someone might have been able to get walked through that shit by the 911 operator, but you were already halfway to getting her breathing again before that could have happened. That’s my niece—maybe not by blood, but that’s just bullshit semantics. I don’t think it was nothing, and I know Jager and Ember don’t. No one that was there thinks what you did was nothing.”
“He hugged me,” she whispered in awe.
“Yeah, bunny. And I’m thinking you get how big that was. Jager isn’t the type. A lot of the guys, they’ll be affectionate with you in their own ways. You’ll be part of the family. Jager would lay down his life for anyone in the club, including doing that for any brother’s woman or family, but he doesn’t do the rest. I’ve never seen him treat anyone but his woman or his daughter like that.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, wow,” I echoed. “You earned that from him. You earned the love the club’s got to give from all of us with that shit.”
Her eyes grew huge. “All of you?”
Oh, yeah, she caught what I was implying there.
“Yes, Evie. All of us.”
Her eyes glistened in the moonlight as tears gathered at the edge. “Stone…”
“I love you, bunny.”
She face-planted into my chest, wrapping her arms around my middle and squeezing for all she was worth.
“You take your time getting there. I’ll wait however long you need, but you gotta know you have that from me.”
Her head popped up, and I learned there was another time her nose twitched. One I would never forget in all my days.
It was right before she said, “I love you, too.”