Never Have an Outlaw's Baby (Deadly Pistols MC #3)(24)
Someone banged on something soft. Like the way I remembered mama slapping bread dough.
“Joker?” I whispered, creeping around the corner.
There wasn't much to the place. Just two tiny rooms, a kitchen, and a main living area.
Someone had left a blanket and several empty beer bottles on the floor, next to the couch. I carefully avoided tripping on them and pressed forward, perking my ears up again, listening for anything.
I heard him when I was near the first little room. Joker's voice sputtering in a harsh whisper.
Desperate. Horrified. Enraged.
“Grandpa, come on. Come on. Come the f*ck on!”
Fingers trembling, I gripped the edge of the door, and pushed it open.
First thing I noticed was the broken glass all over the place. Someone had shot out the window – probably the gunshots I'd heard.
Joker leaned on the floor, bent over the old man, frantically pumping his granddad's chest.
I was about to drop down and help when I noticed the strange, round object perched on the bed. At first, it looked like a pumpkin in the shadowy darkness, but it was only July. Jack-o-lanterns weren't close to being in season yet.
Pushing the door just a little more so I could get light into the room, the shadows moved. Then I saw the detached face staring at me from the bed.
Joker's face, missing his brilliant hazel eyes. They'd been plucked from his head, leaving two neat spiderwebs of blood curling down his sunken cheeks.
Both my hands went straight to my mouth. I tried not to hyperventilate as I realized I was looking at Freddy's severed head, ripped from his body, mutilated in their own house.
Beneath me, the old man sputtered, gasping for breath, finally alive again.
“Fuck, f*ck, f*ck, f*ck, thank Christ,” Joker groaned.
The next few seconds happened in slow motion like some kind of horror movie. He stood, shaking as he got up on his knees, his phone in one hand. He looked at his twin brother's severed head on the bed, and then turned to me slowly, wiping away the hot, brutal tear rolling down his cheek.
“Joker...Jackson...” I tried to say more than just his name, the only two I knew him by, but the words wouldn't come.
What the hell do you say to a man who's just lost everything? What the f*ck could I possibly say that would mean anything?
“Get. Out,” He growled, stepping toward me until I backed away, filling the empty doorway with his huge body. “Old friend's coming to take you home.”
No, let me stay! I want to help! I thought, but my tongue was completely stiff when I tried to speak, my mouth hanging open like a total fool.
“Joker...”
“Do not f*ckin' argue. You heard me,” he said, his warm, cocky voice turned into a killer's ice. “This ain't for you, babe. You don't belong here. You never did.”
Those cracks in my heart deepened. Split. Shattered.
Dashing out the door, I held in a scream, feeling the sharp pieces of my own heart clattering against my ribs, tearing me in two.
The rest of the night passed in a stupor. Somehow, I forced myself onto the porch, where I sat there and waited. Eventually, an old truck pulled up, and an older man wearing a military hat waved.
He asked me where I lived. I told him. Those were the only words we exchanged until he was at my door.
“Out,” he said, reaching past me to pop the door.
I turned, giving the * the dirtiest look I had. “Really? After all that, you f*cking tell me to –“
“You've got ten seconds, doll, before I shove you out that door and take off. I don't ask the questions, just do favors when the club asks me. If you've got any sense in your pretty little head, you'll do the same.” He looked at me, his eyes dark and angry, like I was the biggest chore he'd ever had. “Go home. And don't you ever tell anybody what the f*ck happened out there tonight.”
He had me. He won.
I couldn't deal with this shit. Not after what I'd seen, death and destruction, the love draining from the face of the man I'd started to believe in.
I didn't walk. I ran, all the way to my doorstep, jamming the keys in so hard I nearly snapped them in the locks.
Bed was my only sanctuary.
My face hit the pillows as soon as I was home. I buried it there, drowning in my tears, hoping they'd pull me completely under so I'd never have to wake up. When I did, it was going to be one long nightmare.
Oh, if only that hell was the end of it. I had no idea how terrible things were about to get.
*
Present Day
Three years this week. Three blinding, painful, monstrous years.
It seemed like it passed in the blink of an eye.
The days I cried for him, too scared to go anywhere near his grandfather's house. All the rumors I heard at work about the murder, the decapitation, the worst crime this town suffered for generations.
People talked about how they'd been scared shitless. But I also heard the relief in their voices after a few weeks, when they knew the crime was too big to bring any outlaws back to Seddon anytime soon.
And they were still talking, gossiping, holding their children a little tighter each night when I started to get sick.
Really sick. Every damned morning.
It took me a full week before I could manage to sit down with the pregnancy test, and prove what my body already knew. It only took a day after I saw that neon pink line staring me in the face to decide what I'd do.