Leave a Trail (Signal Bend #7)(119)

Next to Badger, Adrienne sobbed. Just once, but he looked down to see her face wet with tears. “This is awful,” she whispered when she saw him looking.

“I know.”

“Why are we watching? We shouldn’t be watching.”

“They don’t leave this lot alone. We see them off. We don’t turn our backs until they’re out of sight.”

With a sad nod of understanding, she took a breath and turned back to the scene.

Isaac put his hands on Lilli’s hips and drew her near. She seemed to come reluctantly, her head still down. She hit his chest with the side of her fist, once. Twice. And then she was beating him with her balled fists. Isaac withstood the assault and then overpowered her, pulling her hard against his chest, yanking her ponytail until her head came up, and kissing her fiercely. It was brutal and loving and passionate and completely f*cking devastating, and Badger had to drop his eyes. He’d never seen Lilli give in to any weakness before, and he understood the depth of pain she must be feeling. She wasn’t fighting Isaac; she was fighting the loss of him.

“I can’t stand this.” Adrienne barely whispered the words.

“You don’t have to stay, babe,” he answered without opening his eyes. “The Horde stays. But if you need to go in, it’s okay.”

“No. I…I’m with you.”

He squeezed her tighter and lifted his eyes again. Len was climbing into the side door of the van, and Tasha had walked back to the loose line everyone else had formed. Isaac stepped back from Lilli and cupped his hand over her cheek. He leaned in and kissed her forehead, then turned to his brothers. He nodded, then got into the van and closed the door.

When the van was out of sight, Lilli dropped to her knees on the gravel lot. She didn’t cry or yell or anything. She just knelt there. The Horde stayed where they were. Badger figured they all felt like he did— unsure what to do. Then Cory, the only old lady who knew for a fact she would never see her old man again, went to Lilli and got her to stand.

They walked into the clubhouse together, and the rest of the Horde family followed.



oOo



Later that night, Badger came home to find Adrienne behind their little rented house, standing on the porch in her bare feet, wearing only her old sweater over one of his flannel shirts, which skimmed her mid-thigh. She was watching Hector root around in the yard. He and all his littermates were smart pups. They’d all been housebroken within a couple of weeks, and they were learning commands. At about five months old, they were already big dogs. Delia had estimated that all but Len and Tasha’s runt girl would clear a hundred pounds. Kodi, Isaac and Lilli’s dog, was already almost seventy pounds. At five months old.

Hector was more than fifty pounds. He was a good boy and devoted to Adrienne in a way that sometimes made Badger a little jealous—stupid, but true. He obeyed Badger’s commands, but it was clear that he was only doing so to please his mistress. Hector thought Badger was in his way. The pup was too big to sleep in bed with them anymore, so he had his own memory foam dog bed on the floor near Adrienne’s side of the bed. Every night, he sat staring forlornly at their bed, then, eventually, huffed, puffing his jowls in misery, and dropped himself on his pad.

Drama queen.

Badger went out onto the porch now. Adrienne turned her head at the squeak of the screen door and smiled when he put his hands on her hips, standing behind her and looking over her head at the goofy dog snuffling through the little bit of snow left like a pig looking for truffles.

“It’s cold out here, babe. You’re gonna catch your death, out here in that ratty sweater and your feet bare.”

“You sound like an old lady. ‘Catch your death.’ Really?”

He laughed. Come inside, Adrienne. He’s not doing what he’s supposed to be.”

“Oh, he did his business already. I was just…I don’t know. Stuck, I guess. I keep zoning out. I can’t get Isaac and Lilli and Len and Tasha out of my head. I don’t know how they’re going to do this. Six years? At least? I don’t know how I’d make it if you went away like that.”

Turning her in his arms so that she faced him, he lifted her chin and beamed a promise into her blue eyes. “I’m not. I won’t. We’re out of that business. Lilli and Tash will get through with our help. We’ll stand with them and give them whatever help we can—what they need to hold on. It’s what we do. If something ever did happen to me, they’d hold you up, too.”

“I missed my period today.”

It took him a minute to catch up with the sharp turn the conversation had taken. “What?”

“I was supposed to get my period today. It didn’t come.”

“Did you do a test?”

She shook her head. “Today was…busy. My head was elsewhere.”

“Can we do one now?”

“I don’t have one.”

He grinned, feeling an electric zing in his blood at the thought. “I will ride all the way to Springfield and back to find an all-night drugstore if you want me to.” Holy f*ck—she could be pregnant. With his kid!

“I don’t. I don’t want to know either way yet. I don’t want to be sad if I’m not, and I don’t want to start thinking about babies tonight if I am. I need all your attention tonight.”