Page 29 of A Love So Hard

“She’s worth everything,” I told him as I slid my leg over my bike and started her up.

“Fine, I’m coming with you then. We can say it was all on the up and up checking to see why we can’t take our bikes in no more.”

“Whatever you need to tell yourself,” I mumbled before taking off. It only took a few minutes to get to the auto shop run by Jack Carter and when we did it was to see that he was closing the place up. It didn’t look like he was planning on opening for business again any time soon either despite telling Merc that someone else would be taking over.

“Jack,” I called out as he glanced up then continued about his business while he ignored me. I killed my bike and hopped off before making my way over to the man. Merc was hot on my heels as if he was expecting me to do violence on the man. Hell, if it hadn’t been for Lucy I would have done so long before now. I wanted to take him into our little underground room and show him exactly what I’d done to the last man who dared to keep my woman from me. Not that he hadn’t already seen evidence of that, but I wanted him to feel the pain I’d been going through for seven fucking months. Still, I knew she would never forgive me if Lucy found out that was how I finally tracked her down. That was the only thing staying my hand and keeping Jack fucking Carter breathing free.

“What the hell are you doing here? Pretty sure Timeless told you next time he caught your ass here it would cost you those colors you wear.”

“Pretty sure Timeless won’t be sitting in that pretty position much longer. Times are changing, things are being shaken up, Jack,” I spat back at him. “Soon your guard dog won’t be wielding that gavel.”

He stood straight then and looked me right in the eye before nodding. “That they are, boy. One thing that won’t ever change though is you knowing where my girl is. Now, I suggest you get the hell on out of here.”

There was a part of me that sincerely wanted to kill the man, but the larger part – the one who had used up every bit of his resources trying to find his woman – that part of me was tired. I sank down to my knees right there before the man I had come to loathe so much. “I never asked for shit my whole life. I never bothered to demand what could be mine with hard work. She is a piece of me though. How the hell do you expect me to go on with a piece of myself missing?” The question rolled off my tongue as I clutched at my chest in an attempt to soothe an ache that wouldn’t dull in her absence.

Jack seemed taken aback by the gesture momentarily. Then he glanced over at Merc and back down at me before shaking his head. “Give it time, son. You’ll move on. She has.” He turned and walked away leaving me with that last hit to my soul. She has. He couldn’t mean what I thought he did. There was no way.

“Come on, man,” Merc damn near whispered to me. “Let’s get you out of here.” He reached out to grab hold of my elbow and pull me to my feet where I proceeded to lose it completely. Everything I’d let out over the past few months had been nothing compared to all that I held inside. A deafening roar left my body, and I swear a piece of my soul tore free from my body along with the awful noise that filled the neighborhood as I finally let my grief over losing Lucy swamp me and pull me under.

“We need a van here,” I heard Merc saying distantly as I continued to bleed out the last of my hope.

“Why are you here?”

“Why am I here?” My mother echoed back in question. “Lucy, look at you,” she snipped out. “You’re almost as big as this house and,” she glanced around the space that wasn’t filthy, but was starting to look as though a library and laundry mat had exploded inside it. I washed my laundry; I just didn’t see a point in actually putting it anywhere after it dried. Instead, there were piles of it on the couch, the chair, and a basket by the overstuffed bookshelf. “Obviously, you can’t bring a baby into this house looking like this. No doubt, you’d lose him in a week.”

I rolled my eyes at my mother. She was both the last person I wanted here and the only person I could stand to be around. The last was simply because I couldn’t stand to be around anyone, but at least I could openly hate her until she got tired of my crappy attitude and left.

“Your father called while you were in the shower,” she informed me.

“Did he close down the shop like he said he was going to?”

She smiled widely then. “Yes, he did. He’ll be down here in about a week and then we’ll be here until the baby is a couple weeks old and I think you can handle it on your own.”

“Excuse me?” I seethed through clenched teeth.

She waved my attitude off once more with a flick of her hand. “You know what I mean.”

“Did he do it?” I finally asked. I knew it couldn’t be good news since she’d looked entirely too chipper when she told me daddy called.

She nodded her head and tried to appear contrite, though she was having obvious trouble containing her smirk. “He went by that filth hole the man calls a clubhouse and told him about the baby.” She stopped there and glanced down at her manicured nails, inspecting them for an imperfection she could complain about the next time she went into the salon.

“And?” I hated that I had to play this game and prompt her for the information she was obviously withholding for dramatic effect.

“Are you sure you care to hear this?” She asked.

“Mother!”

“Fine. Don’t say I didn’t try to spare you though.” She turned to make sure that we had complete eye contact before she continued on. “His exact words were, ‘since you wanted to be on your own so bad, keep the bastard on your own too.’”

It was as if someone physically punched me. I couldn’t breathe and then there was the sharp pain in my chest that I swear crawled right down into my belly, into my back, and then whipped around again to my belly seizing the muscles there until they were so tense everything seemed rock hard. Then there was a gush of wetness between my legs and when I looked down and saw what was happening I just stood there in a fog as if I was watching this happen to someone else.

“Lucy!” My mother shrieked before running to the phone. I faintly heard her ordering someone to send an ambulance. “I’m so sorry,” she kept repeating over and over to me. It no longer mattered. I was about to become a single mom. It was early, but not so terribly early that I had to worry about my son not being fully developed. At least, that was what my doctor had explained to me at my last visit. I still had three weeks to go, but he had assured me that he didn’t think my body would wait that long. Hearing that Double-D not only didn’t want me but also didn’t want anything to do with his son killed something in me. I came back to my own body and with the next contraction that hit I stared right at my mother and screamed out all the pain she had just caused me. Her face paled as she dropped the phone, leaving it dangling there by the cord before coming to me.

“They’ll be here in a minute, baby. Come on, sit down,” she cooed.

“Get. The fuck. Away. From me.” Every couple words were panted out through the pain of yet another contraction.

“Lucy!” She shrieked in obvious surprise since she’d probably never heard me mutter a bad word in my life. A banging on the door got my mom away from me quicker than my words had.

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