Page 42 of The Broken Beginning: Part One

Lily jumped into action right away and pushed Abbi aside so she could get to him.

“Wow, your nanny just totally almost knocked me on my butt,” Abbi tried to laugh off what had just happened. Which was like her. She was a nice girl, too nice to be hanging around a bunch of bikers with her cousin all the time. Which was why this was about to get a boatload more awkward for her. Lily pulled Declan from his carrier and held him up to her chest, cradling him there and doing that rock-bounce thing that seemed to settle him so easily.

“Lily isn’t my nanny, she’s my wife,” I pointed out.

“Your…” Abbi’s eyes widened almost comically as they moved from me to Lily to the baby that was now in her arms. “Oh, God!” Her face turned several different shades of red as she put even more space between us. It was clear that she was putting two and two together and figuring out that I’d most likely been married and that my wife had been expecting our baby while I was hooking up with her. The disgust that replaced the embarrassment on her face, yeah, that made me feel like a whole pile of shit until Lily spoke up and then I just felt worse.

“Don’t worry, it’s not like that with us,” my wife told her. “Think of our marriage like a shotgun wedding that only really matters on paper. He’s free range. We haven’t even been together since this guy was made,” she tacked on. I wasn’t sure if she was helping or hurting the situation in general, but she was breaking my heart and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why the fuck that was. Nothing she said had been untrue.

“Um, well, congratulations on the baby, I guess,” Abbi offered awkwardly before she turned and hauled ass away from us. Unfortunately for her, she left her basket lying on the floor, where she’d placed it when she was going through it and showing us everything that she was planning to put in her sister’s gift basket.

Lily bent at the knees, scooped the basket up one-handed, and put it in the back of the shopping cart. “Well, that saved us a little time in getting shit we didn’t know we needed.” She winked at me and the grin on her face made me laugh.

“You’re fucking ridiculous,” I told her.

“Nope, I’m just an opportunist. Her loss is our gain.”

Why did I like the sound of that so much? ‘Our gain’. She was including me in something and, for once, it felt fucking right. Our son. Our life. Our gain. I might not have been ready to settle down and have a family in the traditional sense of the word, but things were finally starting to fall into place with Lily so that we could at least become friends and I wanted to keep it that way.

“Shall we go try to find that breast pump before someone else from our pasts comes along to throw a wrench in the day?”

Lily laughed at me while turning to walk toward the aisle she had pointed out earlier. Once we were done picking out a breast pump that she felt like she might be comfortable with, we also had to get bottles to put the milk in and Lily chose based on how realistic the nipples were in comparison to hers, which just made me groan while needing to adjust my fucking dick in the baby store.

All I could think about was last night when she had been wearing that nightie that became completely transparent thanks to the leaking her breasts were doing, and heaven fucking help me, but I wanted to scoot my son out of the damn way and slake my own curiosity with the woman who absolutely would have kicked me in the dick if I had tried it.

As we were checking out, I noticed a little blankie for babies that had all kinds of tactile shit on it. There was a crinkly corner, one that was plastic and kind of nubby, while the third was super soft and fluffy, and the final corner had a bear head on it. I grabbed the thing and put it with the rest on the conveyor belt as the cashier rang everything up. The smile on Lily’s face as she noticed it was worth the whole day. Fuck the grin she’d given to Killian outside; this one was mine. Well, mine and my son’s, and I was going to fucking keep it in my memory bank to pull out on the days I was too fucking stupid to do right by her.

At least, when I was being a complete dick, I’d know that we had a moment where I’d made her happy. For whatever that was worth.

~*~

When we got back to the house, something Abbi had said at the store finally penetrated and I grabbed the phone in the kitchen to call the clubhouse.

“Yo!”

“Who the fuck is this?”

“CJ,” the cocky shit answered back.

“Fuck, man. What are you doing there?”

“Prospecting like a boss!”

CJ, otherwise known as Charles Brothers, was a couple years younger than me, but he was cool as fuck. I couldn’t wait until he was made a full-blown member because then, I felt like I would actually have someone close to my own age in my corner. Then again, he hadn’t made any bones about telling me what a dick I had been to Lily, so maybe it would be a bit of a contentious friendship.

When I got lost in my thoughts and didn’t say anything, CJ prompted me. “What’s going on?”

“Yeah, some chick hit me up at the store today, talking about a party she’s going to at the clubhouse with her cousin this weekend. You know anything about that?”

“If it was ‘some chick’ and no relation to a member then she’s going to have a hard time getting in. Family and club only from what I heard but hang on and I’ll check.”

I heard him yell the question out to whomever was close enough to hear, but then a familiar voice in the background asked: “Who the hell wants to know?”

“Merc,” CJ answered immediately.

“Boy! I’m telling you now, if you’re thinking of bringing some skank with you to this party, I will gut you.”

“What the fuck, Boone? I was just asking because some chick at the store told me about it, and I hadn’t heard anything about a party before.”

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