Page 71 of The Broken Beginning: Part One

“Oh. Well, I did. Maybe that’s why he likes that movie so much? Although it’s not the same kind of animals on the walls. I could change it up to his favorites when we move. I mean, when you guys move. When you pick out a house. The bigger house…”

I couldn’t help laughing as he rolled through his own version of verbal diarrhea.

“You think that’s funny? Laughing at my insecurities where you’re concerned?” Merc moved closer with his fingers outstretched and started tickling my sides. We ended up falling into my bedroom, and I was laughing so hard Deck decided to come join us. Merc had me pinned to the bed, fingers in my side with me about to piss myself as my little savior took a running leap right onto his dad’s back.

“I’ll save you from the tickle monster, Momma!”

“My hero!” I cried out in dramatic fashion.

“Guess that makes me the villain,” Merc teased with a wink, but I caught the slight wince too. He knew that had been exactly his role in my life for a long time. He might not have been tying me to train tracks and trying to get me run over like in cartoons, but he had been his own version of a villain none-the-less.

23 - Old Bones

Tiger Lily

Do you know the feeling, when everything is going so well, and you have that anxious little knot in your belly waiting for the other shoe to drop? That feeling had been nagging me for months.

Merc had not only become a father, but a husband in the past couple months. He was there at every checkup I had and made sure to pay the bill before I could even find out how much it was. He made sure our kitchen stayed stocked, and we wanted for nothing.

Merc took my Jeep to have it completely serviced. Of course, that was after he attempted to talk me into trading it on a newer model. He thought I deserved the luxury of the Jeep Grand Cherokee instead of my “little red shitbox” as he called it. I loved my Jeep though and didn’t want to part with it, so he made sure that it was in tip-top condition.

Then there was the time he spent with us. We went without seeing him for one full week when he had a run for the club, and another week when he was trying to help Double-D track down his woman, Lucy, who had disappeared after thinking her man was cheating on her. He hadn’t been, and there had been a whole lot of upheaval in the club as a result, including a few club whores who were no more. I can’t say I was entirely sad about that, especially knowing that they had all been with Merc at one time or other during our marriage.

I wished Lucy would come back though, because she had become an unlikely friend. I’d never gotten on with the old ladies, since I wasn’t technically claimed in that way and tended to stay away from the club, but it had been nice to have Lucy there whenever I had to show up for family things with Declan.

Outside of all that drama, he was with us most days and nearly every night. I still made him stay across the street at my dad’s place a lot, but there were plenty of nights where he crashed on the couch after tucking Declan in for the night. He always had an excuse that made it impossible for me to argue.

“Tomorrow is Pancake Sunday. I can’t leave tonight, or I might miss it.”

“Declan wasn’t feeling well all day, I think I should stay, just in case.”

“You look worn out, I just want to be here in case Deck needs someone, that way you can sleep.”

It was always something, and it was always sweet. Merc had become a different man, and maybe that was why my body was on edge and couldn’t trust it. As much as I had always hoped for this version of him, it was hard to believe he had changed so much. The crazy thing was that the shoe that dropped, it wasn’t on Merc’s foot. He was the one there to catch me as my world fell out from beneath my feet.

There I was, almost four months pregnant, feeding my son lunch, when the sound of my world imploding came with a stiff knock on my door. I got up, made my way there, and looked out the peephole to see two police officers standing there.

“Can I help you?”

“Lily Ashburn?”

“Lily Ashburn Donovan, yes.”

“We would like for you to come down to the station with us.”

“In regard to what exactly?”

“Get some shoes on,” the second officer huffed at me in frustration, and that attitude put me in no mood to cooperate with whatever bullshit was going down.

“Am I under arrest for something?”

“No, ma’am,” the other man stated coolly while side eyeing his partner.

“Then I think you need to leave, because I’m not inclined to speak with people who talk to me that way.”

“Ma’am, we really need you to come down to the station. It’s about your mother.”

That had me bristling because I hadn’t seen my mother since I was sixteen years old. “I haven’t seen or heard from my mother in years, so I’m afraid I won’t be much help to you.”

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