Page 25 of The Broken Beginning: Part One

“Heard Amber telling the other girls this morning that she was your old lady.”

I laughed, but when Boone didn’t return the sound, I shifted my focus from my wife’s best friend back to my father. “She knows better.”

“Obviously not. Stacey was standing there too and corrected her, explaining that you’re already married which made Lily your old lady.” My brows arched up damn near to my hairline at that, because I honestly hadn’t considered the fact that some people – especially Boone and Robbie – would think Lily was exactly that.

“Don’t worry,” Boone carried on. “Tinder schooled Stacey in front of your new girl. Said that just because you married her that didn’t make her your old lady in the club’s eyes. It just made her your legal wife. He told her that a man in the club could have both, plus mistresses, and all the while end up banging club whores on the side too if they wanted.” Boone said all of this with a straight face while buttering his fucking toast. I don’t know why that pissed me off.

It was almost as if he was no longer in Lily’s corner, and fuck if that didn’t feel wrong to me. I could deal with my father and hers raging against me, but she needed someone at her back. Lily didn’t have anyone else aside from Stacey, as far as I knew. Her dad was her only family and I thought, until this very moment, that Boone and Rob had been filling a void in her life and taking care of her. Suddenly, my skin crawled with the reality that they might have left her to her own devices in the hopes that I would step up. Only, I never did. Hell, I couldn’t even remember the last time I paid bills on the house. Before Christmas, maybe?

I dropped my fork onto my plate with a clatter, no longer able to stomach the food. Boone didn’t even look smug. Nope. Instead, he just seemed resigned to the fact that I would never be with Lily the way he and Rob had once hoped.

“Hey baby!” Amber squealed before scrunching down to wrap her arms around me from behind. Her tits seemed to wrap themselves around my neck. Before I could shake her off, she offered up a greeting for Boone too. “Hey, Dad! How are you this morning.”

“Just fine,” he told her while offering a smile and failing to correct her assertion that she had a right to call him that.

I glared at my father, but again he didn’t seem to have a single fuck to give and instead began to add some jam to the over-buttered toast in his hand.

“What’s the matter, baby? You’re not hungry?” Amber tried to wiggle herself between me and the table in order to sit in my lap, but I didn’t bother scooting back to allow her the room. “It’s okay, I’ll just sit right here,” she tittered awkwardly while planting herself in the chair beside me and moving it as close to my right side as she could possibly get it.

“Lost my appetite,” I finally told her while trying to puzzle out what was going on with my father.

“Oh no! Are you getting sick?” Amber asked while tossing the back of her hand none-to-gently onto my forehead to feel for a fever. I knocked it away.

“Stop!” I growled out the word through gritted teeth.

“S-s-sorry,” she quickly stammered. “I’m just trying to take care of my old man.”

“I’m not your fuckin’ old man!” I yelled, halting everyone in their tracks, except Boone. That bastard just continued to spread the jam on his toast as if it wasn’t evenly dispersed already.

“But, we’ve been living here together for a long time already, I just thought-”

“You thought wrong. You assumed shit that I have never said to you,” I clarified for her, and when it didn’t look like it was really sinking in, I kept on going. “I already have a fucking wife I don’t want. What the fuck makes you think I want an old lady to tie me down here too?” I stood to leave, and Amber tried to follow. That was when I had enough.

“Tell you what, get your shit together, get it out of my room, and find somewhere else to stay or some other brother to latch onto because it’s obvious this shit has run its course if you think you’re getting more out of me than a quick fuck and a place to lay your pitiful head at night.”

Boone put his toast down and glanced around the room before spotting what he was looking for. “Prospect!” He yelled and my buddy Charles came running. He was still too young to be patched in, but being a legacy made him a shoo-in once for when he finally hit eighteen. It also didn’t hurt that he wasn’t afraid to take on the dirty jobs to prove himself since his father was a bit of a piece of shit.

“Whatcha need?”

“Help little Miss Amber here get her things from Merc’s room. See to it that she only takes things that belong to her and then find her a new place to sleep tonight. Explain the rules to her about being club property and what that means.” Boone glared in my direction then, making it clear that her misunderstanding of the situation had been my fault. “I think someone failed to inform her about exactly what the deal is.” My father’s eyes found mine then and he stood and left having never touched that toast he was working so hard on. I had no fucking clue what to do with that shit.

When I turned to head to my room, it was with some doubts in my mind. Had I acted too hastily about Amber? Shit. I didn’t know. My head was fucked. The shit I had going on with Lily tended to cloud everything else. I enjoyed my time with Amber, but could I see myself building a future with her? No. Could I see her being my long-time mistress and love interest in that way? Yeah, I could. I wasn’t sure what the fuck that said about me though.

When I got to my room and saw the sad look that Amber threw my way, I knew there was no sticking around for this move of hers. “Look, it’s not that bad, Amber. We’ll still have plenty of time for one another. I just need a little space because you were getting too heavy, way too soon.”

Charles gave me a look like he wanted to punch me in the throat. I just shrugged my shoulders at him. Loved the guy, but he was barely 17. What did he know?

~*~

Two weeks later, it became obvious rather quickly that I did the right thing by putting my foot down where Amber was concerned. The first time one of the other club girls tried to even approach me, Amber went crazy and launched herself at the woman. There was an all-out brawl that ended with the club paying for Wendy’s broken nose, sprained wrist, and a blown-out knee.

“You can fuck the whores. You can’t fall for them. You can’t shack up with them. You can’t give them false hope that there will be more from you, even if you think you might want more. You have a pregnant wife at home! What if Amber did that shit to Lily? She’s going to be having that baby in just a few months. You think she needs to be getting into fistfights with the crazy bitches you keep bedding down with?”

“Amber wasn’t threatened by Lily,” I argued.

“Yeah, because Lily never came here looking for you. What would have happened if she had?” My father asked me before walking away once again with his head shaking back and forth, as if he didn’t know where in the hell he had gone wrong with me. Fuck! I didn’t know either.

The worst part was that I knew he was right. Then again, in all the time we’d been married, Lily had never bothered to come looking for me even once, so it was sort of a moot point. Amber was sent away from the club after the incident anyway. I didn’t even bother asking where they’d sent her, and instead was thankful that she was gone. What Boone said settled deep. I might not have wanted her as my wife, but I didn’t hate Lily anymore and certainly didn’t want to see harm come to her, so it was for the best.

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