Page 36 of The Broken Beginning: Part One

“What the fuck? I want to see him!” I demanded. “Why the hell did you just put him in Boone’s arms first?” My questions were dripping with accusation. There was only so much shit I was going to put up with from this bitch.

She turned a scathing glare my way as my father smirked while cooing at the baby. The same baby that I still couldn’t see. He was just a damn blue blanket from where I stood.

“You’ve had two whole days to come to the goddamn hospital and see this baby born, hold him, get to know him, or even name him if you wanted to do that. I called and called because Boone and my father were gone, and I needed a ride to the hospital when I went into labor a few days early. My best friend had to come get me instead.” She paused a moment and tilted her head to the side before adding the last bit that fucking sunk me. “Some cunt kept hanging up on me or telling me you were busy while I was in labor and trying to get in touch with you so I could get a ride to the hospital.”

She glanced back toward where I left Madeline lying there with her legs still spread wide and a smirk the size of the grand canyon on her face. Oh shit! Fuck me. Madeline. There was something about that girl that I’d been trying to remember, and it just now hit me. She used to be Lily’s best friend. The night we made our son, was the night Lily told me she was walking home because she’d had a fight with her friend and had basically been stranded there. Of all the bitches to hook up with… And she had been in my room all weekend. If Lily had attempted to call, it would have been Madeline who was hanging up on her.

It also occurred to me that I hadn’t seen the satellite phone my father had left for me just in case Lily went into labor while our fathers were gone. Fuck! I’d deal with Madeline later. For now, I had a son to meet, so I turned my full attention back to Lily who wasn’t done telling me about myself, especially when I attempted to take the baby from my father.

Lily stepped right in the way and shoved me backward. A few of the men who had been hanging around, stood as if they might jump into the fray. Didn’t matter who you were, if you didn’t wear the patch, you didn’t put hands on a brother.

“You don’t get to put your sexually transmitted disease infested hands on my baby! You couldn’t even be bothered to help me to the hospital to have him or to jump out of that nasty whore’s snatch long enough to see if he was living and breathing. My son is still innocent, sweet, and disease free and I’m keeping him that way as long as I can. If that means not allowing your filth to touch him, then that’s exactly what will happen. Now, go fucking shower, because you stink like nasty whore and cheap liquor. Get some fresh clothes on, sober up, and don’t even think about coming around my son until you do!”

It did not go over my head that she was emphasizing the fact that the little bundle of blue my father held was her son and not ours. I guess I deserved that, considering the whole time she was pregnant with him that’s exactly how I referred to the baby. He was her kid. It kept things from being real for me. Now, too fucking late to matter, I finally realized the damage I’d been doing.

Boone chuckled and grinned with pride as he watched his daughter-in-law give me shit. “That’s a fierce little momma right there. Reminds me of a tigress with her cubs. No one fucks with her babies. Our fierce little Tiger Lily,” he finally said, the awe dripping from his voice as he turned his attention to Rob momentarily.

Then he redirected his attention to me. “Where the fuck is the phone that I left for you?” Boone finally asked, and he was pissed, forgetting that he held a tiny baby in his hands when he bellowed out those words. “I didn’t know she didn’t have anyone at the hospital with her. Christ! I would have fucked off that run and come straight there, sweetheart.” My dad told her as he handed my now screaming son to his mother.

She cooed sweetly into his ear as she did a slight little bounce-rock thing, while holding the baby tight to her body. “You’re okay. Grandpa just has a loud voice when he’s upset with his idiot son. You’ll be fine. We’re going to go home and get you fed and changed, and all will be right in your world again.”

Jesus, I think she had every single man in the place under the same spell she was weaving around my kid.

“The phone?” My father asked again, softer this time, but the venom wasn’t missing from the whispered words.

I glared back at Madeline whose face had turned red. She wouldn’t meet my eyes though, which told me everything I needed to know. “I don’t know. It disappeared at some point over the past couple days.”

“Your wife’s lifeline at the end of her pregnancy just disappeared and you didn’t tear down the world trying to find it?” Boone asked. Madeline still refused to look at me so I turned my attention back to my dad and said the most honest thing I could in that moment.

“I wasn’t thinking of the phone to make the attempt to find it and that was my fuck up that I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life.”

Boone scoffed at me. “Now, he thinks he gets it. Boy, you don’t know the half of how badly you’ve been screwing all this up, but you will. And when it really hits you, you won’t be standing because the weight of it all will crush you completely.”

My father’s eyes left mine then and moved to Madeline’s. “Don’t know what the fuck you did with that phone, girl, but you will take the prospect to my son’s room and go find it quick like. Then, he’s going to take you to a special room where you’re going to stay until I can deal with you.”

“What?” Madeline screeched, obviously aware that she had just incurred the wrath of Boone. “I didn’t do anything really, just shoved the damn thing in a drawer.”

“And why’d you do that?”

She almost couldn’t stop herself from snickering. “It wouldn’t stop ringing,” she admitted.

Holy shit!

“Get her out of here before I kill her myself,” I raged. I missed my son being born because my selfish ass was with a woman who was worse than me. I missed being able to name him or have any input at all, and I pissed his mom off so much that I doubted she’d ever let me near him.

“Come on baby girl, let’s get the two of you home. You look like you’re about to drop and that boy looks about two seconds from gumming his fingers off, he’s so hungry.”

Lily chuckled at that. “He does, doesn’t he?” She turned and moved toward the door without giving me another thought. The worst part was, it was no more than I deserved.

12 - Forgiveness isn’t Necessary

Tiger Lily

Merc didn’t show up at the house that day. By ten o’clock that night, I kicked my dad and Boone out, fed the baby, put him in his crib, and turned on the baby monitor that Shannon and Stacey had gotten for me. Then, I took a hot shower and crawled in bed without giving Merc another thought.

Just after midnight, something stirred me from sleep, but at first, I was too groggy to understand what it was. Then, like I was in a nightmare I felt my jelly belly where the baby used to be. It took a second to remember I had already given birth, and the noise that woke me was coming from the baby monitor in my son’s room.

“You’re so tiny,” a gruff voice attempted to coo. “And wiggly,” he laughed lightly, so as not to startle the baby. “Look at those arms go. We’ll definitely have to get you into sports, huh?”

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