regretted agreeing to stop and eat. He’d have to sit across a table from me and that wouldn’t be conducive to pretending I was invisible.
It was real clear he didn’t want to be stuck with me, so I decided I’d put a bookmark in the Make Christian Forker Mine plan. Instead, I’d pee, eat and get coffee into me so I didn’t fall asleep on the back of his bike and then get the fuck home so I could shower, change, and maybe nap for an hour before taking over for Ella. Shit. I also needed a new phone. And bank cards.
I smiled at the waitress and gave her my thanks for the coffee I could see she’d set down. Two seconds after I sat my booty down in the booth opposite him, he launched into a dressing down.
“So lemme get this straight. This bitch railroaded you to her apartment, stuck you with her kid and while you cleaned up her pigsty, she stole your car ‘n wallet?”
Oh. Definitely not invisible right now.
“Basically, yeah.” I added sugar and cream to my coffee. I noted that he drank his black but there were a whole bunch of empty sugar packets sitting beside his mug in a messy pile.
“Why’d you let her get you to her place? Was that smart?”
“I assessed the situation and decided---”
“You assessed wrong.”
“She had a baby and---”
“Still that didn’t stop her from stealing your car and your bag.”
I gave my head a shake and was about to reply but he cut me off again. Seemed like he’d been waiting to grill me about this since he found out.
“Not real smart. I don’t give a shit if she had a kid with her. You shouldn’t have gone. What if she’d had someone at her place waiting to hurt you?”
“She didn’t.”
“What if she did?”
I shook my head. “She---”
“WHAT IF SHE DID?”
“Let me fucking finish,” I demanded.
He clenched his jaw and gave me a hard stare. Or harder.
“She’s claiming this baby is either my brother’s or Luke’s. Luke is someone who was close to my family and…”
“Someone you loved?” he asked, his voice gentler.
My heart stuttered. I said nothing for a second as I processed not only what that word meant, but how it sounded coming from a man who usually spoke so rough on the rare occasion he deigned to speak to me at all.
I shrugged. “Someone who isn’t here to look out for a little baby that might be his. But whether that baby is Luke’s, Ride’s, or that building superintendent’s, he’s a little person who can’t fend for himself and him getting stuck with me when his fuckup for a mom took off means last night and tonight he’s in a warm, clean bed with medicine he needs and food in his little belly and with someone making sure he’s okay. I’d do it again in a heartbeat if I knew it’d mean that baby would be safe.”
His expression wasn’t hard right now. He was looking at me a little bit like he’d looked at me at The Roadhouse the other night.
The sound of motorcycle pipes grabbed the both of our attention and just like that, the spell was broken.
I recognized those bikers. Deacon and Jesse. They’d been gone for a few days and I had no idea why. They stopped at the pumps and were both gassing up.
I stared out the window at my oldest brother. He was going to have a conniption over what’d happened the day before. Not just the Melanie situation, but also the fire.
But still, it was probably better to get it over with and deal with him flipping out so I could get on with things. And seeing his face? It made me wanna cry. It made me want to let my family baby me over what’d almost happened the night before. And I only rarely let them baby me.
I stared out the window and bit my lip.
“Gonna go say hello or what?” Christian asked.
I made a snap decision and shook my head. “If they see us. If not, it might be best to wait until we’re back home. Unless you need to talk to them?”
“Nope. I’ll see ‘em later in church.”
I shrugged.
The waitress brought over our breakfast sandwiches.
Deacon and Jesse didn’t come into the restaurant. They headed the way we’d come so were most likely heading to the Sioux Falls clubhouse.
I stared out the window, lost in thought while I ate.
“Ready to roll?” he asked the instant my last bite of