Everlasting - Christine Michelle Page 0,6

looking for an in with the club when they struck their bargain with the Tallahassee Chapter. That was interesting to note. “I was a target all along?” I asked her, already knowing the answer.

She again tipped her head up and down. “You were, but I realized right away that I actually really liked you though. It wasn’t just business for me.”

“Except for the part where I wouldn’t allow you to accidentally get knocked up,” I added.

“That part was problematic.”

“What if I couldn’t have gotten you pregnant anyway?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “There were contingency plans in place,” she admitted. My stomach rolled. I knew, once I started things with Ever when I went back home, that what I had felt for Sasha had been infatuation and nothing more, but it still sickened me to think about how my emotions were preyed upon to meet a greater need. Not just a need for the woman, but for this group of assholes who had my club locked down running guns for them all these years.

“I loved you,” she finally told me as she drew close enough to run her fingertips across my arm. I shuddered with revulsion as she touched me. “I still do, even after all these years.”

“What happened to your kid?”

“What kid?”

“The goddamn baby you ended up having with Michaels,” I hissed out. She shrugged her shoulders as if it didn’t matter.

“He took her.”

“He took her?”

“Yes, He took her and kept her from me. She wasn’t needed since she didn’t help with any connections.” The sheer detachment with which she spoke of her own child was unnerving, to say the least.

“So, you gave your baby over to the father and your family still thinks that I’m the dad?”

She shook her head. “No, they know the truth now. I couldn’t hide it after your friend started coming around making demands about a paternity test. The stupid bastard nearly got himself killed.”

“Jesus, do you hear yourself? So, why the hell am I here if they know the truth?”

“Because they know it was me who screwed up and that it was supposed to be your baby. We are rectifying that situation.”

“No, the fuck, you are not. I don’t love you. Never did, actually. I am married and have kids of my own with my wife now.”

“She doesn’t matter. They don’t matter,” she shouted back at me. “You will cooperate, or I will have every one of them killed and I’ll make sure you have to watch before I kill you too!” She turned her back on me and stomped out of the room then. What a fucking shitstorm! How the hell was I supposed to deal with that level of crazy while I was strapped to a fucking bed? Worse yet, I couldn’t even warn anyone about what was happening so they wouldn’t know to keep a watch on Ever and the kids. I had to find a way out of this situation. Maybe, pretending to want to be with the bitch would get her to let her guard down enough to release me so I could get away. It was worth a shot. I’d do anything to make sure my family was safe in the end.

Chapter 5

Friends and Letters

Lucy

My bedroom door opened and Tiger Lily walked in looking gorgeous as ever. She had recently adopted a weird throw-back to the 1950s with her outfit choices, but with a twist. She would wear the cutest housewife dresses, but she paired the damn things with her leather jacket, boots, and a bandanna ties up on her head. I just smiled at the sight of her as she came over to my special reading chair and glanced down at what I had in my hands.

“Whatcha doing?” She sing-songed to me. I swear, if I didn’t know she was a few years older than I was, I’d think she was more Anna’s age. The woman was simply timeless.

I waved the pages of one of CJ’s letters at her. “Reading some of these old letters.”

“Old letters?”

“Every time CJ and I were apart, he wrote me a letter for each day we were separated.”

Lily gasped. “Are you serious? Every. Single. Day? That had to be a lot in the beginning. Or wait, when did it start?”

“It started at the very beginning, the first time I left for Florida, before we were ever even a couple.”

“Wow,” was all she could say to that. “Well, read it to me!”

I glanced down at the pages in my hand, and for a moment,