I was doing what was best for all involved. Hindsight really is a bitch, but you have to believe what I’m saying is the truth. In my mind, you didn’t need any more unexpected life altering events, and honestly, I wasn’t sure the baby was yours.”
“And what? You just thought that when the child was grown he or she would never have questions of their own?” I watch his mental state decline with the flaring of his nostrils as he says this.
This conversation has brought me back in time and I can almost feel myself reliving the confusion and pain. Standing, I respond, “I wasn’t thinking, not properly, Rogue. Something I’ve only come to fully realize a few years ago. It sounds cut and dry to you and Rory, but it wasn’t, not at that time, not in that moment.”
“Rory? That’s his name?” he looks up at me.
I feel tears sting the back of my lids before my eyes well up. “After Aurora, it’s the closest thing I could come up with. And either way, I wanted to honor my late friend.”
He gets up, walks to the kitchen, grabs a beer from the refrigerator, cracks it open and begins to chug it as he heads back in my direction. “She was pregnant.”
My brain tries to catch up and make sense out of what he just said. “Who was pregnant?”
“When I got the autopsy report, I found out that Aurora was nearly eight weeks pregnant when she was murdered. Later found out that she had literally learned of the news that day. Her mumbling last words were something about a baby, but it didn’t make sense at the time. You know we’d been trying for years with no luck.” He sits back down and stares off, away from me.
No. No, no, no. The tears glide freely down my cheeks. She woke up that morning, learned at some point her and Rogue’s dream of expanding their family was becoming a reality, and in a few short hours it was stripped away. “No,” is all I manage to mutter out through my hands now covering my mouth.
Rogue looks up at me with a scrunched forehead. “What do you mean, no?”
I plop down back onto the sofa. “I-I didn’t mean it as if it weren’t true. It’s just something I never knew until now and even still, it pains me.”
He finishes the last sip of his beer. “Yeah, well, now you’ve just gotten a small taste of how I’m feeling.” He stands again. “You literally stole the opportunity of raising another child, my son, from me.”
“We still aren’t sure if he’s yours,” I mumble through my tears, his true but hurtful words still haunting my thoughts.
“A fucking blind man can see that he is mine, Bella! He and Gunner will be here for a few more days possibly. I’ll have Stitches get the paternity kit and I have hospital staff on my payroll so the results can be expedited. I mean, fuck, Bella. What did you think was gonna happen once you came back to town? That you could hide your son, my son from me forever? This is insane! Not to mention that Rory just so happens to be a member of an allied MC of ours. One that is now questioning your loyalty considering you’ve been back for a little while now and yet I’m still just finding out about this. I’ll be at the clubhouse until further notice and I need some space and time. None of this looks good, the old lady of an MC president keeping secrets from him? Life changing ones at that?” He turns his back to me to throw his beer away.
“Old lady? Oh, so now that there’s controversy I’m allowed to be given that title?” I question through a raised voice as my own anger takes hold.
“I’m not sure what you are or will be to me after this. What I do know is that the club is dealing with some heavy stuff right now, so you can expect your day-to-day routine of seeing PeeWee to continue,” he finishes before exiting the house.
Chapter Thirteen
Rogue
The tires spin underneath me as I eat up the asphalt. Every mile I put between Bella and myself still doesn’t calm me, if anything, I find that my angry feelings are amplified. By the time I pull up and into the club lot, I’m breathing fire. I don’t feel as if we accomplished much with our talking, but the fact that