Outlaw: Chapter 2
I could see how much the last several days had torn Bear up. After the blowup at the party, where Ilara saw him with Tarin, things had been tense and awful. Ilara refused to speak to him or let him see Hope. He was dying to be at the hospital with the little girl he considered his daughter and her mother. All you had to do was look at his face and you could see how torturous it was for him.
Ilara didn’t look any better. She was pale and had circles under her eyes. We’d all been visiting and trying to gently get her to at least let Bear explain who the woman was and why he’d been in his room with her at the clubhouse. She wouldn’t even talk about it. All of us were wondering the same damn thing. Who was this woman and why was she here? How did Bear know her? Did they have a past and why had she showed up? And the most unwanted question, had he lied and really cheated on Ilara with Tarin?
I shied away from that last one. Why? For one, after thinking about it and not letting my own emotions get in the mix, I knew Bear was an honest guy. I couldn’t see him cheating on Ilara, even if I had sided with her at first. That had been an automatic response to seeing her hurt. Not a single Warrior who’d found his old lady even looked at other women, let alone cheated on them. Bear wasn’t going to be like that either.
The second reason was more complex and harder to wrap my head around. It was my immediate reaction to Tarin. It had been a shock when I first laid eyes on her. I felt like something in me woke up and connected when I saw her. She’d been hanging onto Bear’s cut and looking nervous and a little scared. Her beauty struck me.
Now, I've seen and been with beautiful women. I could appreciate a woman for more than her looks. Those might get you at first, but it was what was inside that was the true determiner for me. Did that mean I didn’t sleep around with women? Hell no. I was a man and I liked sex, but none of the women I slept with expected more. I made it clear from the start, it was just for fun. That didn’t mean that deep down I didn’t hope to find someone special one day.
With Bull, Ace, Rebel, Ajax, Demon, and now Bear finding their old ladies in our chapter, that hope had begun to grow. Though, I really had no idea if a woman could live with me the way I was. There was a lot of shit she’d have to deal with from my past. Things that would have me being an overprotective man. I couldn’t change it, so she’d have to learn to deal with it. If she had things in her past, I'd learn to do the same.
Tarin’s impact was like nothing I’d ever experienced. She was average height, I’d guess five feet six or so. She had long dark blonde hair with streaks of lighter blonde in it. It was a little messy and made me think of her just getting out of bed. Her skin was a light tan, and it looked soft and smooth from where I was standing. Her darker brows made her eyes stand out. Her big blue eyes made a big impact when she made eye contact. The rest of her face was a perfect combination of full lips and a slender nose.
She hadn’t maintained that eye contact for more than a second or two, but it was enough. I’d instantly wanted to know more about her, and I got pissed when I heard what Ilara said. Bear had cheated on Ilara with her? Not only was I upset that he might have done that, but I was more upset that it meant I’d never have a chance to be with her. There was no way I could have any woman around if she was someone one of my brothers had cheated on his woman with.
She’d stepped to the side of Bear to look at Ilara and me. She was fit looking with wider hips. I couldn't see her ass, but her breasts were a nice full B cup, I guessed. I usually liked my women with more in that department, but I wasn’t complaining. I had to tear my eyes away to comfort Ilara. I’d gotten her and Hope out of there though a big part of me wanted to stay.
Later, when Bear came to Demon’s looking for her after he called me, we’d almost gotten into it. Again, he said that he hadn’t cheated on Ilara. We had to keep him back when the ambulance came to take Hope to the hospital. Zara had said she needed to have tests run. Hope had a fever, and she didn’t know what was causing it.
Today, Bear had asked Bull to have church at the hospital. He said he wanted to talk to us. I hoped that meant we’d learn more about the mysterious Tarin. We all waited for him to get started.
He immediately looked at all of us and growled. “Okay, I’d hoped that I would be able to talk to Ilara about this first, however that’s not going to happen any time soon. So, here’s the damn truth about Tarin and what happened the other night.” I saw him narrow his eyes at me. I maintained an expressionless face. “First, I absolutely didn’t cheat on Ilara. I would never do that. I love her and Hope more than anything in this world. When we figure out what is wrong with Hope, I’ll be winning back both of them.”
Our brother Rebel spoke up. “We understand, Bear. We’re sorry we have to do this now, but we need to know what the hell happened, so we can help.”
“Thanks, Reb. Here it goes. When Ilara took Hope home and I stayed, I intended to talk to Terror and Reaper about Todd Hamilton. Once that was done, I was going to go home and talk to Ilara about something else. Before I could find them to talk, a young woman approached me. I had no idea who she was or how she’d gotten in the compound. It was obvious from the way she was dressed, that she wasn’t a bunny with one of the other clubs. She asked if I was Donovan Wood.” We all muttered. How did she know his real name? We didn’t go around giving that out to people, especially some woman we’d casually been sleeping with, though he said she wasn’t one of those.
“I was instantly on alert. Who the hell was she? She told me she had to talk to me and she wanted to do it in private. I told her she needed to get lost. I didn’t know her. I’d never slept with her. She insisted, and I was about to show her to the door when she said a name, a name from my past.” He paused.
“When she said it, I took her straight to my room to talk. Looking back, it was stupid to do that. I should have used Bull’s office or even took her into church, but I was on autopilot. When we got inside, she told me why she’d come. Her story knocked me for a damn loop.”
“What was the story? Stop pussyfooting around and tell us,” I growled.
“I’m getting there, fucker. Tarin is twenty-five years old. She said her mom had just died, and she found papers in her lockbox including her birth certificate. I’m listed as her father.”
“Wait a minute, you told us you couldn’t have kids,” Tank said as he frowned across the table at Bear.
“I know. That’s what I was told all those years ago when I was with Carol. She left me because of it. Anyway, I told Tarin she was mistaken. Yes, I'd been with her mom, but I couldn't have kids. She handed me her birth certificate. Her birthday is eight months after Carol left me.”
“That still doesn’t mean anything. She could have been cheating on you. You had a test done that said you were sterile,” Player reminded him, as if he was likely to forget.
“I know and I told Tarin all of that. She also gave me her mother’s diary. She said it was in the lockbox along with her birth certificate. She showed me a couple of sections. It was Carol's handwriting. I recognized it. Carol wrote about how she didn't want to have kids. She didn’t want to tell me because she knew I’d leave her. For the whole two years we were trying to conceive before I got out of the Army, she'd secretly had an IUD to prevent it.” All of us groaned. What a damn underhanded thing to do.
“When I insisted we have ourselves tested and she couldn’t talk me out of it, she came up with an idea. She always made it home before I did. She got the mail every day. When the results came, she copied it and changed the wording to say I was sterile. That’s the one she showed me when I got home. She wrote that she was pissed when I later said we could adopt.
“She told me she didn’t want kids if they weren’t ours. She thought that would stop me. After all, the reason we couldn’t have them was because of me. I’d be too honorable to leave if it was my fault. However, that blew up in her face when I came back a month later and insisted on us considering adoption again. She knew then I wouldn’t give up. She was backed into a corner.”
“Why didn’t she just tell you? She had to know you were going to leave one way or the other at that point,” Bull asked.
“She did, but she was pissed and she was apparently a cunt. I never saw it when I was with her. She hid it well. She decided she’d do one more thing before she left me to find someone who wouldn’t want kids. She wrote a nasty letter to me about how she couldn’t be with someone who wasn’t a real man. She took our savings and left.” I heard several of them swearing.
“So, what happened when she found out she was pregnant, assuming this Tarin is yours?” I asked. I couldn’t stop myself. I was skeptical of Tarin’s story even though a part of me wanted it to be true.
“She realized it a few weeks later. She came back, but I’d packed my shit and left the damned state. No one knew where I went. I just wandered all over. She couldn’t find me. She was pissed again.”
“Why didn’t she have an abortion if she didn’t want kids? Why did she have Tarin?” Maverick asked. It was a logical thing to ask.