God, she loved that boy.
When she’d first held the test stick in her hand, love was not what she’d felt. Panic and nausea, but not love. Her first impulse, one she’d lived with for days, had been to abort. She’d been twenty-eight years old, she’djustquit her job to focus on the band, and the father was … Edgar ‘Eight Ball’ Johnston, who, while a great fuck, was very obviously not relationship material, much less parenting material.
The first time she’d considered keeping the baby had been the night she’d told Eight. His reaction had been to ask her how much an abortion would cost and tell her he’d go in for half. Not even a blink or a breath. Like she’d told him she was ordering dinner.
Pure contrarianism had prompted her to him she was keeping the baby. The statement had shocked her more than Eight. He’d simply said she should do what she wanted, but he wasn’t going to be a father. In the ensuing argument—brief, because he’d walked out just as she’d gotten really ramped up, and she hadn’t seen him again for eleven years—he’d told her he was no good, he’d be a terrible father, the kid would be better off not knowing he existed.
She couldn’t say he was wrong.
With the idea of keeping the baby implanted in her mind and taking root, like the kid was doing in her belly, Marcella had agonized for a couple weeks over what to do.
Then she’d told her family, who promised to support her decision, whatever it was, and help her however she needed.
And then she’d told Dash. A heavily pregnant woman singing the blues in dive bars and honkytonks didn’t really paint the right picture, but Dash had said they’d make it work. The rest of the band at the time agreed. They even agreed they could take a couple months off when the baby came, so Marcella could stay with him full-time for a while.
Finally, Marcella faced some facts. She wanted to be a mother. She’d never had a really stable relationship; neither her taste in men nor her own lifestyle gave her much opportunity to find long-lasting love. She was almost thirty, and the forecast for a future with a picket-fence house, a Golden Retriever, 2.5 children, and a husband who wore a suit and carried a briefcase to work was bleak—not least because that life didn’t interest her. That was the life her mother and father had tried to make, and it had failed.
She’d wanted to be a mother, and she’d been pregnant. Eventually, she saw that the decision had already been made.
Now she was pushing forty, and that beautiful boy tearing across the field with a grin on his face so big and bright she could see its light from the sidelines was her own. Her family and friends had stepped up to help her, and together they’d made a pretty great life for her very great kid.
Apart from a few desperate nights early on, when she was alone and exhausted, her breasts aching and a colicky newborn shrieking in her ear, she’d never regretted her choice.
Probably she wouldn’t have regretted the other choice, either, because she wouldn’t have known Ajax. She would be living a different version of the life her choices had built. But this wasn’t someTwilight Zoneepisode, or a Gwyneth Paltrow movie, so the different version didn’t matter. This was her life, and that was her kid, and she was glad.
The coach blew his whistle from the center of the field, and the team trotted to him. Marcella smiled when he crouched down so he wasn’t towering over the kids as he talked. He must have said something funny, because a laugh roared up from the group. Ajax tossed his head back and laughed at the sky, like Coach was the funniest guy he’d ever known.
When they all did their ritual high-fives to end practice, Marcella stood up and hooked her bag over her shoulder, ready to collect her boy and take him for pizza. It would be just the two of them tonight. She liked those nights best.
She had no idea if there was any room left for Eight in this life she and her son had built. But if Ajax thought there was room, she’d have to make way.
CHAPTER NINE
By the time the run made it to the Flying J just on the eastern side of the border between Arizona and California, Eight was in a toxic mood. He felt eighty years old, and his bum leg was all but petrified. He missed the days when he could ride six hundred miles in a day without his ass even going numb.
Getting old sucked hard.
Worse than that, something had gone wrong with his dick. It started the night before they’d left Tulsa, when he’d taken Heidi upstairs for a ride.
He hadn’t been able to get it up. In all his years of fucking, his dick had never failed him before. He’d been poking Heidi for five or six years, since she’d started hanging with the Bulls; she’d become one of his favorites. She’d let him do just about anything—more than that, she wasintojust about anything. She was a best-case-scenario fuck. But Tuesday night, he was no-go.
Then Wednesday night, when they’d stopped over with Pancho’s Boys MC in New Mexico, he’d snagged a hot little Latina chick. Same thing. No go—and this time, with a chick he didn’t know and couldn’t trust to keep her yap shut.
Humiliated and wary of word getting out, he didn’t try again last night. They’d stopped at a motel in Winslow, Arizona, and everybody had hoofed it across the street to an old-school, sawdust-on-the-floor honkytonk. The place was hopping and chock-full of prime pussy. All the other single guys had scored, but Eight had parked his ass in a corner and drunk himself stupid instead.
The massive hangover he’d woken with this morning had held all goddamn day. He was sore and exhausted and fucked in the head, if nowhere else.
As the Bulls and the Horde entered the truck stop’s restaurant, almost twenty men in colors, the whole place went quiet. Everybody in the room had turned to gawk. Normally Eight loved that shit, and especially loved intimidating Mom and Pop Traveler when they gave him a look like he might eat one of their kids. This afternoon, however, with his head and body all out of whack, he just snarled a little and walked by.
Three cute little chicks and one old battleax were their waitresses, scurrying about getting tables pushed together to accommodate their party. Show caught his eye and nodded toward the front of the restaurant, where a line was forming at the register. They were scaring off the moms and pops.
It was hardly the first time he’d walked into a restaurant with his brothers and provoked a mass exodus of the buttoned-up crowd, but this afternoon, Eight was irritated. They just wanted to get some fucking food and fill their tanks. They weren’t Vikings, landing on a beach to storm the churches, gut the men, and rape the women.
As the analogy occurred to him, Eight chuckled, which felt pretty good, lightening up his load of mental bullshit a little. The Horde had a whole set of Viking-style traditions. He thought they were pretty stupid, personally, but hey, maybe they’d do some pillaging while they were here.
Probably not. The Horde were riding straight now. They were probably more likely to help those moms across the street.
The waitresses were still taking their orders when Dex and Tommy, the two SAAs at the table, both called out, their voices low but sharp, “Prez” and “Boss,” respectively.