Madeline Sheehan - Unbeloved

Stopping in front of him, she tucked her pen into the base of her ponytail and shoved her notepad into the front of her apron.

“What are you doing here?” she asked quietly. “And why are you wearing that?” She gestured to his coveralls.

“Been workin’ at Pop’s a few blocks thataway,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “Doin’ custom work and shit.”

Maribelle’s caramel-colored eyes grew even wider. “Why?” she whispered. “I mean, what? Do you live here now?”

Clutching his hat in front of him, Jase twisted the mesh material, beginning to feel uneasy. He could almost envision the very loud, very public scene she would make if the knowledge that he’d moved to her town rubbed her the wrong way. And he didn’t want to get her fired because of him. If that happened, it would just be one more thing he would have to try to make right, and the list was already too long as it was.

So he changed tactics.

“Left the club,” he said, keeping his voice low and hoping she’d take the hint and do the same. “Moved here to try and make shit right.”

“You left the club,” she repeated dumbly, staring blankly up at him. “You left the club you’ve been a part of your entire life, that you’ve always chosen above everything else, even your own family?”

Jase’s knuckles cracked as the grip on his hat tightened. Yeah, he was a crappy dad. And he deserved every single piece of shit she was going to fling his way.

“Yeah,” he said hoarsely, “but I ain’t been there my whole life, there was something I did before the club, somethin’ I was, that was a fuck of a lot more important than a club. Took me a while to figure it out, Belle, but I was a father first and I wanna be your father again.”

Uncomfortable silence filled the small space between them, during which Jase could practically feel the rejection that was sure to come, when suddenly Maribelle’s gaze dropped to the floor, her lips twisting and flattening. He knew that look. That was the look his little girl made when she was trying not to cry.

“Belle,” he said softly. “I didn’t come here to upset you. Just wanted you to know how much I love you and your sisters. Just wanted a chance to be a family again.”

“You just expect me to forgive you?” she whispered, still blinking. A drop fell from her lowered eyelashes and onto the floor near her sneakers. “Just because you quit the club and moved to my town, I’m just supposed to forget? Just like that?”

“No,” he said, wishing he could pull her into a hug, wishing that things were simple again, that his girls were still little and all their hurts easily fixed with just a little bit of love.

“I’m not expectin’ anything,” he said. “Was just maybe hopin’ for the chance to try . . .”

When she didn’t respond, Jase took her silence as his cue to leave. Putting his cap back on, he pulled the bill down low and cleared his throat.

“I’ll leave you alone now,” he whispered. “You ever want to talk, I’m living on Forest Street. Got that little white house on the corner.”

He turned to go, feeling sick and suffocated by the disappointment quickly filling him, when he felt a light touch on his bicep.

“Wait,” Maribelle said.

Turning back around, he found her eyes on him, filled with unshed tears. “I have a break coming up,” she said, swallowing hard.

Jase couldn’t believe it, that she was actually letting him in, and despite himself, he smiled at her. A real, goddamn, genuine fucking smile.

“Great,” he said, his voice cracking. “’Cause your old man would love to buy you a cup of joe.”

Despite her tears, Maribelle snorted. “You sound like Grandpa.”

As his daughter walked off, Jase finished stomping off the snow from his boots before heading to the back of the café to find a quiet place to sit. While he waited for Maribelle to join him, he couldn’t help but think that sounding like his old man, or even being like his old man, something he’d never thought of as a compliment before, was just about the very best thing he’d ever heard.

A cup of coffee appeared in front of him as Maribelle took the seat opposite him. Placing her hands in her lap, she glanced up at him.

“So,” she said softly. “What should we talk about?”

Reaching for his coffee, wrapping his had around the warm mug and feeling the same sort of warmth beginning to spread within him, Jase shrugged.

“Everything,” he said. “I want to know everything.”

The road to redemption might be damn hard, but in the end—if you reached the end—his father was right. It was worth it.

Maribelle was worth it.

Funny how her birth was the reason he’d started running, but she ended up being the reason he’d stopped.

Life was really fucking funny that way.

“To Hawk!” Cox shouted, lifting a bottle of whiskey up into the air. “A brother through and through!”

In unison, all the boys standing around the clubhouse bar picked up their shot glasses and threw back their drinks.

“To Hawk!” they shouted back.

“To my dad!” Christopher chimed in from his seat beside Hawk. He raised his glass of soda in the air and the men around him cheered again. Seeing him, so young, praising his father alongside the boys . . .

Well, if it weren’t for Tegen standing beside me, for taking my hand into hers and giving me a hard squeeze, I would have lost it right then and there.

I had only one hour left. One hour left with him, and I was forced to spend it at the clubhouse sharing my last hour with everyone else. I understood that everybody wanted to say their good-byes, but after a night of making love, very little sleep, and a tear-filled morning, the club was the last place I wanted to be.

I wasn’t ready to let go.

I would never be ready to let go.

“Don’t drop the soap!” Tap called out, his lewd implication prompting a round of hearty laughter.

“And to Prez,” Cox continued when the laughter had died down. He turned to face Deuce. “For givin’ all us assholes a fuckin’ home!”

Standing just outside his office doors, Deuce was leaning back against the wall, his arms folded over his chest, watching them all with a solemn expression on his face.

“And to Foxy!” Cox’s gaze slid to where Eva was standing beside her husband, and his smile turned into his typical shit-eating grin. “For makin’ us assholes a family!”

“And to Cox!” Kami shouted. “For giving us all something to laugh at!”

“And to Kami!” Cox shot back. “For spending all my damn money!”

“Good God,” I muttered, dropping Tegen’s hand and turning away from everyone. As happy as I was that Cox and Kami seemed to be back to their normal selves, I couldn’t take it, not one more second of it. Everyone acting like this was just another day, making stupid jokes, completely oblivious that Hawk was about to go to jail for crimes he didn’t commit. All because Deuce wouldn’t be swayed by the same cartel who put Hawk in this position in the first place.

“Mom!” Tegen called out as I stormed away from her. Picking up speed I ignored her, hurrying toward the hallway that would lead me to the back of the club and away from the uncaring, unfeeling ridiculousness happening all around me.

Thankfully I found Hawk’s bedroom door unlocked, and as I slammed it behind me I burst into tears.

The last month had been a whirlwind of emotions, overwhelming to say the least, and now it was all coming to a head—all the realizations, the regret, the tears, the unstoppable flood of feelings, and it was just too much. I couldn’t take it, couldn’t process all that had happened in such a short time. Even more, I couldn’t fathom how it had all gone by so quickly and was ending before it had really had a chance to even begin.

With tears streaming down my cheeks, I took a seat on the edge of Hawk’s neatly made bed, and through blurry eyes looked around the small room. The room where this had started all those years ago. Where two people had come together for reasons unknown to them at the time, but in the end . . .

I sighed. How could I be angry? Losing myself to anger at a time like this would only be selfish and serve no purpose.

Feeling calmer and more in control, I was wiping my cheeks when the door creaked open. Hawk limped slowly into the room on his crutches, and awkwardly used his elbow to shut the door behind him.

“They don’t mean any harm,” he said. “They’re only tryin’ to keep shit light for my sake.”

Pushing my hair away from my face, I sighed loudly. “I know. I just . . . I just . . . I can’t . . .”

Letting out another sigh, a frustrated one because I couldn’t put my feelings into words that I hadn’t already used a hundred times before, I pushed myself up off the bed and crossed the room. Slipping my arms around his waist, I leaned my head against his abdomen.

“It just hurts,” I managed to finish in a small voice. “Why does everything have to always hurt so bad?”

“Because life hurts.” He dropped his face onto the top of my head, burying his nose into my hair and inhaling deeply. “Hidin’ is fuckin’ easy. It’s really livin’ that’s hard, that sometimes hurts like a son of a bitch.

“But, D,” he continued, slowly rubbing his nose back and forth across the top of my head. “We keep ridin’ that shit because it’s worth it, baby. When all is said and fuckin’ done, when we ain’t got no more time left, we’re gonna be grateful for those rides.

“I’m grateful,” he finished softly. “For you, for Christopher, and for the club.”

I didn’t say anything; there was nothing left to say. These moments, they ended here and now, and tomorrow a new chapter in my life would begin. So I just held on to him, to this moment, breathing him in, committing his scent to memory, and reveling in the feel of his big, warm body surrounding mine.

I’d always both admired and envied Hawk’s strength. He was a man through and through.

But now it was my turn to be strong.

For him. For us. For our family.

And come hell or high water, I was determined to do just that.

**•

Throughout the course of his life, Hawk had lived through some really bad days. Some real ugly shit that most times was just easier to forget than to go through the pain of working through it.

This wasn’t one of those times.

This was far, far worse.

Seated on the couch beside his son, Hawk slid his arm around the boy’s small shoulders. Holding him close, he gave Christopher one last squeeze.

“Gotta get goin’,” he said roughly. “But I’ll be seein’ you soon.”

As his son looked up at him, messy red hair framing a face full of confusion and hurt, Hawk had a hard time keeping his emotions in check. It was the first time in a long time that he’d so much as felt the urge to cry, the last time being the night after he’d watched a bullet tear through his father’s skull. Since then, he’d felt a shit ton of emotions, some good, most bad, but none that had the ability to gut him like one look from his kid could.

“Gimme a hug,” he whispered, giving Christopher a tug. As the boy turned his body into Hawk’s and wrapped his skinny arms around his neck, Hawk squeezed his eyes tightly shut and put every ounce of himself into that hug.

“You take care of your mom,” he whispered, burying his face into his son’s hair. “Promise me you’ll take care of your mom.”

Against his shoulder he felt Christopher’s head nod, and that was good enough for him.

Opening his eyes, he found Tegen already waiting to take Christopher. His chest aching, he nodded at her and released his son.

“Come here, little brother,” Tegen said softly.

Christopher clung to him, refusing to budge, and when Hawk tried to forcefully pry him from his body, the boy let out a small sob. In that moment, at the sound of his son crying, Hawk could no longer keep it together. Cupping the back of his son’s head, holding his small body tightly to him, he let his own tears fall, uncaring who saw them, and just held his boy as close as he could. Because, god-fucking-dammit, the next time he’d have this chance, to be free to hold his boy, his boy was going to be a man.

He was going to miss it all.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, what came next was as equally miserable.

Once Christopher was in Tegen’s arms and Cage was helping Hawk to his feet, the rest of the boys began to get up from their seats. One by one they lined up by the door, their expressions ranging from solemn to just plain sad.