Then he spit in my face.
I didn’t wipe it off.
I was filthy. I was disgusting. But so was he.
He left that day, slamming out of the house before my tears had even washed away his saliva from my face.
He’d had no idea. None. He’d looked right past my shorn off hair and mangled hand. And that’s what was so heartbreakingly funny.
My pregnancy was most definitely payback.
It just hadn’t been mine.
Chapter 40
Patrick
She’d wrecked me.
I didn’t understand how she could have fucked someone else after I left. She’d only had a few bloody days to do so, but there was no way I’d misinterpreted her words. She was pregnant, and it was not by me. Unless it was the Lord’s child, she’d had another man between her thighs.
Repeating her words over and over in my head made the ride home seem hours shorter than the ride to Texas had been. When I’d been anxious to see Amy and Mum, the ride had seemed to be unending. However, as I pulled into the driveway of the small house I’d been able to afford on my pay from the garage, it was as if the trip had taken mere moments.
There’s a saying, ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned’. The words have been bastardized a bit since William Congreve first wrote them—but the sentiment was the same.
She’d been angry at me—with good reason—and she’d paid me back in kind.
The thought of another man’s hands on her made me shake with fury. I couldn’t even fathom it, and more than once during the ride I’d had to pull off the side of the road to be sick. It made me want to hurt someone. It made me want to hurt her.
Fuck her and her disgusting American views of marriage and fidelity. Fuck her short hair and her missing fingers and her accent.
I’d never speak of her again. It was the only way I’d survive without her, because as much as I hated her—I loved her still, and that made me angrier than anything else.
The house was quiet as I unlocked the front door and stepped inside. It was late and Moira hadn’t known I was coming home so soon, so she hadn’t left any lights on in the house.
What had I been thinking, renting one place for all of us? Had I been planning on living with both my wife and Moira in the same house? The decision seemed incredibly stupid as I pulled off my boots.
I moved down the hallway as quietly as I could, but Moira’s voice still called out from her open bedroom door.
“Trick?”
“I’m back,” I replied quietly, stopping in her doorway for a reason I couldn’t name.
“I didn’t expect ye back for a while yet,” she said sleepily, raising up to her elbow and resting her head on her palm. “Is everyt’in’ alright?”
I didn’t know how to answer her. Was everything alright? No. However, there was no way to explain the situation without being completely insensitive and cruel.
The next words were out of my mouth before I could stop them.
“Can I sleep wit’ ye?”
Her eyebrows rose in response, but she didn’t turn me away as she watched me silently. After a few moments, I dropped my hand from the door. It hadn’t been kind of me to ask, especially not after I’d just rode thousands of miles away from her to visit another woman.
“Yes, ye can,” she replied as I began to turn away.
I looked back at her face and nodded once as I pulled off my shirt. I knew that I probably smelled like crap, but I was suddenly so exhausted that I couldn’t even make myself have a shower. I dropped my jeans and climbed in as she moved over to give me room.
I stared at the ceiling for a long time with Moira wrapped around me, sleeping deeply. She was a good woman—built for the life we’d made in the few months we’d been in Oregon. She got on well with everyone, always looked beautiful even as she grew larger, and was genuinely kind to me even when I didn’t deserve it.
I closed my eyes and begged not to dream of my wife.
As far as I was concerned, Amy was dead.
Chapter 41
Amy
That first year was horrible. It took months and months of speaking with a free counselor at a rape crisis center, hours of yoga, and long talks with Peg before I felt anywhere near back to normal, and even then... well, normal was relative.
I’d realized that I had to get my shit together after Patrick had left that day and I’d found Peg crying quietly in the kitchen. She’d suspected that something more had happened to me in Ireland than she’d been told and my insistence that Patrick wasn’t the one who’d gotten me pregnant was the confirmation she’d dreaded. I hated telling her about it, and I’d barely skimmed the details, but she knew enough by the time I was done that she’d been both relieved that I’d finally opened up and completely livid at what I’d gone through.
I understood both emotions. I was angry, too, but life as I knew it would never be the same—not ever. And I realized then that I was going to have to figure out where I went from there. In a little over six months, I was having a baby. I needed to get my shit together.
So I did. It was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. I worked at it. Therapy was work, and it hurt, but I relished it—because with each passing week, things became a little clearer. My fears became a little easier to live with. My nightmares tapered off from every night, to once a week and then once a month.
I learned to think of Malcolm as a man, a very bad man, but not a monster that was hiding around every corner. I learned how to defend myself. I learned how to stop looking over my shoulder every second.
I learned how to live in the new normal I’d created.
And then, out of the ashes of the person I used to be, my son was born.
I named him Phoenix.
***
“I can’t believe how small he is,” I said dreamily to Peg while I watched Phoenix nurse.
Breastfeeding calmed me in a way that therapy and yoga never had. It made me feel connected to something bigger, something more important than myself. It was odd really, because in the month leading up to Nix’s birth I’d been riddled with anxiety about it.
I knew that breasts weren’t purely sexual from a biological standpoint, but that didn’t mean that breastfeeding wasn’t a trigger for me. It was. I didn’t understand why it bothered me so badly, especially since my shirt hadn’t even come off during the rape. I didn’t have to understand the trigger, however, for it to have meaning, and by the time Nix was born, I’d broken out in never-ending hives again at just the thought of trying to feed him anything other than formula.
I was miserable as I tried to think of any excuse I could not to breastfeed my child, and guilt ridden over giving him formula when I was perfectly capable of nursing him myself. My hang-ups filled me with self-loathing and the hormones coursing through my body made everything so much worse.
Eventually, someone noticed my odd behavior, and before I left the hospital one of the nurses walked into the room with a counselor trailing behind her. She was someone I’d seen around the crisis center, and she’d known me immediately by name. I’m not sure if Peg had called them, or if the nurses had, but I’ll never be able to thank that woman enough for the way she helped us.
The first time I nursed Phoenix, I cried the entire time. Not because it felt wrong, but because breastfeeding him was another one of the things that had almost been taken from me as a result of that night. It was freeing. It felt like I was fighting back.
“He’ll be grown before ye know it,” Peg answered with a small smile, folding towels on the couch next to me.
“Have you heard from Patrick yet?” I asked, though I knew she hadn’t.
When Patrick had left over a year ago, he’d been livid. I understood it, and as time went on, I’d forgiven him for it. Therapy had helped me let go of the anger I felt toward my husband—the resentment and the blame. The things that had happened to me were not his fault, and I knew in my heart that he would have done anything he could to stop
it. It was just… life. I’d been targeted by a psychopath, and it wasn’t anyone’s fault but Malcolm’s.
That didn’t mean that I agreed with Patrick completely cutting Peg out of his life. Me, I understood. He didn’t know the situation and he believed that I’d betrayed him in the worst possible way. For a long time, I hadn’t wanted anything to do with him, either. But Peg loved him and she missed him, and I thought he was acting like an asshole for refusing to answer her letters and phone calls.
“He’ll come around,” she answered me sadly. “He just needs some more time.”
“He’s being an idiot,” I commented stubbornly, moving Nix to the other breast. “A stubborn idiot.”
“Well, he isn’t the only one,” she replied.
“He has a family, Peg.”
“When the hell are ye goin’ to start callin’ me Mum?”
“He has a family, Mum.”
“Yer his family,” she argued. “He’d be back here in an instant and ye know it.”
I looked down and smoothed back Nix’s wild black hair, ignoring her words. Perhaps Patrick would come running if I told him the whole story. Maybe he’d even move to be near us… maybe he’d raise Nix as his own. But as I gazed at my son, I knew I’d never be the reason that Patrick left his child. I couldn’t do that to him and I couldn’t do that to his daughter that Doc had mentioned one of the times Peg had called their garage.
“We’re just fine without him,” I announced, ignoring the pang in my chest that the words invoked. “It just wasn’t meant to be.”
“Yer both a couple of stubborn eejits,” she grumbled as she stood up and walked away.
God, I was so grateful for her.
Chapter 42
Patrick
“A toast!” I slurred, a goofy smile on my face. “To loyal women and babbies who look just like dere das!”
“Hear, hear!” Slider called back from across the room.
I’d been making that exact toast and several similar ones all night long. I knew I was probably past the point of being annoying at that point, but I didn’t give a fuck.
Moira had given birth just two days before, and I had a beautiful daughter with a head of bright red hair.
Mine. No doubt about it.
Becoming a father was like nothing I’d ever known before. It was terrifying and exhilarating and exhausting all at once, and I couldn’t contain my joy. I wanted to tell everyone I came across about this beautiful creature that I’d made, and more than one woman at the grocery store had nodded in amusement as I’d told them all about her.
My Brenna. The smartest and most gorgeous baby that had ever been born.
I was pissed, completely and utterly drunk.
My mum had called again that day, and I’d refused to answer even though I’d been dying to tell her about Brenna. Dear God, I missed my mum—but speaking to her, even briefly, would open back up a chapter in my life that I was trying very hard to forget. I couldn’t have one without the other, and though I tried to tell myself that I’d moved past Amy’s betrayal, the drunken stupor that had started at three in the afternoon was a clear indication I hadn’t.
Instead, I was making toasts to women who were loyal and babes who looked like their fathers. I was a bloody idiot.
I stumbled against a table, and braced my hand on the top of it, looking up to meet Ham’s serious face.
“Might want to slow down, Poet,” he warned oddly.
Poet, a name that I’d seemed to have fallen into within my first few months at the club and had followed me as I patched in. The name was fine, a lot better than some of the others. But I hated the memories it evoked.
“De night is young,” I said back cheerily. “A toast—”
I stopped speaking when a large body stood up next to me abruptly.
“If I hear one more word come out of your mouth, I’ll lay ya out,” Doc said quietly, his body tight with anger.
He was staring at me, really staring, and the menace rolling of his body was unbelievable.
“De fuck?” I asked stupidly before snapping my mouth shut.
I remembered the day in North Carolina when Charlie had warned me about Doc, and since then I’d seen his expertise in handling the human body on more than one occasion. He was a fucking walking textbook on anatomy, and I knew even in my clouded brain that if I didn’t take his warning, there was a very likely chance he’d make good on his threat.
“You have no idea—”
“Doc,” Ham growled warningly.
“No,” Doc snapped back, not even bothering to glance in the President’s direction. “You have no fuckin’ idea what you’re talking about, boy. None. Your head is so far up your ass it’s a wonder you know night from day.”
“What are ye goin’ on about?” I asked, taking an unsteady step backward. His tone and the sureness of his words were making me nervous, and I felt my palms begin to sweat. What the fuck was he talking about?
“You left your wife in Ireland to take off with the woman you had on the side,” he hissed. “You want to talk about loyalty?” The veins in his neck were throbbing.
“Come on, brother,” Charlie said, coming up on my side and wrapping his arm over my shoulder. “You look ready to pass out and I’m not dragging your ass to bed later.”
He turned me away from the table and started walking me toward the back hallway, and though I didn’t protest, my head turned so I could watch Doc as we left the room. He stared me down until I could no longer see him.
The whole encounter had been odd as fuck and I tried to focus on remembering his words as Charlie tipped me into bed and left the room. The club didn’t get in the middle of brothers and their women. Not ever. That wasn’t what they were about. So to have a member speak up like that was completely fucking strange.
***
I woke up the next morning with my heart racing, and as soon as I’d showered and remembered the night before, I knew I needed to speak with Doc. I was angry and embarrassed that he’d threatened me in front of the entire club, and I wanted to know why the fuck he would do it. My life outside the club wasn’t his business. There was a clear line that wasn’t meant to be crossed, and he’d jumped the bloody thing.
“Doc!” I called out as I saw him walking out of the garage. “Got a minute?”
I didn’t think he was going to acknowledge me as he walked into the sunshine, but as he hit the grass outside, he paused and turned to look at me.
“What de hell was dat about last night?” I asked, stopping a couple feet from him. “Ye have a problem wit’ me?”
“Forget it,” he answered, dismissing me as he pulled a cigar out of his shirt pocket.
“Ye had somet’in’ to say, now say it,” I argued, annoyed that my accent was thickening with my frustration. It was a tell that I hadn’t been able to get a handle on yet.
“What you do is your business,” he said calmly. “Just don’t like hearin’ you bad-mouthin’ a good woman.”
“A good woman?” I asked incredulously, my eyebrows rising. “Amy?”
“You got no fuckin’ idea what you’re doin’,” he said shaking his head. “Playin’ house with your side piece, then comin’ to the club and fuckin’ drinkin’ yourself into a stupor so you don’t have to remember where you should be and what you should be doin’.”
“I’m not playin’ shite.”
“Do what you need to do, Patrick,” he said, my Christian name sounding odd coming from him. “But keep your mouth shut in my presence. Won’t give you another warnin’.”
“Ye have a hard on for me wife? Dat what dis is about?”
His hand was around my throat and his fingers digging into my windpipe before the last word was completely formed.
I hadn’t even seen it coming.
“You worthless piece of shit,” he hissed, spit from his mouth hitting my face as I tried to pry his fingers from my throat. “You fuckin’ left her there!”
I could hear men yelling as they ca
ught sight of us, but all of my attention was focused on Doc’s mouth and the words flying out so fast I had a hard time keeping up.
“You left her to be fuckin’ tortured. You left her to be raped. Then you come back here and run your mouth about her? That poor girl that never done anything wrong but make the mistake of loving a worthless piece of trash like you?”
“Let him go, Doc,” Ham said quietly, his words no less than an order.
Doc relaxed his hand and I finally took a wheezing breath as I dropped to my knees. The world seemed to be moving in slow motion, all around me men were yelling, but I couldn’t hear anything above the roaring in my ears.
I closed my eyes and the memories came before I could stop them.
Amy kissing me goodbye like she couldn’t bear to let me go.
The trip to North Carolina.
Doc alone at the meet-up.
Mum’s letter.
“I’ve got a heartbroken girl here who refuses to speak.”
Riding to Texas.
Amy’s taped up fingers.
“She’s not said a word since we left Ireland.”
Amy’s shaved head.
“It’s not yours.”
Spitting on her.
“I’ve got a heartbroken girl that refuses to speak.”
“It’s not yours.”
“I’m afraid ye’d make it worse.”
Dear God, what had I done?
The noise that came out of me was like nothing I’d ever heard before, and I didn’t know how to stop it. I sounded pathetic, and I knew that the men were looking at me. I knew they thought I was a pussy.
I didn’t care.
I couldn’t stop the sound. It was the only thing that drowned out Mum’s voice.
“I’ve got a heartbroken girl that refuses to speak.”
I wished Doc had killed me.
Chapter 43
Amy
When Nix was four months old, I went back to school. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do yet, but I knew that a college education would be important when it was time for me to start a career. Peg had been more than willing to bring in all of our income, but I hated the fact that she worked so hard and I got to stay home. I hated taking advantage of her and I knew that if I went to school, I could eventually find a great job and support her for once. I couldn’t wait for that day.