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“Yeah, I did.” I wasn’t sure how much longer that would be true after what she’d seen, though. Me claiming her had been on a ‘trial basis’ to see if we could make it work as friends and then maybe something more. We hadn’t even gotten to the something more yet. At least, not beyond a couple stolen kisses and me rubbing her belly sometimes, hoping to feel my baby kick. I’d be lucky if she ever let me do that again.
“I can’t believe you made her your old lady!” June yelled at me again as Kim pulled out of the lot. I watched her car until it was out of sight and then I turned my attention back to June who had begun slapping at my arms and chest to get my attention back on her.
“You need to stop putting your hands on me right fucking now!”
“That’s not what you were saying just a few minutes ago.”
“Just a few minutes ago, I was lost in the past, and then I realized why we don’t exist anymore. You don’t fit in my world right now, June, and maybe you never will.”
“But the skanky bitch who trapped you into an unwanted pregnancy belongs?”
“She didn’t trap me. I did that to her, not the other way around. And yeah, she does fit. Too fucking perfectly. I might lose that now because I lost sight of what’s real for one damn minute. You need to forget about me, June because I’m not yours anymore.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Did you see her cut? Did you see my name on it? How about the baby in her belly, did you miss that? That is my reality now and you no longer have a place there.”
“Stop saying that!” She screamed at me.
“No, June. You’re the one who decided we shouldn’t be together. You forced me to choose between you and my club, essentially between my baby and you. It would have never been you. I need a woman who is strong enough to stand beside me and will love my club just as much as I do. That isn’t you. You told me that yourself when you forced me to make a choice.”
I walked away from my ex then, and grudgingly did the shopping required by my club. As soon as I finished, I prayed the whole way back to the clubhouse that Kim hadn’t left. We had unfinished business and I needed to make her understand that what she saw wasn’t anything other than a memory playing out, and one that would never happen again.
~*~
“I don’t know what the fuck you did, but you fucked up big time.” Tinker said from his stool on the bar. Mack was missing and so was Kim.
“You’re about the biggest fucking idiot,” Ratchet proclaimed. “For someone so fucking smart, you don’t have a single lick of damn sense in that brain of yours. Or maybe the problem is that you keep letting your dick make decisions for you. We all thought you finally got it right when you stood up for Kim on patch-in day, then when you claimed her. Brother I don’t know what the fuck could have gone so wrong on a simple grocery run, but she came back and declared she was no longer your old lady and that once she had the baby, she was free to be claimed if anyone wanted her.”
Ratchet tipped his head back toward the hallway where his office was. “Have her cut back in the office. She put it on the bar and told me to get rid of it before she set the fucking thing on fire.”
Fuck!
Panic set in and I dropped the bag of groceries I was holding as I realized her reaction was far worse than I imagined. “More in the truck,” I called out as I took off for my bike and hauled my butt to the house where the Cross siblings lived.
Chapter 18
Kim
“I know what you saw…” Mack started the minute we walked in the door.
“I’m gonna stop you right there. If you know what I saw, then you know there’s no excuse.”
“You’re right, but I’m just saying, that doesn’t mean something has been going on between the two of them all this time. We’re both around the man damn near twenty-four hours out of the day. He hasn’t had time to slip off to meet up with anyone else.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I come home for hours on end, so I wouldn’t know.”
“When you’re home, I’m there with him or he’s sleeping. The man isn’t a fucking robot, Sis.”
“It doesn’t matter, Mack!” I shouted. “I was standing there, pregnant with his kid, wearing his property patch, and watching him kiss someone else in broad fucking daylight at the only grocery store our entire town goes to. It wasn’t a quick peck. They were wrapped up in each other playing fucking tonsil hockey! Don’t you dare defend him to me right now.”
“You two aren’t really together,” Mack said, and the sad tone he used made me realize he wished we were. Maybe then, Tripp wouldn’t have felt the need to rekindle things with his ex.
“Don’t you think I know that? Why the hell do you think I gave my cut back today?” I swiped angrily at the tears that kept running down my face. “I’ve never been his, but the label never felt more like a lie than it did today. If that label is what has been holding Tripp back from going to be with the woman he loves, then I just set him free to do whatever will make him happy.”
“Don’t do that,” Mack pleaded with me. “He doesn’t want her.”
I laughed at that, even as the tears continued to cascade freely into the puddle they were forming on my shirt. “It looked very much like he still wants her to me. He’s certainly never kissed me like that.”
