Page 91 of Diary of a Biker Queen

And I saw it in Luca now, in the way his shoulders dropped at the mention of it. The way the shame and guilt still ate away at him.

Maybe I should have hated him for what he’d been. For the things he’d done. And yet all I could remember was the way he’d protected me. The way he’d claimed this baby so it could live. And in the way he hadn’t left me.

The way Dax had.

Because I believed Carlos when he said he didn’t have him. He’d seemed truly surprised.

MacGregor, my father, and Carlos were all liars. But so was I. So were Luca and Lynx. The only one out of us who wasn’t was Dax.

He’d told me he’d gone to Scotland to fight.

And maybe I finally needed to believe that.

28

NYAH

Dear Diary,

I’m going to thank YouTube for this one.

Days slid into each other, one after the other, each one a blur of nothing. Luca and Lynx left the clubhouse to train their hockey team, while I stayed behind, getting bigger by the day.

But even feeling the baby kick inside me didn’t bring me much joy when his father wasn’t here to feel it with me. I called Dax’s phone and left messages on his voicemail, talking to it like it was him, telling him about the baby, about Luca and Lynx, telling him he could come home anytime and take back the spot he’d carved out in my heart.

It would always be there.

He didn’t answer my calls, and I had no idea what else to do to try to find him. I’d tried to report him as a missing person, but when the police had questioned me about him, and I’d admitted he’d called and said he was going away to fight, they’d looked at me like I was crazy. When they’d talked to his brothers and they told him Dax had done this before, the police had dropped it and told me the man clearly didn’t want to be found, and I’d just have to deal with it.

Violet came over to keep me company. We sat together, while she told me about how she was preparing for Thanksgiving and Christmas with her new family, and I couldn’t help but smile at her excitement. I was due a couple of weeks before she was, but there was a good chance we’d both have December babies, and she brought me little red-and-green rompers that matched with ones she’d bought for her own baby.

She talked a lot, because I didn’t talk much at all.

She glanced up when Lynx came back to the clubhouse, and I sensed more than saw the silent conversation the two of them had over the top of my head. The one that went something like, “I tried to keep her busy while you were gone, but fuck, she’s a sad sack.”

With Lynx silently replying, “Thanks for trying.”

Violet quietly left, and Lynx sat beside me.

“Okay. Enough of this.”

I squinted at him. “Enough of what?”

He waved a hand at me. “This. The moping over Dax. He’s not here, and I can’t stand seeing you sink farther and farther into a depression over a man who told you with his own words he didn’t want this.”

“What if someone forced him to say them?” I asked.

Lynx shook his head. “You can’t think like that. You’re making yourself crazy.”

I glared at him. “You’re a brave man calling a woman this pregnant crazy.”

He grimaced. “You’re right. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. But fuck, Nyah. You’re scaring the shit out of me. I’ve never seen you like this. So I have a new mission. It’s cheer up Nyah day.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Does it require my participation? Because that sounds like an awful lot of effort for someone who really doesn’t want to get out of sweats.”

He grinned at me. “It will require you getting out of sweats, but I think you’re going to like it.”

I eyed him. “Is it sex? Because I’m a beached whale and I doubt I’m even capable of it right now.”