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“You can’t help me. I don’t need help. What I need is to be able to take care of my family and not be useless. God, is this my fate? To be a burden on you? Hell, I couldn’t even carry your baby. You have to be so disappointed in me. I’d understand if this is too much and you want us to leave. You’ve had to take time off work to care for me and the kids.”
Her words knocked me for a loop. I had no idea she had all these crazy thoughts in her head. I took off my boots and cut then lay down with her. I moved her until she was plastered to my front.
“I want you to look at me and listen. You’re temporarily unable to do all the things you used to do. You are not useless. You’re healing. You’re nowhere near a burden on me or anyone else. We love you and only want to help until you can do it yourself again. There’s no rush. You have to take it slow so you don’t have a setback. You didn’t make me take leave. I wanted to take care of you because I love you, Tonya. It’s not too much work for me and I love being with the kids. I’ll never want you to leave. As for the baby, I don’t want to hear you ever say that again. You had no control over losing the baby. Yes, I’m disappointed but not with you. Do you hear me? I’ll say it as many times as I have to until you believe it.”
She started to sob harder. Through her tears she rambled. “I want my baby. I want my baby so much and it hurts knowing it’s gone. I don’t even know if we were going to have a boy or a girl. What if this is a sign? What if I can’t give you a child of your own? I know you want at least one. What man wouldn’t? I love you and I’m terrified. I’m afraid I’ll lose you. If you can’t have a baby with me, there are other women who can give you one or more.”
This time, I wasn’t gentle. I didn’t hurt her arm, but I did grab her chin and jerk her head up so she had to look at me. I knew she could see the anger on my face and I wanted her to see it. She needed to know that what I was about to say, I meant with everything in me.
“I don’t fucking ever, do you hear me, ever want to hear you say that shit again. If you weren’t hurt right now, I’d spank your ass until you couldn’t sit down for saying and thinking that utter bullshit. Losing our baby isn’t some damn sign that you can’t have more babies. It was an unfortunate thing. You had no control. Yes, I’d love to have one of my own, but if I don’t, I have three healthy, beautiful babies running around outside who I love. And you’re forgetting, there are other ways for us to have a child without you having to carry it. There are surrogates. However, no matter what happens, I will never leave you for someone else. You’re stuck with me until death do us part. I’m so pissed at you that I’m going to save your punishment until you’re healed. You’re not going to get away with thinking like this.”
“Punishment? What will you do?” She looked interested and a little worried. Good.
“That’s for me to know and you to find out. I will tell you that although you’ll hate it at first, once I decide you’ve learned your lesson, you’ll scream my name and beg me never to stop.”
She shivered and I saw a little heat enter her eyes. It was too soon to make love. She still needed to heal, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t kiss the hell out of her and touch her beautiful body until she melted. Pressing her back on the mattress, I set out to do just that.
??????
I sat at the table in church. I was feeling odd being here. I’d been here before, but it wasn’t often or typical for the patched members to have a prospect in here. However, tonight we were going to talk about Tonya. I had to be here. The members were all gathered around the table and Terror had just called us all to order. He didn’t waste time getting to the topic I wanted to discuss the most.
“I want us to talk about Tonya’s situation first. That’s why I asked Law to be here. I know it’s been hell for you, not knowing who did this or why. Smoke and Everly have looked at every camera in town, searching for a dark sedan like Abel described. You know that they only caught a couple of glimpses the day of the shooting and none of them showed faces or the license plate. It’s frustrating as hell. It's almost like they knew where all the cameras were, but that’s impossible.” He paused to take a drink of his beer before continuing.
“I think we’ve eliminated the angle that whoever it was, they were out to hurt or kill her due to being her enemy. Dan is secure and has no way to get anyone to hurt her. He’s the only possible person any of us can think of who might want to do this. We’ve also run through a list of all our past and possible enemies to the club. While we have a few who probably wouldn’t hate a chance at one of us, they have no reason to target Tonya. And if they were after us, why hasn’t anyone else been hurt? We ride out all the time alone and the other women and children until this happened have been out alone without protection. I can only conclude one thing.”
“That whoever it is, it’s a personal vendetta against me,” I said and Terror nodded.
“Yeah, I think so. There’s nothing else that makes sense. So, with that in mind and knowing the list could be lengthy since you’re a police officer, I need you to sit down and compile a list of names for Smoke. He needs to know the names of anyone you’ve arrested and had conflicts with or threats from. Also, if there have been any personal altercations. Is there maybe a jealous boyfriend out there who’s pissed you slept with his girlfriend?”
“If there is a jealous boyfriend, it’s because I never knew he existed. I never slept with a woman who had a man, married or otherwise. It had been a while before Tonya since I’ve been with anyone if you must know. The list of others will take me a little bit to figure out. I’ve arrested a lot of people since I came to Dublin Falls. How long do you think it’ll take to check them all out?” This I directed to Smoke.
“Hell, I don’t know. Everly will help. It depends on whether or not they are dumb enough to email or note shit or if they have large, unexpected withdrawals from their bank accounts that can’t be explained. It’s not going to be quick, but it’s all we have right now. I wish I had better news.”
“Smoke, you can only do so much and I’m thankful as hell for what you are doing. For what everyone is doing. I need whoever did this caught. I can’t have a threat like this hanging over my woman’s head. It’s making her depression worse.”
“Is she still upset about losing the baby?” Ranger asked quietly. The whole club knew we’d lost the baby. We had told them. They were all sad along with us. I nodded at Ranger.
“She even talked crazy the other day about what if she can’t have my baby and about me finding a woman who can. I put a stop to that nonsense. I told her she’s stuck with me until death do us part.”
“Death do you part, hmm. Hey, we know she’s been planning a wedding with the other women. I heard it was going well before the shooting. Have you thought about moving up the timeline? When were you thinking of having it?” Bandit asked.
“She was aiming for November, around the time the house should be done.”
“Well, what’s preventing you from doing it sooner?” Viking asked.
“Nothing other than she needs to find a dress. Which, according to her, she thought she had. She hasn’t mentioned it since she got hurt, but she was following up on it around that time.”
“I bet you anything Caro and Soleil know all about it. Why not have them help you to get it? We’ll get the others to tell us what else needs to be done. She doesn’t have family to invite, so it’s going to be us and our friends. Why don’t we throw a wedding soon?” Savage asked with a grin.
The thought of making her my wife sooner than planned filled me with so much happiness. My only concern is what if she hated the idea. “What if she says no?” I asked them.
“Don’t give her a choice. If you present her with a wedding in progress, do you think she’ll say no? I don’t. She loves you and I know she wants to be your wife. We’ve never done a surprise wedding. I think it’ll be a blast and a great gift for her. She needs to have her spirits lifted,” Terror said.
That’s how we went from devising our next steps in discovering who hurt my Valkyrie to planning to have our wedding over three months earlier than planned. I hoped she didn’t kill me when the time came. We all agreed to work on it and to swear the women to secrecy. I was praying this would not only make us man and wife, but it would help dispel her negative thoughts about the baby and herself. After ironing out a few details and circling back to our original discussion, I was dismissed, and they got on with the rest of church. I didn’t stick around. I went home to get started and to check on my family.
Tonya: Chapter 19
I was sweating in the sun. It was the beginning of July and it was hot and humid in Tennessee. We were lucky that we had the pool. My wound was healing and in another week, I could get in the water to do exercises according to my physical terrorist, Kyle. He laughed every time I called him that. He was determined I’d be as good as new or answer to him.
