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I felt like I’d been sucker punched in the gut. My gaze cuts to Lillian’s left hand, which now has a gold band around the finger. The box in my pocket feels like lead.
“You’ve been cheating on me? When did you get married to this pencil pusher?”
Lillian shrinks back at my tone, but I need to know what the fuck had happened and why.
“I… I was going to tell you tonight. I can’t do this anymore, Jax. I’ve tried telling you that I didn’t think the club would be a good place for our daughter to be around.”
“It’s Smoke. You no longer get to use that name.” I pause as I pace, running my hand through my hair as I try to calm my anger. Both Thor and Patch stand protectively by the door, most likely to keep security out if I lose my shit.
“So, let me get this straight. You decide to cheat on me even though we’re having a baby together, get married behind my back, and then decide to just ‘tell me tonight’? And quite honestly, this is the first I’m even hearing about you not wanting to raise Mae around the club. One would think that in a relationship, if someone is unhappy, they’d speak up about the issue. Not let it fester and apparently lead to this fucked up mess!” I bite my tongue on telling her that I was about to propose tonight. I’ll take the ring back to the jeweler later.
I run my hand angrily through my hair again and notice for the first time that there hasn’t been a peep out of Mae. Normally babies are louder or want to nurse a lot. At least that’s my observation of how my niece has been.
“Can I please hold my daughter, if she even is my daughter?”
Lillian dips her chin. “She’s your daughter… but she… she…” More tears pour down her cheeks and once again, dread fills me. Was there something wrong with Mae? I didn’t care what was wrong with her. I’d make sure she would have any medical attention she’d need.
Dipshit walks over and places my little pink bundled girl in my arms, and I immediately know my life has forever changed in a blink of an eye. And not in the way you’d think.
She was cold.
“She… she was stillborn.”
This didn’t make any sense. I’d left Lillian’s just this morning, and yeah, I wasn’t going to unwrap that right now, but I’d left to finish getting our apartment put together. The crib was delayed and I wanted to make sure it was ready for whenever Mae came into the world.
As always, I rubbed Lillian’s stomach and said goodbye to Mae as well. She kicked and moved around like usual. Unless something happened to her since then?
“The cord somehow got wrapped around her neck,” dipshit says, and though I hate his guts right now, even he was crying.
Refusing to let go of Mae, I purposely ignore Lillian and dipshit, and give Patch a chin lift. I’ll address them later, but right now, I have to take care of my little girl. She comes first.
Patch walks us through everything. The birth certificate. The death certificate. And even though the originals are normally given to the mother in these situations, I take them. Thankfully Lillian didn’t fight me on it, but I would have had Patch give me them anyway. At my request, he also took a picture of Mae and me so that I’d have something to remember her by.
It finally comes time for me to give Mae to Patch so she can be prepared for burial. It kills me that I’ll never get to see her grow up, get married or have kids. My future is in Patch’s arms as he walks her down to the morgue.
The room is suddenly too hot. The tension in the air was palatable. Turning to Lillian, she shrinks back at the hardness of my gaze.
“How long?”
At least she has the decency to look guilty. “I.. um…”
“How long, Lillian?”
“Four months.”
Once again, the air feels like it was knocked out of me.
Three months ago was when we had signed paperwork for the apartment. She signed the paperwork even though she’d been seeing someone else behind my back.
Suddenly, everything starts to make more sense. The timeline of her excuses for getting together, blaming it on wanting to sleep. Though, I’m sure some of that was true. But then there was the week she suddenly told me she’d be gone for.
“Three weeks ago. That wasn’t a trip to your parents’ house. Was it?”
She looks down at her hands and shakes her head.
“We got married on the 8thand stayed at a beach house. We were going to wait to do a real honeymoon after little Mae arrived.” Dipshit smiles smugly before he leans down and kisses her forehead as she wrings her hands together.
That’s what we were going to do.
