Counter To My Intelligence (The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC Book 7) (32 page)

In fact, I liked all of her brothers, even though they had no problem threatening my manhood every chance they got.

“Time for cake!” Brody yelled loudly, even though we were all standing right there.

Reba rolled her eyes, “Seriously, Cole?”

“I’m Cole. That was Brody,” Cole said to his mother in exasperation.

“Just wait until you have kids of your own, then tell me if you care if you mix up their names,” Reba grumbled. “Now, come on, my girl. It’s time to cut your cake.”

Reba was the impromptu wedding planner for our wedding.

In the beginning it’d started out as just her helping, but it quickly escalated into her taking over the whole show when we realized just how many people were coming.

Sawyer was happy that she didn’t have to deal with it.

She had more than enough things on her plate without having to worry about that, too.

“Wait!” The photographer said. “I need to take a family picture! I don’t want you to get cake on your wedding attire!”

I sighed.

My daughter had insisted on the wedding photographer, and although I did think it was a good idea to take pictures, I was down for the guests doing it with their own cameras, and sending them to me in an email or something.

This jackwad was like a man with a whip.

Although, I was fairly sure the pictures would turn out phenomenally.

But I was getting tired of having the man tell me when to kiss, and not to kiss, my wife.

Where to put my fuckin’ hands, and how I should look at her.

One by one, our ‘family’ lined up and Gasten, the photographer’s, mouth went slack.

“Uhh, I’m not sure how I’m going to be able to get all of you in the picture,” he finally admitted.

I looked behind me at my children and their families. Then at Sawyer’s immediate family.
And finally at the rest of the Dixie Wardens and their families.

“This is our family. And not one of them better be left out of the picture or I’ll shove my foot up your ass,” I said. “Maybe you could take a panoramic or something?” I added as an afterthought.

It turned out to be a damn fine picture.

One I would cherish for the rest of my life.

Later that night

“Your mother’s a fuckin’ slave driver,” I groaned as my back finally hit the bed.

I groaned when Sawyer followed me down.

“Sawyer,” I said, finally striking up the nerve to ask her what’d been on my mind for months now.

“Yeah?” She asked, her face pressed into my chest.

“Do you want kids?”

I didn’t know if I did want more, but I also didn’t know if I didn’t.

I just wanted her to be happy, and if that meant a kid for her, then I’d damn well do it.

“Yes, one or two,” she admitted. “We’ll just start with this one, first.”

My lungs froze, and my breath seized in my chest.

“Say again?” I asked carefully.

I could feel her smile against my chest.

“Yep. You heard right. Exactly eight weeks,” she said. “I was going to tell you tomorrow at the barbeque. Tonight was supposed to be just for us.”

My arms went around her, and I pulled her in close.

“I’m going to die of a heart attack trying to chase after another kid,” I told her my fear.

She sighed.

“Silas, you are the most in shape fifty-four year old I’ve ever met. Get the hell over it,” she said in exasperation.

I thought back to the night I was guessing we’d conceived…it was the only time I’d ever gone without a condom since we’d been together.

It’d been the night I’d officially been released for work after my ‘accident’.

In our exuberance to celebrate me being able to fuck my woman without a guilty conscience, I’d gone and forgotten my first rule of fucking.

Protection.

And I’d come inside her tight, hot pussy without a second thought.

Now, though, those repercussions made themselves known, and I realized that I wasn’t upset about it in the slightest.

In fact, I was pretty goddamned excited.

I couldn’t wait to raise a child the way I always wanted to raise my others.

And although my other children all ended up pretty fucking awesome, if I did say so myself, I still wanted a second chance.

And it was here, in my arms.

“I love you, Sawyer,” I told my wife.

She hummed in contentment.

“I love you, too.”

And we fell asleep like that, me holding the woman of my dreams in my arms and her arms wrapped me.

And not one nightmare made itself known throughout the entire night.

“What are you doing?” A voice asked from behind me.

I threw the last photo capturing Sawyer’s torture at the hands of the four guards, photos they had taken during each attack throughout Sawyer’s time in jail, in to the small fire I’d created at the side of my house sighing as it curled up and burned to ash.

“I’m getting rid of some stuff that’s been needing to get gone,” I told Dallas. “Why are you up so late?”

Dallas and Bristol were staying at his parent’s lake house while they were away on vacation.

Their parents had remarried by the Justice of the Peace a month ago with all their family in attendance;
this was their second honeymoon of sorts. Something they’d refused to take until they’d attended their daughter’s wedding and saw her ‘treated right.’

Dallas smiled. “I’ve been kicked out by my wife because she wants to wrap my birthday gifts.”

I nodded. “Yeah, that tends to happen when they think you haven’t seen the credit card statements and know exactly what they bought you.”

Dallas and Sawyer had repaired the minor breach between the two of them, and their bond was even stronger now.

Dallas was over at my house, with his family, at least once a week when I got home from work, and vice versa.

And I was happy to see them happy.

Family was love, and you could never have enough love, especially someone like Sawyer.

“I never said thank you,” Dallas said after a few long moments of silence.

I turned my gaze to his.

“For what?” I asked, wondering what I’d done to earn a thank you from him.

“For helping her when I should’ve been there doing the same. For being there for her, showing her she was worth everything and then doing whatever it took to give it to her,” Dallas said softly. “I love her like crazy, and I thank God every day that she was okay after getting out of that hell hole.”

Dallas had been over one night, staying late to play a game of poker with me, when we’d heard Sawyer screaming from the bedroom.

Dallas had gone deathly white when he heard what she’d been saying in her sleep, and after that, he had made it his mission in life to get her the help she needed.

I hadn’t disagreed with him.

I’d been working on her for months to convince her to go talk to someone about it.

After a long, drawn out conversation with her brother on what was going on with her dreams, Dallas had finally been able to talk her into doing something that I hadn’t been able to accomplish in months of working on her.

He’d explained it after Sawyer had gone back to sleep.

“You just have to play the pity card. Worked every time when I wanted the last cookie,” he winked. “But it only works ‘cause I’m her baby brother and I’ve been working that card for thirty years now.”

“She didn’t break, and she fights every day. You were able to get her to go to counseling sessions when I wasn’t able to,” I admitted. “I could be telling you the same right now.”

His eyes clouded over, and I was sure he’d had something else to say, but a really shrill, “You didn’t tell me you were pregnant!”

I smiled and looked down at the fire in front of me while Dallas stayed silent at my side.

“God help you, man. Because I can barely handle the two of my own.”

And, for some reason, that admission from the man at my side didn’t worry me a single bit.

In fact, it only gave me the motivation I needed to be what I’d never been before…a good father and husband.

Something that my other children had never gotten from me, but something I would spend the rest of my life trying to make up to them.

Something this child, the one that Sawyer carried in her womb, would know from me from the moment he or she took their first breath.

A promise I would keep until I took my final breath.

2-3-16

Sometimes people are too chatty in the morning. And according to the Coffee Gods, it’s okay to kill those people. Slowly.

-Ruthie’s secret thoughts

Ruthie

“Shit, fuck, shit fucking hell,” I growled as I ran from my car to the convenience store where I worked.

The convenience store was one of three in the city of Benton, Louisiana, and I happened to work at the one in the harsher side of town.

But I liked it.

My boss gave me the hours I wanted.

I could go to school, and I could still work at my other job at Halligans and Handcuffs, seeing as it was the job that made me the most money.

Sterling and his three brothers, foster care brothers not club member brothers, came in every three days before they worked out.

Each would grab an energy drink. A Monster for Sterling, and Nos for his two brothers, and two Gatorade’s a piece. Only ever in the red. No blue, orange, or yellow for those guys.

Then they’d take turns paying.

I’d gathered over the last half a year that the middle brother was a baseball player, and the other two supported him during workouts and practice.

Or, at least, when Sterling was here, he did.

He’d been deployed about five months ago, and had just returned two weeks ago.

And I’d missed my time to see him if I didn’t hurry!

Shit!

I stepped in a puddle of water, saturating my pants leg all the way up to my knee.

“Dammit,” I growled, hitching my bag over my shoulder once more and walking quickly.

I didn’t run, though.

Not once I hit the slick black top near the pumps.

It always seemed to gather oil and the likes, and when it rained, it became like a slip and slide.

I’d seen no less than fifteen people bust their asses over the last six months that I’d worked there.

I’d told my boss that it was a hazard and that one day someone would sue, but all he could say to that was, ‘Let them. Then they can have this place and I wouldn’t have to deal with my mother in law anymore.’

I breathed a sigh of relief when my feet hit the sidewalk that would lead me inside the store, and shivered violently when a bolt of lightning came down out of the sky and seemed to practically touch the tip of a six foot pole that was just to the left of where I’d parked my car.

“Holy hell,” I said in awe.

I’d always been interested in meteorology. I was just not smart enough to go that route when I had the chance.

At thirty two, I was well on the way to middle aged, and there just wasn’t time to go anywhere in life anymore.

“You’re late!” My boss, Dane, growled at my side.

I gasped and jumped, covering my face in reflex.

Not because I thought he’d hit me, but because it was simply just a reaction.

Something that’d been ingrained in me since I was a young kid living in a foster home full of kids that liked to beat you up for the hell of it.

Dane didn’t take offense to my maneuverings, only nodded at me, staying where he was so he wouldn’t scare me anymore than he already had.

“Hey,” I said. “My car’s a bitch in the rain.”

Dane smiled. “You should get a new one. You can afford it now.”

I could. But I didn’t want to waste my hard earned money that I was saving to buy a house on a car. That wouldn’t be practical.

I mean, I already had a car that worked. What was the point in getting something new?

“I know, I know. You’ve been telling me that every day for a month. I just don’t want to get a new car,” I said. “I’m saving up for a house.”

In reality, I was saving up for a house that I could pay outright, seeing as everyone in this stupid town thought that I wasn’t good enough to be here.

Apparently, they looked upon a convicted killer with vehemence.

My husband, Bender, had been a real asshole.

He liked to beat me when he drank.

Beat me when he didn’t drink.

Beat me when he was mad.

Beat me when I looked at him funny.

Beat me when I forgot to wash his uniform.

If you could think it up, Bender beat me for it.

He literally hated everything about me.

But he’d knocked me up when I was eighteen, and his parents had made him ‘do the right thing.’

And he’d
hated
that.

He wanted to marry another woman. Had had his sights on Lily Brianne, my best friend since I was twelve.

I hadn’t known that, though.

Lily and I had gone through a lot together.

We’d been in the same foster home until we were eighteen and kicked out since our foster mother was no longer under any obligations to allow us to stay there. Plus, she wasn’t getting any more money for us, so what was the point?

I stowed my things in the locker, and headed to the front counter and thought about Lily and me.

Lily and I had moved into a women’s shelter in Monroe, Louisiana the same night we landed in Monroe.

We’d started working shortly after that, and then we shared a one bedroom apartment.

Then we started going to school, where we met Bender.

Well, we’d met Bender before, of course. We’d all gone to the same high school. Bender had qualified for a full scholarship at the same college we had randomly picked to attend.

Yet, we were in such different social circles that we never got a second look from Bender and his peers

Or so we thought.

Lily obviously got a lot more attention from Bender than I did.

Bender got a lot more attention from me rather than Lily, who had her sights set on another man at our college. Bender’s best friend.

And Bender hated that. Absolutely
hated
it.