Craving Redemption (35 page)

I was packing up my bike to hit the road that morning when Tommy Gun came lumbering out of the clubhouse calling my name. I was standing right in front of him, and I shook my head when he bellowed my name again.

“What?” I snapped, anxious to get on the road.

“Slider wants to see you,” he mumbled, raising his hands with his palms out.

“You know what it’s about?” I questioned, stuffing the rest of my clothes into the saddle bags.

“Nope. I’m just the messenger!” he called almost a minute later as I was walking back inside.

Slider was sitting at the bar when I got inside, and he raised his chin at me as I headed toward him. He had a packet wrapped in brown paper on the bar in front of him, and he palmed it as I reached him.

“You heading south?” he asked, rapping his knuckles on the countertop.

“Yup. Callie’s got a doctor’s appointment that I’m gonna miss if I don’t leave now,” I answered impatiently.

His brows lowered in response to my tone, and I automatically took a step back.

“Not gonna hold you up. Just need you to drop a package in Sacramento when you get there,” he replied quietly, sliding the package to me across the countertop.

“That it?”

“That’s it. I’ll see you when you get back,” he responded, standing from his stool. “Check on my girl for me, would ya?”

“Yep. I’m outta here.” I turned and strode toward the door, raising my chin at Dragon who’d been passed out on one of the couches and was looking blearily at me over the head of some blonde chick.

The first hour of the ride was uneventful. I’d taken the trip so many times I could probably sleep through it, and I had gotten complacent about watching for speed traps and highway patrol. I was thinking about the ultrasound, excited as fuck to see my kid again.

I know most people say some stupid shit about not caring if their kid was a boy or a girl as long as it was healthy, but I didn’t think about it that way. Of course I wanted a healthy kid, which went without saying, but I wanted a fucking boy. I wanted a boy so badly it was like a weight in my gut, something I thought about constantly, no matter what I was doing. I figured Callie probably wanted a little girl that she could dress in frilly shit, but the thought of a little girl made me anxious as hell.

I wanted a boy that I could teach to throw a football and take apart a motorcycle. I wouldn’t know what the hell to do with a girl.

I was flying down the highway, thinking about Callie’s appointment and how the hell I was gonna talk her into moving and leaving that fucking weight around her neck, so I didn’t see the police car under an overpass with a radar gun waiting for stupid fuckers like me.

When I noticed the lights in my mirror, I was annoyed as fuck that they were going to hold me up. It was getting later and later and Callie would have my balls if I didn’t meet her at the doctor’s office that afternoon.

I pulled over to the side of the road and shut off my bike, putting the kickstand down and taking off my helmet as I waited.

“You know why I pulled you over?” the cop asked as he walked up beside me.

“Speeding,” I answered, running my hand over my beard.
Damn, I needed to trim that shit so I didn’t look like a fucking mountain man the first time I met my kid.

The cop looked at my beard and then down to my cut, his mouth lifting into a sneer.

“I’m going to have to ask you to step off your bike,” he told me condescendingly, taking a step back and dropping his hand to the gun at his waist.

Fucking prick
. He was going to mess with me and there was not a goddamn thing I could do about it. I climbed off my bike and stood with my arms at my sides as he spoke into the walkie-talkie on his shoulder before raising his eyes to mine.

“License and registration.”

As I reached for my wallet inside the pocket of my sweatshirt, he pulled his motherfucking gun.

“Hands where I can see them!” he bellowed, pissing me right the fuck off.

“My wallet’s in the front pocket of my sweatshirt,” I told him, hands raised in the air. “Thought you wanted my license and shit?”

“One hand stays in the air, grab your wallet nice and slow,” he ordered, watching me closely.

I followed his orders, slowly using both hands to give him the shit he needed. I didn’t want some rookie cop shooting me in the chest because his balls hadn’t dropped yet.

“Stay off your motorcycle, I’ll be right back,” he grumbled, taking my shit as he walked toward his car.

He took a long-ass time running my shit, and I seriously considered hopping on my bike and leaving his ass behind. If he hadn’t had my paperwork, I would have taken off.

“You have anything on your bike that I should know about?” he asked, as he reached where I was standing.

“Nope,” I told him with a smirk.

“I believe you might be under the influence. I’m going to need to search you and your bike.”

“What the fuck?” I sputtered, completely fucking confused.

“Hands on the hood of the car.”

“Fuck you.”

“Are you resisting, Mr. Hawthorne?” he asked menacingly, one eyebrow raised. The fucker was just dying to get me on something.

I leaned over the car, pissed as hell but still relatively unconcerned as he searched me. I didn’t carry a weapon when I was making the trip to Callie because I was on probation from shit that had happened years ago. I had a piece at her house that I carried when I was in town, but if I wasn’t on a run I didn’t bother to carry. It was more hassle than it was worth if I got pulled over.

“Keep your hands on the vehicle,” he ordered as he headed toward my bike. Fuck, the guy was taking forever and I was counting the minutes that I stood there, wondering how the hell I’d make up the time so I wasn’t late.

He was shining a light under my bike even though the sun was coming up, and huffed when he didn’t find anything. Then he searched through my bags, pulling out mostly boxers because I’d bought ugly-ass new ones to wear around Callie so she wasn’t so fucking worried about her bras.

He finished with the first saddle bag, finding nothing, but when he started pulling shit out of the second, he paused. He reached into the bottom of the bag and my stomach fucking dropped when he pulled out the package Slider had given me that morning. He glanced up at me, probably to make sure I hadn’t moved, and then used both hands to unseal the package and open it up.

“Jesus Fuckin’ Christ,” I murmured, dropping my head in defeat when I saw what he’d sent.

I didn’t watch the cop anymore; I just stared at the hood of his car as my heart raced. I was going to miss the goddamn appointment and who the fuck knew what else.

As the cop walked up behind me and pulled my hands behind my back, I knew before he started reading me my rights that I was going to jail.

Chapter 60

Callie

“Where is he?” I asked Gram as I paced the waiting room of my doctor’s office. The ultrasound technician was running half an hour late, so it was twenty minutes past my scheduled appointment time and Asa
still
hadn’t showed.

“Probably running late,” she answered calmly, flipping through a magazine. “You know he can’t call you when he’s on the road.”

“He would have stopped to call if he was going to be late,” I worried, chewing the inside of my cheek.

“Or he’s riding like hell to get here and won’t take the time to stop,” she told me firmly. “Now sit down and calm down.”

I dropped heavily into the seat next to her and watched my phone. There were no incoming or missed calls, and the longer I went with no word from Asa the more anxious I became.

“Calliope?” I turned my head when the nurse called me from the doorway to the exam rooms but couldn’t make myself stand.

“Well?” Gram asked impatiently. “Let’s go darlin’.”

I drug my feet as I made my way to the nurse, looking behind me a few times in hopes that Asa would be walking through the door.

“Can we wait a couple more minutes?” I asked her almost desperately as we met her in the doorway.

“Sorry, hun.” She looked at me sympathetically. “We’re already so far behind, you’d have to reschedule.”

I looked at Gram for validation, hoping she’d assure me that we should come back, but her lips were pressed into a flat line. My mind raced as I thought it over, but Gram’s hand on my back had me walking through the door and toward a room before I could come to a decision.

“No need to get undressed,” the nurse told me as she set my chart on the countertop. “Just pull your shirt up and your pants down a little. The tech will be in soon.”

She shut the door behind her as tears filled my eyes.

“Calliope Rose Butler, you look at me,” Gram snapped fiercely, pressing both hands against the sides of my head and pulling me close until we were almost nose to nose. “I know you’re disappointed, baby. I know you’re worried and anxious and God knows what else. But seeing your baby on that screen and hearing them tell you if you’re having a boy or a girl—that only happens once in a lifetime.
Once
, Callie. You’ll never get this moment back.”

I nodded and sniffed as she studied my face.

“You get up there and get ready to see that baby, and you leave everything else outside that door. It’s got no place in here with you and me.” She kissed me quickly and took a step backward, giving me a swat on the hip. “Crawl up there so you’re ready when the guy gets in here.”

I worked at pushing everything else out of my head as the female ultrasound tech came in and started chatting. I didn’t hear a word she said because I was so busy trying to filter out everything happening outside the room. It hurt that Asa wasn’t with me, but we’d known for weeks when the appointment would be. If he’d wanted to be there, he would have.

I watched intently as she used the computer to measure my little bean, tracing little lines over its head and torso and labeling different body parts. I was so intent on the baby that she startled me when she spoke.

“Do you want to know the sex?”

I looked at Gram who’d stood from her seat across the room to watch the monitor closely.

“Let’s do it,” she told me with a nod, grabbing my hand tightly.

“Yeah. We want to know,” I answered, searching the tech’s face for an answer before she spoke.

She turned back toward the monitor and started moving her mouse around again. “You see that right there? You, my dear, are
definitely
having a boy.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, stunned.

“I’ve been doing this for five years, and I’ve been wrong twice. I’m reasonably certain,” she told me with a smile as she stood from her seat and handed me a row of black and white photos. “The doctor will be here in a few minutes after he goes over the results.” She gave a small smile before exiting the room.

“A son,” Gram murmured quietly, running her hand down my hair. “There’s nothing in the world like it.”

I ignored her teary eyes, knowing she wouldn’t appreciate if I made a big fuss about it, and cleaned the goop off my belly. The doctor came in a few minutes later, giving us the all-clear on all the test results, and I left the office in a daze, thankful that Gram had driven me to the appointment.

We were having a son, and Asa had missed it. How could he have missed it? I swung between worry and fury as we rode home. How
could
he?
Where the fuck was he?
I would have known if he’d been in an accident. I was listed as his next of kin on a little card in his wallet—someone would’ve called me.

I’d no sooner had the thought than my phone started ringing shrilly in my purse and my stomach dropped.

“No. No. No,” I murmured as I fished it out and saw an unknown number on the caller ID.

“Hello?” I answered frantically.

“Hey, little girl.”

“Poet? What’s wrong? Asa was supposed to be here this afternoon and he never showed.” My words were tumbling over each other in my panic as I stared blankly out the windshield.

“Asa’s just fine—”

“Then where the fuck is he?”

“He ran into some problems on his way down this morning…”

“Why am I just now hearing from anyone? What the hell is going on?” I asked as Gram parked the car and I threw myself out of the car so I could pace.

“Just heard about it myself. Called you first thing.”

“What. Is. Going. On?” I snapped back.

“Asa got arrested this morning, and he had to use his call to phone Slider—”

“Arrested?” I whispered, my stomach dropping. “What happened?”

“Not sure of the details yet, just wanted to let you know that he’s fine. He was real insistent that I call you soon as I could.”

I pressed my hand to my head, feeling dizzy all of a sudden, and I felt Gram wrap her arm around my waist, ushering me toward the stairs.

“Okay, well let me know...”

“I’ll keep you updated. Don’t worry, darlin’, he’ll be out before you know it.”

I climbed the steps wearily as Poet hung up, and I couldn’t even answer the questions in Gram’s eyes, I was so bewildered. Why would he have gotten arrested on his way to me? It didn’t make any sense and my mind was spinning.

“Baby daddy stood you up, huh?” Farrah mumbled around a mouth full of what looked like shredded wheat cereal. My heart sped up as I stared at her in disbelief. She looked like shit. Her hair was matted on one side and there were half-circles of mascara under her eyes. She’d probably just woken up after her bender last night, and she’d been passed out cold while I’d been freaking out for the last two hours.

“Fuck you, Farrah!” I screamed, throwing my purse at her and knocking cereal all over my couch. “You’re such a fucking bitch!”

I felt Gram’s hand on my elbow, but I was too overcome with emotion to pay any attention to her.

“What the fuck did
I
do?” Farrah yelled back, standing from the couch.

“It’s all about poor fucking Farrah! Farrah has had such a shitty time that she treats everyone around her like total crap!” My hands clenched into fists as she stared at me in disbelief. “I should’ve moved to Oregon by now!” I screeched, the veins in my temples throbbing.