Total pages in book: 35
Estimated words: 32845 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 164(@200wpm)___ 131(@250wpm)___ 109(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 32845 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 164(@200wpm)___ 131(@250wpm)___ 109(@300wpm)
My mother winced. “Yeah. A very big ‘if’.”
“Mom, please help me.” The tears were threatening again. “I think I might love him.”
“Honey, I know you love him. At least, you love the idea of him. You have since you were ten.”
My eyes widened. “You knew about that?”
“You’re my daughter. A mother notices things.” She gave me a knowing nod. Then there was more shouting in the background.
“You get your fuckin’ bitch ass back to this clubhouse with my daughter, you bastard! When you do, you better have made your peace with Jesus because the prospects will have your fuckin’ grave dug by the time you get back. We’ll have a nice little ceremony right after I piss on your fuckin’ headstone!”
“Yeah.” I shivered, tears flowing freely now. “A very big ‘if’.”
Chapter Ten
Cyclone
“You get your fuckin’ bitch ass back to this clubhouse with my daughter, you bastard! When you do, you better have made your peace with Jesus because the prospects will have your fuckin’ grave dug by the time you get back. We’ll have a nice little ceremony right after I piss on your fuckin’ headstone!”
To say Trucker was pissed as shit didn’t even come close to what the man was feeling. The odds of my surviving this dropped from near zero to less than zero. Didn’t matter. I wasn’t giving Willa up. If that meant I lived out the rest of my life nutless and drinking my food through a straw, I’d take it. Of course, it kind of sounded like he didn’t plan on letting me live that long. Before I could say anything more, he disconnected the call.
“Well. That could have gone better.” I scrubbed a hand over my face before laying my phone on the table and moving to the connecting door. I was about to knock when Willa opened the door and looked up at me. There were tears on her cheeks and a wave of fury washed through me.
She gasped and took a step back. Yeah. I needed to rein it in. Again. Seemed to be my motto of late. “Sorry, honey. Didn’t expect your mother would make you cry. Doesn’t seem like her.”
“She didn’t. But I heard my dad in the background.” As she spoke, more tears spilled over. “He’s not going to let us be together.” Then she dissolved into more tears.
I pulled her into my arms, lifting her so I could carry her to the couch. She straddled my hips and wrapped her arms around my neck, clinging to me as I rubbed my hands up and down her back. “It’s all going to be fine. I promise you, Willa. We’ll get through this.”
“I’m so sorry, Daniel. So sorry.”
“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for. I never do anything I don’t want to do.”
“But I practically targeted you! Sure, stumbling onto you outside the clubhouse was an accident, but I came there hoping it would be you.”
“You want to know a secret?” I couldn’t believe I was about to tell her this, but she needed to hear it. “After talking with Trucker, hearing his rather vocal and violent pushback, instead of feeling relieved I wouldn’t have to take on a woman, that I’d be getting that beating I so richly deserved before I went on my merry way, I found myself pushing back just as hard as he did. Not aggressively. That ain’t the way to handle a man as big as Trucker. But I’d told him in no uncertain terms that if you’d have me, I was keeping you. Whether or not he approved.” Her eyes got wider and wider as I spoke. “And I meant every fuckin’ word, honey.”
“Daniel?” There was a becoming blush staining her cheeks and she trembled in my arms. Her eyes were wide and glassy as tears still dripped from them.
“I noticed you, Willa. At the compound. Yeah, I watched you grow up, but I noticed you as a woman. I tried to block it out, to deny I noticed because you were as off-limits as it got. But I saw you. When you fell in my lap that night, I think on some level I knew it was you. I mean, there was no way I was in a state to think rationally, but I knew you were familiar to me. I didn’t look too closely at who you were because I wanted you with every part of my fuckin’ being.”
“And now?” Her voice was soft, vulnerable.
“The only way I’m letting you get away from me is if you tell me you don’t want me. I’ll always respect your wishes, but even then, I’d be lying if I said I’d let you leave without a fight. I want you, Willa. You and this baby. So, the ball’s in your corner.”
“Oh, Daniel!” She threw her arms around my neck again, and the tears came in racking sobs into my neck.