The Rampage MC #2: Beard and Emily

Chapter 3 (Beard): I Was Surprised

Four fucking months. Four motherfucking months and my guys hadn't been able to find her. Emily and her friends never came to the bar anymore, and I had a prospect stationed there from the minute they opened to the minute they closed, just in case she showed up, every single day for four months.

Emily had never paid for her drinks from that first night she met me, so there were no credit card receipts to find her last name. She'd only driven to the clubhouse once, and she had parked just outside our camera range so I didn't get a fucking license plate to track her down.

I didn't even know if Emily was her first name or a middle name she used instead of her first name or even a nickname.

But then today, four months after she stormed out of the clubhouse, I'd caught a break. One of the brothers had been with his mom before her surgery, and the anesthesiologist who came to talk to them pre-op was Emily. He'd called me as soon as she left the room to go to the OR.

"Prez. Found your Emily. She's a motherfucking doctor here at Mercy General. She's the anesthesiologist."

I immediately headed for the hospital on my bike and waited in the lobby for hours until I finally spotted her, wearing blue scrubs, a messenger bag over her shoulder. I got out of my chair and walked toward her.

"Emily!" I took hold of her arm when she would have walked past me.

"Can I help you?" she asked with a neutral smile that you'd give to a fucking stranger. Then she pointed to the reception desk in the lobby. "Renata can help you find a patient if you're looking for one."

"I'm here for you," I told her. "Emily, I've been looking for you for four months." She looked good, and it hit me even more forcefully how much I'd missed her.

Chain had been right.

Her face looked fuller because of the weight she'd gained with the pregnancy, but still the same sweet Emily with the soft brown eyes and blondish-brown hair that fell just past her shoulders.

She didn't say anything to that, but she wiggled her arm out of my grasp and I let her because I was relatively certain if she made a break for it, I could catch her.

"You're...OK?"

Again with that motherfucking neutral smile.

"I have to go now." Then she turned and headed for the lobby doors at a pretty fucking fast clip considering her belly was fucking huge. In fact, the few pregnant women I'd seen in my life, none had bellies anywhere near this giant.

"Emily, wait, dammit." I used my voice of authority on her.

Fuck. No effect. She just kept stalking toward the doors.

Once we were outside the hospital, I grabbed her hand and tugged her toward me.

"Emily, hold up a damn minute."

"If you let go of me right now, I won't call security over here," she remarked pleasantly, as if we were discussing the weather.

"I want to know how you're doing," I told her. "Are you OK? You're fucking huge and I don't know if that's normal."

I'd heard the term nuclear winter before, but I don't know if that even began to describe the coldness that crept into Emily's eyes.

"Huge," she repeated coldly. Oh, hell. Was there some rule that you were never supposed to tell a pregnant woman she was enormous? But didn't they know already? It's not like it was new information.

What I really needed to do was talk with Genny, who was getting ready to have Chain's second child. She'd know the rules. But I'd seen Genny the day before she gave birth to their first child, and she'd been nowhere near as big as Emily. So that worried me.

"I don't mean it in a bad way," I tried to explain. "I've seen some of the ol' ladies pregnant and none of them have looked as large as you. Not even close. I just want to make sure there's nothing wrong."

"Large," she repeated again in that same cold tone.

I was starting to panic, and I never fucking panicked.

"I'm just talking about the size of your belly. The rest of you looks almost normal size, nowhere near as big as your belly."

"Big?"

Shit. Wasn't it bad when women started repeating words you said to them as questions? I was so out of my depth here and I was losing ground fast. I'd never had to talk with a pregnant woman, especially not a pregnant woman who hadn't parted on the best of terms with me because I may not have handled the news of my impending fatherhood as well as I could have.

Chain had come up to me after she let go of my balls, and I was still kneeling on the ground, trying not to cry in front of all my brothers like a motherfucking baby at the pain I was in.

He'd crouched down next to me. "I'm not sure you could have handled that any worse. You not only burned that bridge, but you incinerated it."

I couldn't breathe and the motherfucker pressed his advantage. "I've always looked up to you, Prez. Always. Respected the way you went and talked to Genny after I turned in my cut, helped to turn things around for us by telling her to think hard about the way she felt about me. But gotta say, I was disappointed as fuck today to see the way you treated Emily."

I could feel him watching me, but all I could focus on was breathing.

"That woman is the only one who's ever been on your radar for more than a night. Three months, Prez. You've been with her three months and haven't even looked at another woman. That's how I was with Genevieve. That's how I knew. I didn't want to be with another woman ever again after the first time I saw her. And you've been the same way with Emily."

Would this fucking pain ever let up? I wanted Chain to let up, too, but the fucker kept at me like an annoying horsefly.

"She came and told you she was pregnant with your baby and you treated her like a club girl. You treated the mother of your child like a whore and embarrassed her in front of everyone. I got no respect for the way you handled that. She's a nice lady and deserved better."

On a scale of one to ten, my pain was still at a steady hundred. Chain needed to shut the hell up so I could just focus on that. But, apparently, my luck today had run out.

"I hope you meant what you said about not wanting anything to do with your baby because the woman that just walked out of here? She's not coming back. And let me tell you, messing up with a woman like I did with Genny and like you just did with Emily? That ain't easy to come back from. I'm real disappointed in you, Prez."

Then he stood up and walked out of the clubhouse. While I knelt there for a little bit longer.

So, I'd handled things badly the last time I'd seen Emily, and things weren't going much better right now. Huge. Large. Big. Admittedly, not the best words. I needed to try this again.

"Emily, I know I've been stepping in it with you, but I just want to talk with you, make things up to you. I want to pay for your medical expenses --"

"Is that free and clear or still in exchange for some oraI?"

I closed my eyes for a moment, recalling my words that day in shame.

But to show you I'm not a complete asshole, if you come suck me off, I'll throw in medical expenses.

"Free and clear, like it should have been from the start," I assured her. "I was surprised that you stopped by the clubhouse that day, and I'm sorry I didn't handle it the right way. But now that I've found you, I want to talk so we can make plans about the baby, find out about how you both are doing, get the information I need."

"I've already made my plans. They don't include you," she said with that fake sweetness.

Her neutral smile was back in place, too.

"But to show you I'm not a complete asshole, if you come lick my pussy, I'll throw in some information for you."