JACKSON
The courtroom was relatively empty. Each one of us was being brought in individually for the bail hearings despite the similarity in charges across the board for everyone in the club, except for me. The only real differences were based on the background of charges which did affect the bail number tagged on. Dick would have the largest amount. Everyone would be brought up on illegal gang activity and arms trafficking.
Looking around the room, I expected to see some kind of familiar faces. My mom. April. Maybe Kieran along with her. Yet none of them are there. Agent Pierce was there, as was the lawyer for the club. Meredith Grey. She'd gotten us off on plenty of things before and lowered the charges. She knew how to find loopholes in the law. There was supposed to be confidentiality between me and her about anything going on, but I couldn't guarantee that. Now, I didn't have a choice. She was going to have to keep her mouth shut about the fact that the charges being brought up against me were nowhere near the ones being brought up against the rest of the club.
Cold cuffs weighed heavily on my wrists and I didn't say a word to Meredith as I moved to stand next to her. I wanted to know where April was, but I didn't want her and Meredith interacting. April had said she would find a lawyer. Maybe it wasn't as easy as she thought.
"Bail is set at $50,000." The judge announced.
Damn.
One of the local officers came up to escort me back to the solo cell that I had been sitting in over the weekend. I didn't know why April hadn't come but it bothered me that she hadn't. She knew the bail hearing was going to be today. It wasn't like her to not show up for at least some kind of support. Maybe Kieran was being fussy. Maybe she'd slept through it. Hopefully, she would show up soon and get me out of here.
There's not much to do in a cell. It's different from prison in a number of ways, and the fact that there's pretty much nothing to do was one of them. I'd always had a good set up in prison from the club. Going forward, I knew that wasn't going to be possible any longer.
"Avery, you've got a visitor." One of the guards announced, keys jangling as he opened my cell door.
Standing up, I turned my head to see the male who was approaching me. I stepped out, expecting the officer behind him to put a pair of handcuffs on my wrist and he doesn't. The man coming up to me wasn't one that I recognized – definitely a couple of years older than myself, salt and pepper hair, but clean cut. Well-shaved and dressed well, an expensive watch on his wrist. Definitely not someone who was associated with the MC. But there was something familiar about his face that I couldn't quite pinpoint.
"Who are you?" I questioned, brow furrowing.
"Dr. Mark Sloan," he extended a hand as he spoke. "I work with April. I'm here on her behalf."
"Where is she?" I questioned immediately. "I thought she was going to show up at the hail bearing. She said that she was going to and it's not like her to just not show up without a warning."
"I paid your bail so they're letting you go now." Mark didn't answer my question immediately, moving to another one that I had but hadn't voiced. "On her behalf. You need to come with me."
Despite the excess of questions that I have for him, Mark managed to dodge all of my questions that I had about April and what was going on with her. She's at the hospital – he won't say why or what happened, but that I just need to see her for myself. Kieran was fine. That was all that he would say. The lack of answers infuriated me. Something had happened to her and he wouldn't tell me what.
When we finally reached the hospital, I try to get away from him and head straight to the nurse's station to get answers about where she was and what was going on. The nurse isn't helpful. Mark caught back up with me again and guided me up two floors to the room that she was staying in. It wasn't the psychiatric floor. She wasn't just relaxing in her office.
Halting to a stop outside of her door, my eyes laid on her.
April nearly looked as ghostly as the white sheets that she was laying on, almost all of the color drained from her face. Her eyes were shut and she wasn't moving, but there was a steady beeping of the heart rate monitor that she was attached to, indicating that she wasn't dead despite the way that she looked. Normally smooth hair was frizzy and didn't have the same shine as usual. Her neck was purple with dark bruises around it. whatever had happened, someone had certainly tried to beat the life out of her. It looked like they had almost succeeded.
"What the fuck happened to her?" I blurted out, grabbing Mark's shoulder and shoving him back against the doorway so he couldn't try to escape without giving me any answers.
"A man named Matthew Taylor broke into her house on Saturday night." He started.
"Saturday night?" I interrupted. "She's been in here since Saturday night and I'm just now hearing about it? What the fuck? She's– she's my girlfriend! The mother of my son! Why am I just now hearing about this?"
"Her paperwork doesn't list a next of kin," he frowned. "Amelia, I think you know her, she was the one who suggested that I bail you out and bring you in. She said that April would want that."
"Jesus fucking Christ…" I swore, stepping back and running both my hands over my face and interlocking my fingers behind my head. "How did this happen?"
"We haven't been able to get all of the details. Matthew was found DOA. They think she fought him for the gun and managed to shoot him. It weakened him enough that he wasn't able to suffocate her. Alex is still in critical condition in the ICU. She had surgery yesterday to repair her gunshot wound and they ended up having to take out one of her kidneys, but the other kidney function has been looking good so far, so she's probably going to be fine." More details were dropped as if they were nothing. As this was all the goddamn weather to him.
Wait. "Alex? Alex was there?"
"Yeah," he nodded. "Probably the reason that she's alive in the first place. He was stabbed in the lung and lost a lot of blood. He's not stable just yet. Izzie's been watching him."
"I can't fuckin' believe…" I shook my head. "When's she gonna wake up?"
"She's just asleep right now. It's not sedation." Mark replied. "You can wake her up if you want."
"Thank fuck," I breathed out. "Can you give us a minute or something? I need to talk to her in private." Even if he was a friend of April, that didn't mean he could be trusted with overhearing everything that we needed to talk about. No one could be trusted right now.
He nodded his head. "Sure."
Waiting until he had gotten a little bit of distance between himself and the room, I walked into April's room and slid the door shut behind me. She didn't stir or wake up immediately. I'd never seen her this pale before. Every freckle on her exposed arms and her cheeks seemed darker than they had ever been before. She looked so small.
I dragged the empty chair in her room closer to her bed, sitting down and letting out a heavy sigh. The beeping on the monitor picked up slightly and she stirred from the noise but her eyes don't flutter open. For a moment, I felt like I should let her rest. She'd been through hell and I was only just now finding out about it. Did Agent Pierce know about it? Did Mom know about it? Why had no one come to me sooner with what was going on? I sighed, blinking back the tears beginning to burn in my lower lid. Not in front of her.
"Hey, Princess." Both hands wrapped around her tiny one and I brought it up to my lips, kissing the back of her knuckles gently. There was an IV in her arm I was careful to not hit.
April groaned and stirred slightly. A few seconds passed before her eyes opened up, blinking a few times. "Jackson?"
"Hey," I squeezed her hand tighter. "Yeah, it's me."
"Wh…" She started to question something before wetting her lips. Her head tilted toward the pitcher of water and an empty plastic cup on the stand. "Water, please."
Letting go of her hand with a nod, I poured her half a glass of water and held it up to her lips. She used one hand to guide it into her mouth and drink but I don't let go of it, just in case. Once she was finished, I set it back down.
"Are you okay?" I finally mustered up the courage to ask, immediately regretting it. What a stupid question.
"Yeah," she answered despite my immediate regret. "Just… sore."
"I should have been there." I shook my head. "I would've never let this happen to you. I swear to god – if he wasn't already dead, then I would kill that piece of shit myself. He doesn't deserve to live. Thank fuck he's dead."
"I killed someone," April's eyes widened in shock. "Oh… oh my god." Her heartbeat began to pick up on the monitor. "I can't believe I actually killed someone."
"Hey, hey, calm down." I scooted closer to her. "It's fine. He deserved it. You did the right thing."
She didn't seem to believe my words, shaking her head.
"I promise, I would've done the exact same thing. Hell, I probably would have beat the shit out of him, killed him, then beat the shit out of him some more, especially seeing what he did to you now. That's not right," I shook my head. "Can't believe he'd come after you like that. What a piece of shit."
"Wh… what happened to Alex? He–he tied." She muttered, looking at me.
"Doc said that he's in ICU," I sighed. "But he's a fighter. He'll pull out of this just like he does everything else. I promise."
"This is all my fault." Tears began to form in her eyes. "This is my fault…"
"Hey, don't do that," I shook my head and moved toward her. My lips pressed into her forehead and I lingered there for a long moment. "This isn't your fault. No one but that asshole's and he got what he deserved. All you did is set some wrongs right again."
For a few long moments, she doesn't say anything. I'm not sure if it hurt her, but she doesn't complain as I wrap my arms around her shoulders and held her against me the best that I can. She's cold. It's unusual given that she normally radiated warmth. I try to give her some of mine for once. I could afford to share and she had done more than enough of it. I breathed her in deep, giving her a squeeze until I can feel her lose some of that tension and the beep of her heart rate slowed down again on the monitor.
"Mark bailed me out," I murmured and barely separated from her. I sat down on the chair again, one hand holding hers and the other resting gently on her upper arm. "Thanks for that."
"I'm sorry that I wasn't there," she mumbled.
"Don't apologize for a thing." I frowned. "You didn't do anything wrong, okay? You've got to get that inside of your head. There's no reason for you to feel bad. Other than the fact that you got shot."
"Okay." April gave a slight nod, biting on her lower lip. "Okay."
"Do you mind if I go check on Alex? I'll be right back," I questioned, raising my brow.
"Sure," she agreed as she breathed out. "But uh, a favor. Two favors. I have a cardigan in my office – it's black and it should be hanging up on one of the hooks behind the door. Could you get it for me?" I nodded my head. "Okay. And… I need to talk to Agent Pierce about what happened. Matthew… he confessed. He put the drugs in your house to get you arrested."
Oh, that bastard. Of course he did.
"I'll get her here. I promise." At least that saved the problem of figuring out how to avoid the charges coming back to bite me in the ass. The case wouldn't go to trial if it could be proved that he had put it there. Since he was dead, he wasn't around to defend himself. Good for me. "I love you," I reminded her.
"I love you too."
Giving her one last lingering look and another kiss on her forehead, I headed out of her room and toward the nurse's station to get Alex's room number. He was down a floor in the ICU. The floor is quieter than April's had been. I eyed the room numbers and the few patients that I did see. None of them were conscious. Shit. This was just like visiting his dad. Barely any damn life. Walking down the hallway was uneasy even when I finally reached his room.
Izzie was in the room already. She was sitting in the chair that I had been in while in April's room. She looked up when she saw me in the doorway and offered a weak smile.
"How's he doing?" I asked.
"It's a fifty-fifty chance at this point," she sighed out and wiped away a tear. "Hard to say more."
"Shit," I ran my hand over my face. "This happened 'cause he was protecting April. I'm the one who should have been there in the first place, not him." Now I was starting to sound like April.
"We'll see how the next few days go…" Izzie frowned. "But I"m guessing all of you guys are going to be in and out of the hospital while he's here. You all got bailed out, right? Mark said that he was going to get you out. I figured the rest of you would, too… it was a miracle he wasn't behind bars in the first place." A miracle for April.
"I'm not sure what's going on with everyone." There was no point getting into the details with her. I wanted to tell Alex on my own time. I didn't want him to get hurt. It was too late for that now. He looked dead lying there. Fuck. "Maybe."
"I'm going to stay with him," she murmured. "I know that we broke up, but… I need to be here."
"Yeah, it's good." Fuck, if he died… I didn't know what the hell I was going to do. His dad had just died. If he did, too… whatever connection I had left to the club was really and truly gone. It would have made what I had to do easier, but I couldn't just accept that. It would be my fault if he died. Maybe I could let go of the club but I couldn't let go of my best friend. He'd been by my side through absolutely everything. He'd saved April's life. Losing him was burning down the house.
I stared at the slow and steady beeping on the monitor for a few seconds longer before taking a step back out of the room. There was nothing that I could say to Izzie. She probably already knew that he was in this condition because he had been protecting Alex. If Mark knew, then all of her friends probably did. Maybe the police.
At least this was keeping me out of going back to prison for a little while longer.
Taking the elevator up to the fifth floor of the hospital, the walk to her office is a familiar one. No one tries to stop me from entering it. I wondered if anyone was even paying attention. It's weird to be in it without her. Her degrees were on the wall, soothing artwork of plants in hues of green and blue. Grabbing the black cardigan off of the hook as she had requested, I got the laptop off of her desk, too. I knew her. She would be bored sitting around in the hospital. She would want something to do. With my hands full, I went back down to her floor.
April gets settled in more comfortably, and I stay by her side. A text message is sent to Agent Pierce and she promised to come first thing in the morning and get a formal statement from her, as well as post an officer outside of her room just in case something else happened.
A week is spent in the hospital. April gets an infection on the second day of post-op. So does Alex. She gets better. Alex doesn't. By the end of the week, the decision was made to take him off the ventilator.
Another goddamn funeral.
Agent Pierce follows through with taking her statement about what had happened when Matthew broke into her house. She was the only one left with a story to told and it was accepted as the truth – he broke in and attacked her, confessed that he had put the drugs in my house to get me out of the way. His fingerprints on the drugs found confirmed her story. The charges against me are dropped quietly, not wanting to draw the club's attention to it.
Mom spent more time taking care of Kieran than either one of us would have liked. Amelia and Mark both take a couple of shifts with him. I go home to him at the end of the day every day and do what I can, but I can't leave April alone in the hospital. I can't bring myself to. Mom wouldn't hurt my son, I knew that much. But I couldn't make the same guarantee that she wouldn't do something to April. She was already weak and vulnerable. Just because there was an officer outside of her room didn't mean that it would be impossible to do something. We had more cops on the payroll than I wanted to think about.
"Thanks for watching him, Mom." I took him from her a bit possessively, taking a deep breath as he settled into my arms. Once April was recovered fully, we could start looking at the next steps.
"Mmhm," she hummed. "It seems like April has brought nothing but trouble into your life."
"That's not true," I defended quickly.
"It isn't?" Her eyebrows shot up. "God knows what could have happened to that child with her giving birth so early. The club's been busted, she got herself hurt with that ex and now, she got Alex killed."
"None of that is her fault." I shook my head. "You should know that."
"You've changed since she's been around." Mom gave me a pointed look.
"Yeah. I've become a father. I'm thinking about a lot more than just myself and the club now," I sighed in exasperation. "I'm starting to look at the big picture. Maybe it's something that I should have done a long time ago."
"Like when your father was alive?" So she did know.
"Yeah, maybe."
The bitter argument is left there and it was a relief to be able to close the door on her and not have to worry about anything other than April and Kieran. It wasn't a conversation that I needed to share with her – not immediately, at least. She needed to focus on getting better. I wanted to give her the illusion that everything else going on in our lives was fine. She needed to stay relaxed. Her doctors had said so.
She had been instructed with taking it was and not picking up anything heavier than Kieran over the course of the next week or so while her incision from the surgery healed. She wasn't allowed to have a high protein diet. Handling that would be easier than getting her to take easy.
Especially given that Kieran doesn't sleep through the night yet.
Given the pain medication and cocktail of drugs that she had been on after getting shot, Kieran had taken to the bottle while she had been recovering in the hospital. He had taken it without a problem. The problem came when she tried to get him to be willing to feed directly from her again – he refused to take her nipple. I'd held her while she cried for at least half an hour after getting him to go down for a nap, full from the formula. She'd taken up pumping after that, not wanting to go through the heartbreak of getting him to try and fail over and over again. It was the best for everyone. She could sleep through the night mostly interrupted, and he'd still get all the benefits that those natural moms raved on and on about.
The bed stirred as she moved, waking me. I can see her sit up in my peripheral. At first, I don't say anything, trying to figure out if she was just being restless. Once she stood up, I spoke. "Babe?"
"Go back to sleep," she murmured.
"What are you doing?" I questioned.
"I just want to hold Kieran." The heartbreak cracked her voice. "I haven't been able to fall back asleep since the last time you fed him and put him back down."
"You're supposed to be resting," I reminded her and sat up. "Remember? Your doc said. You've got to give your body some time to heal up."
"I'm not going to be able to fall asleep if I'm just laying here," she sighed. "I can't. I tried."
I patted her spot in the bed. "C'mere."
"Why?"
"Just come here."
Sighing, April turned fully back toward me and plopped down on the bed again. She laid flat on her back. I scooted up next to her and wrapped one arm around her waist gently, careful to go low on her hips so that I don't put any pressure where the bandage still is. Pulling her against me, she turned on her side so that her back was pressed against the front of my best. Placing a kiss on the back of her shoulder, I held her tight against my front side. She stayed tense for a few moments before she finally began to loosen up.
"I wasn't breastfed and I turned out just fine," I murmured. "He's going to be fine. You know why? 'Cause he still has you. Doesn't matter if it's coming from a bottle or formula or whatever. He's got you. That automatically makes him the luckiest kid alive."
"I'm worried about more than just him," she admitted, her voice barely more than a peep in the night.
"What are you talking about?" I nuzzled the back of her neck.
"I don't feel safe here anymore." Her words hung in the air for a long moment.
"Matthew's not coming back," I reminded her. "He might be an asshole but he's not coming back from the dead, April. He's rotting away in Hell. I know that you believe that even more than I do." I began to rub her arm gently.
"It's more than that," she shook her head slightly as she spoke. "I mean… yeah, that's a part of it, even if he is dead. I know you moved that carpet to cover the bloodstain in the nursery. But that doesn't change what happened here. But then there's your mom and Dick and all of the ATF stuff. Alex was the only other person in the club I would have remotely considered trusting and now he's dead because of me."
"His death isn't your fault." Something that we both needed to believe. "We can move into my place if you want. Sell this one. Might be a couple of stains just 'cause I'm not as clean as you are but I can promise that none of them are from blood."
"It's bigger than that," she sighed. "I want to get out of Eureka. Away from this town."
"And go where?" I asked.
"Anywhere," April answered simply. "Anywhere that isn't here. I'll support us. I don't care about the money, Jackson, I really don't. As long as we're somewhere safe. That's what matters to me."
"We'll be safe here once the club is taken care of." Eureka was my home. All of my childhood had been here, almost all of the memories with my father, with Alex and his father, they were all right here. I'd never lived anywhere else. I knew everyone and everything there was to know about the town. It was impossible to imagine myself living anywhere else. "Sure they're all on bail out now, sure, but once the trial comes and they're all put away, you'll be safe."
"And what if they find out that you made a deal before that can happen? It'll be weeks or months before the actual trial. That's a long time for them to figure out that it was you." She pleaded. "Catherine already knows. It's only a matter of time before everyone else does."
"If she hasn't told anyone yet, that means that she's already got some kind of plan in place." It was only a matter of figuring out what. I knew her well and yet she was still almost impossible to predict.
She sighed. "I still think that we should just go. Get out of here."
"That's only going to make it obvious that it was me," I explained. "And trust me, they'll come after me before they get put away for anything. They will. They've got the money and the resources to find us as long as they're out of prison."
"So what are we supposed to do? We can't run and we can't stay here."
"I don't know."
It hurt to give her an answer like that. I wanted to have all of the answers for her and know what the next steps were after this, but without any kind of protection from ATF, we were being hung out to dry. It was hard to know if that was the US Attorney's intention or not. Sure felt that way. There was no way that they wouldn't be able to predict something like this happening. There was a reason that Witness Protection existed. It just seemed like they didn't care about a guy like me, even if I had a family to worry about. I was disposable now that they had my information.
I didn't know what the right thing to do was. My last real string to the club was gone. Digging the knife in deeper might have offered some safety for April and Kieran, but that wasn't a given. It might have just been getting myself into more trouble. Maybe she was right – maybe the only sane solution was trying to get out of town.
But ignoring the club wasn't the solution. It was only going to get me into more trouble. I had to act like things were still normal if I wanted any chance of getting through all of this.
A meeting to the table was called. Even though it was the last place I wanted to be, I have to go. Ignoring it would have been way too suspicious and although April was still recovering from her injury, there was an expectation for me to show up when a meeting was called. There was no doubt in my mind what it was about. Technically one of the conditions of release was not affiliating with gang activity, but that was going to be ignored by everyone. They were going to try and figure out what had gone wrong in the system and how the ATF had managed to get enough evidence to get a warrant to raid the clubhouse. If Dick knew, then this would be when he voiced it. This would be it.
So I write a letter that I hope April will never have to read.
Dear April,
If you're reading this, then I'm dead. I'm so sorry. All I wanted was to have a life with you and Kieran, something away from the life that I grew up in. Something better. Even if I'm gone now, I know that Kieran will have that because of you. I know that you can do this on your own and that you're going to be an amazing mother. I love you like I've never loved anyone else. You're it for me. You're worth dying for. So is Kieran. I love you.
Forever yours, Jackson
Folding the letter and sealed it, I placed it underneath my pillow. If I didn't come back, then she would find it. And if I did, then I would be able to get rid of it before she had to see it and realize just how worried I was in the first place.
"I'll be back tonight." I kissed her on the cheek, then Kieran on the forehead. "Do you want me to bring home some dinner?"
"Yeah, whatever you want," she nodded. "See you later."
I hoped I would.
Starting up my bike, the humble growl of the engine doesn't give me the same peace that it used to. I drive slowly to the clubhouse but even then, it still doesn't take me long to get there. Everyone's bikes were already parked around. They must have been waiting for me. It's not enough to make me move any faster. All I wanted to do was turn around and go home to my wife, figure out things with her about how we were going to go forward.
Everyone was already in the back room of the clubhouse and gathered, just as I expected. A few nods and greetings are given and I can only manage to return them with a nod of my head as I moved to sit down in the chair next to Dick. Mumblings occurred for a few moments longer before it quieted down.
"Alright, alright, everyone shut it," Dick started up. "We got business to take care of, boys."
"No kidding," Deluca grumbled.
"What was all that ATF shit all about?" Owen spoke next. "Law enforcement hasn't been on our tails in years and certainly not with enough to be able to pull off a raid like that." He'd been around the club long enough to know.
"Somebody has inside info about what was going on," Dick looked around the table as he took a long pause. "They have all kinds of proof about the case that we've been working. Photos and shit, paper trail with the money, everything that they need to take this case down. I've been checking in with some of the guys that we've got inside of prison to see if anyone's flipped, but it looks like we've got a rat."
A long silence followed his words. No one wanted to be a rat and no one wanted to be accused of being one, either. That was nearly as bad. But if it wasn't one of us, then it was an old lady who spilled. I couldn't imagine anything messier than that. I had to make sure the heat stayed off April. I stayed silent.
"You think that someone on the inside is responsible?" Owen asked. My hand tightened into a fist underneath the table. "Who would flip like that?"
"No idea yet." My jaw clenched as Dick spoke. "But we're going to get to the bottom of this."
"Do we know when the evidence is from?" One of the other men at the table questioned.
"What about the next shipment we've got coming? Are we going to be able to keep up with it?" Deluca asked. "My cousins aren't going to like it if we're not able to keep up with our end of the deal." Shit. I hadn't even thought about how this was going to affect the mafia. Surely they had more than enough options to keep things moving. One more group of people that April and I would have to hide from.
"We need to lay low and make sure that they don't get any more evidence packed against us," Dick answered. "That means there's going to be no more guns right now. Money's going to be tight. No drugs, either. We need to keep our heads down low going forward."
"And find the son of a bitch who did this!"
Chimes of agreement came from other members sitting around the table and I leaned back in my chair, palms pressing flat against the tops of my thighs. I have to chime in just a little to keep up appearances but I had to hope that no one was paying enough attention to notice that I wasn't selling it. I just didn't have it in me.
"Alright, that's all," Dick spoke again. "Now get your asses out of here."
Perhaps the only words spoken that would give me any kind of relief.
Standing up from my place immediately, I shoved the chair back in and headed toward the door. I wanted to get out of there before anyone would get in a word in with me. I almost get a chance, getting out of the tiny room and out to the front of the garage before I'm stopped by my mother.
"Hey, I wasn't sure if you were going to make it with April," she spoke to me, her head tilting as she looked me over. "You guys got any leads on who you think the rat is?"
"No," I breathed out uneasily. "Just stuff about keeping the illegal activity down. That's all."
"Hmm," Mom hummed. "How is April?"
"She's fine," I answered shortly. "Healing up just like she should be. She and Kieran are both good." And they would continue to stay good so long as Mom stayed far, far away from both of them.
"Good. At least someone is." There's an edge to her comment that hooks into me, sinking deep. "Alex is missed around here. It's too bad."
My jaw clenched and I took a deep breath. "You're not the only one. He was like a brother to me."
"This entire club is your family." She tried to remind me. I knew what she was doing. She wanted me to go back on the deal that I had made with ATF, but it was too late for that to work – even if I had wanted it to. Mom was taking the knife and twisting it as far and as deep as she knew how. I took a deep breath through my nose, jaw set. I couldn't let her get to me.
The club had done me good, but it had done me some harm, too. I'd never gone to college because of it. I'd barely managed to finish high school because I had been so obsessed with all of it. I'd gotten my ass kicked more times than I could count or remember, had a close call with drugs before that probably could have ended my life if there hadn't been Narcan available. Getting my ass kicked in jail hadn't been pretty either, and I had some of the ugly scars on my back to prove it. It'd taken my father from me. He had lived and died on the bike, literally. The crash had left him mangled beyond recognition. Not everything had been pretty and perfect as my mother might have wanted to paint it.
"I'm taking care of my family." That was the only thing that I could say.
Heading home, I can't help but keep an eye out. Glancing over my shoulder that frequently isn't good, but I can't help it. Something still doesn't feel right. Mom knew. Why didn't she say anything about it to Dick?
I nearly forget to pick up dinner on the way home, swinging by the store and picking up a roasted chicken and remade mashed potatoes. Not my best, but I wasn't half as hungry as I should have been. We really couldn't stay here much longer. It didn't matter if there were weeks or months left until the trial. April was right. We had to get out of Eureka – the sooner, the better.
"Hey!" April called out as I walked in the front door. I set down the food on the counter and shrugged off my jacket, tossing it onto the back of the couch.
"Hey," I answered.
"How was the meeting?" She questioned as she appeared with our son in her arms, brows raised. "How are you? Or– we? I mean, we're still good with the whole keeping a cover, right?"
"It seems like Dick doesn't know." I took Kieran from her as she passed by to begin unpacking the food. "I mean, that or he's putting on a really good face. Mom definitely knows, but… he and the rest of the club don't. So we're good on the front for a little while longer. They're going to want revenge the minute that they find out but I'm hoping that doesn't happen until they're behind bars."
Making a face at Kieran, I lifted him up and blew a raspberry on his stomach. He squealed with laughter, a real smile embracing his features. He looked like me most of the time, but when he smiled, he looked like April. And maybe with just a hint of my father there, too.
"We can keep it up," April offered a reassuring smile as she got down plates. "We will."
"I hope you're right." I kissed Kieran on the head, putting him in his high chair so that he could sit with us. "How do you feel? The scar?" I circled around my abdomen, pointing to where her injury would have been on me.
"Healing. No signs of anymore infection as of my last bandage change." She answered. "And I got the paint out. Painted over the bloodstains left on the wall. Even if we can't leave this place yet, it… felt good to be able to cover that up and not have to look at it anymore."
"About that…" I took a deep breath. "I think you're right. I think we do need to get out of here. Soon."
