Seven
Sometimes I say “don’t be crazy, Hush” but I don’t always listen to myself.
—Jasper to Calliope
JASPER
As if things couldn’t get any worse.
Now I had to deal with Maxine.
And Bernie.
“You’ll have to go make contact.”
Webber.
When he’d gotten to the shop, he was sounding pretty fuckin’ pissed.
Which was understandable.
Hell, I was, too.
I’d led this mess here, and now it was my turn to clean it up.
Fuckin’ hell.
“I had Apollo send the address to your phone,” he said. “Man, I need to warn you about something.”
I frowned. “What?”
The fact that he felt like he needed to warn me had the hair at the back of my neck standing up on end.
“Bernie.” He cleared his throat. “She has a kid.”
I frowned. “A what?”
“She has a kid,” he continued. “Apollo was trying to look into the kid more, but man, he looks exactly fuckin’ like you.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose and was already ready to deny having a kid, but Webber kept talking, stalling my outburst.
“Kid’s around seven,” he said. “Lines up really well with when you left New Orleans.”
Bernie and I had a great year together, but where she wanted kids and a house and marriage, I wanted a break. I didn’t want to be tied down—who would want me? I didn’t want to be responsible for other people—I didn’t have the mental capacity at the time to deal with that kind of relationship when I could barely function on my own.
Hell, at the time, I could barely commit to a gym, let alone another person.
But we’d had fun for a year.
And when she’d given me an ultimatum, marriage or she walks, I’d chosen my freedom.
That’d been when I’d decided to take the FBI up on their undercover operation with the Truth Tellers MC.
I’d been desperate to get away, not wanting to give Bernie any illusion that I was willing to stay and make a go of the relationship.
Hell, Bernie had been a great woman.
In fact, if there’d been one person that I might’ve been able to settle down with it’d have been her. At the time, anyway.
