Bad Apple (The Uncertain Saints MC #4) (14 page)

Or why he wouldn’t just come inside instead of staying outside.

But I guess that was answered last night, wasn’t it?

I wanted to yell at him. Scream my indignation.

How could he keep us apart for this long over a look he thought I’d given him?

Seriously? Who did that?

But as I saw the bags under his eyes, I realized then that his wounds weren’t superficial. They were deep, and they wanted to hold on and dig deeper.

And he’d been letting them fester.

He’d been letting them get so rotten and infected that he didn’t even realize how bad they were because he couldn’t feel them.

All he knew was that he was hurting. He just didn’t know how badly.

“How long are you going to stare at me with your towel wrapped precariously around yourself?” Apple asked with a rumble
, his voice thick with sleep.

I smiled at him and walked to the dresser that was holding my underthings.

I thought about going into the bathroom to get dressed, but I chose to test him.

If this wasn’t real…he’d leave. The moment my towel dropped to the ground, he’d be gone, and I’d know if he was serious about staying with me or not. About giving us a chance.

You just can’t hide emotions like that.

And the moment I dropped my towel, my back to Apple, I heard his swift intake of breath saw into his lungs.

“Ah, God,” Apple groaned. “You’re trying to kill me. I know it.”

I laughed at him, tossing him a look over my shoulder that clearly said ‘yes.’

“I knew it,” he crowed. “That look you just threw at me was confirmation enough.”

I grinned and bent over, giving him a clear view as I lifted one leg to put my panties on.

The sexiness fell out of it, though, when I had to catch and steady myself on the dresser.

My belly really didn’t offer me very much stability lately, and now that I was so far along, it was getting worse.

“I usually have to sit down to do this,” I told him when he started to laugh.

Apple groaned as he got up, and I was attempting a second try at putting my foot into the hole on my panties when he was there.

He dropped down to one knee and my hand automatically went to his shoulder as he helped me get my panties on.

Pulling them up slowly, he leaned forward and placed a kiss on my still growing belly.

“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he whispered.

My eyes closed in pleasure as he let his hands slip from the waistband of my underwear to move up to my belly where he cupped it as best as he could with both hands.

“I’ve been dying to do this,” he pressed another kiss just under my belly button.

And our daughter, the playful little thing that she was, immediately kicked out where he’d pressed his lips, and Apple’s eyes lit with pleasure.

“I never thought I’d see your badass self on your knees for me,” I whispered to him, letting my fingers play along the length of his beard.

It’d gotten longer over the last couple of months.

Where before it’d just barely been a slightly overgrown beard, probably only days past needing trimmed, now it was blatantly grown out…and I fucking loved it.

I wanted to feel that beard on my skin as he kissed every single inch of my body.

“Your eyes are on fire,” he looked up at me. “What are you thinking?”

I turned my face down to study his eyes, and I liked how he couldn’t stop his gaze from falling down to my unbound breasts before he tried to look me in the eyes again.

I had mercy on him and reached for a sports bra, one of the only things I found comfortable anymore, and pulled it on over my head.

“I think we need to get out of my room before this goes further than we should be going right now,” I told him honestly.

He laughed and pressed his thumb in, getting another nudge from our daughter.

“Are you excited?” He asked my stomach.

I assumed he was asking me that and not the baby, because I was sure that the child we’d made together never wanted to leave. She loved being exactly where she was.

Especially seeing as she was still head up, and I wasn’t dilated or effaced a single tiny bit.

According to my doctor, if she didn’t turn, they wouldn’t risk me trying a natural birth. He’d go straight to a C-section because he didn’t want to cause me any undue stress and accidentally throw me into a seizure.

Which would be bad.

I wanted to be awake for the birth of my child. Not in the comatose state that I always ended up in after my seizures.

“What are you thinking about up there?” Apple interrupted my worries.

I looked down at him and lifted my hand to run over his head.

His hair had a crease in it from where his cowboy hat sat atop his head for the entire day.

He was also still in his uniform, meaning he’d come over here directly after getting off of work.

“I was thinking about my birthing options,” I said honestly. “Yes, I’m excited, but I just hope it all goes according to plan, and I don’t have to end up having a C-section.”

His eyes shuttered as did his body as he stood.

Our baby had fallen asleep in the last couple of minutes of play, and I wanted to roll my eyes.

The kid did this every night. She slept for the hours before I went to bed, and then proceeded to keep me up for over five hours in the middle of the night while she rolled, kicked, and played.

Apple’s hands came up to cup my face, and he leaned in to place a kiss on my lips, but my phone rang.

He ignored it in favor of kissing me, and I couldn’t say I was upset about that.

His tongue pressed between my lips, curling up to tease the tip of my mine.

My hands tightened in his hair, which I hadn’t let go of when he stood, pulling him even closer into me.

His big body was bowed around mine, curling around my belly and pulling me as close as he could.

And when he finally let me go, my brain was fuzzy.

“Food,” I whispered, moving away from him to gasp in a breath.

He smiled just as my phone started ringing again.

“Guess someone’s looking for you,” he murmured.

I shrugged.

“Ridley knows you’re here,” I shrugged. “He wouldn’t bother to call to check on me.”

Apple grinned as he let go of me only long enough to grab my phone off the dresser that I’d brought with me from the bathroom, and answer it without looking at the caller ID.

I let go of him as I grabbed a t-shirt from the dresser drawer, smiling when I found my favorite on top.

I slipped it on over my head and turned just in time to see Apple’s eyes narrow.

“Who is this?” Apple asked.

His brows furrowed and mine rose in question.

“Who is it?” I
asked him, bending down to the bottom drawer and grabbing a pair of shorts.

These were ones I hadn’t worn in a while, but with everything else dirty, I either had those or nothing.

So I chose those while watching his face to gauge his mood.

Which wasn’t good.

“I can assure you that she’s fine. If you’re unsure, feel free to call the cops and the owner of the contract,” Apple barked into the phone.

My brows crawled up into my hairline as I sat on the bed and pulled my shorts on.

I then had to laugh when I saw how tight they were.

They were also digging uncomfortably into my belly, so I rolled them down until they came to a rest underneath it.

Apple growled and hung up, turning to survey the camera that was in the corner of my room.

“Let me guess,” I said, standing up. “It was Jake?”

He looked over at me and nodded.

“How’d you know?”

“Because Jake’s a douche, and he gives me the creeps. He calls me each and every time I go into the bathroom and cover up the feed,” I lifted my lip in a silent snarl.

His brows furrowed.

“There’s one in the bathroom?” He looked ill.

I nodded and took his hand as I passed, taking him to the one in the bathroom and pointing to my shirt over it.

“Sometimes your brother annoys the shit out of me,” he said. “Why would he put one in the bathroom?”

“Because he’s worried I might fall out and die,” I repeated Ridley’s exact words. “But there’s no way, now that I know about them, that I can take a shower in the bathroom or use the restroom while that’s on. The majority of the time it stays covered until Ridley comes home and takes it down.”

“Well, if someone’s here with you, there’s no reason for you to have it up. Tell him that next time,” Apple replied angrily.

I smiled, knowing that I, at least, had Apple on my side.

“Let’s go get dinner before I decide to ride to wherever that motherfucker is and fuck his face up,” Apple growled, walking up to me and taking my hand.

I snorted.

“You should be careful what you say or he’ll hear you and complain to Ridley,” I said soothingly.

“Fuck them both.”

With that eloquent statement, Apple left the room, leaving me smiling at his back as he went.

Dinner and the rest of the night had been magical, but the moment Ridley arrived home at ten, I’d sent Apple home.

Why?

Because he was falling asleep on his feet.

He hadn’t been happy to be sent away, but the promise of seeing him in the morning before he went to work had given him enough incentive to leave even when he didn’t want to go.

And now here I was, three oh three in the morning, and I was wide awake because his child liked to play.

I’d been awake for going on an hour when I decided that a visit to Apple was in order.

Certainly if I had to be up because of his child, so did he.

Right?

I knew it totally contradicted the entire reason I’d sent him home, but I wasn’t thinking clearly any more. I was running on just as much, if not less, sleep than him.

I decided I
was
right after another twenty minutes of second guessing myself.

Getting up, I walked to my closet door and grabbed the first pair of shoes I could find, which happened to be my boots.

Then I went to the bathroom and gathered up the shorts I’d slipped on after my shower.

Once I’d slipped both my shorts and boots on, I grabbed my sweatshirt off the back of my chair and opened my window.

Luckily, I’d covered my camera before I’d gone to bed, or Ridley would be receiving a call right about now telling him I was trying to sneak out.

Why he’d get one, I didn’t know. I was a grown ass adult, but since I knew Jake was on duty, I knew he’d think it necessary to call Ridley ‘in case I hurt myself’.

Or whatever shit he’d come up with for calling.

Ridley was absolutely crazy if he didn’t see that something was wrong with that weird man who watched my every move.

Apple realized it with one single phone call.

Ridley had dozens, and he still didn’t see the big deal.

I contemplated this for the entirety of my walk, and had just come to the decision that I’d be bringing this up with Ridley tomorrow when I arrived to Apple’s driveway.

I smiled when I wasn’t met with just one, but three of Apple’s dogs.

I wasn’t actually sure the exact number he had, but I was sure there were more than just the three.

“Hello,” I sang to the dogs.

Their tails swished in the dirt, and I touched each of their heads once as I walked past.

They didn’t move from their spot, and I was tempted to walk around them to see if I could get them to move.

But my eyes were already heavy, and my ankles were hurting from the walk.

Not to mention my back, which always seemed to hurt lately, was killing me.

And then there was my pubic bone.

That one felt like it was cracking each time I took a step.

I’d asked my doctor, on one of my many visits, if it was normal for a pubic bone to feel like it was about to crack in half, and he’d said it was more than normal. That it was the ligaments that were stretching and preparing for birth that were the cause.

Knowing that it was normal didn’t make it better, though.

I still hurt like a motherfucker each time I took a step. Or moved wrong. Or rolled over in bed. Or painted my toes.

Okay, it hurt all the fucking time.

I didn’t think there was a time it didn’t hurt, unless I was sleeping and able to ignore it.

Except I wasn’t sleeping all that much, now was I?

“Goodnight, doggies,” I called as I walked past them and down the driveway.

I went straight to the barn, closing the door behind me as I went inside.

My eyes went straight up the stairs to find the huge barn doors up top closed as well, which meant that Apple was likely in there with the air conditioner on.

He’d said he rarely closed them unless the air was on, and even though it was only February, it’d been in the mid-eighties all week.

It cooled down at night, but the big barn was fast to heat up, and slow to cool down, according to one of our few conversations.

So I climbed the stairs, wincing with each step.

Once I reached the barn doors, I slid one door softly open just far enough that I could squeeze inside, and closed it just as soundlessly behind myself.

Then I looked to the bed where Apple was lying, and I strongly urged myself not to do it.

I really shouldn’t have.

I swear to God, I was telling myself not to, but the way he was sleeping so peacefully with his hands tucked under his face like a fucking angel had my eyes narrowing.

“Apple!” I bellowed.

He sat up in the bed like he’d been cattle prodded, his eyes crazy, as he looked around the room sightlessly.

It was then I saw the gun in his hand.

I never said I made smart decisions.

Sometimes they were terrible decisions, in fact.

Like starting paralegal school. Or working at a gas station graveyard shift. Or having unprotected sex because I thought my medication rendered me infertile.

Yes, I made terrible decisions, and seeing Apple with a gun in his hand pointed at the roof had my eyes widening.

“Shit,” I apologized. “I’m sorry.”

His eyes finally turned to me, and he narrowed them dangerously low.