Checkmate With Bishop: A Hellions MC Novel (16 page)

“Don’t they teach ‘em that shit in nursing school?” Huff asked with a totally straight face as his gaze moved to the Hellions standing next to him.  “Hard cocks 101 or some such?”

As their laughter wound down, Trey was the first to broach the subject, the one thing that had been playing in Bishop’s mind since he’d first heard it.

“So…J.R., huh?”  And at the big man’s speech, all the humor in the room left.

“I have a kid,” Bishop said on a swallow and realized that just uttering the words didn’t seem to make the idea any more real.  But there were the remaining streams of hope that still held in the borders of his mind.

“Yep, you sure as fuck do,” Dare agreed.  “A really cool fuckin’ kid who’s more than into our kind of machines.”

“God, you’ve got that right!”  Huff’s grin was spread from ear-to-ear.  “Thought the little fucker was gonna cream himself when he saw the Hellion inventory.  Do you know he not only knows the different Harley models, but the motherfucking year of them as well?”

“He told me he was into them,” Bishop admitted.  “But we really didn’t get a chance to talk much.”

“Because of Dory.”  Trey’s summation of only three words was accompanied by a fierce glower, punctuated with crossed arms.

“That bitch,” Huff breathed, copying his president’s move, shifting his thick arms until they were crossed on his massive chest as well.  “She oughtta be fucking hung, drawn and goddamn quartered for keeping your kid from you.”

A quiet descended over the group, each man frowning at the thought of a child born to a Hellion parent but raised without the protection and influence of their club.

“It was me,” Dare started, looking down at his big boots before his face, wiped free of all humor, came back up to Bishop’s.  “I fuckin’ threatened to tell both you and the boy if she didn’t step the hell up and confess.”

“But how’d you know?”  Bishop was more that baffled by how everyone else had figured out that J.R. was his before he did.  Up to and including the beautiful Stella.

“You’re fucking joking, amigo, yeah?”  The surprise on Trey’s face was hard to miss.

“A goddamn Xerox copy, dude,” Huff explained.  “Shit, you don’t see it?”

Dare just looked amused at the fact Bishop hadn’t recognized his own face was stamped on his son.  “So what the fuck are you gonna do about it, bro?”

“What do you mean?”  Bishop hadn’t gone the next step, trying as he had been to process the info that he was some kid’s dad.  At the boy that he’d made with Dory.

“I’m thinking that you need to get the legal shit started AS-fucking-AP,” Trey’s voice was firm, brooking no argument.  “We need to contact Stephenson since he’s a fucking good attorney and is one the Hellions have used before for family issues.  He can helluv resolve this shit in no time.”

“You need to get custody, motherfucker,” Dare pronounced loudly, causing Bishop’s eyes to shift to younger man.  “If nothing else, joint fuckin’ custody.  One where you have the kid for part of the year and then the lying bitch has him for the other.”

Bishop felt a glow begin inside him as the idea grew.

“Do you fucking know if she named you as dad on his birth certificate?” Huff question held merit but Bishop couldn’t answer other than with a shrug while he thought.

“I tried doing an internet search but came up with shit.”

“What’s his full fucking name, amigo?  I’ll contact Pagan and have him start on it since you’re fucking, you know, on
vacay
,” Trey was grinning, exposing his dimples when he offered up the services of the Hellion that was the IT manager at Hellion Construction-Billings.

“I…I don’t know.  I mean, I’m not sure since Dory just calls him J.R.,” Bishop stuttered, his mind spinning and not just from the drugs of earlier.

Huff harrumphed loudly.  “Ain’t that a fucking abbreviation for ‘junior’?”

“Christ!  You mean she’d actually stuck her own kid with a suck-ass name like Stanley Robert?” Dare offered on a derisive laugh.  “Jay-sus, I’d fuckin’ call him J.R. too!”

Manly chortles rang around the room, lightening the mood of the four men.

By the time their mirth had dissipated, Bishop had made up his mind.  “Yeah.  That’s what I want.  Goddamn custody!  J.R. needs to know me and I’m hella fiendin’ to get to know him.”  He raised his eyes to Trey.  “Call Pagan and get me a motherfucking appointment with Stephenson as soon as he can take the meet.  I want those papers filed as soon as fucking possible, dig?”

Glancing at the three men who surrounded his bed, the determination that was filling his chest was clear when Bishop finally said, “I have a son.  A boy who should know of his heritage and maybe his fucking future as a Hellion.  And he needs his goddamn old man to point the motherfucking way.”

“Damn straight,” Huff agreed, holding out his fist towards Bishop and who grinned as the hospitalized man’s knuckles met his brawny hand.

“On it,” Trey announced, rounding the corner of the hospital bed to clap Bishop on his shoulder.

Dare, true to his smart-ass nature, sang a different tune, though.  “So…do I get to call you fuckin’ ‘Papa’ or does a simple ‘Daddy-o’ work for you?”

Words that earned the youngest council member a one-fingered salute of the middle kind.

*.*.*.*.*

I felt the heavy concealer in the creases underneath my eyes, squinting against the bright lights of the hospital’s corridors as J.R. and I made our way to Stan’s room.  Having watched the small conclave of bikes leave the hospital’s lot as I was parking, I felt safe enough to visit Stan.

Although I wasn’t sure of my reception.

It had been a bad night, especially onerous after J.R. had gone silently back to his room, allowing only the spears of his accusatory eyes to convey his thoughts on our heart-to-heart convo.  The one where I’d admitted that Stan was his father.  One that had caused his sharp gaze, that’d pointed a finger at me, one that had more than announced that I was to blame in the whole of what had gone down.

And I couldn’t disagree with J.R.’s indictment.

But I still needed to check on Stan.  To understand what had happened.

To determine if what he’d told me was true or just something my mind had conjured up in the excitement of last afternoon’s moment.

I stopped short of my ex-husband’s hospital room, unexpectedly unsure, hesitant.  Placing a hand on J.R.’s arm, I turned to him.  “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”

But J.R. obviously didn’t hold the same sense of dread and after giving me a long look, he shook off my hand before plowing through the opened door.  “Hi,” my boy greeted, his voice so bright and sunny, delight shining forth from the one syllable.

“Little man!” came the callback, sounding equally as happy at my boy’s intrusion.  “How they hanging, dude?”

I clutched the doorjamb and found my eyes were squeezed shut, allowing Stan’s deep growl to wash over me, choking off the myriad of emotions as he welcomed our son, our beautiful boy into his room.  Their voices as they met and melded became a comforting hum that superseded my nerves.  Enough so, I could put one step in front of the other and enter Stan’s room.

“Hey, Stan,” I called, finding my hand lifted in some kind of half-assed wave.  “How are you?”

Twin pairs of hazelly-green eyes hit mine and I dropped my chin.  I struggled to find nice enough words, social vocalizations to explain my and J.R.’s presence.  “Thought we’d come by to seeing how you were doing.”

Yeah, that was good.  Keep it breezy, light.  Just one old friend to another.

But the tense quiet in the room more than told me that my presence was an unwelcomed intrusion.

“I ain’t dying,” Stan stated baldly.  I heard the gears in the bed begin as he raised the head of it into a more upright position. 

J.R. fidgeted before he dropped himself into the chair positioned next to the mattress, breaking our stare and redirecting our attention to him.  “So what’s wrong with you, sir?  Did they tell you?”

Stan’s face softened and I watched as his gaze roamed over J.R.  “Just a shit-load of sores in my gut that they tell me can be fixed.”

“That’s good, Stan,” I murmured, my eyes catching on a sheaf of papers that sat on his rolling table, ones marked as ‘Meal Plan for Gastric, Esophageal and Duodenal Ulcers’.  “Are they going to have to operate?”

When he didn’t reply, I looked back to the bed to see he was staring at me with a frown.  “You,” he began, shoving a pointing  finger my way.  “You can just take that shapely, mouth-watering ass out into the fucking hall.  Me and
my
boy have shit to discuss.  I’ll deal with
your
shit later.”

The steel in Stan’s voice was hard to miss and only substantiated my guilt, the blood-letting remorse I’d wrestled with all night.  But I wasn’t contrite enough to just immediately do as he demanded.  I felt my eyebrows pinch together and I opened my mouth to let him know I wasn’t his or anyone else’s lackey but J.R. cut in before I could issue my zinger.

“Just give us a few minutes, Mom, ‘kay?”  My eyes slid to my boy whose expression seemed to both apologize and yet beg me for understanding. 

Closing my lips, all I could do was nod while I struggled for calm.  I grabbed the handle of the door in order to closet myself away from my boy and my ex-man.  “I’ll be right outside but make it quick, we still have a lot to do.”

And as the door slid closed with nothing but a dull thud, my heart beating hard and heavy in my chest, I realized the truth of it all.  Realized that I’d probably, through no other but allowing my own horrible pride to plot my course, had lost them both.

But with only the storage unit as my only remaining issue, getting out of Missoula as soon as possible was the next item on my agenda. 

*.*.*.*.*

J.R.’s gaze met the other man’s eyes before sweeping to all the different machines that surrounded him.  “That was harsh,” the young man murmured involuntarily, feeling his cheeks and ears heat at how his mom must’ve felt at the awful, terrible dismissal.

“No less than she deserves, kid.”

“Are you talking about how she...kept us apart?”  J.R. wasn’t sure how to handle the moment, of how to talk to his dad, someone he didn’t know and had been clueless about until the night before.

“You didn’t know either?”  Bishop’s voice while soft, held the edge of incredulousness and J.R. felt the other man’s gaze one him.  “She didn’t admit it to you?”

“No, sir.”  J.R. found himself swallowing hard enough that he felt the movement.  “She just told me last night.  That was why I called you, remember?”

“Fucking Christ.”  Bishop scrubbed a hand over his face.

“Is that b-bad?”  J.R. hated his voice, hated the way it broke and went into two different octaves without his fore-knowledge, his acceptance.  “That you are…you’re like my dad, or something?”

J.R. remained still, his mind working through the fact that the man laid out on the bed was the one he’d been searching for all his damn life.  It wasn’t until he felt the heat and heaviness of the other guy’s palm, one that covered the hand he held clenched on the plastic bedrail that he allowed himself to relax. 

“Fuck no.”  The other man, the stranger that his mother had confessed was his father, sounded sad.  “No, J.R. 
Never
.  I’ll fucking never be sorry of being a part of you, boy.”

He couldn’t be a pussy, couldn’t cry in front of the man that he’d been waiting his whole life to meet.  So the young teen-ager blinked hard and swallowed rigidly.  “So why do you seem so angry?”

“It’s the fucking sitch.”

“Sir?”

“The fucking situation.  That I didn’t know about you and you didn’t know about me.”  J.R. shot a glance upward without shifting his head in order to ascertain the truth of the other man’s speech.  Although he was confused, more perplexed than he’d ever been in his life.

“Your mom and I used to dream about you, you know,” came the soft continuation.  To J.R.’s mind, the man sounded suddenly sleepy or maybe he was flying on whatever pain meds he was taking.  “We used to talk about having you.  About how we’d care for you and how our lives would change once you were born.”

J.R. didn’t speak, couldn’t find the words to respond.

“But you were wanted.  Fuck,
yeah
,” the older man mumbled and J.R. found his eyes skimming over the large form that seemed to hold the only color in the hospital room.  “So goddamn fucking wanted.”

“I think you need to rest, sir.”  J.R. wiggled his hand in order to escape the pressing heat of his father’s palm.   The man’s mumblings were starting to scare him even though he suspected it was the result of whatever drugs they were feeding him.  “I should probably go.”

“Yeah,” came the whispered reply offered after a jaw-creaking yawn.  “We’ll talk later.”

Chapter Thirteen

By my estimation, J.R. and I were just a bit more than halfway through clearing out the storage unit.  We had three piles going:  one to trash, one to donate and another to take with us back to Casper.  It was slow going.   But even as we worked my mind kept going to all that had happened both the night before and with that morning’s kind of doing.  On a man that had dismissed me even after confessing that what I’d found in the ruins of my heart was more than reciprocated.

I caught sight of a movement out of the corner of my eye and raised my face as I watched a golf cart make its way towards me.

“Ms. Leone?” the middle-aged, balding man called from his place behind the wheel as he brought the cart to a stop at the farthest pile.  I saw him glance at J.R. before dragging his eyes back to me.  “A word, please.”

I straightened and yanked my t-shirt back into place before running a hand over my hair.  I was hot, tired and covered in the dust that coated each and every box, over every piece of furniture from my storage unit that hadn’t been looked at, much less touched, in a very long time.  Stepping towards the man, I noted the frown he wore but I couldn’t be sure if it was from the glare of the sun or because of what he needed to talk to me about.

“I’m P.W. Smith, the owner and manager of Ace Storage,” he pronounced as soon as I was standing next to him.  “And while it has been a pleasure to serve you all these many years, I’m formally asking you to clear your space by six p.m. tonight.”