“I’m keeping it,” Sherry said, anger rising in her voice.
“I don’t care. I won’t have anything to do with it. You’re probably just lying, trying to get me to take you back. It was just about sex, Love. I like to fuck.”
Tears stung Sherry’s eyes, salty and hot, and she realized she had been an idiot. Of course he would be like that. He wouldn’t ever do the right thing. She turned and hurried out of the bar.
6
Days passed and Colt felt worse and worse. He had played the part he was supposed to in front of his friends. He had said what he was expected to say, not what he had really wanted to say. He’d now had a few days to focus on what Sherry had said. She was pregnant. It was his. He could be a father, maybe a better one than his own old man. Surely he could do better than that asshole ever had. He could teach the kid right and wrong, be there for him or her—like his own father never had been.
He made up his mind and went to see Sherry. He knocked on her door one evening, but she didn’t answer. He knew she was home; her car was parked in the lot behind the apartment.
“Sherry, I want to apologize,” he said.
She didn’t speak to him, didn’t even let him know she was there. Eventually he left.
He came back the next night, and then the next. A week of that went by, and on the ninth straight evening of him coming to speak to her, she let him in. She was dressed in sweatpants and an oversized T-shirt. Her belly was already showing.
“What?” she asked as he stood in her living room and she sat on the couch. He rubbed his arms. He was heavily tattooed, and he suddenly doubted he looked like most fathers.
“I want to make it work,” he said.
“No.”
“Please.”
Sherry sighed. “I don’t need you.”
“I fell in love with you. That’s why I ended it. I fell in love with you and I freaked out,” Colt said.
“That’s nice,” Sherry said. Her face was one of anger and sadness, a perfect mix.
“Come with me to Earl’s,” he said. “I want you there for something.”
“You aren’t serious,” Sherry said.
“Please?”
She sighed but relented. She drove her car, and he led the way on his motorcycle. They went inside, and the Vipers who were there drinking were surprised to see them together.
Colt stepped to the head of the table. Sherry hung back, her arms over her belly protectively.
“I’m resigning as president of the Vipers,” Colt said, and the other members gasped.
“Why?” Davey asked.
“I want to be a father. I want to be with the woman I love,” Colt said, turning to look at Sherry. “It’s time I do the right thing. I love you all, I always will, but sometimes…you just have to grow up and do what’s right.”
The Vipers begged him not to go, and they angrily indicated that Sherry was behind it all, but Colt told them to shut up and deal with his decision. He and Sherry walked out of the bar. She turned on him by her car and jabbed a finger in his face.
“You think that’s enough?” she asked. “Enough to make me forgive what you said? How you acted? Colt, you have to be real.”
“Rupert,” the man said softly.
“What?”
“My name is Rupert.”
Sherry looked at him, her mouth open wide. “Rupert?”
“I know, it’s stupid. It was my great grandfather’s name. I never liked it.”
Sherry burst into laughter. “It makes you sound British.”
“I know, I know.”
“I see why you go by Colt.”
“Are you going to keep making fun of me?”
Sherry stopped laughing, but she went back to looking stern. “You deserve it.”
“I know I do.”
“I love you too, by the way.”
Colt smiled, and Sherry stepped into his arms. They kissed.
They were married around Halloween, with a small service that included her family and friends from Oklahoma and his big biker friends with leather vests and with long gray beards.
The baby came six days before Christmas, and Colt teased Sherry, making it seem as though he wanted the little boy to be named Rupert like him.
“I don’t think so, Rupert,” Sherry said from the hospital bed, holding the little pink baby to her chest.
“At least it’s not a girl,” Colt said. “I couldn’t deal with calling my daughter Love.”
“Come on, be serious. Help me think of a name.”
“How about Viper?”
Sherry laughed. “Are you ever going to grow up?”
“Did you think I would ever grow up this much?” Colt asked, and Sherry grinned and shook her head.
“No,” she said.
Colt leaned down and kissed her, and then he pressed his lips to his son’s tiny forehead. He still looked mean, covered in tattoos, and he favored jeans and Tshirts, and his anger rose up sometimes, but looking down at the woman he loved and their son, Colt knew he would never go back to the man he had been.
*****
THE END
MOTORCYCLE CLUB Romance – Bad Boy Biker SEAL
1