“Look at him, Cassidy. He’s perfect. So innocent… so pure. All the good in the world is wrapped up in him.” She looked down at him, a grief-stricken expression on her beautiful face. “I’m no good for him. I’ll only fuck it all up if I keep him here. I love him. I love him like nothing else, and I have to protect him… protect him from my world… protect him from me.” I could feel the storm of emotions begin to take hold again, so I took JW from her arms and picked up his bag. “I don’t expect you to understand it, Cassidy, but this is something I have to do. I have to do this for him.”
“Please… please don’t do this,” she begged as she grabbed my arm. Her eyes pleaded with me to listen as she said, “This is a mistake. You’re going to regret this for the rest of your life!” I couldn’t listen to anymore. Trying my best to block out her cries, I walked past her and out the door.
I was relieved to see that the parking lot was empty as I sat John Warren into his car seat. When I clicked his seatbelt around him, he reached for my hand and smiled. That smile would be forever burned into my mind. I took his little hand and brought it up to my mouth, gently kissing the fingers that wrapped around mine. “I love you, JW. Always will.”
I handed the little guy his giraffe as I put the rest of the bags in the seat beside him. I closed his door and got into the car. I sat there for a few minutes in the silence, trying to pull my shit together. Everything was so quiet. It was like I was stuck in some kind of nightmare, lost in a deep fog, and then JW started to babble. He was talking to me like I knew exactly what he was saying.
I turned back to him and said, “I know, little buddy. I know.”
I wiped the tears from my eyes and started the engine. It didn’t take him long to fall asleep, leaving me with a whirlwind of thoughts and questions. I still couldn’t believe how much had happened over the past year. If I had just known… if I hadn’t been so stupid and realized everything that was really going on with Hailey, maybe things could have been different.
I’ll never forget the first time I laid eyes on her. I’d pulled my bike into an old diner out on Highway 19. It was an out of the way spot, but it was raining, and I was wet and cold. The moment I saw her walk across the floor, I wasn’t cold anymore. She was waiting tables, and I wondered why a sexy woman like her was working at a place like this in the middle of nowhere. She had a figure that made a man want to peel her clothes right off, and I would’ve done just about anything to do just that. I instantly craved the touch of her skin against mine. Fuck… my whole body tensed and my dick jumped up in need every time she even passed by me. Her long black hair was pulled back into a ponytail showing off the most beautiful blue eyes I’d ever seen. Her smile though, that mouth, those lips… damn, she was perfect.
One date was all it took. After that, the months rolled by so fast that I lost track of time. It was a whirlwind. She was everything I ever thought I wanted and more. She liked being on the back of my bike and enjoyed hanging with my brothers at the clubhouse. We spent hours talking and drinking with them. She fit. I loved that. We were happy. We’d even started talking about our future, making plans for our life together. She had enrolled in a nursing program and worked every day at the diner to pay for her tuition. Life was good.
Then the nightmare hit. Everything went up in smoke. It was hell. A stupid drunk crashed into Hailey’s car, leaving her severely wounded. The dashboard crushed in on her, breaking her leg and fracturing several vertebrae in her neck. It was my fault. I was being selfish that night. I just wanted to be with her every second, and I didn’t listen when she told me she was too tired to come to the club. She’d been working all day and just wanted to go home. I should have listened to her, but I was too selfish. I’d had a long day and just wanted inside her.