I was stuck in Eugene, waiting for the inevitable, while something ate at her in Sacramento—and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
Over a week after I’d been released, it was time for my court date. I rode with the lawyer to the courthouse, but I didn’t have anyone else with me. The lawyer had told Slider that his and Poet’s notorious faces might hurt my chances and I didn’t even mention anything to Dragon or Tommy. I didn’t want them to see me looking like a chump, being cuffed by some fat fuck cop, so I was on my own. As soon as we arrived, the lawyer stepped out of the car so I could make one last phone call.
“Hey!” she answered calmly, a smile in her voice.
“Hey, sweetheart.” I hated the fact that I was going to be wiping that smile away. “It’s time.”
“What? I thought you had a few more hours! I thought—”
“Sugar, we went over this. We knew it was coming,” I corrected her gently as I slid my sleeves down my arms and buttoned them around my wrists. I couldn’t hide the tattoos on my neck or the ones on my hands, but I didn’t think my full sleeves of ink needed to be on display.
“I know,” she whimpered dully, sniffing into the phone.
“Now, we went over everything so you shouldn’t have any problems, okay?” I told her urgently as I heard car doors shutting and the lawyer tapped on the driver’s side window. “I’ll have one of the boys call you once we know what’s going on.”
“Okay.” I heard her sniff again before her voice grew stronger. “I’m fine—we’ll be fine. You just do what you need to do, and I’ll wait.”
A lump formed in my throat as I opened the door and climbed out of the car. Fuck, but she’d grown up since I’d met her as a scared sixteen-year-old girl.
“I love you,” I told her fervently as the lawyer started ushering me toward the front doors.
“I love you, too—so much.”
“Be strong, okay? This’ll be over soon, I promise, and then we can finally move you up here and be a family,” I promised frantically as we joined the line in front of the metal detectors and I patted down my pockets, making sure I hadn’t accidentally dropped my pocket knife in there like I usually did.
“Don’t hang up!” she sobbed hysterically, making my chest feel like it was imploding. “I’m not ready! Don’t hang up!”
“I love you, Sugar. Stay strong,” I answered calmly as I heard a rustling on the other end of the phone.
“Hey, Asa,” Cody greeted while I heard Callie sniffling in the background. “I got her, you just worry about your shit. Take care.”
The click of the phone call ending made me flinch.
I was standing with my hand over my face and my phone dangling from my fingertips when the security guard called for me.
Once the lawyer found the right courtroom, we walked in silently to find some seats, and my heart raced as I saw the back of a familiar grey head sitting two rows from the front.
“Rose?”
“Asa,” she called back with a nod as she stood from her seat.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, confused. I thought she’d be in California taking care of Callie.
“I’d never let one of mine face something like this alone,” she told me firmly, motioning with her hands so I’d lean toward her.
The minute my head was lowered, she pulled a blue checkered tie out of her purse and wrapped it around my neck.
“Get that top button,” she ordered as the courtroom started filling up. After I’d followed her direction, her fingers started flying as she knotted the tie.
“There, now you don’t look like a hooligan.”
“I don’t think a tie is gonna make a difference,” I told her sincerely, afraid that she was envisioning a far different outcome than I was expecting.
“Doesn’t matter. You know you did your best to put the right foot forward, that’s what’s important,” she stated seriously, smoothing down the tie with her gnarled fingers.
“We need to take our seats,” the lawyer interrupted behind me.
“My lawyer,” I informed Rose with a motion of my hand.
“Yeah, the suit tipped me off,” she replied wryly, scooting down the aisle so there was room for the three of us to sit.
When we got situated in our seats, I felt the walls start to close in around me. Fuck. Jail time wasn’t shit; I’d done it before, no problem. But the thought of leaving Callie was like a lead weight in my gut. I was pulling at the collar of my shirt when I felt a small dry hand settle onto mine.
“Nothing wrong with your shirt. Stop fidgeting,” Rose ordered quietly, facing straight ahead.
Her hand in mine and the no-nonsense tone of her voice had me instantly pausing, and I took a deep breath as I squeezed her hand.
“Thanks for coming,” I whispered back.
“I wouldn’t be anywhere else,” she assured fiercely.
We had to sit through two other cases before it was time for mine, and she held my sweaty palm the entire time. When they called my name, she gave me a squeeze and let go as the lawyer and I stood.
“It’s time, son,” she murmured, looking intently into my eyes. “You ready?”
“Yeah.” I looked down at her as my heart beat frantically and my head began to throb. “I’m ready.”
Chapter 64
Callie
When we prepared for Asa to go away—that’s how I liked to think of it—we hadn’t envisioned the length of time that would entail.
They gave him twenty-five months. Twenty-five months because he’d broken his probation and it had nullified his suspended sentence for an assault charge from three years before.
Twenty-five months because Slider had asked him to carry a gun to Sacramento.
The first week he was gone, I barely got out of bed.
The second week, I raged.
The third week, I played the what-if game.
The fourth week, I realized that I had a baby growing inside me that didn’t deserve a basket case for a mother.
The entire time I raged, wept, and pleaded, my resentment for the club he’d called home his entire life grew. It grew to such massive proportions that I couldn’t bear to see the members of the Sacramento Chapter when they came to check on me. Even Michael was turned away at my front door, his confusion apparent when I shut it in his face.
Asa called as often as he could, but the calls were often stilted and awkward. He refused to talk about anything to do with his incarceration, and answered any questions I asked with yes or no replies that made me want to pull my hair out. Most of our conversations were carried by me as I spoke on and on about the baby.
As those first months passed by, I grew.
My belly became more and more prominent, becoming so large that even maternity shirts left a little sliver of belly showing whenever I moved. As it swelled, I gained line after line of angry red stretch marks, beginning at my hips and wrapping around the lower half of my belly, making me look like I’d gone head to head with Freddy Kruger and his knife fingers.
My bump wasn’t the only thing that grew in those months. My boobs became massive, so massive that Farrah would run around the house with my bra on her head like a yarmulke, spouting off random Hebrew words. My feet were so swollen that Gram made me spend hours each night with them elevated, though it never seemed to help. My cheeks, thighs, and ass grew rounder until I looked like a snowman with all my lumps.
And as my body changed and I recorded everything for Asa, my resentment grew.
One morning, almost five months after Asa went to prison, I woke up having contractions. It scared the hell out of me and filled me with so much adrenaline I was shaking. I climbed out of bed slowly, taking the time to shower and blow dry my hair before I woke Farrah up. When I was finally ready, I strode into her room, only to find her up and putting her shoes on.
“I heard you in the shower and you never get up this early. Baby time?” she asked me briskly as she pulled her hair into a high ponyta
il. She’d slowly but surely come back to the girl she was before, and I wondered how much of it was because of her need to take care of me. It seemed that both of us had broken at different times and the only thing that put us back together was the other’s need. It was a hell of a cycle.
“Yep. Let’s go over and wake Gram up,” I told her as she passed me. “Wait for me!”
The bubble I was floating on at the thought of racing to the hospital and popping out my son was burst when we got to Gram’s apartment.
“You don’t need to go to the hospital yet,” she stated matter-of-factly. “I’m gonna go get dressed. I’ll be out in a minute.”
I watched her walk into my old room with my jaw hanging wide open at her nonchalant reaction. I was having a baby! Did she not see the urgency in the situation? What the hell?
Farrah was pacing behind me when Gram finally came out of her room, wearing an entire set of jogging gear. She even had a sweatband on her head.
‘What the hell are you wearing?” Farrah barked, bending at the waist as she burst out in hysterical laughter.
I glared at Gram, waiting for an explanation, but she just smiled cheerily back at me.
“Time to go for a walk!” she ordered, clapping her hands together.
“I’m in labor, Gram. We need to go to the hospital,” I explained slowly, wondering if she’d finally lost her mind.
“Walking first, Callie Rose,” she told me as she pushed me toward the door. “Trust me on this; go put some tennis shoes on.”
She closed the door on Farrah’s laughter as I stood on the landing, gaping.
I wished my brother hadn’t left for school a few months before. He’d understand my need for the hospital. He wouldn’t tell me to put shoes on, or laugh, or force me to walk.
I trudged to the house and put shoes on, meeting Gram and Farrah outside.
“We’ll walk around the block first,” Gram informed us, taking off before we could reply. I had to race to catch up with her, which wasn’t helping my contractions or swollen feet one bit.
“First?” I practically yelled. “What the hell, Gram?”
“You’re not even breathing hard, and I bet those contractions barely hurt,” she said with a nod as she came to a stop on the sidewalk. “You don’t want to be sitting in a damn hospital bed waiting for hours and hours before anything even starts happening. Walking gets things moving.”
She gave me a squeeze on the arm before turning and stalking off again.
So, we walked.
And walked, and walked, and walked, until the sun was inching toward the middle of the sky and my contractions were coming hard and painful. Yet, we still didn’t head to the hospital.
First, Gram helped me take a shower and braided my hair. Next, she made a small breakfast for me and Farrah. Then she called my brother to let him know that we were leaving.
After all of that, I was still barely dilated when we got to the hospital.
It took hours for me to reach the point where I felt the need to push, and I was exhausted. The anesthesiologist had come in around six that night and put a huge needle in my back, almost instantly providing relief from the pain, but I still didn’t get any rest. It was impossible to turn my mind off long enough to get more than fifteen minutes of sleep at a time, and the pressure of the contractions wasn’t helping the situation.
I wanted Asa so badly that it was hard to breathe at times.
I wondered what he was doing as I was laboring and whether he knew that we were at the hospital. I wondered whether he could feel somewhere in his gut how badly I needed him in those moments.
I pushed for over an hour, Gram and Farrah at my knees, bracing against them as I burst blood vessels in my cheeks and eyes. They encouraged, cajoled, and wiped my face with a cool washcloth—but nothing, and no one, was a substitute for Asa.
“I need Asa, Gram,” I wailed, completely out of my mind with fear and exhaustion. “I’m tired. I want Asa.”
“I know, darlin’. But he can’t come so we’re gonna have to make due.” She wiped my hair back from my forehead with the palm of her hand. “Let’s get your boy out. You can do this, Callie.”
“I can do it,” I answered with a nod, any reassurance giving me strength at that point. “I can do it. Let’s get him out. I want him out.”
“That’s right. Push, Callie. Push!”
I grit my teeth and bore down, and within minutes, I felt him sliding from my body, screaming.
They laid him on my chest, covered in gross white crap and blood, and all I could think about was how much I loved him, and that he had Asa’s nose.
“Why are his balls so huge?” Farrah gasped in fear.
The nurses started laughing loudly. “There’s a lot of pressure on him in the birth canal, and he’s got mom’s hormones running through him. They’ll go down in a few days,” a nurse assured Farrah as she gently picked my boy up. “I’m just going to weigh him and test him real quick,” she directed at me, giving me an understanding smile. “I’ll bring him right back.”
“Take pictures, Gram!” I called to her as she followed the nurse to the little bed on the other side of the room.
The next few minutes were a disgusting mess of delivering the placenta and getting stitches. Yes, stitches. The only downside to having children with Asa was his son’s ridiculously broad shoulders.
“Here you go, mama,” Gram called tenderly as she brought the baby to me and laid him on my chest again. “You might want to start trying to breastfeed. Good for him to start right away.”
“Okay,” I whispered, reaching blindly for the button to raise my bed as I watched him open and close his mouth. “He looks like Asa.”
“Yeah, but he’s got your skin, lucky little booger,” Farrah commented quietly, reaching out with one finger to touch the side of his face. “What’s his name?”
“William Butler Hawthorne,” I answered, watching as her eyes widened before she schooled her features.
“Good choice,” she replied with a small smile. “Hey, Will.”
Chapter 65
Grease
Almost five months down and only twenty more to go.
I was trying not to count the fucking minutes, but it was hard as hell. Shit wasn’t bad inside—if you didn’t care about the nasty-ass food and complete lack of freedom. Thankfully, we had boys on the inside, so I’d rarely had to bust heads to make sure fuckers left me alone. Between the other Aces locked up for a variety of crimes, and my size, guys didn’t mess with me much.
I picked up the phone and went through all of the shit I needed to do to call Callie, anxious to hear her voice after a night of barely any sleep. We’d passed her due date a couple of days ago, and I couldn’t’ sleep wondering if she was okay. After all our years of living far away from each other, I was used to not seeing her gorgeous face every day, but it fucking sucked that I couldn’t call her whenever I had the urge. I had to wait until the fucking designated times, which usually meant I was waiting hours before I had the chance.
Her phone rang and rang, and when she didn’t answer, my heart started thumping hard in my chest. I tried to tell myself that she was probably sleeping, or forgot her phone somewhere, but I knew in my gut neither of those were true. She always answered her phone, no matter what she was doing.
I hung up and started the process over again, calling Rose this time, but she didn’t answer, either. My hands were shaking and my chest felt like it had a hundred-pound weight on it as I hung up and started again. The guy behind me in line started bitching about how he was waiting for the phone, and it took all I had not to turn around and shut him up. All it would take was one fist to the jaw, but I knew if I started a fight, I’d have to wait God knows how long before I got to a phone again.
I took a deep breath in relief when Cody answered.
“Hello?”
“Hey, man, it’s Grease,” I told him quietly.
“Hey, how’ve you been?” I could hear cars in the backgro
und and wind blowing into the cellphone, making my gut clench for a second as I imagined life outside.
“I’m good. Livin’ the dream,” I answered flatly, causing him to chuckle.
“Yeah, I bet. What’s up?”
“I’ve been trying to get a hold of your sister, but no one’s answering. You know where she might be?”
There was silence on the end of the line for so long that I thought I’d lost him. “Hello?”
“Yeah, I’m here. I just—no one has gotten a hold of you?”
“Not sure how they could,” I replied calmly, as I felt myself breaking into a cold sweat.
“Yeah, just a sec.” I heard some shuffling, and Cody said something to someone before it was silent on his end again. “Had to go out in the hallway—class is starting.” He paused while I held my fucking breath and clenched my teeth against the need to scream at him to just spit it the fuck out.
“Callie went into labor yesterday,” he told me quietly. “It took a while, but she had him this morning. Gram says everything went well. She’s doing good and so is the baby.”
I locked my knees so I didn’t fall to the floor and rubbed the back of my neck with my fingers. Fuck me. Fuck. Fuck.
I couldn’t say anything. I knew he was waiting for a response, but my throat felt like it was swollen shut. She’d had our son and I’d missed it because I was rotting in a fucking shithole prison. I’d known that I was missing out on a ton of shit while I was in there, but what I’d lost had never been clearer.
I had to restrain myself as I heard the douche behind me complaining again.
“She’s good, man. Gram said she was up and walking around right after she had him, and he scored high on all the tests they do.”
“Do—” I stuttered and cleared my throat in an attempt to get it together. “Do you know how big he was, or any of that shit?”
“Uh, I think I wrote it down. I was writing all of it down when she called me because I knew I’d forget it if I didn’t,” he mumbled. “Had this hot as fuck chick in my room, I was a little preoccupied.”