“Ricochet, I know you and Emerson are family and all, but the next time you tell me to back up I’m gonna knock you the fuck out.” Stoney loosens his grip on my neck as he warns Ricochet to back off, giving me enough of an advantage to free my gun from my holster and point it at Stoney. God dammit, I never wanted it to come to this, pointing a gun at the father of my child, but here I am.
“Why don’t we take this conversation somewhere more private?”
Stoney isn’t looking at me. Instead he’s staring down the barrel. “Alright, Tala. Let’s have a chat.”
Cowboy glares at me, and I mean he’s glaring at me more than he did the day I told him Destiny wasn’t his. “Ricochet, you and Horse can tag along if you don’t mind. But you’re both staying outside of my office. Is that clear?” I say, looking to both Ricochet and Horse who give me a curt nod.
“We’ll only come in if we think you’re gonna kill each other.” Ricochet confirms.
I pull my gun back and secure it inside the holster on my hip. Stoney releases the grip on my neck and takes a step back, giving me a bit of room to walk by him, I go to the door that leads into the hallway. We head straight for my office so I unlock the door and Stoney follows me inside and shuts the door.
I don’t even have my ass in my chair before Stoney starts coming at me again. “I’m not leaving. Not when I’ve missed so fuckin’ much, and especially not when that fuck out there is getting called Daddy. I’m her daddy, Tala. Not him. Me! Why in the fuck is—” Stoney slams his hand down on my desk, causing me to take in a deep breath.
“You never wanted a kid with me.” It’s a fact, and based on the way he immediately stops speaking, he only confirms this fact. “You never wanted this sticky situation, and I know that. God, Stoney. We had a hate fuck. That’s all it was. We weren’t anything more, not even if we were both subconsciously trying to test the waters. The most important thing to us both is our clubs, and there’s no denying that. At least at that time that is where my priorities were. Now they’re different. Destiny is my priority, and I’m not gonna lie, I didn’t make all the best decisions, but I did what I thought was best.”
Stoney’s eyes widen and his nostrils flare. “You did what you thought was best? Are you fuckin’ kidding me!?” He grabs the ceramic piece of pottery my father and I made at a studio down the street before his passing. I’m sure he thinks it’s just some random piece of art on my desk, but the meaning is so much more important than that. It’s one of the last good memories I had with my dad.
“Please, please don’t break that.” I beg him with shaking hands, feeling tears threaten to spill. Stoney looks down at the white, blue, and gold painted dove and tosses it between his hands.
“What? You mean this?”
I nod and he pulls his arm back, throwing it as hard as he can against the wall. My dove shatters into so many little pieces, and while it might not seem important to most . . . Stoney just crushed the last reminder I had of my father. The last good thing.
Tears stream down my face as I stare at him and my hands shake even worse than they were a few moments ago. A gut-wrenching scream leaves my body and I can’t even hear it. It’s like everything goes silent around me. It just stops as the pain surrounds me, pouring out of me from the years I’ve kept it pent up.
“Why is she calling him Daddy, Tala?” Stoney roars, veins pulsating in his arms.
I shut my eyes for a moment and look up to him, “Because he loves her, Stoney. Even when I told him Destiny wasn’t his, he stuck around. He barely even looks at me, but he comes here and sees her as much as he can without getting his visa flagged. Destiny is his entire world.”
“That’s the fuck you were screwing around with when we slept together?” Stoney questions with an amused smirk.
I’m sure he’s thinking Cowboy isn’t anything special with his thinner frame, but he’s ripped under his clothes. He isn’t huge like Stoney, but it doesn’t matter. It’s always been the personality that’s attracted me to men, or women, depending on the case. Stoney’s stubbornness made me want to fuck him, the way he dominated everything around him. In Cowboy’s case, it was his loyalty to the club, and most of all, to me.
“He’s a good man. He’s a good father.” I mutter, ignoring the way he’s trying to make fun of Cowboy.
“I’m her father, not him, so get that through your fucking skull, bitch.”
When he calls me a bitch it’s like a switch gets flipped inside my body. I totally lose my shit and break the distance, trying to claw at this motherfucker’s eyes. He slams me up against a picture frame, causing it to break when Horse and Ricochet come running in. Horse manages to pull back his father while Ricochet pulls me away before I do something I really regret.
“Jesus, what the fuck happened in here?” Ricochet questions, looking down at the floor and then at my tear stained face. Then his eyes focus in on the ground. “Whoa. What the fuck? Where’s the dove?”
“You mean that shitty little thing on her desk? I fuckin’ broke it. Bitch needs to learn what she can and can’t do to a man like me.”
Ricochet lets go of me and gets right in Stoney’s face. “Her father fuckin’ made that with her before he died you disgusting piece of shit. It was the only
