The President's Wife (Snakes Henchmen MC 0.5)

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He runs his tongue over his top teeth. “Maybe not, but Taylor means the world to me, you both do, and hearing her sobbing in her room... Man, it broke my heart.”

I scrub my hands over my face. I feel really fucking old all of a sudden. I’m in my thirties, and I feel twice as old. “Taylor had a miscarriage a couple of weeks ago,” I tell him.

“When was this?”

“When the kids were with her parents for the weekend.”

“Why didn’t you say anything, Jack?” I shrug. I wasn’t ready to admit it to myself. “You’ve been keeping this to yourself for weeks. You could have come to me, man.”

“I know.” I hang my head for a second. “I don’t know how it happened. When Taylor told me that she was pregnant, I was so happy, you know?” Stryker nods slightly. “She wanted to wait until she was twelve weeks before we let people know. That’s the way we did it with the boys, waited until we got past the period where Taylor could miscarry easily. We dropped the kids off with Leroy and Emelda that Friday night, I took Taylor to dinner, and she started feeling ill on the way home. Soon as we got here, she collapsed. I took her to the hospital, but it was too late, the baby was gone.”

“Jack, I’m so sorry.”

“She can never have another baby, Stryker.” He sucks back a deep breath, and I can see the pity in his eyes. “The doctor said the miscarriage was so bad that it left scar tissue behind, so much that Taylor’s womb would never carry another child. It broke her.” And then some. It broke me too.

“When she went to the store with Lynette earlier, she told Lynette what happened. Neither of us had told anyone before that moment. I guess Taylor couldn’t keep it to herself any longer, not from her best friend. Lynette dragged me into the den when they got back and yelled at me how Taylor had broken down to her. She thinks I blame her for what happened.”

“And do you?”

My eyes narrow, my nostrils flare. “Do you really think I’d fuckin’ blame Taylor for something like this? It wasn’t her fault! It wasn’t…”

“Yours either,” He cuts me off with his words, and I'm stumped. “It wasn’t your fault, Jack. I know you better than you think I do, and right now, I know you’re blaming yourself, and that’s why you can’t talk to Taylor about this. You’re scared you’ll break down in front of her, and you think that will make you look weak in her eyes. But shall I tell you something?” He's going to anyway. “You will never be weak in her eyes, Jack, because you’re Taylor’s hero. Right now, she needs you. She needs you to let it all out so that she can also. Hold each other, talk about it, let it out, help each other move forward.”

Fuckin’ little shit!

I close my eyes and breathe back my emotions. I don’t know how to deal with this. That woman in there is my life. She’s all I know, my one and only. She’s in pain, and so am I, but I don’t know how to help Taylor through this when I don’t know how to get myself through it.

Stryker clasps my shoulder. “You don’t have to be strong right now, Jack. You are the best man, I know. You’ve been more of a dad to me than my own ever was. You’re my hero, man. You’re Dante and Dominic’s hero, and the Lord knows you’re Taylor’s. You need each other right now more than you ever have. Don’t hide these feelings from your wife. There is nothing the two of you can’t overcome as long as you’re honest with each other.”

Where the fuck did this kid come from? All the hell he’s lived through in his short life, and he’s still grounded. He’s one of the best friends a man could ask for. I haven’t even told my actual best friend what happened, but I’m sure Lynette will before the nights out.

I wrap my arm around his shoulder and pull him to me, hugging him hard. “Thank you,” I tell him.

“I love you, Jack. I’ll always be here for you. If you can’t be strong right now, then don’t. I'm here. I can be strong for you.” Fuckin’ kid is killin’ me.

“I love you, too, Mark.” I kiss his head, slap his back, and make my way inside. I need to find my wife.

Taylor is asleep in our bed. I watch her for a moment, loose curls splayed around the pillow beneath her head. She’s only wearing a cami and tiny shorts, no sheet covering those light mocha colored, toned legs of hers. She’s the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Every single thing about Taylor is beautiful. Everything from her smile to her very soul.

I strip out of my clothes, right down to my boxers, and sit in the chair beside the window. A light breeze blows through the open window, blowing the white muslin curtains into the air. I close my eyes for a second and breathe deeply. My grandmother once told me that to feel a sudden breeze in the heat, when there usually wouldn’t be a breeze, is the spirit of a loved one who’s passed, their way of telling you they are with you and that they’ll never be too far away.

My baby girl, that’s who just blew through the room and right over to her mother. I imagine her kissing Taylor’s head and whispering in her ear that she loves her. A tear falls from my eye. We’d only found out through a blood test the day before we lost her that she was, in fact, a little girl.

We were so happy because we’d always wanted a daughter. We gave up any hope of having another child, so many years after Dominic was born, but we never wallowed over it, we were content with our boys.

I remember the day I met Taylor in town. She was wearing tight jeans, a tight blue top, sandals on her little feet, curly hair tied up in a bun, lost in a world of her own, she bumped into me, almost falling but for the fact I caught her. She apologized, and the second our eyes locked, I was lost to her. She told me her name, I gave her mine, and I knew right then she was mine.

Taylor and I met up in secret many times over the following months. In secret, because my parents were racist, and I knew if they found out I was dating a girl with a black Daddy, and a white mother, they’d send me away so I couldn’t see her anymore. Knowing Taylor just an hour, I knew I couldn’t risk that happening, I felt something so special for Taylor, and I didn’t want to lose her.

The first time I kissed Taylor, God, I almost died with how hard my cock was, I’d never felt anything like it. The sparks behind my eyes, the fucking fireworks going off in my head, the electricity we both felt, I knew we were meant to be. I knew it at that moment without one doubt in my mind. However, Taylor was fifteen, and there was no way I would have done anything I shouldn’t have, meaning push her into sex before she was ready. I was a couple of years older than Taylor, I knew better than to sleep with a girl of Taylor’s age. No matter what I felt for her.

Of course, I wanted her so bad my balls ached each time we kissed, but Taylor was too scared to go any further than us kissing and groping until we came, and I was completely okay with that. Taylor was sixteen when she first let me take her with my mouth. Fuck, I have never been so hard as I was right at that moment. Then she sucked my dick, and I thought I’d die right then and there.

We’d been together six months before I met her parents. They were worried about me being older than Taylor, but I seemed to make a good impression on the laid-back couple, I liked them, they were so outgoing, and they never had a bad word to say about anyone. Taylor’s dad gave me the usual father routine, telling me not to pressure his youngest child into sex before she was ready. I was as honest with him as I could have been, and I gave him my word that I would never force Taylor to do anything she wasn’t ready for.

Forcing any woman just wasn’t then and isn’t now in my nature. I was already in love with Taylor by that point, and even the thought of forcing my bea

utiful girl into sex made my stomach churn.

I spent every Saturday afternoon at Taylor’s, having dinner with her and her parents. I met Taylor’s older by fifteen years sister, her husband and young son, Tallon, who ended up becoming Roman in the years that followed. I met her much older brother’s and their families. They all welcomed me into their lives and made me one of them. I loved being part of their family. Leroy told me that I was family to him and Emelda now, and that meant so much to me.

Then my father found out I’d been seeing Taylor, and he made damn sure I stayed away from her. It fucking killed me, but he made some pretty fucked up threats that had me a little scared of what would happen to the girl I loved more than life itself if I didn't do as he wanted.

I’d known Shepard a while, I knew his biker family, I knew Titus also. Something else my father hated. They were a little older than me, by seven and eight years, but we were friends. They took me under their wings when I was just six years old and lost in the woods. I’d wandered off away from my mother one day, so she told me, and I got lost. Titus and Shepard were fishing in the lake. I saw them and approached them.

They looked at me like I was a little feral child. I must have looked a mess. My clothes were torn from where I’d fallen in the woods and gotten my shirt caught on thorns. My hair was a mess, and my face was streaked with dirt. I'd been crying because I was lost, but hey, I was six!

‘You lost, kid?’ I nodded my head at the biggest boy. Both boys set their fishing rods down and made their way over to me. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Jack. What’s your name?’ I didn’t feel scared of the older boys, and I remember how I felt safe now that I’d found them.

‘My name’s Vince, this is Michael.’

‘How old are you, Jack?’ Michael asked.

‘I am six. How old are you?’

Michael laughed and told me, ‘I’m thirteen, Vince is fourteen. Where’s your momma, little man?’