But we didn’t know that at the time, and the conversation went towards the inevitable as we lay in bed together, panting while our brains swam in a concoction of post-orgasmic chemicals.
“Let us assume that you wound up pregnant in the future,” Hunter mused aloud. I settled a little harder into the crook of his arm as he spoke. “What would you want to do?”
“Keep it,” I answered immediately.
“Oh yeah?” He turned his head my way.
I nodded thoughtfully. “I’m not comfortable with the idea of… you know… that. I don’t think that I could go through with it.”
“Right,” he replied, subtly nodding as well. “I’m not sure that I could ever ask you, anyway.”
That surprised me. “What do you mean?”
Hunter turned his face upward, smirking. “Don’t get me wrong. I have no intentions of being a young father. We’re not ready for anything like that… hell, Sarah, you only just turned eighteen, and I only have a year on you…”
He exhaled a brief sigh.
“…But honestly? If we ever had a kid, I’d want to give that kid the best goddamn childhood any kid will ever have. I’d raise that child to be clever, resourceful, and a force to be reckoned with.”
I took in his words, watching the profile of his face as he spoke. When he paused at the end, I squeezed closer and planted a huge kiss on his cheek.
“You mean that?”
Hunter turned his face towards me again. “Even if we got pregnant young, Princess… I know that you and I would figure it all out. I’d give up whatever it took to raise that kid right.”
“Even your bike?”
Hunter’s face darkened subtly. Oh shit. Did I just push too much?
“My bike is part of who I am,” he told me in no uncertain terms, “but… truth be told, I’d put it all on the line for the kid. If it came to that, I’d make my peace with it. For sure.”
“Goddammit, Hunter Hargreaves, I don’t know what to do with you,” I shook my head with utter surprise and admiration. “If it was going to be anyone, it would have to be with you. No doubt.”
“Yeah?” He smiled slyly, feigning aloofness. He knew better than to try and pull one on me. I could tell that he was quietly scanning my eyes, searching for a kink in my conviction.
“Absolutely,” I grinned, snuggling up against his chest. “I don’t want to be a teenage parent either, but one day… is it bad that I’ve wondered what a kid between us would be like?”
“Nah,” he responded with a slight shrug of the shoulders. “Truth be told, it’s kinda crossed my mind as well.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah,” he answered. “Which would you rather: a boy or a girl?”
“You tell me first.”
“I asked first,” he insisted with a smile.
“Fine… I don’t know,” I lied.
“Well, if you’re not exactly sharing, I’ll tell you,” Hunter chuckled. “I have a good feeling about a boy.”
“A boy?”
Hunter sensed apprehension. “Why, is that bad? Would you rather a second little Princess in my life?”
“Actually… I think I like the idea of two men in my life,” I considered. “My big man and my little man. Following in his old man’s footsteps. Becoming a handsome, dastardly little guy. Oh, the girls are going to fawn all over him…”
“With my striking good looks and your natural beauty, probably so,” Hunter chuckled. “He’d have my convictions and resourcefulness, and your luck and pride… what a killer combination.”
“Hey!” I poked him in the side. “I’m resourceful too! Don’t pretend that I’m not.”
“Point taken,” he laughed, shrugging off my feeble attempts to stick it to him, “but your pride outweighs that. You’ve always gotta do things your way… I let you, because your way is my way, but one of these days that ain’t going to exactly work…”
“Hmph,” I growled, although it came about with the rough tenacity of a newborn puppy.
“Oh, don’t do that,” he smiled, pulling me closer. He nuzzled his face into my neck and whittled away a little at my irritation. “We all have our flaws. Hell, I’m not perfect. Never claimed to be.
“But we’ll grow together and work on these things… especially if we’re going to be parents in the future.”
“Yeah… I guess so,” I conceded.
“So, not interested in having a girl?” Hunter questioned curiously.
“I’ll take whatever comes my way. After all, I’m resourceful.” I couldn’t resist the opportunity to lightly chide him, and he cast me a small, miffed look before accepting my answer.
At least we’ll be together forever, I thought to myself. There’ll be plenty of time to work all of that out in the coming years.
Little did I know how wrong I was.
After all, it would only be three weeks before Hunter learned that his sister had disappeared on vacation to Cancun. The cascading domino effect would set in motion a chain of events that would change our lives forever…
Sarah
When Hunter and I were separated over a month later during an orchestrated police raid on his new motorcycle club’s headquarters, I didn’t think that I’d ever see my beloved again.
I still had to pinch myself as I climbed out of his bed, careful to not wake the slumbering president of the Devil’s Dragons motorcycle club. I slipped away and put on a fresh pot of coffee in his temporary house, reflecting back on the whirlwind of events that brought us back together.
An impossible choice had separated us. But an incredible coincidence had dropped him back onto my radar hard.
Stripped of the only other man I’d cared about at a pivotal moment, I followed Daddy’s footsteps into law enforcement. I spent most of that time rising through the ranks through grit, sweat, and the knowledge that my successes were attributed to nepotism and bullshit gender equality.
As if the entire force dared to think I could possibly be a badass of my own volition.
My first assignment as a freshly minted detective had forced me onto a cold case: three missing cheerleaders, snatched on a retreat a few hours away in Tucson.
To my astonishment, my former lover turned up in the files; still with the Devil’s Dragons to which he’d pledged his life. After the law had failed him all those years ago, he’d turned to the notorious club to help find his sister. The following escapade took them below the border to attack a sex-trafficking cartel known as Viboras Verde, the “Vipers of the Green.”
But the crazy part was how a single snapshot of my old lover figured into my investigation.
After strolling into town to pull some kind of underworld investigation, Hunter and his biker gang had high-tailed it out of there overnight. Last mentions had placed them in El Paso, Texas, and I knew where I had to go to follow the only warm lead in the entire damned folder.
Of course, I had no idea that he’d risen through the ranks to become the President of the revived motorcycle club… And I never could have expected that I would land back in his arms…
After a few setbacks, we led a thrilling midnight ride below the border: the two of us, his assembled gang, and nearly seventy other bikers from his Outlaws alliance of bikers, thugs, and criminals. The assault struck the Viboras Verde hard at their new base, and in the aftermath, we found the girls and laid waste to their operations.
The girls were saved, but my rampant insubordination came at a cost. Luckily, my police chief was willing to cut me an off-the-table favor, and with a few months of hard work I transitioned into a glorious new field:
Sarah Buchanan, Private Investigator.
It was with that career switch on my heels that I returned to El Paso, back to the lover who had swept me off my feet so long ago, saved me from stagnation and destitution when the wheels of chance slapped me on a dead case, and helped me to save eighteen girls from sexual slavery.
Rubbing my belly absentmindedly, I smiled at the other small thing
that was tying us together now.
Hunter Hargreaves put a baby in my womb.
It was more than I could hope for that he and I would hit things off again when I tracked him down. I was hoping we could at least be close allies, if not partners.
Hunter had exceeded all of my expectations. While I’d initially feared that dedicating his life to the drug-running motorcycle club would extinguish the light inside him, the opposite had been true.
The fire inside my former lover had burned brighter than ever, searing away the darkness and leading the Devil’s Dragons in a new direction: armed protection and, more recently, vigilante heroism.
We had fucked long and hard the night that we were reunited, our passions for one another immediately ascending to the surface once more. I didn’t see it at the time, but it was inevitable that we would become lovers again.
And conversations long since buried in the dust of our shattered lives stirred once more. I wondered – Does he still feel the same way now? Would he set this all aside to protect his child?