onto the steps. “There’s too much swimming around in here right now,” she tapped at the side of her head. “I didn’t know you’d be out so soon,” she admitted. “I didn’t think things were going to work out like this.”
“Me neither,” Rex sat down beside her. “Where were you?”
She looked at him with a quizzical expression.
“What do you mean?”
“Where were you?” he repeated. “All those months I was holed up in that jail, you never came to see me. I waited and waited until I thought my heart was bleeding. Every time visiting day would roll around I’d be waiting to see your face. I’d be desperate to see those pretty blue eyes of yours, but you were never there.”
“I wrote to you,” she replied coldly, although she didn’t mean to. “I wrote to you a lot, but you never replied.”
Rex looked to the ground and kicked up the gravel with his biker boots.
“I never was good at writing letters,” he confessed, “or writing anything at all.”
Again, he shook his head as though trying to shake away the regrets.
“I just wanted you to come and see me. That’s all. Even once would have meant the world.”
There was a spike of anger in his voice, a tinge of menace that was once again resurfacing.
“I couldn’t make it,” Brandy looked up at his face, “because I was looking after your child.”
“Why didn’t you bring him with you?”
“Prison ain’t no place for a baby,” she said with a definitive firmness. “What kinda lesson would that teach him, eh?”
Rex stood up, anxious and annoyed. That stormy look came over his eyes again, the one that signaled trouble was approaching. It was one of the things Brandy had always hated about him. Despite his charming personality and stunning looks, he could flick like a switch, change moods in an instant.
“Who is he?” he stood up close to her, his chest pressing into her.
“Eh?” she knew fine well what he was talking about, but fear was holding her words back as though her mind was in a cage.
“Your new man. Who is he? I wanna know who’s stolen my boy.”
“He’s not stolen him!” Brandy protested. “He’s been raising him as his own while you were in prison!” she wailed.
“Raising him as his own?” the thought enraged him and his face grew red. “And, why would a man be so stupid as to raise a biker’s son as his own? Is the man suicidal?”
Brandy didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t bear the thought of Neil being hurt, but the thug in front of her…
“You still haven’t told me his name…”
Brandy looked down to Rex’s hands and saw they were white at the knuckles, his fingertips pushing into the palm of his hand.
“I don’t think it’s any of your business,” she feigned a level of haughtiness.
She knew it would make him madder, knew she was playing with fire, but she had a family to protect; a perfect one, and she wasn’t giving it up.
"None of my business!" he seethed, his eyes narrowing as he looked down to the tiny woman beneath him. "Bitch," he pointed at her. "Don't tell me who he is... and I'll take that little boy from up there and you'll never see him again."
She knew it wasn't an empty threat, but she also knew she didn't want Neil to get hurt. In a moment of terror, she did the unthinkable, knowing before all else, she had to think of her child.
"Neil Wilkins," she hung her head in shame.
"Neil?" Rex yelled. "That fucker mechanic who works over on Weston?"
"That's him," she nodded as the tears fell from her eyes once again. "So, now you know."
"I grew up with that prick and this is how he repays me?"
He stormed away from Brandy, his footsteps shaking the floor.
"What are you going to do?" she chased after him, her nails clawing at his jacket as he walked.
"Ain't none of your business what I do," he rasped.
Then he was gone, hurrying down the driveway to his motorcycle. Brandy watched him from the window as he left. There was no way he'd just want to talk