Before I Wake: A Kimber S. Dawn MC Novel Read online

  Once I’ve blinked eighteen hundred thousand times and get past the tears, I cut my gaze up to his face, which is looming over mine as I lie helpless in the hospital bed. “The fuck do you want?” I growl around the pain in my throat and my heart. Why is he so angry at me? “Get out of my face. I’ve nothing to say to you. I’ll talk to my father. I’ll talk to my mother. Other than that—”

  I’m not sure what happens. I’m in the midst of my bravest speech even as my dead, macabre mess of a heart decides to twitch back to life with Jacques standing over me, glaring...boring his eyes into my mine one second. And, in the very next, furniture is moving around the room and the hospital bedside table is flying through the air.

  The entire room feels like it’s shaking. I blink a few times, wondering what city or state I’m in and if it’s a possible earthquake. Then, suddenly, Dreads enters the room and physically removes Jacques from it. A split second later, he storms back in, a little more than winded.

  “Hey. Sorry, Pipsqueak. He, ah... He’s had an accident. That and his patience is running thin as fuck these days, too.” Jacques’s right-hand man, Dreads, smirks at me before tangling his fingers through his dreadlocks. “And he doesn’t recall shit, which sucks. Obviously. Nor will he heed any of my warnings about who I think he should keep at arm’s length. But we’re making progress. Slowly but surely. At least I hope we are. Otherwise, he’s got me just as hoodwinked... Which is riddles and club shit I know I shouldn’t be talking to you about. How are you? I mean, aside from being kidnapped.” He shrugs coyishly.

  “Again?” I whisper around my malfunctioning voice box. Then I shrug and smile the first genuine smile I’ve smiled in six months. “And drugged. Not good. But not bad, either, I guess. Could’ve probably been much worse. Dreads?” I nod towards the door that just slammed. “What’s up with him?”

  He glances over his shoulder before slowly settling into a chair.

  Finally. It seems I’m finally going to get some answers.

  When the door abruptly reopens, my father walks in with a lawyer-looking Cajun guy—who happens to be the same dude when I was rescued from Ben’s. Though their sudden entrance is cutting my conversation with Dreads short, I hold my tongue as my mother and two police officers also enter. Then I sit up more in bed, almost completely forgetting Dreads’s words. Nervously, I look back and forth between them and Dreads, when it dawns on me, I’m waiting for more answers than I can even count.

  And they come. Oh, finally...they do come. In an a-fucking-bundance, too.

  “I’m Philip.” The attractive lawyer-looking fella steps forward.

  And only then do I even acknowledge just how damn attractive he is. At least until he smiles and speaks, introducing himself. Then all bets are off. Even if the boy is beautiful.

  “Your cousin, King’s nephew.” He smiles, glancing down as he speaks shutting off my train of thought.

  Oh, well, that’ll kill it if nothing else will.

  “I found some letters a few months back,” he says. “Some that should have been brought up before now, but unfortunately, I didn’t know what to do with the information. So, instead of doing anything, I sat on it. And, for that, I’m afraid I may have played a part in all this. And I’m sorry. Please, know that I am terribly sorry. If it comes to light my actions are the reason behind any of this…” He sadly smiles before stepping back.

  I keep glancing back and forth between the men in uniform in the room—my sexy lawyer-looking cousin and my father himself. Then I allow my gaze to settle on my mother’s. And, for reasons well known, I strike. Hard. And fast.

  “And what the hell do you have to say for yourself? I thought, once I was through waiting for my last memorable birthday—my twenty-first birthday— to come and go and you missed that one too, I was finished waiting for you to fuck something else up. I thought you were done wreaking havoc on what’s left of my life. However, I see you’re not. And, now, Eden’s paid the ultimate sacrifice. How’s that feel, Mother? Knowing that? It doesn’t feel good knowing had I listened to Jacques—or, hell, even my grandmother. Even Grams—in the first damned place, none of this would have probably happened. It hurts, knowing I could’ve stopped it. So I can only assume it’s a pretty fucking crippling feeling to know you’re the main reason she ended up like she did! Knowing you’re the only reason any of us ended up like this! What the fuck do you have to say for yourself?! Huh?!”

  I’m past shouting. I’m past screaming. Even though I have no voice. And even if the words are coming out as whispers with the spittle that flies from my lips with my accusations. I’m pissed, and the tiny grasp I have on my arsenal of emotions slips from my control for a small passing of a second.

  But, once the thoughts, which are just as loud as the accusing look she has the audacity to wear looking back at me as my words, fall between us and settle, I slowly raise my eyebrows. I know I’m right. I don’t give a damn what I missed while I was missing.

  I’ve lived through hell. Through utter fucking agony. I’ve been forced to eat slop. I was boycotting Ben and his offers of simple kindness while my sister was being buried. I’ve been stubborn, but I’ve been vigilant. And I won’t lose sight of what’s important. Not now.

  And not until I figure out what the hell it is.

  “This conversation is for later. On your personal time. We have some pertinent questions we need answered if you want the person or persons responsible for your sister’s death, your kidnapping, and your mother’s assault caught and put behind bars.” The male officer at my mother’s left speaks up and as he steps forward, I catch Dreads waving beside the door from the corner of my eye.

  “I’ll come back.” He smiles after mouthing the words to me.

  I nod, wondering why he’s suddenly so friendly.

  “The doctors are saying the Sons of Silencers are stating you were taken from their property six months ago. Is this correct?” When the female police officer steps forward, her voice is a little subtler than her male partner’s. “And the president of their operation, Jacques Archer Bishop Cain, is the person responsible? For you?” The petite brunette cop, the woman one, steps closer and smiles. “Is that right?” She then glances over her shoulder at the male cop. “Sorry for interrupting.” She looks back towards me. “I’m Detective Natalie Burns, Eve. It’s nice to meet you.”

  I nod, glancing between the two cops, and then look back to where Dreads is currently trying to escape the small hospital room unnoticed. “Nice to meet you, too,” I mutter, catching Dreads in my peripheral as he comes back in.

  Even though the room continues to get more crowded, Natalie, the brunette cop, mustn't notice the commotion at my hospital door, ’cause she steps even closer and smiles reassuringly at me. “Eve, is that correct? Is Jacques Cain your responsible party? Do you know him? The other officers and I are trying to get the puzzle pieces of your sister’s death and the circumstances surrounding it to start coming together. We need to know if what happened to you and what happened to your mother... We need to know if it’s all connected. And we need answers for that—”

  Dreads, who finally seems to have found a good time to exit the small room, tries to leave again when another physician I haven’t met before steps in, halting his steps. He glances over at me and his shoulders shoot up as if he’s ducking. Like he’s trying to duck out of not only the room, but also hearing the information the newest doctor stepped in to announce.

  “No. No more questions.” The little, blond, female physician comes in barking new orders louder than anyone else speaking in the room. “If anyone gets to ask questions, it’s her. And me. Her health should be the number-one priority at this point. She’s still under the care of Mt. Sinai. My care, specifically.” Her gaze locks with mine after she’s finished addressing the other people in the room. “I’m Dr. Lily. Eve, you’ll get to talk with these lovely people in a little while. Or not at all. It’s really up to you and what you decide at this point.” Once she’s expertly moved her way
around the brunette police officer and turns, spinning her little, white, tailored coat, she directs her attention back on me.

  ”My wheel puts your dates at or near twenty-nine weeks gestation. Have you had any morning sickness?” Her cold hands flip my gown up and starts touching my abdomen. “Have you felt the fetus move yet? Although, with you being a primigravida, it isn’t abnormal for you to not be aware of what it is you’re feeling—especially if you don’t know. You poor thing. You probably haven’t even noticed.”

  A what? “A prima-freaking-what? Twenty-nine weeks to what? What are you talking about, lady?” I sit up, trying to shove myself off the bed.

  Politeness and manners are completely lost, and in front of my mother, even as she rushes towards me and lovingly—motherly—pats my shoulders.

  “Stop. Get your fucking hands off me!” I growl at my mother, barely noticing as Dreads finally ducks, slipping out of the room. After I zero my gaze back on the female doctor’s, I look to the other doctor in the room, the one I have been talking to about my health care, then back towards her. The woman with OBGYN under her Dr. Lily name tag.

  No. No. No. No. No. I shake my head, looking between the two doctors. “What? Can someone please tell me what’s going on?” I beg the male doctor with my eyes. “What’s she saying? She’s got the wrong patient or something, right? ’Cause I’m not twenty-nine weeks into anything. Right?”

  Please. I can’t be. I just can’t.

  “She fucking twenty-nine weeks WHAT?!”

  Jacques Cain’s voice thunders down the hall at the same time I notice Dreads finally escaped the hospital room. Then everyone in the room, aside from myself, has all the answers to what is going on.

  But not me. I don’t. ’Cause the information of being fucking pregnant. Twenty-nine weeks and then some? That information doesn’t compute for me. Not nearly enough. Not for me. That doesn’t answer shit. ’Cause I’m not. I’m not! I fucking can’t be.

  “The fuck do you mean she’s pregnant, Dreads?” I growl, stepping closer to the man who stepped into my cousin Ben’s void spot in my life over the last six months. “With what?” I ask, looking back and forth between Roxy and him.

  “With what?” He chuckles before turning his back to me and looking up at the ceiling.

  I glance towards Roxy, who’s standing beside me. And she looks as though she’s seen a ghost.

  “I glove up. I don’t NOT glove up. I can’t fucking afford to not to.” I laugh almost hysterically looking from Dreads back to Rox, who hasn’t started laughing.

  She knows I fuck around. I can’t get around not feeling anything towards Rox sexually—I can’t. She knows this. Because of this...odd sisterly affection and love I feel towards her, I can’t be with her. So, instead, I fuck around.

  But I always cap Captain Cock. She thinks it’s out of respect for her and the family she thinks we’ll have some day—but I know who and what I’m paying respect to. And that’s my cock. And my name. I don’t want a bunch of bastards running around with half of my DNA. Not yet.

  Jesus. Mary. And Joseph. The world ain’t ready for that. And I hardly remember enough to know that myself.

  “Whatever the hell happened during the time I was fucking her, I can promise you this, Dreads. I fucking gloved up. Whatever she’s pregnant with, I didn’t put it there,” I claim. Proudly and with every ounce of certainty I glare into the eyes of the closest thing to a best friend I have these days. And, after looking him up and down, I step closer towards Rox and hold my hand out.

  After she’s sunk her tiny hand into mine, I look back at Dreads. His light-brown eyes narrow, and the headache that’s been constantly lurking in the background of my troubled, tumbling thoughts the last hour turns into a full-fledged migraine. Blackout spots and waves of nausea included. And fuck, it makes it profoundly harder to concentrate.

  “She’s your toxic. Don’t you understand? And you’re fucking it all up. All of it. By not realizing this shit. You gotta fucking remember, bro. You’ve got to.” He glances over my shoulder at Rox, and the look of disgust that settles on his features is enough for me to notice and follow his eyes.

  Mine settle on the girl who’s been there every minute Dreads hasn’t intermittently during the last six months. Helping me gain my strength, feed me when I couldn’t. Dress me when I couldn’t. And I narrow them even more.

  “Why does Dreads hate you so, Rox? You never have been able to explain that. The history we have. The connection we have because of my mother and how much she loved you—I understand that. But my own brothers? Of my own MC? Despising my old lady? Do you see my confusion here, Roxy?” I look back towards Dreads. “Still got nothing to pin on her? How long’s it gonna take you? Any of you?” I ask as Slim and Clutch finally step up to our huddle in the hospital hall. “If you want me to believe”—I point in the direction of the crazy pregnant bitch’s room, which was thankfully located with the help of Dreads and my other MC brothers—“that she’s my Jacqueline, that she’s my toxic?! Then dammit, she’s been found. Get the answers you need to prove your word. If she’s got the answers to why this one can’t be trusted”—I point a finger at Roxy and jerk her towards the hospital’s exit—“then get her to talk. And let me know when she starts. Until then, I’ll be at the club with King, trying to find my cousin, Ben.”

  I’m stalking towards the double sliding doors to exit Mt. Sinai, easily dragging Roxy Bell behind me as her feet stumble around the damn wedge shoes she’s wearing, when a female voice stops me in my fucking tracks.

  “Eve’s asking to speak to you. She’s actually claiming she’ll sign out against medical advice if she doesn’t get to. And, with the state of her health, especially after what she’s been through, on top of her pregnancy…” The woman sighs. “I can’t afford for her to leave. Not if I want to uphold my Hippocratic oath. She’s just asking for a few minutes of your time. That’s all, Mr. Cain.”

  I’m trying to remember if I saw the color of the missing girl’s eyes when she peeked at me through her lashes earlier when a pair of brown one’s flash into my mind’s eye at the same time I let Roxy’s hand go and slowly turn around to face the doctor.

  Dark. Deep, dark-chocolate-brown eyes surface as my migraine strengthens.

  “Is that so?” I ask, smirking around the pain. I keep my eyes cast downward and step forward. “And why exactly does she want to speak to little ol’ me? What’d I do that makes me so special?” I chuckle when the little, blond doctor in her tailored, white coat visibly shudders as I step towards her.

  And, though she may be hunkered down by my mere presence, her voice is still mighty. And it cuts to the quick.

  “It seems she lost her innocence to you some time back.” Her words are spoken carefully and meticulously as her eyes pin and lock on mine. “And that, being that you’re the only person she’s been with since, makes you the proud father of her child. Either that or she’s the next Virgin Mary. So I assume that’s why you’re special. That or it’s your lucky day. Just go and talk to her.” She points over her shoulder as everyone, including the police officers and Eve’s parents, begin filing into the hall from the small hospital room Dreads came from. “I’ve asked everyone to step out. She just wants to speak to you. Then she’s agreed to let me assess her and speak to the police.”

  Okay. So I’ll talk to her. That’s not too much to ask for in exchange for some answers. I glance from Dreads, whose eyebrows have risen to the middle of his forehead, then to Roxy. She looks like her world is about to end depending on my response in this very moment.

  As she steps forward and loops her arm around my bicep, the petite, blond doctor shakes her head.

  “And she’s threatening to call security on her if she attempts to enter her room. She claims she’s the one behind her kidnapping.”

  “What?!” Roxy and I exclaim at the same time.

  “Wait. What? Roxy? How?” I shake Rox off before looking at Dreads. “Bro, what the fuck? You said, as far as you
knew, she wasn’t involved—”

  He just chuckles. The only man I’m supposed to trust. The only man, from what Slim and Clutch tell me, I did trust—up until I wrecked my bike, Linda, and lost my goddamn memory along with my mind.

  “No,” he says. “I told you I couldn’t say for certain if she wasn’t involved. I said I couldn’t tie Ben to Roxy on the night of your accident. Not that I wouldn’t bet my balls on her knowing something about it, though. I never told you that. If anything, I told you to stay the fuck away from her. I told you you needed to keep her at a distance until we could figure all this shit out! But, every time I’d step away, there she was. Do you think that’s a coincidence, Jacques?”

  “Jacques, this is bullshit,” Roxy proclaims in a whiny voice, pulling on my arm. “All of it is. And I’m not standing here and taking any more of it. Let’s go. Please.” As she tugs my shirt behind me, I shove her off and stalk forward.

  Heading straight for Eve O’Malley’s hospital room.

  “Jacques!” Roxy whines behind me, but her words don’t continue when I get to the door, turn around, and raise my hand for her to shut the fuck up.

  I motion for Dreads to step forward, towards me. “Dreads, you’re coming with me, bro. I’m not going behind enemy lines without backup. You can kiss my ass. I may not know much, but I know I’m fucking smarter than that.” I direct my attention to the girl still tugging on my arm somehow and pleading me with her eyes. And my voice is harsher than I intend for it to be. “Leave it alone, Rox. If you didn’t do anything like you’ve claimed for the last six months, then it’ll be proven. Whatever happens in the dark always comes to light. Nothing she says can change that if you haven’t had anything to do with any of this. Right?”

  “Right. But—”

  But I don’t give her another second of my attention because I’m ready for some real, honest, upfront answers. Not some of the same damn hemming and hawing Roxy’s been allowed to pacify me with over the last half year. I’m done with that.