Page 37 of Slayin Villain (Royal Bastards MC: Nashville, TN #11)
Villain
Everything fucking hurt.
The cracked ribs made it hard to breathe. The road rash along my shoulder throbbed like hell. My left hand looked like I'd boxed a meat grinder and lost. But none of it compared to the hollowed-out pain in my chest.
That crash should’ve killed me.
Hell, maybe I was hoping it would.
When they pulled me out of the woods behind Royal Road, the bike mangled against a pine and my blood mixing with dirt, I barely remember cursing them out for dragging me back to the living. Now, I was back in my house at the clubhouse, bandaged up, hungover, and full of bitterness.
Pagan had dropped my busted helmet on the floor like a trophy.
“Congrats,” he said, deadpan. “You lived. Dumbass.”
Kingpin showed up that afternoon, reeking of cigar smoke and judgment.
He didn’t yell.
Didn’t even raise his voice.
That made it worse.
“You done throwin’ your tantrum?” he asked, settling into the chair across from me like we were discussing church business. “Or you got another suicide mission lined up?”
I rubbed my forehead. “I’m not tryin’ to die.”
“Could’ve fooled me.” He leaned back, boot tapping the floor. “You crash your bike, end up face down in the woods, and for what? A woman?”
“It’s not like that.”
“No?” He gave me a look that stripped every lie off me. “Then what the hell is it like, Villain? 'Cause from where I’m standin’, it looks like you knocked up a woman, lost her, then tried to drink and ride the guilt outta your soul.”
“I didn’t lose her.”
“She’s gone. Ain’t she?”
The words hit like another crash, slower this time, sinking in, not shattering.
“She left you, son. Packed up and disappeared. No note. No message. Just vanished. What the hell does that tell you?”
“That I fucked up.”
“Damn right you did,” he said. “But you still got one thing goin’ for you.”
I raised a brow. “What?”
He pointed to my chest. “You’re alive. Which means you’ve still got a choice. Be a man worth chasin’... or stay the kind that makes women run.”
Later that week, I sat alone in the clubhouse with a bottle of bourbon in my lap and bruises blooming under my skin like old sins.
The ghost of Rachel’s laugh haunted that space.
I remembered the way she’d stood beside me when no one else would. The way she looked at me like I was more than a patch, more than a problem. Her green eyes flashing when she’d call me on my shit. The softness of her voice when she first told me about the baby, hoping, maybe, that I’d be happy.
Instead, I’d frozen.
Backpedaled.
Ran.
And then I ran straight into Ember’s bed, looking for something to numb me, distract me, punish me.
God, what kind of man does that?
What kind of father?
My phone dinged.
I hadn’t turned it off, even though I hadn’t expected anything. No missed calls. No texts.
Eve sent you a message
I frowned and opened the app.
There she was.
Rachel.
Standing next to an older woman on a busy sidewalk somewhere, lit by neon and streetlamps. Nashville. She was smiling, kind of. That guarded smile she wore when she didn’t want people to know she’d been crying.
Her hair was pulled back, her belly just barely showing under a fitted dress.
My heart dropped into my gut.
She’s still pregnant.
Still mine.
And not gone-gone…just… hiding. In plain sight.
And suddenly I saw a sliver of light crack through the fog I’d been living in.
She might hate me.
But she was still reachable.
Still real.
Still Rachel.
I scrolled the comments like a bloodhound.
She was tagging someone’s business.
And then, in a reply chain, I saw it.
“Where’s that new nursery shop y’all mentioned?”
Eve: “East side, just past Lebanon Pike.”
Someone else replied. “Rachel’s mama lives over that way. She’s been nesting HARD.”
My chest squeezed tight.
There you are.
I dropped the bottle, staggered to my feet despite the pain still gnawing at my ribs.
I didn’t have a plan.
Didn’t know what I was gonna say.
But I knew what I wasn’t gonna do.
I wasn’t gonna sit here and let her raise that baby thinking his daddy never tried.
Not anymore.