He Cheated With His Ex, So the Club President Claimed Me novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Club Kids Stay

Hallie takes Eli from the nursery past Brock and two prospects, and Brock cuts her off from the house and money. Dot says the president walks out of prison Friday.

I didn't put Eli down.

I turned around with him on my hip and looked Brock in the face.

"He's two," I said. "He's mine. Say it again in front of everyone."

Brock's jaw worked.

He glanced at the brothers standing in the hall, and none of them met his eyes.

"Club kids stay with the club," he said again, quieter.

"Then the club can tell me to my face."

I looked at the men behind him.

An old brother with a gray ponytail rubbed the back of his neck.

Two prospects stared at the floor.

Nobody moved.

Rae stepped out of the storeroom behind Brock, buttoning her jacket.

"Let her go, baby," she said. "She's making a scene."

I laughed, and it came out ugly.

"You're the one with your boots on in a man's storeroom."

Somebody in the hall snorted.

Rae's smile slipped.

Brock grabbed my arm above the elbow.

"You're not leaving with my son."

"Let go," I said.

"Hallie."

"Let go of me, Brock, or I scream, and every man in that yard sees you do it."

His fingers tightened for one second.

Then Dot walked up beside me, wiping her hands on her apron.

She was fifty-eight and five foot two, and she had cooked for every man in that hallway for thirty years.

"Brock Kimmel," she said. "Take your hand off that girl before I take it off for you."

He let go.

Nobody in that building talked to him that way.

He knew it, and so did everyone watching.

I walked past him down the hall with Eli's face in my neck.

The brothers parted.

At the front door Brock called after me.

"You walk out of here, you walk out with nothing, Hallie."

I stopped.

"The house is the club's," he said. "The truck is in my name. The account is mine."

"I know whose name it's in."

"So where are you going to go?"

I didn't have an answer yet.

Dot did.

"She's coming with me," she said.

"Dot."

"I've got a spare room and a crib left over from my grandson," she said. "Anything else, Brock?"

Brock looked at her, and then at me, and then at the men who had stopped drinking to watch.

"This isn't over," he said.

"It's over for me," I said.

I pushed the door open and walked out into the sun.

Dot's house was a green two-story at the end of Larch Street, ten minutes from the clubhouse on foot.

She carried my bag of crackers, and I carried my son, and neither of us said anything on the way.

She put Eli down in her kitchen with a wooden spoon and a pot.

He banged it on the floor, delighted.

I sat at her table and put my head in my hands.

My hands wouldn't stop shaking.

Dot set a mug of coffee in front of me and sat down.

"You did that right," she said.

"I didn't plan it."

"Those are the best ones."

"He's going to fight me for Eli."

"Maybe."

"He said it in front of the whole club, Dot."

"I heard him."

I looked up.

"Can he do it? Can the club just keep him?"

"No," Dot said. "Not if you don't let them."

She poured her own coffee and took her time with it.

"But Brock's been running that clubhouse for three years, and he thinks every kid born there is a piece of the club's furniture."

"He chose me," I said, and my voice cracked.

"Honey."

"Then I'm done being chosen," I said. "From here I do the choosing, starting with where Eli sleeps."

Dot reached across and put her hand over mine.

It was dry and warm and smelled like flour.

"I've been watching that man for twenty years," she said. "He doesn't want things. He wants to have them."

I didn't say anything.

Eli had stopped banging the pot.

He was looking at me with his serious gray eyes, the way he did when the grown-ups were loud.

"Mama sad?" he said.

"Mama's fine, baby," I said.

I picked him up and held him until my hands were still.

That night I counted what I owned.

Four hundred and eleven dollars from tips, a phone with a recording on it, and a son.

It was not much, and it was all mine.

"I can work the diner again," I told Dot that night. "Two shifts. I'll pay you rent."

"You'll do no such thing," she said. "Put the boy to bed."

I was drying a plate when Dot looked up from the counter and her face changed.

"What?"

She turned the volume down on her radio.

"Gage Rutledge walks out of Monroe on Friday," she said.

I put the plate down.

"The president? Brock said not till next spring."

"Brock was told Friday a month ago." Dot folded the dish towel. "He's been sick about it every day since. He hasn't told the club."

"Why would that scare him?"

She didn't answer.

She looked at the crib in the corner of the room, where my sleeping son had one gray eye open, watching the dark.

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