Mad Gold (Providence Gold Series Book 2) Read online

  Epilogue

  Dahlia

  F our months later…

  I was nervously pacing around the room waiting for Madix to get home. In the last four months so many things had happened.

  I’d recovered from being shot. Aside from a few moments where I’d freaked out either during the night or when I heard a loud bang, I was doing okay. Well, aside from my knee which was kind of messed up still.

  My dad had come home the day after I’d been shot and had turned up at the hospital with my grandma who looked better than I’d ever seen her. She’d decided while they were on the plane that she was moving here, so that had happened too and now my dad spent all of his spare time at the garage, trying to get away from her. He’d done the dad thing where he glared at Madix with his arms crossed over his chest for all of ten minutes, and then he’d sighed and said, “And don’t forget it.” After that, they became good friends and Dad knows that if he ever needs anything, all he has to do is as Mad and it’s done. My grandma had an odd obsession with him, though, and took every opportunity she could to rub his arm or fall against him. He found it hilarious, but both Dad and I were still mortified whenever she did it – which was daily.

  Madix had moved his stuff from his house into mine and was now my official roomie, except it was more like sex slave. I loved having him around (yes, he could reach high and get the cobwebs before I even noticed their existence) and spending time with him. The dogs all adjusted well, and it was like having one big happy family.

  The inquest into Nick’s death had been and gone too. It had been discovered that after Levi had put sugar and water in the engine of his car in high school, his dad had been pissed. What tipped his scales was the delivery of an anonymous note informing him of what his son had done to me. When Nick’s mom wouldn’t discipline him by kicking him out, his dad had literally said fuck this and off he went. Nick’s mom became an alcoholic and left in the middle of the night, leaving a note that said she was going to join the circus. Left with a property he couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage and taxes on, he’d up and left and had started over – still as an asshole though. His wife was a lovely lady who attended the inquest and gave evidence weirdly enough. It was like they merged a court case into the inquest into his death all at once. I wasn’t a lawyer, nor was I a judge, but that part had thrown me.

  After she divorced him, he’d decided that the Townsends were to blame for all the bad shit that had happened in his life because he’d known it was Levi who’d written the note that had started it all. To give him credit, Levi was devastated when he’d found out about it all, but we all got him to see that Nick had made his own path in life. Shit happens, but you have to find the right path to travel down, which he hadn’t.

  My mother, or my incubator as she will be known from now on, had also turned up in town. She’d come in, glared at me on my first day back to work, and had then walked out again. It turns out she’s been living thirty minutes away the whole time and hadn’t even graced me with her presence once. The bitch!

  Dad had a new girlfriend too. A lovely lady who was a regular customer of ours, Hazel Reid. She was shy and really quiet, but I’d seen the looks between them and had appointed myself cupid. One day, when she’d been due to collect her car, I’d made sure I was out of the office and that Jones was distracted too. This meant that Dad had to take over, and one thing led to the other. I loved them as a couple and was delighted that Dad was taking the next step in his life.

  I’d also met Madix’s dad. He was just like his son – quiet, serious, handsome, loving and just awesome. He’d gotten along well with Dad, and now they were great friends, texting and making plans to go fishing and whatever else. I’d also seen the guilt and regret on his face when he’d seen Luna, something which she’d also picked up on and lectured him over for hours afterward. He wasn’t responsible for her childhood or the fact her father had kidnapped and abused her for years. He also wasn’t responsible for her dad selling her to a bunch of disgusting rapists. After that, all it had taken was Luna putting Jamie in his arms and calling him Grandad, and he was a goner. He was also a baby hog, which pissed me off. Because of my injuries, I’d spent a lot of time sitting down which meant that people always passed me their babies, or I ended up with Jamie. I’d become a baby pro and wasn’t scared anymore, so when Madix’s dad Ranger came and I wasn’t allowed to hold her, it pissed me off.

  One of the other awesome things to happen that delighted all of us was that Mrs. Crane had to leave town. Apparently, people were more accepting of LGBTQ+ than she’d assumed. After the Levi-Madix proposal at lunch, word got around, and she lost all of her friends. Two weeks after it at church, the Pastor called out any ‘would-be’s’ who couldn’t love thy neighbor. This was a two pronged attacked on her because she’d attacked me for something I wasn’t part of, and he was of the mind that love was love, regardless of gender. When he added that he hoped the Lord forgave anyone guilty of not being able to love their neighbor and live life in a loving and peaceful way, she had gotten up and walked out. After that, she’d just packed up and left. I felt sorry for the people where she moved to, but hopefully she’d clear her mind of her nasty ways.

  What else had happened? Oh, the Townsend cousins had an issue about two months previously. This meant that all the men and Ariana had to go and help, so I was without Madix for nine days. Nine. Long. Days. And the rat bastard had hidden my vibrator so I couldn’t find it. As a joke though, he’d left a car battery on the floor beside the bed – asshole. Again, they didn’t say exactly what had happened, but I knew it had been bad.

  And that brings me to today. I’d gone to see the orthopedic doctor at the hospital about my knee. The MRI that they did on the day of the accident had shown a tear in the cartilage in my knee, something that was sore but not really a huge problem. As the days went on, I’d been experiencing more and more pain which wasn’t being helped by painkillers so I’d stopped taking them and now relied on Lidocaine patches – big old sticky patches that numbed the area. They were fabulous, but they wore off quickly during the day. Today, I’d gone for a follow up MRI because my doctor had decided that surgery was more than likely going to have to be done. It was a simple arthroscopy which would mean just cleaning out the gunk, looking around inside and then walking away – that I could handle. I was sure it wasn’t as simple as that, but the way he described made it seem like that.

  When I’d arrived, they’d asked me if there was any chance I was pregnant. I’d laughed and said no… until they asked me for the date of my last period.

  Fuck. Me!

  So, one pregnancy test later and there it was. No MRI, no operation, keeping the sore knee, and I was carrying a baby gorilla that was going to come out the baby chute taller than me.

  Now I had to tell the big silverback.

  Madix

  Four hours later…

  I was sweating like a pervert in a sex shop. My hands were shaking so hard that I was almost sitting on them to hide it from everyone.

  To make matters worse, all the Townsends had trailed in when I’d gotten home, deciding for some reason to get in their cars and drive all the way here instead of meeting at their own home. I’d wanted it to be just me and Dahlia for what I had planned, but as always the plan didn’t go the way it should.

  Dahlia had insisted that I have a cup of coffee – which was the last thing I needed at this precise moment. Any more caffeine or energy in my system and I’d be shaking like one of those dogs outside the store that looked like it had been left on charge for too long. So now I was sitting with a cup of coffee, sipping it like it was poison.

  “You okay, man?” Tate asked from where he was lying on the floor with the dogs around him.

  Harambe was freakin’ huge and had more hair than a wig factory. He also shed like a mofo, so it wasn’t unusual for me to gag because a piece had gotten into my mouth. It also wasn’t unusual for me to pulling strands of it off my pants while I was at work, or wherev
er else it had stuck to. We had to vacuum three times a day – something which got me a glare from his mother each time.

  How was I to know he’d shed constantly?

  Baileys was the canine leader of the house. He truly was tiny and the funniest thing, apart from when he was shitting in my Nikes. He adored Bonnie and graced her with little ‘chocolate-covered raisins’ every time she came around, like it was a present. Bonnie found this hilarious and would give him a treat each time and then follow it up by giving the other boys a treat too. Their party trick was to knock her down with excitement and then lie on top of her until someone came to rescue her. Admittedly, both Dahlia and I took our time when it happened meaning that she had roughly one-hundred-and-seventy pounds of dog on top of her. I’m not gonna say that ‘sorry, not sorry,’ shit that everyone says because it annoys the fuck out of me. But suffice it to say, I wasn’t sorry, it was fucking hilarious.

  What I hadn’t done was propose. I’d been waiting for the perfect moment and it had been torture. Every time I got ready to do it, something would happen, and the moment was gone. I’d been planning tonight for a couple weeks and it had been hell waiting for five o’clock to come around so I could get home to her and just do it.

  Of course, the Townsends had to choose tonight of all nights to show up. Fucking A! And fucking frittata Friday. I didn’t even like them, and the biggest irony was – we weren’t even having them. Nope, they’d all decided that it was fajita Friday, with extra salsa Verde of course for the little addict.

  “You almost done?” Dahlia shouted as she poked her head around the kitchen door and looked pointedly at the mug in my hand.

  Shaking my head, I took another sip of my coffee and then called the dogs away from Levi as I reached for the bag I’d hidden down the side of the couch.

  Making eye contact with all the Townsends I growled, “Do not say a word.”

  Pulling out the three collars I’d had made, I put them around each dog's neck, and then held up Baileys and gave the crucial orders. “Don’t eat it. If you do, I’ll make sure you have to shit it out. Seeing as how it’s three times the size of your normal poop, it’ll be the biggest lesson of your life. Do I make myself clear?” When he yapped, I figured it was good enough and made my way to the kitchen with them all following – dogs and Townsends.

  Lining the dogs up in order of size, I kept a distance of roughly six feet between us and the door. When they were all in place, I shouted out to Dahlia to come and help me.

  As usual, she grinned at the dogs, and then she saw their collars and the grin turned to confusion.

  On Bing’s collar was the word ‘Marry’. On Harambe’s was ‘Me’. And on Baileys was a ‘?’ along with the ring that I hoped the woman in front of me would wear for the rest of her life.

  I saw the moment it sank in, and dropped down to one knee, picking up Baileys and holding her and the ring out.

  “Well?”

  “Yes,” she wailed, as the women screamed around her. “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!”

  “Congratulations!”

  “She said yes!”

  “What a waste!”

  “Cheater! You told me I was your special tickle butty!”

  I stored away the last two away in the revenge memory bank. I didn’t know when, but I knew that Tate and Levi would get their asses kicked.

  Right now, I had more important things to do – like kissing my wife-to-be. Which is what I did!

  Twenty minutes later…

  I hated cold coffee with a passion. It was one of the most disgusting things in the world. And don’t even get me started on people buying iced coffees – it’s not a coffee, it’s a coffee milkshake for fuck's sake.

  Yet, there I was finishing the cup of coffee that my wife-to-be had made me, with a big grin on my face. As I took the last mouthful, grimacing as the cold liquid hit my mouth, I saw something written at the bottom of my mug. Swallowing awkwardly, I turned the mug around and everything in me froze for the second time in an hour as I looked at the words.

  “What’s wrong?” Jer asked, getting up and walking over. “Hey, are you okay? You’ve gone whiter than milk.”

  “Surprise!” Dahlia whispered, wringing her hands beside me.

  “What’s wrong?” Jer asked again, taking the mug off me and looking inside. “You are going to be a dad,” he muttered as he read the text written on the bottom of the cup.

  My head snapped up, and I snatched it back to check.

  “Is that what it said? Oh, thank you Jesus. I thought it said, ‘You’re going to be dead’.” I sighed with relief, not taking in the meaning of the words staring up at me as I grinned at Dahlia.

  Then it sank in…

  “You’re pregnant?” I rasped, walking over to my world and picking her up with an arm under her ass so she had no option but to wrap her arms around me.

  “Yeah,” she whispered, leaning down to give me a peck on the lips. “Surprise!”

  It was the best day of my life as I twirled her around, watching her laugh and throw her arms up in the air.

  “I’m not sure I know how to be a mother,” Dahlia murmured hours later as we lay naked, wrapped around each other in bed. “I’ve been watching Erica and Luna for a while and trying to remember how they do it though, so hopefully that’ll help. I might make some cards so I don’t forget anything.”

  “What makes you think you don’t know how to be a mom, baby?” I asked, running my fingers through her hair and gently working out a knot before I moved to another chunk of hair.

  “My mom, my luck,” she shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal, but her voice gave it away.

  Turning her onto her back, I looked down and thanked the big man above once again for how lucky I was. She was everything.

  “Baby, you’re not bad luck. You’re also not your mother.” When she went to speak, I placed my thumb over her lips and shook my head. “No, you need to hear this. With everything that has happened to you, you’ve come through it the most beautiful person I’ve ever met. You laugh, you love and you live life to the fullest. People adore you, especially fucking Tate,” I growled the last bit, because he never failed to flirt with her in front of me. Little shit! “You got shot and survived it because out of everywhere that he could have hit, he hit fat.”

  The ‘hey’ that she tried to shout at me came out as a mumbled squeal, but I knew what she was saying.

  “It’s true. And after everything that your mom and other people put you through, you still have the capacity to love. That blows me away. If people had treated me like that about my mom, I probably would have ended up in a cell by now.” And it was true, this woman had conquered everything and come out of it with a big heart and a big smile. “You’re not unlucky at all. You’re the luckiest person I know and I can’t wait to meet the little human we’ve created,” I slid my free hand down to rest on her abdomen. “I can’t wait to see you as a mother. And I can’t wait to make you my wife, knowing you’ll be mine for the rest of our lives.” I stopped and pulled my thumb off her lips, giving them a couple gentle rubs first. “I need you to accept the facts, baby. So, what do you say?”

  There was silence as she stared up at me, absorbing everything I’d just said to her. Throughout it all, her expression never changed once, and aside from a couple blinks, she hadn’t moved.

  And then…

  “Oh, shit, Madix. How do you do it?” she burst into tears and started sobbing. “That… that…” she gasped, still bawling her heart out. “It was be… bea… utiful.”

  “It’s true,” I assured her firmly, trying to wipe up the tears, but they were going faster than I could keep up with.

  Unfortunately, those final three words made her cry even harder.

  Reaching over for my phone, I picked it up and searched for the question that was bugging me. Did women cry more when they were pregnant? And there it was in black and white – oh yes they fucking did.

  So long as they were happy tears
, I was okay with that. Even with the snot.

  Dahlia

  Seven months and three weeks later…

  Thanks to my knee, which hated the extra weight from my pregnancy – which FYI I was carrying one of the dinosaurs from Jurassic Park – Madix and I hadn’t been able to say our vows. I’d been put on crutches at around the four-month mark because my kneecap kept moving around and the pain was becoming too much. Then, my pelvis had joined in on the bitch fit, and I’d developed a condition called SPD or symphysis pubis dysfunction. That was where the pelvis became misaligned and it was painful as fuck. Basically, my vagina was broken. That meant movement was painful in both my poor choochie and my knee.

  So, you can imagine that walking down the aisle was something that filled me with dread. Who wanted to be saying I do when all they could do was focus on the fact their pelvis felt like a highlander was shoving a sword up their lotus flower.

  Lotus flower, my ass. I hadn’t seen it in a while, but my vagina was probably more like the psycho plant out of Little Shop of Horrors.

  Last week, Madix had come home from work and told me point blank I wasn’t having his baby until I had his name. I think he’d expected an argument, but I was all over that demand so long as I didn’t have to walk or stand, as were the Townsend women including the cousins' wives. Within a week, it was all organized, and it was going down in exactly three minutes.

  Sitting on the back of the ATV, I let Levi drive me to where my big giant was waiting for me with a huge grin on his face. It hadn’t been easy getting a dress that would accommodate my belly. All the pregnancy ones looked like I was wearing a sheet with a hole in it for my head and some pretty beads sewn on. I’d been close to tears when the lady had brought through the last dress, a beautiful ivory gown that looked like something out of Pride and Prejudice. It was tight over the boobies, which made them look awesome, and then it nipped around my waist, and had swathes of ivory lace that fell down to the floor. I was a goner!