by K. L. Savage
“Hey, Maze. Just letting you know, you can call me Daddy, or Reaper, or Jesse. I’m happy with any of them.” I try to play it cool, but I really want her to call me Daddy. I never once thought I’d have the chance, but yet, here I am.
And I’ve never wanted it more.
“Okay,” she whispers and stretches her arms up and over her head as she yawns, showing her two front teeth that are missing.
Shut the fuck up! No kid is allowed to be this fucking cute.
“You want to go get that tree we’ve been talking about?” I ask her.
I’ve never seen anyone move so fast in my life. She bolts out of bed, tripping on the comforter that’s wrapped around her foot, but I catch her so she doesn’t fall. She’s wearing a onesie that has those Disney Frozen princesses all over it. She puts on her bunny slippers, then her Trolls beanie and grabs her puffy white jacket that makes her look like a marshmallow. Maze is ready in less than a minute.
It’s impressive, but getting the girl to brush her teeth … that can take an eternity.
“You sure you want to go?” I ask her, and she grabs my hand to drag me out the door.
“I’m sure. I’m sure. I’m sure! Let’s go, Daddy. Let’s go!”
She decided to call me Daddy.
I wipe my right eye on my shirt sleeve. Allergies. Presidents of a badass MC do not cry.
“Anything you fucking want, Maze.” I smile, lifting her up by her arms and hitching her to my side.
“You said a bad word,” she calls me out. “I’m gonna tell Mommy.”
She’s got to stop. I can’t take it anymore. Maybe it’s because Sarah and I have been trying so hard to have kids, and hearing the title hits home. “Badge, watch Maze for a second; I need to go find Sarah,” I say, handing Maze off to the guy who can’t stand children but loves Maze.
He holds her out in front of him, hands under her armpits, and looking unsure of what to do. “Um, okay. I can do it. I got it.”
“I’m not an it!” Maze harrumphs, crossing her arms over her chest.
“You’re something,” Badge comments as I walk away, which makes me smile to myself.
She really is something.
Before I find Sarah, I need a minute. Right now, I don’t want to be Reaper. I don’t want to be the President of the Ruthless Kings.
I want to be a dad. For the first time in my life, I’m a fucking dad. I slink into the kitchen without bothering to turn on any lights and grab the edge of the table to stop myself from falling over.
In happiness.
In exhaustion.
In relief.
And I allow myself to tear up. I knock my knuckles on the table, harder than I intended, and let myself feel the immense joy in my heart right now. No one can relate except Sarah. God, we’ve been trying and trying and fucking trying to get pregnant. I don’t have the strength to tell Sarah that I don’t think it will happen. We lost the one we were meant to have, and for a long time I held out hope, but every time she takes a pregnancy test and she cries, I lose a little bit of that hope I’ve been clinging onto.
But now, I swear to God, my heart is fucking full.
“Ye alright, Prez? I swear, I hear sniffles,” Skirt says from behind me, carrying his newborn daughter, Joey, named after Doc’s ol’ lady, Joanna after she tried to save Skirt’s life from a fire.
“I’m fine.” That sounds like a lie. My voice cracks, completely giving away how I’m doing.
“Shite, Prez. What the fuck happened? Is Sarah okay? Is Maizey okay? Did someone die? Damn it, don’t tell me someone died.”
I push Skirt by the shoulder until we are safe in the hallway where my office is. “Maizey called me Daddy,” I say proudly, nearly puffing out my chest. “I’m a Dad.”
Skirt’s eyes soften around the edges as he stares at me. In a flash of understanding, he knows that right now I’m not trying to be tough. I’m not trying to be the man everyone needs me to be all the time. I’m fucking human at the end of the day, and I won’t blink an eye when it comes to killing necessary evil. But when it comes to the ones I love, I have a soft spot in my heart. An area of quicksand that I get lost in when I’m around Sarah or Maizey.
“Aye, Reaper. Yer a dad. Bring it in, big fella. Congratulations.” He gives me a quick hug and pats me on the back, and we’re careful not to squish Joey between us.
“Thank you.” Being soft, I place my arm on his throat and push him against the wall, so quick, yet gentle so I don’t wake his daughter. “If you tell anyone about this, I’ll be fucking furious.”
“Ye don’t want to tell people yer a dad?”
“No one knows I teared up. Got it?”
“Ah, aye, got it. Don’t worry, Reaper. I don’t think less of ye for dropping a few tears. Being a dad does that. I can’t go anywhere without my Joey. I feel fucking lost when she isn’t attached to me. I got to feel her little breaths and hear those tiny sighs. Her fist likes to grip on to me beard and yank it. It hurts, and I’ll forever have a few bald patches, but I wouldn’t trade her for the world.”
I let go of his neck, and he brings Joey up to his shoulder, burying his nose in her bright red hair. She’s Skirt’s daughter, that’s for sure.
“That’s so sweet,” Tongue’s drawl comes from a nearby corner, but I don’t know which.
It has me and Skirt jumping, and I don’t find it to be a coincidence that Joey starts to cry. “Damn it, Tongue.”
“Congratulations, Reaper. I’m happy for you.” And just like that, the scary bastard is gone.
I reach my hand into the corner and grab nothing but air. He was here, though. He was right here.
“Shhh, it’s okay. Tongue isn’t going to get ye, baby. I got ye.” Skirt bounces to hush his little girl to keep her from crying, but she isn’t letting up anytime soon. She gets louder. “Damn it, Tongue.”
“I plan on getting the tree. Do you, Dawn, Aidan, and little miss thing here want to go?”
“Aye. Let me tell Dawn and Aidan.”
“Reaper! Reaper!” Tool’s voice is urgent as he yells out my name.
I turn to look over my shoulder to see him dart through the kitchen, searching for me. I step out of the hallway and flip on the light. He stops in his tracks, and shakes his head at me as I start unsheathing the knife I keep tucked away in the back of my pants. “What happened?”
“No, you don’t need that,” he gasps, the light shining against the sweat on his forehead. “A woman came into the club. She’s in bad shape. She’s in the main room, and Doc is looking her over.”
“Oh.” I put my knife away and start toward the main room. “Is she okay? What’s her name?”
“I don’t know, but she asked for you.”
“Uh, interesting. Okay, I’ll go check it out.”
Tool’s hand stops me by gripping my bicep. “Prez, I have to warn you. She looks a lot like you. And she’s young.”
I think about what he’s saying and hope like hell Tool doesn’t mean what I think he means. “You might want to cut to the chase before you piss me off and ruin my good mood.”
“Just go see for yourself. I’m probably wrong.”
My heart thumps as I stomp my way down the hallway. When I come through, Badge is there, still holding Maizey as if she has a disease.
“I can do this all day, buddy,” Maizey says, poking Badge in the cheek.
“I hope not,” he mumbles under his breath.
I don’t have time to deal with that right now. I have to go see what the fuss is about. I get to the living room, and Doc is listening to the stranger’s heartbeat, while the guys hover around as close as they can.
The expression on their faces tells me I need to be worried. When Poodle’s eyes meet mine, he swallows. I look to Slingshot next to him, who pops a skittle in his mouth, but won’t even meet my eyes. Knives is spinning his ninja star in his hand while Mary is on the other side of him, sitting in a chair, still healing from a piece of wood impaling her leg. She kicks Knives,
and he drops his ninja star on the ground, which rolls to the tip of my boot.
Clink.
The steel-toe of my boot meets the silver star, and it causes it to tip over.
“You made me drop my star, Mary!”
“Maybe you aren’t as slick with your weapon as you thought.”
“Want to find out?” he challenges her, and even though I’m in the room, they won’t look at me either.
Fuck.
My phone vibrates in my pocket, and I pull it out; it’s Boomer calling. Damn it, he probably wants to talk about Christmas plans.
But there’s always something, isn’t there? Can’t we have a fucking month where nothing happens? I’d love for the only thing I need to be worried about is Tongue blindly making people mute and Slingshot’s taco disorder because it sure as fuck is not an addiction.
I ignore his call and squat next to Doc in front of the couch. I analyze the woman. She’s skinny. Her clothes are old, and she smells like she hasn’t bathed in weeks. “What’ve we got?”
“I wish I knew more, but I don’t. She’s coming out of hypothermia, which is odd. It’s cold, but it isn’t that cold. It’s like she walked out of a freezer to get to this state. She’s skinny, and the poor girl has been through it. She’s bruised all over, a few cuts, fractured orbital socket. I’d put her in her early twenties, maybe nineteen? She’s young.”
“Jesse,” she whispers my name, and I fall onto my ass in surprise.
I point at her. “I’ve never met this woman in my life. She can’t be going around saying my name like that. Sarah will kill her.”
The girl starts to come to, pinching her brows in pain before her eyes open, and they’re the same color as mine. She searches her surroundings, and our eyes lock, and something snaps into place. I don’t know what it is, but I have this need to take care of her. “Jesse,” she says my name again, but it’s weighed down with so much pain. Her eyes water, and the first of her tears fall. “I found you.”
I knee-walk to her and take her hand in mine. “Listen, you’ve got to tell me how we know each other because I can’t remember. I’m an asshole like that,” I state, which causes her to smile. It’s watery and tired, but it’s there.
“What’s going on?” Sarah asks as she walks around the couch. When she sees me holding the hand of another woman, she doesn’t think twice or doubt me. She knows I would never set my eyes on anyone else, and I love her for it. She lays her hand on top of mine and the person she doesn’t know. “Are you okay? Oh my God. What happened?”
“What’s your name?” I ask her, squeezing her hand to keep her awake. “How do you know me?”
“My mom said.” Her teeth clatter against one another, and she gives a full body shiver.
“Give me another damn blanket!” I bark.
Not two seconds later, the guest in our house is covered in ten of them. I’m going to leave them there. She seems like she needs all the heat.
She tries again, stammering through the shivers. “My mom … said if anything … bad ever happened to … to find you, Jesse. Vegas. Ruthless Kings.” She repeats the last three as if reading from a list in her mind. “Jesse. Vegas. Ruthless Kings,” she says again.
“Hey, you’re here,” I say, cupping her jaw with my hand, but she flinches away. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Delilah,” she stammers. “My name is Delilah.”
“That’s a pretty name,” I say, staring into her eyes that are eerily similar to mine. “Are you my daughter? I swear to God, I didn’t know about you,” I blurt.
She chuckles before painfully groaning, then shakes her head. “Sister,” she corrects me.
“Sister? That’s … no. That’s impossible.” It isn’t. My dad wasn’t a saint. He fucked around with club sluts every single day until the day he died.
But the longer I stare into her eyes, the more I know she’s right. They’re too familiar. The structure of her face, her mouth, the color of her hair; even the way she smiles is too much like me. I don’t need details when the facts are staring me in the face.
I have a sister.
And she’s under the Kings protection now.
Until death.
And after.
It’s the Ruthless way.
Delilah is asleep. Maizey fell asleep in Badge’s arms right there on the floor. They finally gave up whatever power trip they were on. Everyone might be asleep, but Jesse is wide awake. We haven’t made our way home yet. The clubhouse isn’t where we sleep anymore. We have a cabin on the property, but we’ve somehow been staying here more since everything has happened. I wouldn’t be surprised if Reaper moved us back in temporarily.
He’s sitting in Church at the head of the table on his throne. The chair is new, made up of black leather and hand-carved skulls surrounding the frame. The power he has in that chair vibrates my body. He’s holding the gavel, staring at it as if he’s waiting for it to grow the body it used to belong to. It’s old, older than him and his father, along with this table.
Bad things happen in this room.
Deadly decisions are made, but sometimes, Reaper needs the room to think.
He isn’t sitting in the chair normally. He’s leaned against the side, one leg up and bent. One elbow is on his knee while the other is on the arm of the chair, rolling the human bone in his hand.
“You okay?” I ask him, knocking slightly on the door to let him know I’m here.
He gives an easy shake of the head, then lifts his eyes to look at me. I hate seeing him in so much pain. I’m the only one who ever gets to see it, and it kills me every time. “How did I not know about her, Doll?” he asks, hoping that I hold all the answers in the world. “She can’t be older than you.”
“Does…” I’m trying to untwist the knife in my gut from how his tone sounds. “Does that bother you?”
“What? No, it has nothing to do with that, Doll. You little maniac. You know I don’t give a damn about our age difference.”
“Anymore,” I tease him.
“You were jailbait.”
“Yeah, I was, wasn’t I?” I giggle. “I was such a brat.”
“Was?”
“You better watch it.” I’m hoping our teasing back and forth helps his mood. I close the door behind me, taking one last look at Maizey and Badge on the floor. His arms are tucked behind his head, and she’s curled up in a ball next to him. The dogs surround them too. Yeti, Tyrant, Chaos, and Lady. Lady isn’t as healthy as she used to be. Poodle is worried this will be her last Christmas, which will fucking kill him and everyone else. Lady means the world to everyone.
Once the door clicks shut, I make my way over to Reaper and take the gavel from him, setting it on the table that has the Ruthless Kings MC emblem carved in the middle of it. “Then what is it?” I say, keeping my voice almost as low as a whisper. I run my hands through his shaggy hair, which is a bit oily from the day, and it makes the strands slide between my fingers easier. Plus, the unkempt greasy look is sexy on him. When he is fresh out of the Kings’ Garage? He can’t get me off him.
“She’s around your age, Doll. If what Doc said is true, how did I go nearly twenty years without knowing she existed? What’s happened to her wouldn’t have happened if she would’ve been here with me. I never expected to know how Boomer felt after meeting you, and now I do. I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut, and I’m angry at the world for not telling me about Delilah. She’s hurt. She’s scared. She was nearly frozen to death. Who did that to her?” He curls his lip in and slams his fist on the table, the gavel teetering on its end. “I want to find them, rip their hearts from their chest, and let her watch the worthless organ pump in my fist. I want her to know she’s safe.”
I straddle his waist, and he moves his legs down between mine so I can be more comfortable. There’s one thing that can never be argued when it comes to Reaper, and that is how passionate he is. He takes his title very seriously. This isn’t a job to him; this is his family. Th
ere isn’t a better man to be President of the Ruthless Kings.
“You’re going to keep her safe. She’s only been here for an hour. She’s home now. She’s never been more protected than she is now.”
“I know that … I know. I’m just…” He sighs and tightens a hand around my waist. I snuggle against his chest, laying my cheek against his defined pec as I rub up and down his arms. “I’m shocked. God, I thought she was my daughter. What would you have done if you’d found out I had a daughter your age?”
I sit up and cup the side of his face. His beard scratches the palm of my hand, and his skin is softer than anyone would expect. He has a few wrinkles around his eyes from squinting so much, and the gray around his temples checks all my damn boxes. I make sure his browns meet mine. His are darker, nearly obsidian and blending into his pupils. It’s hard to tell what’s what some days depending on how the light hits them.
“I would have loved you just as much and probably more than I do today, Jesse. It wouldn’t have bothered me if you had a daughter. I’m not oblivious to the life you lived before me. I know with our age difference comes experiences you have that I don’t. I would have loved you, and I would have loved her.”
“I just thought with us trying so hard, maybe it would take away from us, and I didn’t want you to feel slighted.”
“Baby,” I exhale. “Never would anything take away from that. Nothing. If you have a sister today and three daughters walk through the door tomorrow, I’d still want you to lay me down at night and make love to me because I would still want to have your baby.”
He hums in agreement, rubbing his hand over my stomach. His eyebrows do that worrying frown in the middle. I know exactly what he’s thinking right now, but I don’t want to talk about that. “I don’t know how to be a brother,” he says after a few minutes of silence.
“I’m sure she doesn’t know how to be a sister either, but she came here knowing her brother would protect her. That means something, doesn’t it? Already, there’s a bond.”