by Nicole Helm
Simple. To the point.
But as Cecilia stood on the threshold of his small, stark living room, watching a big man holding a tiny baby, she could only say one thing.
“His father is a member of the Sons.”
Brady’s expression did that thing that had always fascinated her. It didn’t chill. It didn’t heat. It was like something inside of him clicked off and he went perfectly blank.
She envied that ability.
“His mother is in the hospital,” she continued. “The state is going to award him to his father. I can’t let that happen.”
“It’s not up to you, Cecilia.”
He said it so coolly, so calm. She wanted to scream, maybe give him a good punch like he’d once taught her to do when she’d been thirteen and a boy at school was bothering her.
But rage and punching never got through to Brady Wyatt. So, she had to be harsh. As uncompromising as he always was. “Would you send this baby to survive your childhood?” Because Brady had spent eleven years stuck with the Sons, surviving his father—the leader of that terrible gang.
There was a flicker of something in his eyes, but his words and the delivery didn’t change. “He isn’t Ace’s son.”
“He could be,” Cecilia returned, trying to match his lack of emotion and failing. “Ace is gone. Elijah is trying to move up, take over. He’s recruiting people at the rez at a rapid rate.”
“Elijah Jones,” Brady said flatly.
The fact Brady knew him didn’t soothe Cecilia’s nerves any. “Yes. You know him?”
“Of him,” Brady replied, still so blank and unreachable. “He has a record.” Brady’s gaze lifted from the baby to her. “The state wouldn’t put a child with someone who—”
“You know what? Forget it.” God, he infuriated her. After everything he’d seen as a police officer, everything he’d survived as a boy, he could believe the state would do the right thing. She marched toward him. “I don’t need your help. I don’t need you and your rigid, ignorant belief in a system that does not work. Hand him over.” She held out her arms.
But Brady simply angled his body, keeping Mak just out of her reach. “No,” he said firmly.
Chapter Two
Brady had seen Cecilia angry plenty of times. She was a woman of extremes. Completely calm and chill, or...this. Fury all but pumping off her in waves. If he hadn’t been holding a baby, he was certain she would have decked him. Possibly right in the gunshot wound.
“You brought him here for a reason,” he said in a tone of voice he’d learned and used over the years as a police officer. Calm, but not condescending. Authoritative without being demanding. It often soothed.
Not with Cecilia. “Yes, and boy was it a stupid reason,” she returned through gritted teeth. He could practically see the wheels in her head turning as she tried to figure out how to get the baby away from him without hurting Mak.
“Why don’t you calm down and—”
She bunched her fist and he winced because he’d made a serious tactical error in telling her to calm down.
“I swear to God I will—”
The baby in his arm began to cry. Brady blinked down at the little bundle wiggling against his arm. He’d dealt with babies before—not often, but he’d held them. Calmed a few after a traffic accident or during a domestic case. Babies weren’t new or strange to him.
But little Mak was so tiny. His face wrinkled in distress as he cried, clearly disturbed by the sound of raised voices. He had a patch of dark hair, and spindly little limbs that reminded Brady of a movie alien.
Cecilia held out her arms, gave Brady a warning look, but Brady simply bounced the baby until he calmed, nestled closer. There was something comforting about the weight of him. Something real and...heavy, even though the child was light. Brady had been adrift for weeks, and holding Mak felt like a weight tethering him to shore.
Cecilia frowned, her forehead wrinkling in much the same way Mak’s had. But she didn’t argue with him any more. There was a kind of anguish on her face that had his heart twisting.
Brady nodded to the couch. “Sit. Tell me the whole story,” he ordered quietly.
“I don’t want to sit,” she returned, petulantly if he had to describe it.
She would not have appreciated that characterization. She folded her arms across her chest and began to pace.
She was tall and slender and like a lot of the female cops he knew, played down everything that made her look too feminine. Her hair was simple—straight, black, braided. She wore no makeup, and the jeans and T-shirt she’d shown up in were on the baggy side, as if she might have to put her Kevlar on underneath.
Cecilia could flip the switch when she wanted to. Put on a dress, do up her face in that magical way women seemed to have—like she had on New Year’s Eve, all glitter and smoke and fun. She even seemed to enjoy it. Or maybe she’d just enjoyed knocking him off his axis.
With Cecilia, he’d bet on the latter.
“His mother’s in the hospital. She...” Cecilia hugged herself tighter, then finally sat on his couch. “She’s one of my oldest friends on the rez. She’s been wrapped up in Elijah Jones for years now. I couldn’t come out and say he was bad news, you know?” She looked up at him, an uncomfortable amount of imploring in her eyes. “If you say they’re bad, it only makes some people want to hold on even more. Fix them even more. Some people don’t understand that not everyone is fixable.”
Brady nodded. He’d worked enough domestic cases to know that people of both sexes were often blinded by what they thought was love. Enough to believe they could change the worst in someone else.
Cecilia seemed to find some relief in his understanding. “So, I tried to be subtle. I tried to make it more about her. What she should have. What she could have if she only gave up on holding herself back.” Cecilia shook her head. “Anyway, she was ecstatic when she got pregnant. Elijah stuck around more. He had plans. But they all involved the Sons.” Her tone turned to acid. “Layla had the baby, and Elijah told her he’d be back once the kid was out of diapers so he could take him. Make him.”
Cecilia popped back up onto her feet. “Take him. As if that boy was a peach that had to ripen before he ate it. Take him, as if he had any right.” She shook her head vigorously. “Layla had already been struggling a bit, but that really sent her over the edge. I helped out, but I urged her to talk to her doctor. Something wasn’t right. Finally I took her down to her doctor myself and wouldn’t leave until she told someone how she was feeling. They said it was postpartum depression.”
“Common enough.”
“Sure. Sure. Since then I’ve done my level best to help her out. To do what I could to help Mak. I took her to her appointments, but we had a hard time scheduling them. Her insurance is terrible and she was already struggling financially. She didn’t have any supportive family, and I tried to be that for her, but...”
“You’re only one person, Cecilia.” It came out gentler than he’d intended, and the look of anguish she sent him made his chest too tight.
She collapsed back onto the couch. “One person or ten, it doesn’t seem to matter. The night I came to the hospital to talk to Felicity and Gage, that night you were shot? She took a bunch of pills. She called me. Told me, so I called an ambulance and it got there in time, but—”
“You know better than to blame yourself.”
“Do I?” she snapped.
“You should,” he replied, keeping his voice gentle even though he wanted to snap right back. She should know better, and she shouldn’t be sitting here making him feel sorry for her. She didn’t want his pity any more than he wanted to give it.
“Yeah, well should can bite me. I do blame myself, and I will,” Cecilia replied with a sneer, though it quickly faded. “I also know if it weren’t for me, she would have had no one to call and she would have died. So, may
be it evens out. I don’t know. They let me see her and she begged me to take Mak. He was with a neighbor and Layla didn’t trust the woman not to hand him over to the state or Elijah.” Cecilia blew out a breath. “She just needs help. She needs to get through this. She won’t if Mak is with Elijah. Or gets shipped off into foster care.”
“Cecilia, there are laws and rules and—”
“I had to. I have to do this for her. I know you only care about your precious laws and rules, but—”
“Those precious laws and rules are the difference between people like us and people like Elijah.” And Ace. Though he didn’t say that aloud, he had the uncomfortable feeling she heard it anyway.
“Except when those laws are going to hurt an innocent baby,” Cecilia insisted. “If they give Mak to Elijah, being abused by the Sons is all that boy has to hope for. Is that what you want?”
Of course it wasn’t. He didn’t want that for anyone. It wasn’t that he thought the law was infallible, that people didn’t fall through the cracks of it. No rule could possibly apply to everyone in every situation, but this wasn’t so much about following the letter of the law as it was about consequences.
“We could both get fired for this. You far more than me, but it risks both of our badges. We are sworn to uphold and protect the law, even when we don’t agree with it.”
She closed her eyes, then buried her face in her hands. Brady was rendered speechless and frozen in place for a good minute as Cecilia began to cry.
He’d never seen her cry before. She’d broken her arm falling out of a tree when she’d been thirteen and she hadn’t cried. She’d yelled and cursed a blue streak, but she hadn’t actually cried. At least not while he’d stayed with her and Gage had run to get help.
“Stop that,” was all he could think to say.
She looked up at him dolefully, her face tearstained and blotchy. “You’re such a comforting soul, Brady,” she replied, her voice scratchy.
He didn’t know what to say to that, since usually he could comfort people. Usually he knew what to say, how to calm and soothe so the work could be done. If she was anyone else he would have sat next to her on the couch and patted her shoulder, or leg or something. He would have known what to do with her tears.
But when it came to Cecilia, all those options seemed dangerous, and he didn’t want to figure out why. He wanted to keep his distance.
“I’m sorry,” she said on a sigh.
“You don’t have to apologize for crying.”
She rolled her eyes, wiping her cheeks with her palms. “I’m not sorry for crying. I’m sorry because I shouldn’t have brought this to your doorstep. It’s just, I had to think of the place Elijah would be least likely to look for Mak. He’s going to suspect I had something to do with Mak’s disappearance—Layla’s neighbor will no doubt tell him who took him even though I bribed her not to. So, he’d know to look at the ranches, and I thought Nina and Liza made them too obvious,” she said, speaking of her foster sisters who each had a child in her care—Liza her young half sister and Nina her daughter. “But you’re just a bachelor in an apartment.”
“Just a bachelor in an apartment,” Brady repeated, surprised at how much that appraisal hurt.
“You know what I mean. Besides, you’re hurt. He’d think less of you because of it. He’d think I’d want Mak with someone...”
“Who could actually protect him.” That feeling of everything that had gone wrong since the gunshot wound settled deeper. He nodded toward his bad shoulder. “I can’t protect him.”
Cecilia stood again. Though the traces of tears were still on her face, there was something powerful about the way she stood, the way she angled him with a doleful look. “I’d take an injured Wyatt over just about anyone else. You’ll protect just fine.”
Brady didn’t want that kind of responsibility thrust upon him when he was so... Things weren’t right inside of him, and if he looked too closely at it, he had to believe it had begun even before the gunshot wound.
“Now, I have to get going. I don’t think Elijah would have tracked me, but the longer I stay here, the more chances there are. I have to get back to the rez.”
“You’re just going to leave the baby with me?”
Her expression went grim, but it softened when her gaze landed on Mak’s sleeping form cradled in Brady’s arm. “Unfortunately, I’m a liability to him right now. I have to leave him with someone I can trust.”
“They could track your car.”
She shook her head. “We walked.”
“You...walked. In this rain?”
“I had to. I had to.” She cradled her head in her hands again, though she didn’t cry, thank God. “I didn’t want to tell you this. I didn’t want to... It isn’t fair, but I can’t worry about that when Mak’s life is in my hands.”
She looked up at him—desolate, apologetic. His heart twisted, though he tried to harden himself against that. Against her.
“Elijah idolizes Ace. He worships him. He wants to be him, and not in that Sons way where they’ll do whatever Ace did just for power. In a real way. In a real, dangerous way. He wants to take Ace’s spot, and he’ll do anything to get there.”
Brady felt no surprise, no hurt. He should be feeling both of those things, but he couldn’t manage it with a soft baby curled up against him. He could only tell her the truth. “I know.”
* * *
“YOU KNOW?” CECILIA blinked at Brady, at that harsh, final way he said those two words. “How do you...”
His jaw was set, and that blankness he’d perfected enshrouded his whole being. But his eyes told a different story. There was anguish there. Had she ever seen anguish in Brady?
“I’ve had run-ins with Elijah for the past eight years,” he said, not offering any explanation as to what run-in might mean.
“Eight years,” Cecilia repeated, just barely keeping the shriek out of her voice, and only for Mak’s sake.
“It was happenstance. The first time.”
“The first... Brady. What is this?”
“I arrested him. My first arrest actually. When he realized I was a Wyatt...it became something of a game to him. To poke at me. To try and get arrested by me specifically. I assume to prove he could get away with things—and out of jail over and over again. Nothing serious, obviously, but he made it pretty clear he was the next iteration of my father and there was nothing I could do to stop it.”
“How come none of you ever told me?”
He turned away from her, Mak still sleeping cradled in his arm like the baby belonged there. “I’m the only one who knows. I didn’t think it’d ever touch anyone else.”
“Brady.” She was utterly speechless. He had a secret from his brothers. She hadn’t thought it possible. Oh, there were emotional scars they all kept from each other, anyone who’d grown up in the midst of them knew that. But not actual...secrets.
She’d thought.
“What do you mean—”
“It isn’t the point right now. The point is if you really don’t want anyone to know you stole this baby—”
“I didn’t steal—”
“Then you can’t stay. Do you have anything for him? Diapers? Food?”
“Not yet, but there’s a plan in place.”
“A plan?”
She looked at him for a second, trying to wrap her brain around what was happening. What she was asking, and what he was saying. She’d known Brady would have to go along with some of this because he understood what it was to be a child in the Sons.
But she’d had no idea he had a connection to Elijah. That her life, which had just taken the most complicated turn, would be even more complicated by the man in front of her. She’d always considered him pretty uncomplicated.
“You can’t tell me there’s something you’ve never talked to your brothers about, that ties
to this child, and then change the subject.”
“Except I just did.”
“Were you born this frustrating or did you have to work really hard at it?”
“Says the woman who brought me a stolen infant.”
“He is not stolen,” Cecilia replied through gritted teeth. She’d done the right thing, knew that with an absolute certainty that had no room for doubt, and yet he made her feel shame for not finding a legal way to do it. “What would you have done differently, Brady?” she asked, though she was half-afraid he’d have an answer, and a good one.
He looked down at the sleeping baby for the longest time, then finally sighed. “I don’t know.”
Thank God.
“What’s the plan for baby supplies?”
“Felicity and Gage are going to bring you dinner...but it won’t be food in the take-out bags.”
“And you didn’t take the baby to them because...?”
“Felicity has already had her Sons run-in. Besides, she...” Cecilia trailed off. She was usually an expert at keeping secrets, but that one had nearly slipped out.
Brady raised an eyebrow, waiting for her to finish that sentence.
“She has a job. They both do. I know you’d love to be back at yours, but you can’t. Trust me, if I could leave him with Liza or Nina, I would, but I think Elijah would expect that. He’s going to look at my sisters harder than he looks into the Wyatts, what with it being my friend’s baby and all.”
Brady’s face was impassive. “He’ll look at us too.”
“Maybe he will, but I don’t trust anyone else.” She hated being so baldly honest with him, hated the fact she’d cried in front of him. But she would do it over and over again if it kept Mak safe.
And Mak looked safe in Brady’s arm. Sleeping against Brady’s chest. Brady was too noble not to do everything in his power to keep Mak safe. She had to believe he’d bend some rules for this, if nothing else.
“I have to go. Gage and Felicity should be here soon. I’ll be in touch.” She moved for Brady and Mak. She looked down at the baby she loved and thought about Layla’s desperate pleas. All that responsibility weighed heavy.