by Drew Elyse
Of course, he was a lot less intimidating when he was smiling that way. You couldn’t so much see the actual smile beneath his scraggily beard, but the effect was still there in the curve of his mustache and the lines around his eyes.
Just behind him, with his trademark indecent smirk, was Daz. In a club full of men who weren’t bonded by vows of celibacy by any stretch, Daz still managed to stand out as a man whore. And he reveled in the title. It was in his swagger, in the way everything about his appearance screamed “just fucked”, and the overwhelming innuendos he wove into conversations like prepositions.
Daz offered me a nod and kept moving to the back of the truck to unload. Stone, however, came right to me.
It surprised even me when he pulled me into a tight hug. Stone had been around my whole life and I held none of the fear he inspired in most people, but he didn’t tend to be the most touchy-feely of the men I called my uncles.
“Welcome back,” he said as he stepped away.
“It’s…” I hesitated. I couldn’t necessarily say it was good to return. If I could help it, I wouldn’t be here at all.
“It’s alright, you don’t have to front. Weird being here again?” he let me off the hook.
“Very.”
“I want you to know we’re working on this,” he said. “I swear to you, we’re going to keep you safe, and we’re going to get this…” he trailed off and eyed Emmy for a moment, “situation sorted.”
I nodded, not sure what to say. I still only had a vague idea of what the situation was seeing as it was “club business”. In that silence, Emmy decided she’d had enough of being out of the conversation.
“Hi,” she greeted with a bright smile.
“Hello, little one,” Stone answered.
“I’m Emmaline,” she said, extending her hand. How she understood handshakes and introductions was beyond me. Maybe she was watching too much TV.
Stone did her one better. Reaching out, he turned her hand so the back was facing up and bowed to place a kiss on it. If it weren’t for the gruff biker look winning out, you might have thought he was a prince.
Emmy giggled, and squealed, “It tickles!”
Stone smiled as he pulled away. “I’m Stone.”
Emmy’s hand came back toward us and she laid it over her heart. She was going in for her kill. “I’s so nice to meet you.”
And another one bites the dust.
Stone was grinning at her bigger than I had ever seen. Not to be outdone, the king of charm himself came swooping in.
“Well, hello, pretty lady,” Daz said, flashing her a cheeky smirk.
For a moment, I could swear Emmy was sizing up the competition. It was as if she could tell Daz was a flirt and was going attempt to outmaneuver her. She was not about to have that.
Before she could make her move, Roadrunner spoke up. “Careful, Daz. You might’a met your match with this one.”
In my arms, Emmy started to fuss. Her silent demand to be put down was odd. Usually, she was all about vocalizing her thoughts. Still, I set her down without question. She immediately stepped up to Daz and extended her arms in the air. The look on Daz’s face, the panicked way his eyes popped open, had me biting my lips to keep from laughing. Daz was not a kid person. I think he was uncomfortable with them out of a basic fear of some woman he’d one-nighted showing up with one of his own. I had to hand it to him, though. He only froze for a second before lifting my girl into his inked arms.
Without hesitation, she grabbed onto his stubble-shadowed jaw and gave a smacking kiss to his right cheek.
“Well…fuck,” Daz muttered.
“Daz!” I reprimanded. “Could you not swear in front of my three-year-old?”
“Right. Sorry. Shit—” His eyes went wide as he did it again. “I mean…oops.” Emmy giggled. “Just don’t repeat anything your Uncle Daz says,” he told her. “How ‘bout that?”
“Untle Daz is funny,” she went on laughing.
“Uncle,” I corrected.
“Untle,” she repeated while nodding at me like she had it under control. I just shook my head. There was no arguing with her.
Daz looked to Stone and Roadrunner. “See? I can’t keep the ladies off me.” Then, he turned with my girl and started walking inside.
“You can’t keep her, Razzle-Dazzle,” Roadrunner called after him.
Daz flipped him the bird behind his back. “I’m her uncle. It’s called babysitting.”
“You can’t use my daughter to pick up women,” I told him.
“What good is being an uncle then?”
I heard Emmy’s laughter. She might not have understood the conversation, but the animated way Daz talked was enough for her. “Oh yeah, that’s what’s good about it,” he muttered.
Totally sunk. He was just another victim to her charms.
I stayed with Stone and Roadrunner while they each grabbed a box from the back of the truck. I had Emmy’s backpack of things to keep her occupied in the car and one duffle I packed with some basic necessities we might need before we could get to unpacking.
Shuffling through the entry, I kept my gaze down as I held the door open for both men. I needed that moment to brace. Without a doubt, I knew looking into the living room of the farmhouse was going to be hard. I spent more days than I could count in that room and I knew, as well as I knew the Disciples, it would not have changed much. The brothers weren’t exactly interior decorators. Unless a piece of furniture broke beyond repair, it stayed where it was. The constancy had been comforting as a kid, but I found myself wishing it weren’t true anymore.
When the two men were through the doorway, I took a deep breath, turned into the room…
And froze.
Flowers. Everywhere. On the couch, piled into the corners of the room, all over the living room.
“What the…”
“Yeah, those’ll be gone soon,” Stone said over his shoulder. “Deni organized for us to take them over to the hospital.”
“But what are they all from?”
“The wedding,” he answered.
Before I could ask what wedding, Roadrunner spoke up. “Forgot to tell you about that. Gauge and Cami had their wedding here over the weekend.”
Wait. Gauge and Cami?
“Cami, as in—”
“As in my baby girl got hitched to a Disciple,” Tank cut me off. I turned to see him coming out of the kitchen with his arms full of…a little boy? Before I could ask, Tank went right on speaking. “Sorry I couldn’t meet you at the door. Little Levi decided he needed feedin’ now.”
“Levi?” I asked, already making my way toward him.
Tank grinned at me like he was king of the world. “My grandson.”
I dropped the duffle bag and backpack to the floor as Tank’s big arms extended the little boy my way. I’d guess he was about a year old. He was bigger than Emmy had been at that age, but Gauge wasn’t a small man. There was no doubt who his father was, even though it had been years since I had seen Gauge. Levi had his dad’s deep tan coloring, his dark eyes, and his mess of black hair. The resemblance was so absolute, I saw none of his mother in him.
“Gauge’s genes were dominant, huh?” I mused.
“Thank fuck for that.” My head snapped up in confusion at Tank’s words. He read it right away. “He’s not Cami’s. Not by blood, at least. But the papers just went through and he’s her son now.”
Jeez. A lot had happened.
“I didn’t even know Cami and Gauge knew each other.”
Cami had grown up with the club as well. She was a few years older than Gabe and I, but we were like cousins. There weren’t a lot of kids around, so age differences were set aside. Cami left for college at eighteen and essentially never came back. From what I’d known before I left, she started seeing some guy Tank was not at all fond of and they were living together. She never came back to visit and Gauge hadn’t become a brother until after she’d left.
“That was my doing,” Tank said,
a note of pride in his voice. “I’ll let Cami tell you the story when she gets back in town. Gauge took her on a ride out for a few days for their honeymoon. Didn’t want to leave Levi for too long. They’ll be back tomorrow night.”
I was about to formulate some version of how I was looking forward to seeing her so I wouldn’t cause an awkward silence—which was my standard way of handling things—when Emmy came running into the room.
“Momma! Momma, it’s so pretty! You hafta see!”
Having no idea what could be “pretty” in a house full of bikers, I handed Levi back to Tank and followed her down the hall. Most of the rooms were upstairs, but there were a couple at the far end of the main floor. Back in the day, they were used as storage rooms. Gabe used to sneak us down that same hall, into those unused rooms. No one came looking for us there…
Crap. I needed to shut that down.
I focused on Emmy and her palpable excitement as we approached one of the rooms. The door was open, so I followed her as she turned in.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
What had to be a whole new set of furniture filled the room. Had to be, because no one living in the house would have been using a white wood framed canopy bed with pink gauzy curtains. The shelves on one side and the dresser with little tiara-shaped handles were likewise not in high demand.
They’d done this for us. They’d gone out of their way to make a room fit for a princess.
I could just imagine a group of these men in well-worn jeans and leather cuts, bearded and tattooed, walking into a furniture place and asking for the girliest set they had. The image was funny enough to hold back the threatening tears.
“It’s a pwincess room!” Emmy declared, in case I hadn’t gotten that.
“I see that, baby.”
My eyes swept over the whole room again, my chest constricting. I’d never been able to give her that. I’d tried. Every day since I found out I was pregnant, I had tried to provide my daughter with everything. We’d gotten by, but I’d never been able to give her something so luxurious. All the furniture we had was second hand. We got what we could from resale shops and garage sales. Her room at home was a mismatched nightmare, but it was what I could afford.
For a moment, the crushing sense that I had been failing her made me feel about a foot tall.
I ducked back into the hall as Daz helped Emmy rip open the moving box full of her toys. She was going to town on it, getting everything unloaded at top speed. She wouldn’t notice if I was gone for a while.
Standing in the hall did nothing to clear my heavy heart. It only reminded me of where I was. The club had been there, right where it always was, ready to welcome me back. I could have come home with Emmy years ago and the brothers would have taken us in. They would have helped us. She could have had this for years.
It wasn’t just the room. The physical gifts were only the smallest piece of what I was mourning. What really hurt were the relationships she missed out on. I grew up with a dozen uncles and now she would know what that was like. We were barely in the door and even Daz was sunk by her.
I kept that from her.
But I couldn’t have come back home, could I? I was forgetting the big issue, but I wouldn’t be able to for long. We would have to see each other at some point.
“You okay, Ash?” Roadrunner asked from behind me.
I turned back toward the room, trying to keep the emotions that felt like they were exploding inside of me from my face. “Just a bit overwhelmed,” I answered.
“We wanted her to have a room she was going to be comfortable in,” he explained. “We had to get furniture either way, there was nothing in here.”
Now Roadrunner was going to try to downplay the enormity of what they had just given my daughter, as if it meant nothing. It wasn’t nothing.
“Thank you,” I said, too overwhelmed to find any words that would come close to what I was feeling.
“Momma?” Emmy called just before her blonde curls popped around the doorframe. “You gotta see! You got a room, too!”
I tried to hide the mortification at what she was saying. Kids said crazy things. I could play it off, but only if I didn’t give the truth away.
“Yeah, baby,” I said in as even a tone as I could.
“There’s even a bed! A big one! So you can sleeps in one, too!” she kept right on with her excitement.
“Yeah, baby. Why don’t you keep unpacking? Uncle Daz probably doesn’t want to unpack your stuffies himself.”
Luckily, she followed my suggestion right away. Unfortunately, I knew the damaged had already been done.
“What’s she talking about?” Roadrunner asked.
Crap.
“It’s nothing.”
“Ashlynn Mae,” he said in warning.
With a deep breath, I looked up at him. “I couldn’t afford a two bedroom apartment,” I said, hoping that would suffice.
“So you two shared that room?” he asked, but he knew the answer. He’d seen Emmy’s bedroom.
“Not exactly.”
Roadrunner simply raised his eyebrows, his waning patience obvious.
“She’s getting older. I thought it was important that she have a space she could identify as her own as she grew up. She needed to get used to doing some things alone, like sleeping.”
“And where did you sleep?”
“The living room.”
“Where in the living room? I was there, Ash. I didn’t see a bed.”
“The couch,” I said, giving him the answer he already knew.
Roadrunner rubbed at his eyes like he had a headache setting in. “At least tell me it was a fuckin’ pull-out.”
I wanted to lie. So much of me wanted to tell him it was. Would he ever know otherwise? Probably not. I just couldn’t lie to Roadrunner, though. “It wasn’t.”
“Goddammit, Ash.” He started pacing while gripping the sides of his head. He was pissed. Seriously pissed. Pissed to the point where a casual observer would question my sanity at being in a little hall with him. But Roadrunner would never hurt me. He’d never lay a hand on any woman, but it was more than that. He hated the very idea of me hurting in any way. That was what had him so upset. “Why didn’t you call? Come home? We would’ve taken care of you.”
It was the same question that had been beating around my brain just minutes before.
“I know, but I couldn’t.” My eyes moved to the bedroom door where Emmy had disappeared again.
Coming back to the club was never something I’d intended to do, especially not with Emmy in tow. There were too many questions I couldn’t answer where she was concerned. I had no idea how we were going to do this as it was.
Roadrunner shook his head in a frustrated way. I knew he understood I was keeping Emmy away, but he didn’t understand why, and I couldn’t explain that to him.
With a great sigh, he came to me and pulled me into his arms.
“You’re here now. We’ll take care of you both,” he said.
He was right; we were here now.
How was I going to leave all this behind again?
It hadn’t been dark long when I pulled up to the farmhouse. I’d meant to keep riding, but it was fucking pointless. Being on the road was doing nothing to clear my head the way it usually did. Every thought was at that damn house, imagining the girl who had torn herself from my life almost five years ago jamming herself back in like a knife into an open wound.
I was so preoccupied, I nearly bit it on a curve I hadn’t noticed coming up. I took it too fast and nearly became a bad paint job on the side of a minivan in the other lane. That was about the time I realized I was in no fucking frame of mind to be on my bike.
My plan had been to just go to the clubhouse and crash there, but I scrapped that. It didn’t matter if I hid out at the clubhouse for the foreseeable future; I was going to see her at some point. God only knew how long she was going to be around. Avoidance wasn’t a long-term plan. I was counting on the an
ger I already had boiling over when I saw her. Maybe then I could move the fuck on.
Yeah, I was going to be the eternal damn optimist.
The walk to the front door required a whole lot of one-foot-in-front-of-the-other encouragement. It made me want to offer my left hand for a smoke. I’d cut the cigarettes out after I lost my uncle. The nicotine addiction wasn’t what killed Gunner, but they found the lung cancer in the hospital when he died. If it hadn’t been the accident, it would have been the cancer before too long. Talk about a come to Jesus moment. Even if he’d avoided the drunk asshole behind the wheel of his cage, he would still be gone now. I threw my last pack in the hospital trash and went cold turkey. Never picked up another smoke. I thought I’d totally kicked the cravings too until that moment.
I beelined right for the kitchen to grab something of the liquid variety to take the edge off. As long as none of the assholes in the house drank it, I had a bottle of Lagavulin ready to do the job.
As I got close, I heard Roadrunner’s voice. When I turned the corner, I could make out what he was saying.
“—didn’t even have a bed, for fuck’s sake. Just slept on the fucking couch for Christ knows how long.”
Stone stood beside him looking tense, which said a lot for that somber fucker.
“What’s up?” I asked, already locating the scotch I was looking for in the cabinet.
“Ash is here,” Pres replied as I grabbed the bottle.
Before anyone could take that topic anywhere, I said, “Right. I’m out.”
I took barely two steps before Roadrunner spoke to my back. “You have to deal with this shit eventually.”
The truth in that statement—a truth I did not need illuminated since it had been fucking dogging me since Stone told me she was coming back here—pissed me off.
“I wanted to deal with this shit,” I reminded him. “I wanted to deal with it over four fucking years ago.”