by Drew Elyse
I didn’t know what to say to that, because I was thinking he might be right.
“You might struggle with it for a while, but you remember what that fucker was threatening to take from you. You hold your daughter and know from experience you would go to any lengths to protect her. There’s not one bad thing about that. That’s just proof of how much you love her.”
With those words echoing in my head as we stood together in silence, I realized he was right. Barton was a monster and he’d threatened Emmy. I’d done what I needed to do.
“Thank you,” I eventually said into the dark landscape.
Jager didn’t say anything back, but I didn’t expect him to. After a while, I decided to go back inside. Before I left, I placed a hand on his upper arm. When he looked my way, I told him with the full gravity I felt, “I’m sorry.”
He jerked his chin up at me and I decided it was time to leave him alone. He’d opened up some very deep wounds for me, the least I could do was let him have peace to try to stop the bleeding.
When I stepped inside, Sketch was standing there. He was leaning against the wall, a clear view into the back from where he was.
“He help?” he asked.
I nodded, then he mirrored the movement. Without a word, he extended his hand. Walking the rest of the way to him, I placed mine in his. He took us back to my room and into bed.
I didn’t have the nightmare again.
“How you doing, birthday girl?” I asked when Carson took a moment to shake out his hand and give me a breather.
Emmy was sitting in a chair next to me, a purple lap desk across her legs, coloring away. At the end of the crayon in her hand was a birthday gift Jess had given her when we got to the shop. It was a pink-painted, wooden replica of a tattoo machine. Even pink, it was cool as fuck, and Emmy loved it. She thought it was awesome that she got to be just like me, and I fucking loved that she wanted to be.
She was even more excited to use it while Carson worked on my chest with the real thing.
I’d been tasked with keeping Emmy for the morning while the guys decorated the clubhouse yard under the strict eyes of Ash, Cami, and Deni. I was more than happy to take my girl and get the fuck out of that.
I’d taken her out for breakfast, where I let her get a waffle with strawberries, ice cream, and whipped cream on it, but only after she swore she wouldn’t tell her mom. Ice cream for breakfast, Ash would ream my ass. The waiter even added sprinkles and a candle to her waffle, catching the not-at-all-subtle hint from the pink t-shirt she was wearing that said “Birthday Girl” in glitter. Emmy was over the moon.
Needless to say, my princess loved her birthday. It was a whole day where she got to be the star, and she didn’t even know what we had planned for her.
“Good,” Emmy answered, her head staying down in her new princess coloring book.
Well, as long as she was happy. We didn’t have much longer here, anyway. Carson was almost finished and the party set-up should be nearly complete.
Having Emmy hang out while I got a tattoo wasn’t quite what I’d meant to spend the morning doing, but it had been hard to carve time out of the last week.
After her talk with Jager, Ash did seem to do better. However, that didn’t mean shit was perfect for her. She still had moments where she struggled. When we’d first gone to pick up Emmy the morning after it happened, she’d had to excuse herself before she broke down. In the first few days, the times it overwhelmed her were more frequent.
Unfortunately, it had also fallen on me in those days to tell her about Jackson. I’d considered keeping it from her, but she knew too much about our plans for that. The time would have come where she either asked or at least worried over what would seem to be a lack of progress in finding him. I didn’t want that to plague her at any point, so I’d laid it out for her. We’d found Jackson. He was no longer a threat to anyone. End of story.
The guys had dealt with disposing of Jackson, Barton, and Barton’s muscle. They’d dealt with Officer Andrews in regards to Ace’s gunshot wounds and Barton’s sudden disappearance from local business. I’d had no part in any of it. My focus was on Ash.
With all that going on, I’d asked Jess to reschedule my clients so I could be there for her. This meant, once she’d started doing better, I’d had a heavy work schedule to see to.
I’d finally finished the design for the tattoo I was getting to fill the untouched space on my chest a couple days before the shit with Barton went down. Carson had helped me work out some of the design flaws. What we hadn’t had the chance to do was actually sit down so he could put it on me. I had plans for this tattoo, and those plans meant I needed it done.
“We're just about finished here. Just have to finalize some of the shading,” Carson said. He dipped the needle into one of the small caps of ink beside him and got back to work.
About half an hour later, he cleaned off the last of the blood and excess ink, and handed me a mirror to take a look at the finished product.
“Fuckin’ amazing, man,” I told him as I took it in. It was exactly what I wanted, exactly what I planned to get for years.
“Guess this means I'm officially retired now,” Carson said as he studied his own handiwork. “Also means this place is yours now.”
Fuck.
Sailor’s Grave was mine.
“I’ll do you proud,” I promised.
“Know you will,” he returned.
While he cleaned up, I went back to Emmy. She was still coloring away, but looked up when I got close.
“Ready to go, princess?”
“Where we going next?” she asked.
“That’s a surprise.”
That got her attention, and her excitement. She was quick to pick up her crayons and coloring book, and put them in her backpack. Once she was ready to go, I looked to Jess and Carson, the only ones in the shop with us.
“You both headed over?”
With nods of assent from them, we headed out. I shot a text to Ash to let her know we'd be there in half an hour, giving them plenty of time to finish anything they had to do and giving Jess and Carson time to get there before Emmy and me.
When we finally pulled up to the clubhouse, I was pleased to realize Emmy didn't note the significance of the number of bikes and cars out front. I got her out of the truck and carried her through the building and out to the back. I'd hit send on a pre-typed text to Ash when I parked so she'd know to get everyone ready.
The moment we stepped out into the backyard, a chorus of shouts greeted us.
“Surprise!”
Emmy started applauding wildly and squirming to get me to set her down. The moment I did, she was off like a shot to her mom. Ash scooped her up and gave her a kiss. That was all she got from Emmy before our girl took off to greet the rest of her guests.
I went to Ash, wrapping her up, but keeping her leaning against my right side, away from my new tattoo. I tried not to grin at the sight of her wearing the black leather with a patch that read “Firefly” on the breast. On the back, much bigger in a statement it would take a fuckin’ fool to miss, were the words “Property of Sketch”. I’d been planning to put that patch on her since I was six years old. I’d finally done it the day after Barton went down.
She’d wanted to go visit Ace again, so we’d been getting ready to leave to get there as soon as visiting hours started. Once she was dressed, she headed straight for the door.
“Where’re you going, babe?” I’d asked.
She’d given me an impatient look. “I want to get to the hospital.”
“You’re not ready yet,” I’d told her. She didn’t understand, but I hadn’t meant for her to. I went to the bed, taking the bag I’d hidden under it out. With my back to her, I had put the second part of the surprise in my pocket. Then, I’d turned to hand her the first part.
She teared up as soon as she saw the black leather in my hands. She knew exactly what it was and I figured she’d been waiting about as long to have it as
I had to give it to her. Not a moment passed before she took it and pulled it on. While she went over to the mirror affixed to the inside of the closet door, I took her second gift from my pocket.
I went up behind her as she admired the sight of herself in the cut. For a moment, I stood back a few feet so I could permanently burn the image of my patch on her back into my head. Once I was sure it was there, I moved in close. Her eyes came up to mine in the mirror as she smiled and thanked me. While her attention was there, I slid the ring onto her left hand.
That was how I proposed. I didn’t get down on one knee. I didn’t ask, no matter how much shit she gave me for it afterward. She was already mine, and I was hers. That was just my symbol telling her we were going to make it legal.
I still wasn’t used to the sight of her wearing my patch or my ring, though I fucking loved seeing both. So even though I tried not to, I was grinning like an idiot when I got in close to her surrounded by Emmy’s birthday guests—who were pretty much the same people always around, the Disciples.
“Hi, Firefly,” I said before I took a kiss.
She kissed me back, then moved her eyes to Emmy, who was up in Daz’s arms. It looked like she was gushing over the surprise party. Fuck, she was such a ham.
“You think she liked it?” Ash asked.
I was about to tell her it was pretty obvious and point out there was no way our little princess wouldn’t love the fact that it looked like the women had found every bit of pink and sparkly decoration they could get to throw all over the yard when a shriek sounded out.
We both turned to Emmy, who was still in Daz’s arms with her hands covering her mouth and her eyes huge. Then, she moved her hands to shriek again.
“A pony!”
Yeah, we’d gotten a fuckin’ pony. Not for her to keep, mind you. It was just there with its owner for the afternoon.
“I think she likes it,” I stated the obvious.
A few hours later, we were sitting next to a big table laden with presents. The vultures I called family had already fallen on and consumed the cake, but only after singing the lowest, rumbling Happy Birthday ever to “Princess Emmy” and watching her blow out her four little candles.
Most of the presents had already been opened when Sketch declared it was his turn. He grabbed the couple remaining gift bags from the table and handed the first one off to Emmy. She tore in immediately and came up with a piece of paper. Since I was sitting closest to her, she handed it to me.
“What’s it say, Mommy?”
I looked down at the paperwork Sketch and I had filed a couple days ago, then up to him. We’d done our research and found out adding Sketch to Emmy’s birth certificate as her father didn’t require a paternity test at all, only signed declarations from us both that he was. We’d gotten it taken care of immediately, but hadn’t explained it to Emmy yet. The tears were stinging my eyes already.
“It says,” Sketch answered Emmy, “you’re officially my daughter, and I’m your daddy.”
Emmy, bless her little heart, didn’t get it. “You’re already my daddy.”
Sketch smiled huge, picked her up, and sat back down on the ground with her in his lap. “Yes, but that piece of paper tells the whole world that.”
“Really?” she asked in wonderment.
“Yeah, princess.”
“That’s a good present,” she told him, and that broke the seal. Tears went down my cheeks and I did nothing to stop them. From the gasps I heard nearby, I was guessing Cami and Deni were losing it, too.
While I collected myself, Sketch moved on, pulling down the last two gift bags. He handed one to Emmy and the other to me. I gave him a curious look as I took it.
In answer to my questioning look, he told me, “You’re probably going to have a concern or two about this present. Your gift is the answer to those concerns.”
I had no idea what he was talking about, but I went with it. Getting the okay from her dad, Emmy ripped into the new bag and unearthed a tennis ball. She looked at him, but he was looking toward the door. Right on cue, Tank came into the yard with a squirming German Sheppard puppy in his arms.
Emmy jumped to her feet. “A puppy!”
I watched as she ran over to Tank, who knelt down in front of her and helped her meet her new puppy. It was nearly as excited to see her as she was it. It was wiggling all over her, trying to lick her face. I was glad when I saw Cami with her phone out and angled that way. That was a memory we’d want to have forever.
“Open yours,” Sketch said from beside me.
Sifting through tissue paper, I pulled out a few sheets of paper stapled together. They looked like a printout from a real estate website. I flipped through the pages, reading about a two-story, three-bedroom house. On the last page, I got a look at the property.
“You…” I couldn’t even put it into words. I was looking at a picture of my childhood home.
“It came back on the market a few months ago. I’d been keeping an eye on it,” he explained. “Just closed the deal on Wednesday.”
“You bought my dad’s house?” I asked. I couldn’t believe it.
He smiled. “I bought our house.”
Our house. A house the two of us, Emmy, and her new puppy would call home. A house we would raise her in. A house we might give her a sibling in. And it was a house I already knew as home.
It was perfect.
Hours later, Sketch and I were in the room that had once been mine, but I’d started to think of as ours, at the farmhouse. Emmy was already in bed, her puppy, Duncan, in a crate in the hall, directly between her room and ours. She’d knocked out early after all the excitement.
Sketch and I had spent the night since tucking her in talking about the house. We planned out how we would furnish it, which of the bedrooms we would install Emmy in, and I’d cried more than a handful of times at the realization that we would raise her where Dad had raised me.
We were in bed, Sketch sitting against the headboard, me lounging against him, when he said, “Got another gift for you.”
I sat up and turned to look at him. “It’s Emmy’s birthday, not mine.”
“Maybe, but four years ago, you brought that perfect girl into the world. That deserves celebrating, too.”
Crap. He had really been going for the waterworks all day.
Leaning over the side of the bed, he reached into the nightstand and pulled out a sheet of paper. His face was serious in a way that made me wary when he settled back into his spot.
“Before I show this to you, I want you to understand why I did it. I thought you needed this to move on. If there had been a different result, I would not be showing it to you. I’d take that secret with me to the grave. You’d have never known. But I want you to see this now.”
I took the papers from him, worried I already knew what it was.
The printed report was loaded with information I couldn’t sort through, but the top included a word that left me speechless. “Paternity.”
My eyes shot up to him. “I’m her father,” he declared.
My grip on the paper tightened until I was wrinkling it, but I didn’t care.
He went on. “I know you didn’t want to do the test because you were worried it wouldn’t be me. That’s why I didn’t tell you. If it had come back negative, I would have kept that secret. I would have loved Emmy the same either way. I did it for you, so you could finally let go of what happened. Emmy is ours, by blood and by something so much more important.”
He stopped talking, but started moving. His cut came off, and then his shirt. Beneath it, across the left side of his chest, was a bandage. I knew, even before he started to peel back the tape holding it closed, what he’d done. That spot was the only part of his torso that had no tattoos. At least, it had been.
The tattoo he revealed stole my breath. Despite the shiny cream covering it and the redness at its edges, it was the most beautiful tattoo I had ever seen. It was a jar, designed like a watercolor painting. Inside, were two
glowing yellow shapes.
Fireflies.
“I decided a long time ago this spot,” he said, indicating his chest, “was for you. I kept it bare all this time, because it was yours. Now, it belongs to you and Emmy.”
For years, life had gone off course, taking me down a road I’d never expected. I’d accepted I would never get back to the dreams I’d had. I was prepared to accept a different happy, a joy entirely centered around Emmy. Looking at the ink on his chest, with the gifts he’d given me on the fourth anniversary of bringing my baby—our daughter—into the world, he gifted me those dreams back.
“You did it,” I whispered.
“What?”
“When we were just kids, you told me we were going to have all of this one day. You were going to become a Disciple, marry me, and we’d have kids together. You told me you’d make me the happiest wife ever.” I stared at him, having no idea how to react to everything I was feeling. “You did it.”
He kissed me then, until my body was on fire, and I was ready for him to make me a different kind of happy while returning the favor. Right against my lips, he whispered, “Do anything for you, Firefly.”
He would, I knew it. He’d claimed a Disciple’s daughter at six years old and made one of his own. He had already done it when he made my entire world shift.
ENGAGE
DISCIPLES’ DAUGHTERS #3
Jager’s Story
Drew Elyse spends her days trying to convince the world that she is, in fact, a Disney Princess, and her nights writing tear-jerking and smutty romance novels.
When she isn’t writing, she can usually be found over-analyzing every line of a book, binge watching a series on Netflix, doing strange vocal warm ups before singing a variety of music styles, or screaming at the TV during a Chicago Blackhawks game.