The car’s driver got out, tugging at her rich blue blazer as she stepped out from behind her car door. “We’re looking for Marcus Hall?”
My lip curled unconsciously at the sound of my real name. One I’d been glad to be rid of the moment I got patched and was given my road name.
I edged forward. “That would be me.”
The woman’s nervous eyes scanned the crowd that stood behind me. “Is there somewhere we could sit and talk?”
“You can talk right here and tell me what the hell is going on,” I stated, just wanting her to hurry up and get the hell on with what she had to say. It didn’t worry me who fucking heard it. I had no secrets from the club, nothing to fucking hide.
She shrugged. “My name is Cara Wellington,” she announced, the second lady passing her some files before walking back to the car. She handed me some paperwork. “This is Miss Emma Drake’s last will and testament. In it, you’ll fi—”
“Emma died?” I croaked, feeling my body pull back just slightly with the weight of those words. My brothers circled me, stepping in around me, offering me their energy and their support.
I’d only just fucking seen her.
I’d just spoken to her.
She was alive and fucking breathing.
Cara started talking again, but it took me a moment to actually get my brain to process the words.
“And I need you to hear me. Miss Emma Drake’s last will and testament…”
God, I wish she would stop fucking saying that.
“… specified precisely that if anything were to happen to her, this was what was to happen. Right now, this is a temporary ruling from a judge. There will have to be appearances in court, and I imagine her husband may try to challenge this.”
Another blow to the chest, though I took it, breathing through the fucking shock with my fists clenched at my sides.
Though that all became irrelevant when the second woman pulled a car seat from the back of the car, and it suddenly felt like gravity ceased to exist.
My entire body going numb.
“The hell is that?” I muttered through this heavy weight in my gut that seemed to be the only thing holding me to the fucking earth.
“That… is your son.”
SHOTGUN
Avery stepped forward while the rest of us stood stunned.
The lady put the tiny baby carrier onto the gravel, and I watched Avery crouch down in front of it, her fingers tugging at the tiny blanket that was resting over him.
It’s fucking hot.
Why does he have a blanket on him?
Someone needs to take that off.
A million thoughts raced through my mind, but only one fucking spilled from my mouth. “No fucking way,” I growled, shaking my head and shifting from foot to foot. “The fuck are you saying?”
Cara looked at me like I was crazy.
Like she hadn’t just said the damn words.
But the truth was, my brain was having trouble processing them.
“What I’m saying is, Emma had your name added to the birth certificate, but you’ll need to sign it and some other papers to do with accepting your parental rights,” Cara announced and shoved another piece of paper in my face, a document with a lot of fucking words. “It’s going to be a process, but I need to know now what you want to do.”
I opened my mouth to speak, to tell her to get the hell out of my face. That I wasn’t fucking ready to make any kind of decision. Normal people had nine months to get used to the idea of being a parent—a father! They were giving me nine minutes. And when it was a word that came with so many painful memories and feelings, what the hell did they want me to do?
What did they expect?
My heart was pounding, my eyes constantly being drawn to the infant a few feet away that she was saying was my fucking son.
“Shotgun,” Avery cut in, looking up at me with this frown on her face. Like she was confused by my reaction. “He’s your son.”
My son.
I couldn’t help but notice the tiny hand curled around her finger. It felt like my heart was captured in them instead of being squeezed and strangled.
I snatched the papers from the lady’s hand and smacked them against my palm. It was the only thing I could do to try and gain some semblance of control back because right at that moment, all I felt was this numbness spreading throughout my body.
Taking over.
Shock settling in.
I needed to find control again.
“She didn’t tell me she was fucking married,” I growled, rolling my shoulders. “Hell, I saw her three goddamn days ago, and she couldn’t have mentioned then like… hey, I birthed your child recently?”
Though the way she acted, it made more sense now.
Maybe it wasn’t that she felt like she was in trouble.
Maybe it was that she thought I was going to figure out what she’d done.
Avery leaped to her feet. She seemed out of breath, stomping toward me. “But you know now,” she announced, her voice shaking and quiet.
“Avery…”
“No, don’t you dare.”
“I don’t even fucking know if he’s mine!”
“Why the hell does that even matter?” she shot back at me while shaking her head back and forth, her long brown hair flying around her face. “Are any of these people here your blood? Does it make you love them any goddamn less?”
There was this sickening, twisted pain in her voice. Every word she spoke was like acid, but she couldn’t not say them, no matter how badly it hurt her.
Or me.
“Yours or not, do you know who he has right now?” she challenged when I couldn’t find the words to reply. “No one. His options are a dead mother or you.”
No one else spoke up.
No one said a single fucking word as I looked at this woman in front of me. A woman I was fucking falling for hard, standing her ground for this baby whom she’d never met, that she simply believed was mine.
She was ready to go to bat for him.
Fuck what I said.
And when I still didn’t respond, I watched her face drop, her shoulders sag, and her mouth fall open. “Please tell me you are the man I think you are. Please tell me I’m not about to watch you turn your back on that child?”
Her eyes sparkled in the sunlight, and without thinking, I reached for her, but she slapped my hand away and stumbled back. It was then that my brothers stepped in, Myth grabbing Avery, lifting her off the ground, and carrying her back inside the clubhouse.
She didn’t protest, her body sagging in his arms.
I wanted to be furious, to fucking tell her to go to hell.
That she was fucking wrong.
But the truth was, she wasn’t.
That exact thought had passed my mind, and it made me feel sick. Here I was, my thoughts focused on whether the fuck this baby could be my blood when I’d lived a life that had constantly defined family as something else. Family was the people you could go to when life got hard, who would have your back, who would fight for you, who would fucking bleed for you. They were the people who didn’t care where you came from or how you got there.
My hands, they were shaking.
I knew what I had to do.
But God help me if I could fucking move my feet right at that moment.