Shotgun stood back against the wall, his back pressed hard against it like it was the only thing keeping him from falling to the floor.
Or running.
“She had a fucking husband,” he murmured, his brow pinching as he stared across the room, almost like he was watching a movie play on the wall. A piece of his past that was so vivid, so real to him. “It wasn’t like I loved the girl, but why? Why fuck with me while she’s married?”
And there it was, the reason why this man was so hard to not fall in love with.
He was a fucking biker.
Why should he give a damn if she had a husband?
Why should he give a shit about the person he’s sticking his dick in?
Because to Shotgun, when it comes to loyalty—you either are or you aren’t. You don’t get to choose when it suits you and when it doesn’t.
It twisted my stomach.
His gaze jerked toward me. Watching that pain in his eyes, knowing it was caused because of these feelings he had for someone else—it was fucking hard to take. Especially for me, who has been pretending like my feelings for him aren’t so much stronger.
I was in too deep.
When a dead booty call can make you feel jealousy like you’ve never experienced before, you know you are in over your head.
His tortured gaze had me climbing across the bed, careful not to jostle the sleeping child.
I stepped in front of him, reaching up to touch his face, forcing his attention to me, trying to keep him in the present, not the past. “You can do this.”
His eyes drifted again back to the sleeping baby. “He needs a fucking family who can raise him the way she would have wanted him raised—”
“No.” I grabbed his face, pinching his jaw between my fingers and jerking his attention back to me. “He needs you. His father.”
I knew what it was like to have my own parents turn on me, to deem me unworthy of their love—not once, but twice.
The people who were meant to love me couldn’t.
And the ones who chose to love me wouldn’t.
“You have no idea how you could break him by giving him up,” I whispered, that feeling of worthlessness and abandonment so fucking fresh I could feel my body beginning to itch. Panic settling just beneath my skin.
“I feel like I’ve already fucking broken him,” he murmured, withdrawing, and stepping around me, pacing across the room, though his eyes never left the small child. His small child. “I’ve spent my whole life fucking fighting the poison in my blood, and now I’ve already passed on everything I fucking hate about myself to him. He should hate me. The genes he got are dirty,” he muttered, thrusting his fingers through his hair, pulling it back from his face.
“And yet, he won’t,” I argued, following him, not allowing him to escape. “Because you are nothing like your father, and this little boy will be everything like you. Strong. Protective. Determined. Loving.”
He spun, his fingers curled into fists at his sides, his teeth clenched. “How do you know that?”
“Because you and I, we learned how to love from the people who didn’t love us,” I croaked, feeling this unexpected wave of emotion hit me. “And that means we love harder. And we fight to be something better than they could ever have imagined.”
He moved closer, and I reached out, taking his cut into my hands and tracing the stitching with my fingers.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he whispered, his eyes moving between his child and me.
“No first-time parent does. You might have no idea how to be a dad, but you know how to protect the people you love with every part of your being,” I whispered as I stared up at Shotgun and that lost look in his eyes. “It’ll be fucking hard. Sometimes it will come easy. And sometimes you’ll have no fucking idea. But… we’ll figure it out.”
He paused.
I heard the words come out of my mouth too.
I could have stopped them, but the truth was, I didn’t want to. I wanted to have his back on this. I wanted to help him be the person my family never could be—I wanted to help him be the man I knew he was. A soft murmur from behind me had both of us shuffling toward the bed. The small bundle had finally spit out the pacifier and was screwing up his nose and kicking his legs like he was building up for…
His scream resonated across the room, bouncing off the walls.
Shotgun didn’t move, so I moved for him. This now became a team effort whether it was meant to be or not.
You’re already too deep.
Now you’re going to get attached to a baby too.
You’ll never survive.
You won’t endure losing them.
And that’s what will happen.
Just like everyone else.
The words in my head tortured me, my hands pausing above the screaming child’s torso. But instead of running, I held my breath, tucking my hands under the tiny body and lifted him from the large bed before turning to Shotgun.
He was there when I needed him.
I was going to be there when he needed me.
Consequences and heartbreak be damned.
“Get on the bed and lay on your back,” I ordered, stepping out of the way. He moved slowly, his eyes on the baby, already displaying this anxiousness at hearing him cry. He lay down, and I gently placed the baby on his stomach on top of him, his little head resting against Shotgun’s heart. He was out of his depths, his hands laying at his sides while his son squirmed restlessly looking for comfort.
“Hold him.”
He lifted his hands, but his fingers curled into fists. “What if I break him?”
“Just be gentle, and he’ll be fine—”
“That’s not what I meant.”
His gaze jerked up to meet mine, glassy and unsure—the man who always needed to be in control, suddenly out of his depths.
It’s easy to forget sometimes that these men, they are hard, they are strong, and seem so indestructible sometimes. But the truth is, they have had to do and see things no normal person ever should have, and at the end of the day, they are still human.
With real emotions.
Real fears.
For them, taking a life to protect the people they love may be nothing.
A means to an end.
A job.
A way of life.
But when they do lose someone, when they are hurt, they feel pain just like each of us.
My heart squeezed, and I slowly tucked my legs underneath me as I lowered myself to the bed next to him, placing my hand on the baby’s back.
“He’s not stopping.”
“Talk.”
“About fucking what?”
I smiled. “Anything.”
His glare was almost cute, but he cleared his throat. “She named him Gage, you know,” he announced with a soft laugh. “Given that she consistently called me by my government name, how fucking weird was it to hear her give him a name that’s so connected with my road name.”
“She knew it was important to you,” I answered, trying not to let my grin grow bigger as I watched his tight shoulders settle and relax. I softly patted Gage’s back, feeling him react to his father’s calming body.
“I guess she did. I should have done something. Should have pushed harder when we saw her at the hospital the other day.” There was that move again, his eyes watching the ceiling, his pupils flickering slightly. “I knew there was something going on, something seriously wrong, and I chose to fucking ignore my instincts and let it pass. Let her walk out. That’s always going to stay with me. Wondering whether I should have gone after her that night. Wondering whether I should have made that choice for her rather than simply thinking she would come to me… God… why didn’t she just come to me?”