“But that’s silly.”
Okay, so maybe I hadn’t entirely fucked my daughter up. “I know, but it wasn’t silly to me then. He never talked to me, was never really that nice to me, and I just… I wanted him to love me.”
“But being bad, didn’t that just make him angry?”
“If he was angry, then at least he felt something instead of just… nothing. I don’t think my daddy loved me, but there were five boys in my life who did.”
“My daddies?” she questioned solemnly.
“Yes. But daddies are boys, aren’t they? And here, boys are always fighting.”
“So you learned to fight too?”
“Exactly. You’re so smart, baby.” I sucked down some air before I continued, “But you, my little love, don’t need to do things like that. I love you, and your daddies love you if you’ll give them the chance.”
That had her sucking on her bottom lip.
“I fight because that was how I was raised. But you? You don’t have to fight. You can be you, and that’s just perfect. You don’t have to be like me. And, honey, I’m going to try to stop being like this, because it’s setting a bad example for you.”
Her brow puckered. “No. You keep us both safe,” she defended. “That’s what mommies do.”
My smile, when it came, probably lit up the damn room at her words. I reached up and pinched her chin gently. “I’ll always keep you safe. But your daddies? They’re going to keep us safe.”
“Will he be nice to you?”
It didn’t take too many guesses to figure out which daddy she was referring to. “Yes,” I promised.
She blew out a breath. “Okay. I’ll talk to him.”
“Thank you, baby.” When Amaryllis held out her hand, I frowned at it. “What’s wrong?”
“We can talk to him now if you want?”
Nodding, I smiled at her and got to my feet. Whatever business Wolfe was involved in at the moment, he could tell it to fuck off, because this was far more important.
I figured it was destiny on my side, though, when I knocked on the door and he called out, “Come on in.” As I peered around it, I saw that Dagger and Wolfe were there, and considering they were the two that she knew the least, it was definitely fate.
Dagger nearly turned white when he saw Amaryllis, but Wolfe? He smiled. And that smile? Jesus, it was enough to make my heart and my panties melt.
Fuck.
So many times I’d come into this office to be reprimanded. So many times, my father had been seated behind that god-awful desk and he’d screamed at me, hissed and snarled, raged at yet another stupid thing I’d done to act out.
This couldn’t have been a greater contrast.
“I have someone here who’d like to talk to you both,” I prompted, closing the door behind me.
“Well, we have all the time in the world, don’t we, Dag?” Wolfe replied, his tone sweet for her sake, but I heard the warning to Dagger and I had to stifle a snort.
This was just the first step on a journey that would take a thousand, but at least this was in the right direction.
I figured I couldn’t ask for much more than that.
7
Axe
“She’s so little, man. What if we break her?”
I snorted at Flame, then punched him in the arm. “We won’t break her.”
“You don’t know that,” Flame countered.
Shit, he wasn’t wrong. You couldn’t break kids though, could you? At least, I hoped you couldn’t. None of us were particularly gentle guys, but there were plenty of kids around the MC and none of them had ‘broken’ over the years.
That had to mean something, right?
Rubbing my chin with one hand, I used the other to prop myself up against the wall. We were outside where a lot of the kids had decided to play tag.
It had always been weird to me how a clubhouse could have so many kids in it, especially considering what went down on nights and weekends, but the MC was a family first, and families had kids.
Lots of them.
This past year, we’d had thirty brothers have kids. Thirty-four babies in all because JoJo and Rock couldn’t do anything simple and had to have twins. We were drowning in kids.
Some of the mothers were sweetbutts, but most belonged to Old ladies who actually worked and couldn’t when they had a baby attached to them twenty-four seven. I’d never even thought about the kids other than to label them as a nuisance in my mind. Funny how things could fucking change in the blink of an eye.
“I don’t like how that Lawrence kid is looking at her.” The words were punctuated by the hissing of Flame’s lighter.
I stared at Lawrence—Wheels’ surprise, surprise—and then saw how he was acting around Amaryllis.
“He’s protecting her.”
“Look at his eyes.” Flame grunted. “Don’t trust the little fucker.”
“He’s, what? Eleven? And she’s fucking five, dude. Don’t see shit where there ain’t nothing to see.”
“He’s gonna be a problem,” Flame intoned in his voice of doom.
I huffed. “Lawrence is a good kid. Maybe he just wants to look after her like we did Lucie.”
“Exactly.”
Elbowing him in the side, I grumbled, “We didn’t do shit until she started doing it to us.”
“Which part of this ain’t you getting?” Flame retorted. “That’s my fucking problem. You watch, they’ll be raising hell together.”
“Little early to condemn them,” I retorted, watching as Amaryllis, giggling all the way, began chasing after a little girl whose name I didn’t know in an attempt to tag her.
I’d never known any of the kids’ names because I hadn’t been interested. Not outside of how they and their mommas affected our men anyway.
Now, all of a sudden, both Flame and I were standing outside, watching over the proceedings and all because our daughter was in among the mix.
When Flame had found me in the common room having a beer and a game of pool with Rodeo, one of the guys who was working his way up the ladder to sit on the council, he’d said two words, “Amaryllis’s outside,” and instantly, he’d gained my attention.
Didn’t matter that there was a Benjamin Franklin riding on the game, didn’t matter that I was close to winning. Those words had been like a stick up the ass as we’d headed outside.
Why?
It was the first time she’d left the clubhouse.
Period.
With or without her momma at her side.
Seeing her now in the yard, I had to admit to feeling a little better about shit. This had to mean she was settling in, right? Or was it too soon to even be thinking of that?
“She misses Ryan,” Flame murmured sadly.
“She ain’t the only one,” I said on a sigh. We all missed Ryan. It was like being short of one of our Musketeers. We’d been five, though, not four, but now we were that permanently.
“Wish I’d gotten to see him before he passed over,” Flame rasped, showing about as much emotion as he was capable of.
I cut him a look, then eyed the vicinity. That tone of voice usually went hand in hand with him setting fire to something, but I figured we were okay out here. Not only was Amaryllis playing nearby, but there wasn’t really anything flammable around us.