Sacrifice, page 14
“Wait!” the first man called, stepping forward. “We just—”
Two arms came around me, pulling me back a few feet, as Banner—the head of security—and Scoop rushed in, shoving and driving the three men back.
“You need to get the fuck out,” Banner demanded, grabbing the shirt of the first man and dragging him toward the exit.
Scoop and Drew rounded up the other two, but I didn’t miss the way they watched me as the men pushed and shoved them out the front doors.
The arms around me relaxed, and Chase stepped around so he was in front of me. “You good?”
I nodded. “Thanks.”
“Sorry it took a minute. There was a drunk guy outside trying to get in.”
I patted him on the shoulder, cringing when my fingers screamed in pain. “Dammit,” I cursed, chewing on my lip as I studied my hand.
Chase grabbed my tray from the floor. “Come on.” He nodded to the swinging doors that headed out the back. “Let’s get some ice on that before it starts to swell.”
I let him direct me out, waving at Gem when she hit me with a concerned frown as we passed the bar.
Chase knocked on Bishop’s office door. “Come in,” he called, and Chase pushed the door open, holding it as I stepped inside.
Bishop looked up. “The hell happened?” he questioned, leaning forward when he spotted me cradling my hand.
“I’ll grab some ice,” Chase said, slipping back out the door again.
“Sit.”
“I’m fine, really,” I protested, but quickly moved to one of the chairs facing his desk when he hit me with his, take no shit glare. “Some guys were just being creepy. They ordered water, told Gem they wanted me to deliver it, then started talking like they knew me or something. One of them grabbed me, and I hit him.”
Chase leaned back into his chair, a smirk on his face as he shook his head. “Of course you did.” He reached for his cell, and I let out a short laugh.
“Do we really have to call him?”
“We do. But not because I think you need him to run down here and check your boo-boo,” Bishop explained, flicking through the numbers before hitting the one he wanted and pressing it to his ear. “This is me just letting my brother know that shit happened, but his woman handled herself. Because that’s what we do... it’s what family does.”
I was still learning.
Learning what it felt like to be a part of something bigger than my tiny bubble and have people around me who actually gave a damn about my well-being.
And right now, instead of the voice of independence screaming like a siren inside my head, all I could think was how good it felt to know that I had people—family—watching my back. Out there at the bar, in here, at home with Kadey.
A family who had lightened the weight I was carrying so damn dramatically over the past month.
A real family.
HAWK
“Balloons!”
I chuckled, scribbling balloons onto the list as Kadey lifted her juice box, humming happily and swinging her legs as she sucked at the straw. “You have anything you want me to add to this, Calli?” I questioned loudly, tapping my pen as I eyed the almost page full of Kadey’s demands for her birthday.
It took a minute or so for me to realize that Calli hadn’t answered me from the kitchen, so I got to my feet and hefted Kadey onto my hip. We walked around the dining room table and through the archway to the kitchen.
Calli stood at the counter facing the window, gripping a large bowl with one hand while the other held a thick wooden spoon, but she wasn’t mixing or folding or stirring.
She was dead still.
“Calli?” I tried again, taking another step forward. Still no response. “Calli, what the hell—”
Reaching out, I gently touched her shoulder, and the bowl instantly went flying. Chocolate cake mixture sprayed from the bowl as it flipped through the air, coating the floor, the ceiling, the counters and appliances before the now mostly empty metal bowl clattered onto the ground.
“Oh my God!” She gasped, covering her mouth with her hands while Kadey let out a loud cackle of laughter and threw her arms into the air.
“Yay,” the little girl exclaimed. “Again!”
I placed her on the floor, allowing her to bounce around happily while I tried not to look at the absolute mess, instead focusing on my cousin. “I’m so sorry,” she said with a heavy sigh, instantly turning and pulling open the cupboards below the sink to grab the bucket of cleaning supplies. “I’ll clean it up.”
I stepped around the dancing toddler and gently removed the bucket from Calli’s hand, placing it on the counter. “What had you so distracted? I called out to you like three times.”
She shook her head, though it didn’t remove the worried frown that had settled into her brow. “It’s nothing.”
“Calli,” I warned. “Tell me.”
She pulled her lip between her teeth and glanced at the window she’d been staring out a few moments before the cake batter disaster. “I thought…” she started, pausing to scrunch up her nose. “I thought I saw a face.”
There was nothing like the idea of someone wandering around my fucking house at night to light a spark under me. I took one step toward the fridge, throwing open the cabinet above and reaching for the handgun I’d recently stashed up there.
With Kadey and Missy hanging around, I’d had to rethink where I kept emergency weapons.
“It was probably nothing,” Calli said, her shoulders slumping. Though the way her eyes kept flickering back to the window let me know it wasn’t. It had scared her. Enough that she had frozen up and blocked out everything else around her for those few minutes.
“Kadey,” I announced, drawing the little girl’s attention. “Just stay in here with Calli for a few minutes, okay.”
“Why?” she asked in this sing-song voice that almost made me crack a smile.
I gripped my gun tightly, trying to hide it slightly behind me, so it was one less question I had to answer. “Because… we’re playing… the floor is lava.” Calli rolled her eyes, but at least the worry seemed to be gone, replaced with an amused smile. “And the kitchen floor is safe, but the carpet is not.”
Kadey’s eyes grew wide as she looked at both the exits to the kitchen, one into the dining room and the other into the living room—both with carpet. “We’re trapped.”
“I’m gonna go see if I can find something to help us, okay?”
She nodded, and Calli scooped her up off the floor. “While Hawk is finding a way to save us, how about we wipe up some of this mess, huh?”
“Clean up, clean up,” Kadey sang as I stepped out of the kitchen and stormed through the living room to the back door. I could still hear her as I walked out onto the concrete porch and around the side to the kitchen window.
A ten-foot-wide space ran down that side of the house, leading to the driveway and garage. A tall fence on one side kept out any nosey neighbors, and a garden alongside the house held a few sparse plants in some dirt.
I walked past the kitchen to the front of the house, my finger firmly curled around the trigger of my gun. The street lights lit up the quiet street, and my eyes scanned the shadows for several minutes, searching for any signs of movement in my front yard or anyone else’s.
But there was nothing.
No strange noises or hidden surprises.
Quiet, just like it normally was—my brothers and I were the loudest bastards living there, but even we tried to be respectful to the neighbors.
Bishop lived directly across the road—I’d grown up in that house on this street. It was just a couple of blocks from the clubhouse, and while we all had rooms there, some of us preferred to have our own space.
Some of us wanted a home.
So a few of the boys and I had taken up residence here too. Any time a place on this street came up for sale, one of us snatched it up.
Feeling a little less tense than before, I turned and walked back down the side of the house, where the path was lit by the lights from inside—a path which would be a lot nicer if it had a few more plants in the garden. Maybe some flowers.
I made a mental note to get some to make the house a little more colorful and inviting.
Not for me.
But for a certain single mom and her energetic daughter, who I was hoping one day might see this as a place they’d want to live. I’d already cleaned out the rooms upstairs, where I’d been storing boxes and motorcycle parts—like any other single man—but they were mostly pushed to the side so Kadey could at least have a bed.
But I wanted to give her more.
I wanted to give her and Missy the fucking world.
And I couldn’t do that with some old boxes and a few greasy motorcycle shocks.
I paused for a second, looking down at the garden and gauging how many bushes I might need to cover the dirt when something caught my eye. I shoved my hand into my pocket, pulled out my cell, and switched on the flashlight.
“Motherfucker,” I cursed when the bright light illuminated a goddamn footprint in the dirt.
As if someone had stepped there to get a better look through the goddamn window.
I need to call Bish—
“Hawk!” Calli’s shout cut off any previous thoughts to the only one left—run.
I sprinted around the corner of the house, gun still in one hand, phone clenched tight in the other. My shoulder collided with the doorframe as I took the sharp turn from the patio, in through the rear doorway and down the short hall to the living room, holding my gun straight out, level, ready to end someone’s fucking life if they had their hands on my family.
But there was no one.
“What the hell?”
Calli held out her cell. “Dad said he tried to call you, but you didn’t answer.”
I plucked the phone from her hand. “You fucking psychic or something?”
“Just giving you a heads up, some guys came into the bar. Missy said they knew her name and were creeping her out. So she had to tell them to leave,” he explained, making me frown.
“Okay, why—”
“She told one of them with her fist.”
I smirked, shaking my head. “Of course she fucking did.”
“That’s what I said.” He laughed. “Her hand is a bit sore, but she was determined to go back to work, so I’ll just keep an eye out until her shift finishes.”
“Thanks, brother.”
I hung up and handed Calli her phone back, my mind racing a little as I considered the footprints in the garden.
Someone watching us.
The guys at the bar.
Maybe they weren’t connected.
But what if they were?
What the fuck is happening?
MISSY
“Guess your swing isn’t as good without a bat,” Hawk teased quietly as we stepped into his house.
He’d picked me up at the end of my shift every night since Backroad had opened last week. Sometimes he’d stay at his place with Calli and Kadey until I was done. Sometimes he’d help at the bar or on the front door. But without fail, he’d be there waiting when I was done.
The first night I’d walked into his house, certain that I would just collect Kadey and get him to take us home. And instead, I saw her curled up in the brand-new bed he’d bought for her in his spare room, my baby girl wrapped up in princess blankets and sleeping like a log.
Not on a bean bag in the back room of a strip club.
Or in my car, as I drove us home after my shift.
In a home.
In a bed.
He’d got just for her, where she could sleep all night.
And after that first night, I’d told that voice in my head to hush.
All I’d wanted for so long was for my daughter to know what love was. To make sure that she felt loved and cherished in ways I didn’t for a long time. And from the moment Hawk met Kadey, all he’d done was show her that. He protected her and provided things she needed with no questions asked or ulterior motives, just because he wanted to.
So every night this week, that’s what Hawk did.
And Kadey and I hadn’t spent a single night back in our apartment since.
These men—they don’t date. They see something they like, and that’s it.
That was it.
We stepped into the kitchen, and Hawk instantly grabbed my hips and lifted me onto the countertop.
He held out his hand, and I placed my hand in his. He examined it for a moment brushing his thumb delicately over my knuckles. “It looks okay. Probably just going to be a little bruised.”
“Did any of the boys mention those guys? Whether they talked to them?”
I’d asked Banner before my shift finished, and all he said was that they were gone. But I could still feel this weird chill settling over me every time I thought of the way they spoke. How they’d said they were excited to meet me, like I was some kind of celebrity.
“The boys didn’t say much,” he answered, swiping a stray hair back from my face. “We know one thing, though.”
“What’s that?” I asked, eager to find out what I was missing.
He smirked, placing his hands on the counter on either side of my thighs and leaning in, his lips a breath away from mine. “We know what happens when someone puts Baby in the corner.”
“Hey, how’s the hand?” Calli asked as she stepped into the kitchen.
I shrugged. “It’s not too bad, honestly.”
“That’s good. I was gonna get some ice out for you, but the tray was empty,” Calli noted with a frown before moving to the sink and filling a glass of water.
“Huh, wonder where the ice went,” Hawk said with a grin as he stepped back, my ‘you aren’t funny’ glare obviously amusing him. “I better fill that up.”
“Mm-hmm,” I agreed, trying to keep my cheeks from overheating. “You better do that.”
MISSY
“Can you call me before she goes to bed?”
Jared rolled his eyes, tossing Kadey’s overnight bag into the back of his car and slamming the door shut. “Sure, because you can’t go more than a couple of days without talking to her. I go weeks, Missy. You get that, right?”
“I’m just saying,” I protested, a little stronger than I usually would. “And she’s with me almost every night, so yeah, it’s hard when she’s not there.”
“Yeah, I bet your new boyfriend is really into family time, huh? I know what guys like him are like,” he roared, slamming his palm against the side of the car and waking Kadey, who had been sleeping in her booster sleep. His face quickly changed when he realized she was watching him, a wide grin growing. He pulled the door open, unclipping her belt and holding his hands out. “Hey, beautiful girl. Ready to come to Daddy’s for the weekend?”
She looked at me for a second before holding her hands out for him to pick her up.
“I’ll see you in a few days, okay?” I told her, leaning in and kissing her on the cheek. She was still sleepy, her eyes drifting between Jared and me, like she wasn’t quite sure what was happening, although we’d been talking about it all morning. “I love you.”
“Love you, Mommy,” she murmured, releasing a huge yawn as Jared put her into her booster in his car and closed the door.
He reached for the driver’s door, pulling it open but pausing for a second. “Have fun with your criminal boyfriend.” He ducked in and slammed the door shut.
That was him.
Get the last word in and run before anyone can say anything else.
That was how he felt good about himself.
I watched him pull out of the parking lot, waiting until he was gone from sight before leaning back against my car and releasing the breath I’d been holding.
Sometimes I wish I could tell him to go to hell where he belonged.
These weekends made me so anxious, knowing Kadey was with him, and while I trusted him to look after her and give her everything she needed—he just didn’t know her like I did. He didn’t naturally pick up on her emotions, and there were times when he had all his friends around, and she’d be too shy to ask him for things.
He had a right to spend time with her.
And Jared was a good dad.
I just wished he was a great one.
***
I’d decided to take a shift that night, knowing it would at least keep my mind occupied.
When I walked in, Hawk and some of his brothers were sitting at one of the larger tables with another man I’d met last week—the accountant who would be keeping a close eye on all the spending.
I was well early, so I grabbed a glass and poured myself a soda before taking a seat at the bar. I was happy to simply chill out for the next hour or so before things got crazy.
There was a big NBA game on, and we were expecting our biggest crowd yet.
It was exciting to be part of something, watch this place grow, and learn and grow with it. Bishop had already organized someone to come in and help us understand how to make cocktails and really work on our skills.
It was a far cry from being a girl shaking her ass and handing out watered-down liquor.
Not to mention the sexy-as-hell man who had completely consumed me.
I loved coming home to him at night.
And waking up to him in the morning.
Just having someone there to share everything and talk about my day with.
After a few minutes, Hawk got up and came and joined me at the bar, placing a plastic bag in front of me. “Got you a present.”
“I see you wrapped it for me,” I jested, leaning into his shoulder as I pulled at the tied plastic handles at the top. I leaned in as I pulled it open, my heart stalling for a second when I suddenly realized what was inside. “Hawk…” I whispered, reaching in and taking one out, my eyes wide as I held it up.
EpiPens.
At least six of them.
“One for my house, one for your car, my truck, daycare—”
“Do you have any idea how much these cost?”
His eyebrow raised just slightly. “I bought them this morning. I think I know.”
Two arms came around me, pulling me back a few feet, as Banner—the head of security—and Scoop rushed in, shoving and driving the three men back.
“You need to get the fuck out,” Banner demanded, grabbing the shirt of the first man and dragging him toward the exit.
Scoop and Drew rounded up the other two, but I didn’t miss the way they watched me as the men pushed and shoved them out the front doors.
The arms around me relaxed, and Chase stepped around so he was in front of me. “You good?”
I nodded. “Thanks.”
“Sorry it took a minute. There was a drunk guy outside trying to get in.”
I patted him on the shoulder, cringing when my fingers screamed in pain. “Dammit,” I cursed, chewing on my lip as I studied my hand.
Chase grabbed my tray from the floor. “Come on.” He nodded to the swinging doors that headed out the back. “Let’s get some ice on that before it starts to swell.”
I let him direct me out, waving at Gem when she hit me with a concerned frown as we passed the bar.
Chase knocked on Bishop’s office door. “Come in,” he called, and Chase pushed the door open, holding it as I stepped inside.
Bishop looked up. “The hell happened?” he questioned, leaning forward when he spotted me cradling my hand.
“I’ll grab some ice,” Chase said, slipping back out the door again.
“Sit.”
“I’m fine, really,” I protested, but quickly moved to one of the chairs facing his desk when he hit me with his, take no shit glare. “Some guys were just being creepy. They ordered water, told Gem they wanted me to deliver it, then started talking like they knew me or something. One of them grabbed me, and I hit him.”
Chase leaned back into his chair, a smirk on his face as he shook his head. “Of course you did.” He reached for his cell, and I let out a short laugh.
“Do we really have to call him?”
“We do. But not because I think you need him to run down here and check your boo-boo,” Bishop explained, flicking through the numbers before hitting the one he wanted and pressing it to his ear. “This is me just letting my brother know that shit happened, but his woman handled herself. Because that’s what we do... it’s what family does.”
I was still learning.
Learning what it felt like to be a part of something bigger than my tiny bubble and have people around me who actually gave a damn about my well-being.
And right now, instead of the voice of independence screaming like a siren inside my head, all I could think was how good it felt to know that I had people—family—watching my back. Out there at the bar, in here, at home with Kadey.
A family who had lightened the weight I was carrying so damn dramatically over the past month.
A real family.
HAWK
“Balloons!”
I chuckled, scribbling balloons onto the list as Kadey lifted her juice box, humming happily and swinging her legs as she sucked at the straw. “You have anything you want me to add to this, Calli?” I questioned loudly, tapping my pen as I eyed the almost page full of Kadey’s demands for her birthday.
It took a minute or so for me to realize that Calli hadn’t answered me from the kitchen, so I got to my feet and hefted Kadey onto my hip. We walked around the dining room table and through the archway to the kitchen.
Calli stood at the counter facing the window, gripping a large bowl with one hand while the other held a thick wooden spoon, but she wasn’t mixing or folding or stirring.
She was dead still.
“Calli?” I tried again, taking another step forward. Still no response. “Calli, what the hell—”
Reaching out, I gently touched her shoulder, and the bowl instantly went flying. Chocolate cake mixture sprayed from the bowl as it flipped through the air, coating the floor, the ceiling, the counters and appliances before the now mostly empty metal bowl clattered onto the ground.
“Oh my God!” She gasped, covering her mouth with her hands while Kadey let out a loud cackle of laughter and threw her arms into the air.
“Yay,” the little girl exclaimed. “Again!”
I placed her on the floor, allowing her to bounce around happily while I tried not to look at the absolute mess, instead focusing on my cousin. “I’m so sorry,” she said with a heavy sigh, instantly turning and pulling open the cupboards below the sink to grab the bucket of cleaning supplies. “I’ll clean it up.”
I stepped around the dancing toddler and gently removed the bucket from Calli’s hand, placing it on the counter. “What had you so distracted? I called out to you like three times.”
She shook her head, though it didn’t remove the worried frown that had settled into her brow. “It’s nothing.”
“Calli,” I warned. “Tell me.”
She pulled her lip between her teeth and glanced at the window she’d been staring out a few moments before the cake batter disaster. “I thought…” she started, pausing to scrunch up her nose. “I thought I saw a face.”
There was nothing like the idea of someone wandering around my fucking house at night to light a spark under me. I took one step toward the fridge, throwing open the cabinet above and reaching for the handgun I’d recently stashed up there.
With Kadey and Missy hanging around, I’d had to rethink where I kept emergency weapons.
“It was probably nothing,” Calli said, her shoulders slumping. Though the way her eyes kept flickering back to the window let me know it wasn’t. It had scared her. Enough that she had frozen up and blocked out everything else around her for those few minutes.
“Kadey,” I announced, drawing the little girl’s attention. “Just stay in here with Calli for a few minutes, okay.”
“Why?” she asked in this sing-song voice that almost made me crack a smile.
I gripped my gun tightly, trying to hide it slightly behind me, so it was one less question I had to answer. “Because… we’re playing… the floor is lava.” Calli rolled her eyes, but at least the worry seemed to be gone, replaced with an amused smile. “And the kitchen floor is safe, but the carpet is not.”
Kadey’s eyes grew wide as she looked at both the exits to the kitchen, one into the dining room and the other into the living room—both with carpet. “We’re trapped.”
“I’m gonna go see if I can find something to help us, okay?”
She nodded, and Calli scooped her up off the floor. “While Hawk is finding a way to save us, how about we wipe up some of this mess, huh?”
“Clean up, clean up,” Kadey sang as I stepped out of the kitchen and stormed through the living room to the back door. I could still hear her as I walked out onto the concrete porch and around the side to the kitchen window.
A ten-foot-wide space ran down that side of the house, leading to the driveway and garage. A tall fence on one side kept out any nosey neighbors, and a garden alongside the house held a few sparse plants in some dirt.
I walked past the kitchen to the front of the house, my finger firmly curled around the trigger of my gun. The street lights lit up the quiet street, and my eyes scanned the shadows for several minutes, searching for any signs of movement in my front yard or anyone else’s.
But there was nothing.
No strange noises or hidden surprises.
Quiet, just like it normally was—my brothers and I were the loudest bastards living there, but even we tried to be respectful to the neighbors.
Bishop lived directly across the road—I’d grown up in that house on this street. It was just a couple of blocks from the clubhouse, and while we all had rooms there, some of us preferred to have our own space.
Some of us wanted a home.
So a few of the boys and I had taken up residence here too. Any time a place on this street came up for sale, one of us snatched it up.
Feeling a little less tense than before, I turned and walked back down the side of the house, where the path was lit by the lights from inside—a path which would be a lot nicer if it had a few more plants in the garden. Maybe some flowers.
I made a mental note to get some to make the house a little more colorful and inviting.
Not for me.
But for a certain single mom and her energetic daughter, who I was hoping one day might see this as a place they’d want to live. I’d already cleaned out the rooms upstairs, where I’d been storing boxes and motorcycle parts—like any other single man—but they were mostly pushed to the side so Kadey could at least have a bed.
But I wanted to give her more.
I wanted to give her and Missy the fucking world.
And I couldn’t do that with some old boxes and a few greasy motorcycle shocks.
I paused for a second, looking down at the garden and gauging how many bushes I might need to cover the dirt when something caught my eye. I shoved my hand into my pocket, pulled out my cell, and switched on the flashlight.
“Motherfucker,” I cursed when the bright light illuminated a goddamn footprint in the dirt.
As if someone had stepped there to get a better look through the goddamn window.
I need to call Bish—
“Hawk!” Calli’s shout cut off any previous thoughts to the only one left—run.
I sprinted around the corner of the house, gun still in one hand, phone clenched tight in the other. My shoulder collided with the doorframe as I took the sharp turn from the patio, in through the rear doorway and down the short hall to the living room, holding my gun straight out, level, ready to end someone’s fucking life if they had their hands on my family.
But there was no one.
“What the hell?”
Calli held out her cell. “Dad said he tried to call you, but you didn’t answer.”
I plucked the phone from her hand. “You fucking psychic or something?”
“Just giving you a heads up, some guys came into the bar. Missy said they knew her name and were creeping her out. So she had to tell them to leave,” he explained, making me frown.
“Okay, why—”
“She told one of them with her fist.”
I smirked, shaking my head. “Of course she fucking did.”
“That’s what I said.” He laughed. “Her hand is a bit sore, but she was determined to go back to work, so I’ll just keep an eye out until her shift finishes.”
“Thanks, brother.”
I hung up and handed Calli her phone back, my mind racing a little as I considered the footprints in the garden.
Someone watching us.
The guys at the bar.
Maybe they weren’t connected.
But what if they were?
What the fuck is happening?
MISSY
“Guess your swing isn’t as good without a bat,” Hawk teased quietly as we stepped into his house.
He’d picked me up at the end of my shift every night since Backroad had opened last week. Sometimes he’d stay at his place with Calli and Kadey until I was done. Sometimes he’d help at the bar or on the front door. But without fail, he’d be there waiting when I was done.
The first night I’d walked into his house, certain that I would just collect Kadey and get him to take us home. And instead, I saw her curled up in the brand-new bed he’d bought for her in his spare room, my baby girl wrapped up in princess blankets and sleeping like a log.
Not on a bean bag in the back room of a strip club.
Or in my car, as I drove us home after my shift.
In a home.
In a bed.
He’d got just for her, where she could sleep all night.
And after that first night, I’d told that voice in my head to hush.
All I’d wanted for so long was for my daughter to know what love was. To make sure that she felt loved and cherished in ways I didn’t for a long time. And from the moment Hawk met Kadey, all he’d done was show her that. He protected her and provided things she needed with no questions asked or ulterior motives, just because he wanted to.
So every night this week, that’s what Hawk did.
And Kadey and I hadn’t spent a single night back in our apartment since.
These men—they don’t date. They see something they like, and that’s it.
That was it.
We stepped into the kitchen, and Hawk instantly grabbed my hips and lifted me onto the countertop.
He held out his hand, and I placed my hand in his. He examined it for a moment brushing his thumb delicately over my knuckles. “It looks okay. Probably just going to be a little bruised.”
“Did any of the boys mention those guys? Whether they talked to them?”
I’d asked Banner before my shift finished, and all he said was that they were gone. But I could still feel this weird chill settling over me every time I thought of the way they spoke. How they’d said they were excited to meet me, like I was some kind of celebrity.
“The boys didn’t say much,” he answered, swiping a stray hair back from my face. “We know one thing, though.”
“What’s that?” I asked, eager to find out what I was missing.
He smirked, placing his hands on the counter on either side of my thighs and leaning in, his lips a breath away from mine. “We know what happens when someone puts Baby in the corner.”
“Hey, how’s the hand?” Calli asked as she stepped into the kitchen.
I shrugged. “It’s not too bad, honestly.”
“That’s good. I was gonna get some ice out for you, but the tray was empty,” Calli noted with a frown before moving to the sink and filling a glass of water.
“Huh, wonder where the ice went,” Hawk said with a grin as he stepped back, my ‘you aren’t funny’ glare obviously amusing him. “I better fill that up.”
“Mm-hmm,” I agreed, trying to keep my cheeks from overheating. “You better do that.”
MISSY
“Can you call me before she goes to bed?”
Jared rolled his eyes, tossing Kadey’s overnight bag into the back of his car and slamming the door shut. “Sure, because you can’t go more than a couple of days without talking to her. I go weeks, Missy. You get that, right?”
“I’m just saying,” I protested, a little stronger than I usually would. “And she’s with me almost every night, so yeah, it’s hard when she’s not there.”
“Yeah, I bet your new boyfriend is really into family time, huh? I know what guys like him are like,” he roared, slamming his palm against the side of the car and waking Kadey, who had been sleeping in her booster sleep. His face quickly changed when he realized she was watching him, a wide grin growing. He pulled the door open, unclipping her belt and holding his hands out. “Hey, beautiful girl. Ready to come to Daddy’s for the weekend?”
She looked at me for a second before holding her hands out for him to pick her up.
“I’ll see you in a few days, okay?” I told her, leaning in and kissing her on the cheek. She was still sleepy, her eyes drifting between Jared and me, like she wasn’t quite sure what was happening, although we’d been talking about it all morning. “I love you.”
“Love you, Mommy,” she murmured, releasing a huge yawn as Jared put her into her booster in his car and closed the door.
He reached for the driver’s door, pulling it open but pausing for a second. “Have fun with your criminal boyfriend.” He ducked in and slammed the door shut.
That was him.
Get the last word in and run before anyone can say anything else.
That was how he felt good about himself.
I watched him pull out of the parking lot, waiting until he was gone from sight before leaning back against my car and releasing the breath I’d been holding.
Sometimes I wish I could tell him to go to hell where he belonged.
These weekends made me so anxious, knowing Kadey was with him, and while I trusted him to look after her and give her everything she needed—he just didn’t know her like I did. He didn’t naturally pick up on her emotions, and there were times when he had all his friends around, and she’d be too shy to ask him for things.
He had a right to spend time with her.
And Jared was a good dad.
I just wished he was a great one.
***
I’d decided to take a shift that night, knowing it would at least keep my mind occupied.
When I walked in, Hawk and some of his brothers were sitting at one of the larger tables with another man I’d met last week—the accountant who would be keeping a close eye on all the spending.
I was well early, so I grabbed a glass and poured myself a soda before taking a seat at the bar. I was happy to simply chill out for the next hour or so before things got crazy.
There was a big NBA game on, and we were expecting our biggest crowd yet.
It was exciting to be part of something, watch this place grow, and learn and grow with it. Bishop had already organized someone to come in and help us understand how to make cocktails and really work on our skills.
It was a far cry from being a girl shaking her ass and handing out watered-down liquor.
Not to mention the sexy-as-hell man who had completely consumed me.
I loved coming home to him at night.
And waking up to him in the morning.
Just having someone there to share everything and talk about my day with.
After a few minutes, Hawk got up and came and joined me at the bar, placing a plastic bag in front of me. “Got you a present.”
“I see you wrapped it for me,” I jested, leaning into his shoulder as I pulled at the tied plastic handles at the top. I leaned in as I pulled it open, my heart stalling for a second when I suddenly realized what was inside. “Hawk…” I whispered, reaching in and taking one out, my eyes wide as I held it up.
EpiPens.
At least six of them.
“One for my house, one for your car, my truck, daycare—”
“Do you have any idea how much these cost?”
His eyebrow raised just slightly. “I bought them this morning. I think I know.”
