Dark Guardian (Black Hoods MC #3) - Avelyn Paige Page 0,59

is any of this possible? I kissed my son on his forehead the night before I left, the last memory I had of him before Gina told me he’d died. Now, my boy has his own kid. My brain is on the brink of explosion.

I look at Grace, Natalie, and Kevin, barely able to wrap my head around how quickly things can change. Just a few months ago, I’d been a lonely man on the edge of fifty with nobody to come home to and only my club to rely on.

Now look at me. I have a woman, kids—a family for the first time in my life. The weight of it crashes down on me until the dam breaks under the incredible force of happiness I feel.

“Holy shit,” I mumble, burying my face in my hands.

“Howy shit.”

Lifting my head, I look at the toddler across from me. He’s finished his donut, and now he’s just grinning at me, knowing full well that the words he’d just repeated were ones he shouldn’t have said, and not giving a single fuck.

“He really is your grandson,” Kevin quips.

The laughter that erupts from my chest makes it hard to breathe. I don’t even care, though. Oxygen doesn’t matter right now. All the shit that had gone on in the past few days melts away, leaving only this little boy and me, and the fact that his father is the son I’d lost when I was only twenty years old.

As the others join in on my laughter, I look into Grace’s eyes, knowing this is just the beginning. I’ve only known her a few short weeks, and already she’s given me my family. My son. God, even thinking that word is strange to me. My son and I have a lot of catching up to do. A grandson. Kevin and Natalie are mine now. Hashtag saw to that with his paperwork. Everything that I wanted in my life is right here in front of me. Every fucking last thing.

All of that is enough to keep the joy of my laughter going, because I know that even after this moment, after the laughter has faded away, the joy I feel will stay with me. Now that we all have each other, the joy will stay with all of us.

I’ve found my home, and I’m never letting it go.

Lindsey

Seeing him lying so still in that bed will haunt me until the day I die.

Karma has always been larger than life. An impenetrable force to be reckoned with. Always at the ready to tear down the world and kick some ass. But that’s exactly why he’s here in this bed, with so many tubes and wires coming out of him, isn’t it? His need to protect me going too far over the edge, and now he could die and leave me forever. A forever I wasn’t sure I wanted until this very moment. Leaving me alone. Stuck here with an empty space where our child once grew.

I’d never thought much about having children until after I had finished college and settled down, but those two little lines on that test changed it all for me. Since then, I’d planned for our future, and how we’d tell my uncle when the time was right. I’d thought about what that baby would look like, and who he or she would grow up to be. And now... now that baby will never be, and any future babies will never come along.

We tried to save the baby. We tried to save your uterus, but the damage was too great. The doctor’s sorrowful words still haunt me.

Karma had so many hopes for the future, so many plans. When I’d told him about the pregnancy, and after we’d both gotten over the initial shock of it, he'd been over the moon.

From that moment on, he rarely left my side. He was my constant, gorgeous, yet annoyingly ever-present shadow. I couldn’t get near anyone without seeing him right behind me, which made classes fun. No one expects to see a beast of a man like Karma sitting in on a chick lit class. But he went with me, rolling his eyes every single second until it ended. He loved our baby, and so did I. And then it was ripped away from us both in a blink of an eye. Our little miracle made from love, just… gone.

Its absence throbs in my numb and broken womb. A womb that will never carry life in it