“Imagine if you would, a man slapping me across the face and two men seeing it. One being some man that knows me but doesn’t know me that well. Then one of those men being your father.”
I did imagine it.
My father, obviously, would’ve murdered the man right then and there. The other man would’ve probably made sure that the guy didn’t hit her again, but not much more than that before calling the police.
I felt a lump start to form in my throat.
“A man that doesn’t have feelings for my baby girl doesn’t just up and hurt someone the way Sin hurt Brees,” she pointed out. “We’re not dumb, baby girl. There were major feelings there.”
I blew out a sigh of relief, thinking that this might go easier than I expected if they knew that there’d always been something there for me.
“Not to mention, we’re curious people. And when our baby girl moves halfway across the country to work at a jail, and that same jail is the jail that her savior happened to go to, we tend to put two and two together and get four,” she continued, amusement showing on her face.
My lips twitched. “I never said you were dumb.”
“No,” she agreed, “but you have to admit, you weren’t hiding your feelings very well at all.”
She did have a point.
But then again, I hadn’t really been trying to hide my feelings as much as I was just trying to get to the man that those feelings were for, and at the time, I hadn’t wanted anyone to get in my way.
“Anyway,” she continued, reading my thoughts as only a mother could, “I just let you be, because I knew that you needed this. Whatever that is.” She gestured to my ring.
“It’s forever,” I admitted. “We’ve spent the last few years battling the feelings, and obviously we’re both tired of trying.”
She snorted. “I…”
“Babe!” Dad shouted out down the hall. “There’s someone here with a really massive goddamn cake that I’m sure cost a couple hundred bucks, and I have no fuckin’ clue where to put it!”
Mom sighed as she picked up her cut off the bed.
On it said ‘Property of Shiva’ in worn white embroidered letters.
Shiva was my father’s ‘road name’ that the club had given him.
Upon seeing it on my mother’s shoulders, I suddenly yearned for the same exact thing.
Property of Sin had a nice ring to it, didn’t it?
“Come on,” I gestured to June. “I want to see my favorite people in the world and remind them who the best aunt is.”
“Who their only aunt is,” June corrected me, bumping me with her shoulder.
I scoffed. “Best and only.”
When we arrived back outside to the party, it was to see that quite a few people had arrived.
One of those few people being my grandfather and his wife, Sawyer.
“Papa!” I called out loudly.
My grandfather whirled, still spry for his age, and grinned like a fuckin’ loon when he saw me.
Then I was running toward him, hurdling myself into his arms like I’d done a thousand times over my lifetime.
When his big arms closed around me, I felt like I was home.
“Glad to see you here, baby girl.” Silas Mackenzie was a rough and gruff biker, but he had a soft spot for his family. Especially for his girls. “How was the trip over?”
The trip over wasn’t nearly as boring as it’d once been. Especially since I’d spent the trip pressed up against a certain man’s muscular back.
“It was great,” I said. “I got to stop at my favorite Arby’s.”
He grumbled under his breath. “That place is shit.”
The place was shit, but it was still good.
“You say tomato, I say tomato.” I shrugged.
June was there beside me in the next moment, and my grandfather let me go momentarily to wrap her up in a hug, too.
“Junie,” he rumbled. “Glad to see you brought our wayward grandson home.”
Her eyes gleamed. “I’ve decided to try to do it on a more permanent basis soon.” Her eyes trailed over to me, and then to Sin. “You mind if I steal Blaise for a few seconds?”
My grandfather winked. “Sure thing. Because there’s a little shithead that’s been avoiding the hell out of me, and I see he’s penned in right now and won’t be able to do it today.”
I looked where he was looking to see him staring at Zach, who was standing next to the fence with his back to it, while his mother and father spoke with him not a few feet