I felt the sting of tears in my eyes and she let me go, looking away quickly and I gave her that play.
Okay, so, I guess Aunt Bette inwardly accepted Tack, his kids and my biker babe lifestyle too.
Good to know.
My dampening eyes found my old man’s.
He was standing, one arm thrown around Rush’s shoulders, but his attention was all on me and he was grinning his sexy grin at me.
Yes, I thought, sitting in the sun, my girls around me, holding his gaze, taking in his smile and carrying his child, Aunt Bette was absolutely right.
Sometimes it happens in weird ways that included fights, blood, drunkenness, kidnappings and pregnancies.
But dreams came true.
* * * * *
“It was good form, your brothers not pulling knives or shooting anyone when Mitch, Brock and Hawk’s team beat your team in baseball,” I noted, lying cuddled na**d in bed with a na**d Tack in his room in the Compound.
It was late. The barbeque was over. Aunt Bette and Uncle Marsh were at their hotel. Tab and Rush were at home. And Tack and I decided to keep partying in private.
“Lawson didn’t tell me he had a secret weapon,” Tack mumbled. “Fuck, you see that kid hit?”
“Yep.”
“Jesus,” Tack muttered. “Got an arm on him too. He’s only eleven.”
“I noticed that too.”
“And Lucas’s boys weren’t far behind him. Older, f**kin’ powerhouses.”
“Yep.”
“We didn’t stand a chance.”
“Nope.”
Tack fell silent.
I did too.
Then I broke it with, “Rush make his decision?”
Rush had graduated high school and Rush told his father he was thinking of joining Chaos. I was surprised this wasn’t a given but, for some reason, it wasn’t.
“Not yet.”
“What’s holding him back?”
“I don’t know, maybe our shit gettin’ a woman he cares about stabbed five times?”
My head popped up from his shoulder and I looked through the dark at his shadowed face.
“Me?”
“Only some shit you can shield your kids from, darlin’, my kids ain’t dumb and their mother had a big mouth that also was loud, both of those making it harder to shield them at all. They heard me and Naomi fightin’. They heard what it was about. Hard as I tried, bitch wouldn’t shut up. This only led to what happened to you. And, babe, you know Pipe went down.”
Only weeks after my drama, Naomi’s old man had gotten into his car, started it and got blown to smithereens. Lescheva might have been out but the Russians kept good books. They knew who owed them a debt and those kinds of debts got paid.