“I get you, but—”
“LeLane’s hired me when I was pregnant,” she cut him off to say. “They work with my schedule as best as they can. They deserve loyalty. I want to be a stylist, but I want to make it so I’m a stylist. Not be giving some woman fabulous hair and thinking that Aaron was the one who made it so I could do that.”
Joker felt his lips twitch.
“So, I’ll take support,” she declared. “And he’s right. Travis is okay with this schedule, and if Aaron stops being a jerk, then it’ll settle even more for him because he’ll feel it’s settled for all of us. I’ll work for a while at LeLane’s, and with Travis’s support money coming in, save up for my own education. Once I’m there and I can give it to myself, I’ll go for it.”
“You’re turnin’ down a quarter of a million that, bottom line, that guy owes you, baby,” he said gently.
“I’m turning down guilt money that will make him feel better for being so mean to me,” she returned. “I don’t care if he feels better or not. I don’t care about him at all. I’ll take his support money for Travis because he’s Travis’s dad. Other than that, he doesn’t exist for me.”
He grinned at her.
“Your call,” he said.
“It is. Now, it’s time to feed my family. Are you doing the cooking and I’m doing Travis, or the other way around?”
“You ever gonna make that chili you promised me?”
She smiled at him. “Guess I’m doing the cooking.”
Joker smiled back then grabbed hold of her boy.
He dragged him up his chest as the kid squealed.
When he got him face to face, he said, “That means I get you.”
And for his troubles, he got clocked in the face with a duck.
*
Three weeks later, Joker was walking from Ride to the Compound when his phone rang.
He pulled it out, saw who was calling and put it to his ear.
“Yo, Lee.”
“You busy right now?”
“Nope,” he answered, seeing as he wasn’t. Carissa’s ex had Travis so she had an afternoon shift. He was done with what he wanted to get done on his new build that day, so he was headed to the Compound to have a few beers with his brothers.
“Need you at Children’s Hospital,” Lee told him.
Joker stopped dead.
“Why?”
“Callin’ a marker, brother,” Lee said quietly.
Fuck.
“I’m on my bike,” Joker told him.
“Maternity,” Lee replied.
Shit.
“Got it. I’ll be there.”
He shoved his phone in his pocket and went to his bike.
Then he rode to the hospital.
He hit maternity only to see Lee wasn’t alone.
Hank was with him.
“I’m here, what?” he asked when he stopped close.
“Need you to suit up,” Lee told him.
“What?”
Lee knocked on a door. It opened, a nurse peered out, looked at Joker, then raised her hand and crooked her finger.
Joker looked to Lee, to Hank, then to the woman.
He followed her.
Once inside the door, he suited up. Covers over his boots. Cut off and gown over his tee.
Once done, she led him to a room that had little domed cots.
She stopped beside one and he stopped with her, looked down, and stared at the tiniest baby he’d seen in his life. The kid couldn’t be bigger than his hand. He had tubes in his mouth and in his thin arm, cotton taped over his eyes, yellowed mocha skin, tufts of soft black curly hair.
“Preemie,” the nurse said softly. “Addict.”
Those two words sliced through his stomach, and Joker cut his eyes to her.
“She’ll be good,” she said. “She got this far, no stopping her now.”
Joker looked down at the baby, who was not a he but a she.
“Can she be held?” he asked.
“No, but she can be touched,” the nurse answered. “Through those holes in the sides. Let me get you a glove.”
She got him a glove.
Joker put on the glove, shoved through, and he was right. The kid was as big as his hand.
But she seemed so fragile, he hesitated to touch her. Instead, he pressed his finger to her palm.
And when he did, her fingers curled right around.
Tight.
“Told you she’ll be good,” the nurse muttered.
Joker stared at the baby girl, feeling something soak into him through his fingertip.
Then, gently he pulled his finger away and his hand out of the hole.
He nodded to the nurse and walked to the door. He took off the shit he’d put on and walked back into the hall.
“Do not fuck with me on this,” he growled to Lee.
“Woman came in, had the kid, took off. She barely hit recovery before she vanished. No one’s seen her since,” Hank told him. “It’s been a week and a half.”
Joker glared at him.
“She was high when she came in. Deserted her baby,” Hank went on.
“And how many people out there are in line for this kid?” Joker asked.
“None,” Hank stated.
“Mixed race,” Lee said quietly, and Joker narrowed his eyes at him, knowing that didn’t mean dick to people who wanted a kid. “Born preemie, addicted, serious shit, Joke. And all systems are go now, but no one has any clue what’s gonna happen with that kid. How she’ll grow up. How she’ll develop. There could be problems down the line, and those problems and their likelihood, those in line have backed off. That little girl needs someone special who can suck it up and don’t give a fuck what they’ll face, long’s they got a kid to love. Now, if we don’t find people who got it in ’em to give her a beautiful life anyway, she grows up in the system.”
“So what you’re sayin’ is, you want me to go to my high school history teacher who’s been through the wringer with his wife and offer up a kid with issues and a mom that’s disappeared?” he asked.
“You think for a second they’ll say no, then no, I don’t want that shit,” Lee returned.
“My guess, they won’t blink at the kid. But the mom has disappeared. She comes back—”
“She won’t come back,” Hank stated.
“If she comes back—” Joker started again.
“She won’t come back,” Lee said firmly.
Joker stared at him.
Then he asked, “Dad?”
“Dad’s out of the picture,” Hank said.
Fuck.
They knew the dad.
They also knew the mom.
They knew everything.