She had no clue how right she was.
“Speaking of her aunt, where is Audrey?” I asked.
She yawned and settled back into her chair.
“Last I checked, she was in the room with Fender.”
I found a smile as my eyelids started getting heavy.
“And Fender is fine, the last I heard. He is being released tomorrow. What is she doing in there?”
Mina’s eyes blinked open slightly.
“When I went to check, she was telling him every single thing she did wrong.”
I just shook my head.
“God help him.”
Epilogue
A beard is the difference between ‘Mr.’ and ‘Sir.’
-Fact of life
Ghost
Eight months later
“How’s your wife, man?” Sebastian asked me.
I offered him my only open hand, which was my left, and said, “She’s fine.”
Sebastian grinned and clasped my hand without shaking so as not to wake the sleeping child cradled in my arm.
“That’s the best news I’ve heard all day.”
I looked to his side where his daughter, Blaise, stood. “And how are you?”
I’d gotten to know my old club members’ kids quite a bit over the last eight months, and I was fairly sure all of them liked me. All of them, that is, but Blaise.
She was too much like her father. All quiet and watchful. I never knew where I stood with her.
“I’m fine,” Blaise replied. “You look different from Pop’s pictures.”
I blinked.
“Blaise…” Sebastian warned in a low tone.
I waved his concern away.
“I was burned pretty badly,” I said, holding out my arm. “See that uneven skin?” She nodded. “That’s from a burn. The ones on my face were fixed, but in doing so, the shape of my face changed enough that I no longer look the same as I once did.”
She nodded solemnly.
“Blaise!”
I turned to find Sienna barreling down on us. “Do you want to play outside with the water guns?”
Blaise looked up at her father. Sebastian nodded, and Blaise ran off with my girl.
“So polite,” I muttered. “Can you teach my girl that?”
He laughed. “It might be too late for that one. She looks like she’s already set in her ways. This one?” Sebastian ran his hands down Gianna’s thick mop of curls. “Maybe not too late.”
I chuckled.
“Here,” I offered my newborn baby girl to him, and he gladly accepted.
He cradled her expertly to his chest, and looked down at her with such loving adoration that I felt the love that was wafting off of him.
But, that was the way with these big, life-hardened men. They loved their kids, and they loved their club members’ kids.
A sound caught my eye, and I grinned when I saw Truth and Verity’s young son getting belly raspberries from Trance. The little boy was laughing so hard that he could barely draw in a breath.
“I like this, you know.”
Sebastian looked up. “What?”
“Our blended family. You can’t even tell where one chapter ends and the other begins. It’s like that line doesn’t exist for us,” I explained.
His mouth turned up into a grin.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come home?” Sebastian asked.
All of them asked.
Every single one of them.
Loki. Trance. Torren. Kettle. Sebastian. Silas. Sterling. If I saw one of them, they asked.
They missed me. I missed them.
But Mooresville was our home now, and Benton, Louisiana held a lot of bad memories for my wife and I.
This place was a fresh start for us.
“No,” I answered honestly. “I love Benton. It’ll always be my home…but we’re happy here now. This is where we’re staying.”
Sebastian sighed. “I was afraid you’d say that.”
He then handed me back my baby girl, who I curled into my chest.
With one hand, Sebastian lifted his fingers to his mouth and whistled.
The piercing sound broke the quiet conversation around him.
“Dad!” Sebastian called. “You got that cut?”
Silas broke off from his conversation with Big Papa and weaved through the tables that were occupied by other members of the club.
Once every few months, we got together for a club-wide picnic/family party of sorts between the two chapters. This particular party was held exactly one month after Gianna’s birth, and it was more of a celebration of her birth rather than just our normal party. There was cake, gifts and a good time to be had as we all celebrated my daughter’s birth.
Silas picked up a box from the gift table on his way over to us, the only present that was on the table that wasn’t wrapped in fucking pink, and stopped at the table next to where Sebastian and I were standing.
He dropped the box on the table, tore off the top and shook out the contents onto the table in front of me.
“This is for you.”
My throat thickened as I reached out and took it.
“I hope that you know that you’re always welcome back here with us,” Silas said. “You’re a fine man, and one I wouldn’t mind having in my club if you ever decide that Benton might be home again.”
My smile was almost wistful.
“Ohh.” I heard my wife’s hitched voice say.
“This one is yours.”
That’s when Mina, who I hadn’t realized had even come up beside me, burst out crying.
“I can’t believe you found it!” she cried out, reaching out to take her folded leather vest from him. “I threw that out!”
Silas smile was instant.
“Yes, you threw it out, but you did it in front of four old ladies. We thought that one day you might want it back,” Baylee, Sebastian’s wife, broke in. “Though, at the time, we only thought you’d want it back as a remembrance of your old man. We certainly didn’t think that you’d need it because your old man came back from the dead.”
I grinned at Baylee. “Thank you.”
She winked. “We made some modifications, though. We think you’re going to like them.”
Mina held out hers, and the smile on my face grew wide.
“Property of Ghost,” I read. “I fuckin’ like it.”
She tossed me a withering look. “You’re holding our kid. Watch your mouth.”
I shrugged unrepentantly. “My bad.”
She rolled her eyes and then threw her ‘Property of Ghost’ vest on over her shoulders. The buttery leather settled perfectly over her body, and a feeling of contentment settled over me at seeing my name on her.
“I like it,” I declared.
She stuck out her tongue.
“Yours is different, too.”
That came from Big Papa.
My brows rose, and I gestured to Mina. “Hold it up for me to see, or take her.”
The baby was taken from my arms, not by Mina but by Fender.
He settled her into the crook of his arm and watched the proceedings.
“Thanks,” I said, then took the leather in both hands and held it out in front of me.
“We changed your name,” Silas began. “But that’s not where the real change is, it’s here.”
He gestured to the back, and I turned it around, my stomach clenching when I saw not one rocker, but two, at the bottom of my cut. One rocker read Mooresville, AL and the other read Benton, LA.