“It’s a deal.”
“Uh huh, okay. Thanks, brother.”
His voice, talking low, is what wakes me up and I slowly sit up on the bed to see him standing, looking lost as he runs his hands through his hair. “Ash? Are you okay?” I ask.
I notice he’s got his jeans on, although his delicious chest is still bare to my gaze. He’s muscular like all the brothers are, and his tattoos are works of art, criss crossing his arms, shoulders, and back. Hell, I think he even had one going down his thigh, but I didn’t examine it too closely since my attention was on his engorged cock.
He sighs as he sits down on the bed, handing me my underwear and yoga pants. “Yeah, uh, we need to wrap up the inventory and get back to the clubhouse, though. Data found out some information for me.”
“What kind of information?” I question as I start getting dressed.
While I’m still a bit sensitive about the scarring I now bear on my abdomen, knowing that I can’t change anything has me pushing it to the side as his attention drifts to me.
“I asked Data to look into my family,” he admits. “After you told me about that little girl, I had to know if there was a possibilitythat we were related. Because if we are, there’s no fucking way I want her to be stuck in foster care, you know?”
He helps me off the bed and I grab my bra and shirt before quickly putting them on while he slips his own back over his head, then grabs his cut and puts it on. “I wouldn’t want that for her either,” I reply. “I mean, Pauline is a great foster parent. She’s helped a lot of kids since becoming a foster parent, but you’re right, if Becca is family, then she belongs with us. So, what did Data find out?”
“She’s my niece,” he whispers. “David’s little girl. Apparently, he and his wife were killed in a car accident, and my sister, Alice, became her guardian.”
“Why not your parents?” I query, slipping my shoes on now that my socks are firmly in place.
He huffs out a laugh, but there’s no mirth in it whatsoever. “Because my mother is dead, and my father is in a nursing home with dementia.”
He’s never really talked a lot about his family, but from what I’ve pieced together over the years, he was estranged from all of them for a very long time. Still, it has to hurt that his mom is dead. I know I miss mine every single day. “I’m sorry about your mom,” I tell him, standing up and wrapping my arms around him in a tight hug.
“So am I, baby, so am I. She wasn’t strong enough to push back against my dad, though, so when I left, I lost her too,” he says, kissing the top of my head.
“What about your sister? Why isn’t Becca with her?”
When I see the ravaged expression on his face, I find myself on my ass on the bed once again. “She… she was charged with child abuse and neglect earlier this year. Becca was found alone in the apartment they shared, filthy, malnourished, and sick.”
I rush to the bathroom and hit the floor in front of the toilet before losing the contents of my stomach. That poor little girl! I had a few times where I was with family members who were not the best when my mom first got sick, but even though I was neglected, it doesn’t sound like it was anywhere near as bad as what Becca went through.
“It’s okay, get it out, sweetheart,” Ash says as he holds my hair back.
Considering some of the intimate things he’s had to help me with when I was recovering from my surgery, this is nothing to him, but it’s still a little embarrassing for me. As I blindly reach up to flush the toilet, I hear the handle being depressed as he pulls me up to my feet. Then, he wets a washcloth and washes my face before he starts searching in the cabinets for something so I can rinse out my mouth.
“I have some mouthwash in my purse which is down in the bar,” I tell him.
“Then let’s go get that, finish up the inventory and go see what I have to do so she’s able to come home to us,” he says.
While the guys are in church, I decide to take a shower and get cleaned up. I’ll order pizza and wings for everyone once I’m done, but I need to think about how this will change things.
For us.
For the club.
But most importantly, for Becca.
As I’m puttering around the kitchen, comfy in my sweats, my phone rings and I grin when I see it’s Holly.
“Hey, girl, how’s it going?” I ask, taking my plate over to the table. After setting it down, I head back to the refrigerator and pull out a bottle of water before I settle into one of the kitchen chairs. There’s no way I’m waiting on the brothers to wrap up church before I eat.
“So, a little birdie told me that you may be adding to your house soon,” she teases.
“I see that Rebel told you what Ash found out thanks to Data’s search,” I say, taking a bite of pizza.
“Yeah. How do you feel about it?” she questions.
