He gave me a confused look.“Yeah.With my life.”
“Good.Then if there is a question of my safety or whatever reasons you gave yourself last time, you will take it to your club.I know that’s what you do, right?”
He nodded, looking a little stunned.“Yeah.You trust my club enough for something like this?For them to look after you and stuff?”
“No.”I answered without hesitation.When he opened his mouth to respond, I put my fingers against his lips.“Butyoutrust them.And I trust you.So, you don’t cut me out of your life.Your club will take care of me until you come home.And, make no mistake, if you have to leave for any reason, youwillbe coming home.”
His fingers continued their gentle exploration of my changed body, lingering on the places pregnancy had forever altered me.Where once I might have flinched away, embarrassed by the map motherhood had etched into my skin, now I lay still, letting him witness the physical evidence of our daughter’s beginning.
“Did you know?”he asked suddenly, his voice barely audible.“That day in the visitor’s room, when I told you to forget me.Did you know you were pregnant then?”
The question hit like a physical blow.I swallowed hard, staring at that water stain.“I confirmed it that morning.Before I came to visit you.”
His breath caught.“Christ, Lavender.If I’d known --”
“What?”I turned my head to look at him, needing to see his face.“Would it have changed anything?Would you have told me to wait years for you?”
Pain flashed across his features, raw and unfiltered.“I don’t know.I thought I was protecting you.Giving you a chance at a normal life.”
“There was no normal life without you,” I admitted, the truth I’d carried for years finally spoken aloud.“There was just… surviving.For Brynn’s sake.”
Knight rose onto one elbow, looking down at me with those black eyes that somehow still showed every emotion as clearly as they had before prison changed them.His other hand came up to brush hair from my face, the gentleness of the gesture at odds with the fierce intensity of his expression.“I’m never leaving you again, Lavender,” he promised, his voice thick with emotion.“Either of you.I don’t care about anything other than the two of you and my club.And I only put the brothers in the same category because I know they’d die to protect the two of you.With or without me now.I’m all in, Lavender.Forever.”
I raised myself up, pushing him back to the bed, looking down at him.Tears gathered, hot and insistent, but I blinked them back.“I’m holding you to that,” I whispered.“We’re in this together now, whatever happens.”
His hand cradled my face, thumb catching a tear I hadn’t realized had escaped.“Together.”
I leaned down, pressing my forehead to his, breathing in the scent.“She’s going to get worse before she gets better.You know that, right?Even if the surgery goes perfectly, the recovery…” I couldn’t finish the thought, the fear too enormous to put into words.“This is just starting and I can’t begin to tell you how scared I am for her.”
“I know.”Knight’s voice was steady, a counterpoint to my trembling one.“I’ve read everything I could find on kidney transplants.The anti-rejection medications, the risk of infection, the dietary restrictions afterward.I’m going to help you with this and we’re going to be amazing at it.Brynn is going to be brave, strong, and a wonderful pain in my ass and I’m going to give her all the love and understanding she needs until she no longer wants to push me away.We can do this together, Lavender.”
I pulled back slightly, studying his face.“You’ve been researching?”
He nodded, a small smile touching the corner of his mouth.“Every night after you and Brynn went to sleep.I might not understand half the medical terminology, but I’m learning.”
“The doctor said if everything goes well, they’ll schedule the surgery for next week,” I said, settling back against his chest, ear pressed over his heart.“We’ll be in the hospital for at least two weeks afterward.Maybe more depending on how she does.”
“We’ll handle it,” Knight’s voice rumbled beneath my ear.“The club’s got our backs.Pretty sure Jag and Ada are planning on staying.Figure Knuckles and Hannah will swap out with Gunnar and Pippa soon.”He shrugged.“Ada’s arranging for a nurse to help at the compound once Brynn’s stable enough to come home, if she needs it.”
Home.The word hung between us, loaded with meaning.The compound had become our temporary shelter, but hearing Knight speak of it as home for all of us shifted something fundamental inside me.
A watery smile spread my lips.“I didn’t think we’d ever be a family,” I confessed, the words muffled against his skin.“I told myself Brynn and I were enough for each other.That we didn’t need anyone else.Even told her that during some of the worst moments.”
His arms tightened around me.“Were you?Enough for each other?”
“Most days.”I traced the outline of a tattoo on his chest.“But she always had questions I couldn’t answer.About you.Where you were.Why you weren’t with us.I told her the truth, of course.At least, as close to the truth as I knew.”
“I wanted to make it so we never had to worry about money.”He sighed.“Got too greedy and too cocky.Got caught.I got the most time for punting the FBI officer in the knee.”
“You what?”I jerked back, looking up at him in surprise.
He gave me a wry grin.“It was reflex.Cost me an assault conviction, which landed me in Terre Haute instead of some minimum-security resort in Florida.”Knight’s exhale was shaky against my hair.“I’ll spend the rest of my life making everything up to her.To both of you.I should have trusted you to know your own mind.”
“Yes, you should have.We can’t change the past,” I said, echoing the words I’d said to him when he first reappeared in our lives.“But we get to decide what happens next.”
He was quiet for a long moment, his hand moving slowly up and down my back.“What do you want to happen next, Lavender?After Brynn recovers… what do you want?”
The question caught me off guard.I’d been living moment to moment for so long, focused solely on Brynn’s needs, that the concept of wanting something for myself felt almost foreign.No matter how much we’d said forever and all that shit.
