She was everything her mother could’ve been if the world hadn’t beaten her down. If I hadn’t failed to protect her.
“You gonna stand there all night, or you gonna come in?” King’s voice came from behind me, and I turned to see the president of the Nebraska Chapter leaning against the wall, arms crossed.
“Just watching,” I said.
“I can see that.” King pushed off the wall and moved to stand beside me. “She’s something, isn’t she?”
“Yeah.” The word came out rough, scraped from my throat. “She is.”
We stood there in silence for a moment, two men who had nothing in common except the woman behind the bar. King was young, late thirties, maybe. Built like his father, Braesal O’Malley, and covered in ink, with eyes that had seen too much too soon.
He loved my daughter. I could see it in the way he watched her, the way his whole body leaned toward her even when he was talking to me. The way his eyes tracked her every movement, as if she were the only thing in the room that mattered.
The way I should have been watching her for the past thirty years.
“She tell you about her mother?” I asked.
“Some.” King’s jaw tightened. “Enough to know Christina kept a lot of secrets. Enough to know Grace is still trying to figure out who her mother really was.”
“Yeah.” I watched Grace lean against the bar, one hand resting on her swollen belly. Protective. Maternal. Christina used to touch her stomach like that when she was carrying Grace.
I thought about the journal in my pocket. The one that held secrets I wasn’t quite ready to hear. Secrets that kept me from reading beyond the first entry because I was terrified of what else I’d find. What else Christina had hidden from me. What else she’d done that would shatter the memory of the woman I’d loved.
“You regret it? The years you lost?”
The question hit like a fist to the gut. “Every goddamn day.”
King nodded slowly. “Grace knows you were looking for her. Knows you didn’t just walk away. Trust me, that matters.”
“Does it?”
“Yeah.” King’s voice was firm. “It does. She’s been through a lot of shit, and all that time her mother’s voice was in her ear, telling her to give up. Telling her not to trust any man. She’s angry about the lies, about what her mother kept from her... from both of you. But she doesn’t blame you for not being there. Not anymore.”
“Maybe she should. Maybe I should’ve looked harder.”
“You never stopped looking.” King’s eyes met mine. “That’s not nothing.”
Grace looked up then, catching me watching her. Her face softened, and she smiled. Not Christina’s smile, this one was bigger, brighter, more confident. This one saidI see you, and I’m not afraid.
But there was something else there, too. Something uncertain. Like she was still trying to figure out who her motherhad been. Who I was. Who we all were in this tangled mess of secrets and lies.
She waved me over, and I moved through the clubhouse as if I were walking through water. Every step felt heavy. Every breath felt like work.
“Hey, old man.” Grace’s voice was warm, teasing. “You gonna stand in the corner all night, or come talk to your daughter?”
“What are you still doing back there?” I asked, settling onto the stool in front of her. “Ain’t you got your hands full enough?”
“Always.” She patted her belly. “This one’s gonna be a handful. I can already tell. But until he or she gets here, I need to stay busy.”
Something flashed in her eyes, and my heart broke for what she was still going through. One of the club’s old ladies was a shrink and had been working with Grace to deal with what those fuckers had done to her. She’d come a long way since the day I found her. But I knew what she went through was something she might never fully recover from.
I looked at her stomach, at the life growing inside her. My grandchild. A piece of me and Christina, carried forward into the next generation. A small blessing that the baby was King’s and not one of the fuckers who’d hurt her.
“You scared?” I asked.
“Terrified.” Grace laughed, but there was truth in it. “But King’s gonna be a good dad. Better than—” She stopped and bit her lip.
“Better than I got to be?” I finished for her.
