Not to him.
Not to myself.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Popeye
From my place in the doorway of the clubhouse, I watched as Trudy drove out of the lot. I waited until her taillights disappeared and then I went in search of my daughter.
I found her on the couch in the main room sitting with a few of the other old ladies.
“Hey, baby girl, got a minute?”
“Of course, Dad.”
She struggled to get up and when I reached to help her, Sam suggested, “We’ll go.”
“It will take longer for Grace to get off the couch than for us to find something else to do,” Beck joked. Grace flipped her the bird as I sat down beside her, and they both laughed.
This was what I’d missed out on. By hiding Christina and Grace from the club, while it had been for their safety, I’d missed out on having the woman I loved and my daughter in my life.
In my home.
In my club.
Virginia had been the only old lady among the officers. The rest of us towed the line, afraid to subject the women we loved to the narcissistic asshole who owned our lives.
Happy had been in love with Virginia for decades, but she belonged to George. Instead, he met and married Linsey’sgrandmother. When his wife and daughter were killed, his granddaughters had been hidden away from him. Linsey was in her twenties before Happy saw her again. He’d spent the rest of his life alone, pining for a woman he couldn’t have.
And once he got her, we realized he wasn’t any better than George had been.
Snoopy had three children with two different women; neither told him about them until they’d grown into adults. He met Tessa when she was in her twenties, after she’d had a kid with Montana. And well, Hemlock he’d only met last summer. His twin brother Shamrock died before he’d met him.
I’d searched for twenty years, trying to find my daughter. When Titan told me Christina had left, I’d held out hope that I would find them both and build a life. I’d assumed George had gotten wind of my family and threatened her.
I didn’t blame her for running; I blamed myself for not protecting her.
The damn journal she left me told a different story. One I was hesitant to keep reading. What I had read told me that Christina ran on her own. She’d made the choice to hide from me. Hide my daughter.
Whatever love I’d held onto for her died when I read that last entry.
“If you knew what I did. The things I let them do to me. The things I did for them.”
I still wasn’t certain what she’d done, but I could guess some of it. I was the VP of a notorious motorcycle club. I knew how MCs treated women. What they expected.
I should never have left her there.
I trusted the wrong people.
“You and Trudy, huh?” Grace said with a smile, her voice filled with warmth.
“That okay?”
She leaned her head against my shoulder, her hand rubbing the top of her stomach as she exhaled. I wasn’t sure what she was about to say.
“You need to tread carefully, Dad. Trudy isn’t what she appears.”
“What do you mean?” I wasn’t ready to hear my daughter tell me she didn’t like Trudy. That she didn’t want me with her. There was no question I would choose her over a woman. Hell, I’d spent my whole life as a bachelor—what was a few more years?
