Bella snorts. “Everything toddlers do looks like criminal intent.”
Raven lifts her coffee. “Because it is.”
Emma smiles into her mug. “Give it five minutes. Someone will cry, and it won’t be the one who started it.”
“Motherhood,” Ana says dryly. “Beautiful, magical, and mostly just hostage negotiations with snacks.”
That makes me laugh. It comes out easily. Naturally. No one stops to stare at me because of it. No one softens like they’re relieved I’m capable of making a sound that isn’t grief. They just keep going, folding my laughter into theirs like it belongs there.
Mac points toward Knox. “Do not hit Remy with that.”
Knox pauses, pillow dragging behind him, and looks at her with complete innocence.
Kya narrows her eyes. “That face is a lie.”
“It’s always a lie,” Mac agrees.
Remy grins like he understands every word.
Mason toddles into the room two seconds later, holding a toy car in one hand and looking far too pleased with himself.
Brooke sighs. “Where did you get that?”Mason beams. “Never mind,” she mutters. “I don’t want to know.”
The room fills with laughter again, and I sit in the middle of it, feeling something warm unfold in my chest. It isn’t soft in a weak way. It’s stronger than that. Survival is here too. Not in the sharp way it lived in my body for days, not the teeth clenched, stay alive, don’t break kind of survival.
This is the after.
The part nobody talks about enough. The part where women sit around a kitchen table with coffee and toddlers and scars, making jokes because the alternative is letting the darkness keep taking from them. I look around the room, really look, and it hits me all over again.
People see the men first. The cuts. The bikes. The guns. The violence. The way the room changes when Logan speaks or Cobra moves or Cain steps into a doorway like a warning. But the women? They are the backbone. They endure. They survive. They make homes in places built for war. They hold babies, bury fear, challenge dangerous men, and then somehow remember to make coffee the next morning.
Emma catches me looking and smiles softly. “You okay?” The question doesn’t feel like pressure. It feels like an open hand.
I nod. “Yeah. I think I am.”
Kya’s expression gentles for half a second before she covers it with sarcasm. “Careful. Around here, saying that out loud is how the universe gets ideas.”
“Don’t scare her,” Shaina says.
“I’m not scaring her. I’m preparing her.”
Raven nods. “Honestly, she’s not wrong.”
Bella looks at me. “Rule one of being attached to one of these men? Never say things are calm. They hear it as a challenge.”
Brynn laughs quietly. “That explains a lot.”
Allison lifts her mug. “Rule two. If they say they’re fine, they’re bleeding somewhere.”
“Or hiding a limp,” Mac adds with a pointed look toward the hallway, where Logan is not currently visible but somehow probably feels the accusation anyway.
Brynn smiles faintly. “Or refusing to admit a bullet wound hurts.”
Kya raises her hand. “Or pretending they’re not emotionally devastated by a toddler rejecting them for the other parent.”
Brooke points her spoon at Kya. “That one is my favorite.”
I laugh again, and this time it lasts longer. My chest doesn’t hurt as much when I do it. That feels important.
