Page 16 of Reckless

Mine follows, and somehow, it feels as though it’s exactly where it belongs.

***

This hospital room was not designed for bikers and their Old Ladies. The staff keeps looking at us like they can’t decide whether to call security or ask for a club membership form.

Nitro has been pacing for forty minutes. Every second or third pass, Marley reaches out and grabs his arm to slow him down, which works for about thirty seconds before he’s up again.

Baby Marcus is healthy.

Victoria is exhausted but smiling every time she looks at him, and Sin hasn’t left her side for a single second. I don’t think he could if someone paid him.

I’m sitting in one of the uncomfortable plastic hospital chairs between Marley and Ro when Victoria looks over, smiles that tired new-mom smile, and carefully places Marcus into my arms.

Every muscle in my body locks.

He weighs almost nothing.

Warm, sleepy, and ridiculously small.

I cradle him a little awkwardly, terrified I’m somehow going to break something that feels so impossibly perfect. “Hey there, little man,” I whisper.

Marcus.

The name settles over the room differently than any other.

I have never met the first Marcus.

But I know him anyway.

I’ve heard the stories. Seen the photographs tucked into frames around the clubhouse. Watched the way conversations soften whenever Victoria talks about her brother, and the way the older members of the club still carry him with them without ever having to say his name out loud.

He wasn’t just Victoria’s brother.

He’d worn a prospect cut.

He’d bled beside these men.

He’d laughed in that clubhouse.

He’d planned on earning his patch before the world stole that chance from him.

His death brought Victoria to Las Vegas Defiance.

The rest, somehow led here.

To Sin.

To family.

To a tiny little boy sleeping against my chest, carrying his uncle’s name into a future the first Marcus never got to see.

There’s something beautifully unfair about that.

And somehow, beautiful anyway.

I look over at Victoria, who is watching her son with tears quietly slipping down her cheeks, one hand wrapped around Sin’s. He catches my eye for a second before looking back at Marcus, and there’s gratitude there, but something else too.

Peace.