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I grinned. “I love you, Mr. President.”

He growled and held me tighter, and I’d never felt so loved or so treasured. “Mine,” he whispered.

Forever.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Knox

The party partied until the sun came up and as I walked through the clubhouse, I saw signs of the party everywhere. Beer bottles lay sideways in the dirt, ashtrays overflowed with cigarette butts, joints and even a few discarded cigars, and string lights hung a little looser than last night. It was early enough that the girls hadn’t cleaned up yet, but late enough that it was all on display under the full power of the early afternoon sunshine. Pushing through last night’s celebration brought it all back in vivid color.

I’d done my rounds after I fucked my wife, accepted the backslaps and the raised bottles and the brothers calling me Prez like they were testing it out. It had been a good night. A damn good night.

Rex was dead.

I was president.

Hatchet was here.

Ivy was mine.

I started this day a man on top of the fucking world, and every step I took toward my father was lighter than the last.

“‘Bout time you showed up. Thought you were gonna sleep all day.” Hatchet grinned at me from a chair somebody probably dragged out here for him. He held a cold beer in one hand while the other rested on his leg.

I pulled a crate up and sat down beside him instead of standing over him, the way I had as a kid when I wanted to be where he was and seemed like I was one of the guys. For a minute neither of us said anything. We sat in the sun and drank our beers, listening to the compound come back to life, slow and hungover around us.

“She’s staying.”

I knew the she he was talking about, but I gave nothing away. I took a pull from my own bottle and kept my expression blank.

“Saw you two together at the party.” His smile grew wider, as if he was in on a secret the rest of us weren’t. “You got it bad, boy.” He shook his head and let out one of those amused laughs I hated when I was a boy.

I tried to keep the blank expression on my face, but it was fucking useless. My smile spread wide on its own, a physical representation of that undeniable fact. “I do.”

“She feel the same way?”

I thought about the way she told me she loved me every night before she curled up on my chest, her cheek resting right over my heart like she was listening to make sure it still beat just for her. The way she said it again and again while I feasted on her pussy until she forgot every word but my name. The messages she dropped on my phone all damn day, little ones, just in case I forgot between morning and night. “Yeah,” I said. “She feels the same way.”

“Good. That’s real good.” He shook his head, a wistful, faraway look settled over his face. “Leading this club has been the greatest fucking honor of my life, aside from being your father. Doing it with your mother at my side? Those were my best years. Can’t say why, only that when she was at my side it was always fun.” I hadn’t seen him smile like that since I was a child.

I saw the fun they had together because I’d grown up with both versions of him. Hatchet was a different man when my mom was alive, happier and lighter, the kind of man who’d catch her dancing at the stove and stand in the doorway just to watch. After we lost her, he packed that version of happiness away and lived for me and the MC and nothing else.

I’d resented it for years, the way the MC came first. I understood it better now than I was capable of back then, how grief changed a man irreversibly. Last night in Church, I’d been struck with just how deeply grief transformed a person at a cellular level. For the first time in too many years, I’d wished for my mom. Wished she’d been there last night to cry her happy tears all over the place when I got the patch. I was able to wish that without fear or regret because of Ivy.

It kept coming back to her and that’s when I realized it wasn’t just grief that changed a man. It was love too.

I took Rex’s deal thinking he’d send a spy or a burden, or best case scenario, a broken women who jumped at shadows. Instead he’d handed over the thing my heart needed most, right when it was primed to accept her. Her. “Then I’m lucky I get Ivy and you while I do it.”

At that moment, the door opened behind us, and Ivy appeared with a smile on her face and a beer bottle in each hand. Her hair was up in a loose ponytail that made her look young, and she had on one of my old flannels to ward off the chill in the air. “You boys need a refill?”

Hatchet grinned. “Like you read my mind, sweetheart.”

“Feeling good today?” she asked him, trading him the fresh bottle for his empty one.

“I’m fine,” he groused, waving her off. “I told you to stop worrying about me.”

Her lips pulled into a flat line. “Well, you’re my father-in-law, and you’re important to my husband and to everyone in this MC, so I’ll worry if I want to.” She crossed her arms over her chest and planted herself in front of his chair. “So how are you feeling today, Hatchet?”