Blood & Bones: Cage (Blood Fury MC 5)

He dropped his head back against the wall and stared up at the dark ceiling.

His father’s words slammed him directly in the chest. Your life’s just been changed forever.

He could still take the easy route and give her up for adoption. He could.

Red did it with Levi.

And Sarah gave up her daughter.

People gave their kids up every fucking day.

Maybe like Levi, she’d have a better life elsewhere. Not be stuck with a father like him. A man who wasn’t ready to be a father.

A father who didn’t have a fucking clue.

“Sorry I’m your dad, monkey. I didn’t ask for this. Know you didn’t, either.”

When she stopped suckling, he put the bottle aside on the table and lifted her to his chest to burp her using one of the methods Cassie showed him.

When a tiny burp escaped, he kept her there, against his shoulder, rubbing her back in her little onesie that had the Harley Davidson emblem on the front and Crawl. Walk. Ride. on the back.

She was so fucking vulnerable. So fucking innocent. So unaware of the turmoil surrounding her arrival.

Her mother didn’t want her. Just like his didn’t want him.

He couldn’t give her up. He couldn’t walk away from her.

He couldn’t do that.

She wasn’t a mistake he could ignore or erase.

Blood was supposed to be thicker than water. That was how the saying went, right?

And they were blood.

She was his.

No matter what, she was a piece of him.

The weight of his future was pressed against his chest. But he had no fucking clue where to go from here.

Your life’s just been changed forever echoed through his head.

Cage dropped the empty bottle into the sink with the rest of them. Someone needed to wash those bottles so he had some to use.

This kid never stopped eating.

He glanced at the clock on the stove. Six-twenty.

Christ. He’d gotten no sleep after reading that email.

Worse, he needed to give Trip and Judge the results. But it was too early yet.

He also needed to tell his dad.

And Rook.

And, fuck, everyone.

Then he’d needed to not only figure out where he needed to go from here, but needed to face whatever the exec committee decided would be his punishment for breaking the rule.

If they stripped him of his colors, the support of his brothers would be gone. The help of their ol’ ladies, gone. He might end up with just his father and brother, if that.

He threw the dish towel over his shoulder and settled his daughter against him. He moved from the kitchen to the small living room at the front of the house, bouncing her gently as he went.

Then he began to pace. He was too fucking tired to figure out what to do about the situation.

He needed to sleep for days.

He needed gallons of coffee.

He needed a lot of fucking help.

Getting only a couple hours of sleep between feedings and diaper changings wasn’t working. Every fucking cell in his body screamed for rest.

Again, he didn’t understand the appeal of having a fucking kid if this was what it was like. Who the fuck wanted to do this?

He paced back and forth across the tiny living room, softly patting the baby on her back, waiting to hear the burp.

“I need to pick out a real name for you, monkey.” Before his father woke the fuck up and continued to call her a German Shepherd’s name. Cage gritted his teeth every time he heard it.

He took a couple of long strides across the short room again and stopped when he spotted photos on the far wall. Pictures he’d seen so many times, he normally looked right through them. His father had framed and hung a picture of himself on every sled he’d ever owned in his lifetime. From his first, a ’77 Low Rider to his current.

Cage stepped closer and stared at one in particular.

A framed, but faded, eight by ten of Dutch on his ’91 Harley Dyna Low Rider. It had been a special edition called the FXDB Sturgis. A sled he sold years ago when he decided he needed a change.

A sled his father still wished he owned. A sled Cage wished his father had passed down.

He pursed his lips as he studied the Harley, his fingers wrapped around the back of his daughter’s neck to support her head while his other hand cupped her tiny diapered butt as he stood in place and bounced her.

Harley Low Rider Dietrich.

He kind of liked the ring of that.

Reilly’s comment about the name being stereotypical came rushing back to him. Whatever name he picked would be with her forever.

She wouldn’t only live amongst him, his family and his club—all bikers—she’d go to school. Maybe, unlike Cage, to college. He wouldn’t want her to be bullied for her name. Even better, she might become a lawyer like Reese, or an accountant like Red, and get a job in some fancy high-rise office building in some city, like New York or Pittsburgh.