“Of course, I’m going to worry. You are my daughter, and I am your mother.” She sniffed, shooting a little glance at Zeus. “I’m just glad those ruffians aren’t crowding you. You need space to heal.”
As if on cue, sensing the drama of the moment, there was a swell of thunder on the air, rattling the cheap windows in their frames.
It was the roar of Harleys. Dozens of them.
Phillipa looked sharply at Zeus, who shrugged unabashedly. “Might’a told one or two’a ’em that Bea here was awake.”
My mother sucked in a breath to argue, but Grandpa beat her to it with a soft hand on her arm.
“They’re here to pay their respects,” he said softly. “They aren’t just Louise’s family anymore. They adopted Bea a long time ago. There is no space for judgment where there is love, Phillipa.”
His words made warmth soothe the ache in my limbs and swell in my heart until it felt overfull. One more word of love or praise and I felt I might burst.
We heard them before we saw them.
The stomp of heavy motorcycle boots on laminate floors, the harsh metal jiggle of wallet chains, and the clamour of masculine voices speaking low but rough as they descended the corridor to my room.
I was lying in a hospital bed, broken and battered, but suddenly, it felt like Christmas.
I was already smiling when the first Fallen brother breached the narrow doorway. Bat Stephens, the sergeant at arms, beside Dane Meadows, our newly returned war vet, then Curtains with his flaming red hair shoved off balance by Boner who swaggered in after him. Axe-Man and Wrath both so large they had to pass through the frame sideways, then Skell, so skinny he looked like he should be hospitalized himself. Nova was there holding Loulou’s daughter, Angel, who stared up at him in awe because even at one year old, she knew beauty when she saw it, and King, sweet returned King, holding his new baby, Prince, in one arm, and Angel’s twin, Monster, in the other.
By the time the entire Entrance Chapter of The Fallen MC had filtered into the room, it was packed like a can of sardines with large men and the scent of leather.
They took turns touching me, making space to squeeze or pat the places of my body not encased in gauze or plaster. I didn’t respond to any of them because they were all talking over each other.
When they finally settled enough for me to speak, there were more people at the door.
Harleigh Rose and her fiancé, Lionel Danner, with Cressida and Lila, Cleo, Hanna, and Maja. My biker babes, the women who had raised me more succinctly than my mother ever could have.
They blurred in my vision, and I frowned, trying to blink away the obstruction only to realize I was crying.
No, sobbing.
Great tears of relief and joy that rolled through me like the waves off the coast.
Nova teased me for being a baby, and Boner laughed. Buck, the eldest member and the club VP, slapped him upside the head and told him to have some respect even though it was Nova who’d said it. Harleigh Rose shoved Loulou aside so she could press my hand to her cheek and study me carefully with her own eyes to make sure I was okay. Cressida grabbed my only free foot and squeezed it, her wide brown eyes filled with tears and love.
It was calamitous. Utter chaos.
I could hear a nurse in the hall trying to tell Lila that too many people were in the room making too much noise. That I needed peace and quiet after my trauma.
She didn’t know shit, Ransom, the prospect, said with a fierce glower. They were my family, and I needed them now more than ever.
I cried so hard, I thought my heart stopped.
Loulou’s sweet, sugared cherry scent enveloped me as she leaned forward to tug me into her arms.
“It’s okay, Bea,” she whispered in my ear.
I couldn’t stop crying for long enough to explain to her that this was what I had always wanted. Even with a mother and father, Loulou and I had never really had a family unit, not until a bullet connected her chest to chest with a man who would gift her not only his heart, but an entire community that would embrace us, and never, not through anything, let us go.
Maybe Lou thought she and The Fallen were the reason I’d nearly been killed, but I knew better.
They were the family that kept me alive and smiling every day.
The only essential piece missing was the man who’d quite literally saved me.
The man who distanced himself from his family, from me, as much as he possibly could.
I felt the emptiness in my chest, that small section I’d carved out as his when I was just fourteen, echo vacantly.