Chapter 4 Cash
CASH
When Hawk hangs up, the entire waiting room is silent. I set down the magazine.
“Well?” Bones demands.
Hawk’s typically stoic expression cracks into a rare smile. “It’s a girl. Eight pounds, two ounces. Both mom and baby are healthy.”
A wave of whoops and back-slapping relief washes through the room. The tension that’s been coiling in my gut for hours finally snaps. A genuine, unguarded smile lights up Mercy’s face. Something in my chest eases.
“Can we see them?” Her voice cuts through the celebratory noise, softer than the rest but just as eager.
Hawk nods, his expression serious again. “Give them a few minutes to get settled. Then family can go in, two at a time.”
There’s that word again. Family.
I see the light in Mercy’s eyes dim just a fraction, a subtle shift no one else would notice. She thinks that word excludes her. I know what it’s like to be on the outside. To not belong anywhere until someone decides you’re worth keeping. Bones gave me that. The club gave me that.
And I’m about to give it to her, whether she thinks she deserves it or not. The need to pull her onto my lap and brand the club’s mark on her myself is a physical ache.
Bones claps Duck on the shoulder. “You and Maggie go first. Club elders get priority.”
“Watch your mouth, kid,” Duck mutters, squaring up at Bones playfully. “You might be less than half my age, but I’ve still got a mean right hook.”
Maggie scoffs as she tucks her knitting away. “Quit being ridiculous, you old fart. Come meet our newest club member.”
“You got lucky,” Duck tells Bones, who then proceeds to chase after Duck, making a show of play fighting the older man.
Axel appears in the doorway to the ward, looking wrecked and happier than I’ve ever seen him.
He gives Duck a tired nod, and Maggie links her arm through her old man’s as Axel leads them back.
“Who’s lucky now?” Bones calls out, chuckling to himself as he slumps into a nearby seat and lets out a contented sigh.
The moment the door to the ward closes, Mercy’s shoulders slump. I quickly make my way through everyone to stand beside her.
“What’s going on?”
She looks up as though I startled her. “Nothing. Just…will you tell Poppy congratulations for me when you go in?”
My brow knits. “Why? You can tell her yourself. It’ll be our turn soon.”
“He said family.” The words are a whisper.
“Club is family,” I say, my voice low and rough.
“I’m not club.”
“Yeah, you fucking are.” I grab her hand and pull her to the chairs Duck and Maggie just vacated. They’re far enough out of the way that we can have a moment’s privacy while everyone else talks about the baby and coos over the photos Axel sent through.
“Cash.” Mercy tries to argue as I pull her onto my lap. “What are you—”
My arm snakes around her waist, locking her against my chest. Her gasp is lost against my shoulder as I hold her there. A claim. A promise. A public statement that she’s mine and everyone here better fucking acknowledge it.
She’s mine, and she’s family. Whether she knows it yet or not.
Her whole body goes rigid, a silent protest against the public display.
“You can’t just do this,” she hisses, her voice a low, frantic whisper meant only for me.
I know I’m pushing. Maybe too far. But she keeps slipping through my fingers, and her standing on the edges of my world is worse than the looks we’re getting.
“Watch me,” I murmur, my lips brushing against her hair. The scent of her—lilac and something uniquely Mercy—calms the feral thing roaring in my chest. “You belong here. With us. With me.”
She tries to shift, to create distance, but I hold her fast. Her fight gives way to a tense surrender. She stops struggling, her weight settling against me. Her head tilts back slightly, and her wide, uncertain eyes meet mine.
“You don’t get to decide that for me,” she whispers, her voice filled with a weary resignation that makes me want to burn the world down for her.
“Maybe not,” I concede, my thumb stroking the curve of her hip. “But I’ll keep showing you you’re wrong until you believe it.”
I let her slide from my lap then, because I know when to push and when to let her breathe. Control isn’t about forcing—it’s about knowing exactly how much pressure to apply and when. And right now, I’ve made my point. Everyone in this room knows she’s mine. Now, she just needs to accept it.
She instantly crosses the room back to where Kya, Josie, and Ginger are standing. Bones makes his way over to me again.
“Looks like you have a fight on your hands.”
Arms folded across my chest, I look over to where the women coo over baby pictures. “Story of my fucking life.”
It takes a solid hour for everyone to pay their respects to Axel, Poppy, and little baby Rose.
I’ve never been that big on kids, but even I have to admit the kid is kind of perfect.
A tiny, scrunched-up thing with a full head of dark hair, just like Axel.
But my opinion is definitely skewed by Mercy holding her.
She’s got the baby tucked into the crook of her arm, her head bent low as she whispers something that makes the kid’s mouth work in a tiny, sleepy O.
The soft light from overhead catches the red in her hair, turning it to fire, and the look on her face is pure, unguarded awe.
A fierce, possessive heat coils low in my gut.
It’s the first time I’ve ever looked at a woman with a kid in her arms and seen my future. An old lady on the back of my bike, a baby in her belly.
My baby.
My old lady.
The thought steals the air from my lungs.
Fuck.
I’ve always been in control of what I want, when I want it, how I take it.
I decide when to walk away. I decide the terms. But this?
This is different. This is wanting something I can’t just take.
Something that requires her to choose me, to stay, to build something permanent.
And that means giving up control. Means trusting her not to leave when she figures out all the shit I keep buried.
I don’t do trust. Don’t do vulnerability. But looking at her holding that baby, I want it anyway. Want her anyway. Even if it scares the hell out of me.
Mercy reluctantly hands Rose back to Poppy, her smile soft and a little sad.
I follow her out to the waiting room. We settle back into the uncomfortable chairs, the energy shifting from tense anticipation to a low, happy buzz.
One by one, the others take their turns.
Kya and Lee are the last to go in, and when they emerge twenty minutes later, Lee looks like he’s just seen a goddamn miracle.
Josie is the first to stand. “Early court date tomorrow,” she explains.
“I’ll walk you to your car.” Stone stands with her, and if we didn’t know our president as well as we do, we’d think he was just being polite. But the low tone in his voice tells us he’s practically falling over himself trying to get this woman alone.
I know exactly how you feel, Prez.
Josie slings her purse over her shoulder. “That’s not necessary—”
“It’s three in the morning. It’s necessary.”
Josie looks like she wants to argue, but something in Stone’s expression stops her. “Fine. Thank you.”
As they head toward the elevator, the room erupts with speculation.
Mercy somehow starts another one of her betting pools before we all head to the parking garage, a pack of leather-clad misfits moving as one.
It’s a little after three in the morning.
The exhaustion hits me all at once, but it’s a good kind of tired.
As we pile into the elevator, I find myself next to Mercy again.
Her shoulder brushes mine. The simple contact sends a jolt straight through me.
I want to pull her close, to pick up where we left off the last time we were in here, but there’s no room, no privacy.
The ride to her apartment is quiet, both of us lost in our own thoughts. When I pull up outside the building that houses her place above the laundromat, she slides off the bike and pulls off the helmet I insisted she wear.
I cut the engine, the rumble dying into the quiet of the pre-dawn street, and swing my leg over the bike. She turns as I approach. Her hand comes up, pressing flat against my chest.
A barrier.
“Cash, I—”
“I’m not trying to fuck you, Mercy,” I say, hooking a finger under her chin and ghosting my thumb over her lower lip. “It’s late. You look dead on your feet. I’m just walking you to your door, making sure you get in safe.”
Her hand falls away, but her body doesn’t move. The fight has gone out of her, replaced by an exhaustion that settles deep in the lines around her eyes. I want to carry her upstairs, tuck her into bed, and stand guard until morning.
“OK,” she whispers.
We climb the exterior metal stairs, our footsteps the only sound in the sleeping street. The air is cool and smells of damp pavement and the faint, clean scent of bleach from the laundromat below.
At her door, she fumbles with the keys. I take them from her trembling fingers, unlock the door, and push it open into the darkness of her apartment.
She hesitates in the doorway, a silhouette against the gloom. “Thank you, Cash.”
“Get some sleep, angel.” My voice is a low growl. I step closer, my mouth brushing her ear. “Dream of having my mouth on you.”
She shivers and I step back, waiting until I hear the deadbolt slide home before I head back into the street and fire up my bike.
A cold shower is definitely in my immediate future. Maybe several of them.