Chapter Four #5
He was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen outside’a his mum and honest to Christ, he looked just like her.
When I murmured that, Cress laughed, an exhausted exhalation of sound. Her index finger feathered lightly over one of his plump cheeks.
“He looks like his father,” she insisted, voice dreamy. “He looks just exactly like the man who changed my entire life in a grocery store parking lot. Fitting, because he’s changed it again now.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, ’cause I’d thought I was prepared to be a father.
I wasn’t.
’Cause Cressida was my fuckin’ universe, but this little eight pound wonder had a section’a my heart beatin’ right alongside his in that little chest. I knew there wasn’t a moment that’d go by forevermore that I wasn’t thinkin’ about him, lovin’ him, wantin’ only the best for him.
“He’s beautiful,” Tayline murmured as she and the ladies moved around the edges of the bed, all of them reachin’ out to touch their Queen in some way, faces soft and slicked with happy tears.
“Was a fuckin’ miracle to have you both back with us,” Zeus said, words rough as tires over gravel. “But this is a fuckin’ gift. A grandson.”
“Old man,” Loulou teased from under his arm, fingers pokin’ his hard belly.
He growled low at her, nippin’ at her mouth.
“Give them a minute to enjoy their new baby before you set out to make a new one, yeah?” Harleigh Rose suggested with a grimace.
We laughed and our son, as if sensin’ the love and peace in the room, raised a little fist into the air as if he could catch the sound in his hand.
Instead, I offered my finger and watched without breathin’ as he wrapped his tiny fingers around it, holdin’ tight.
“He’s strong,” I muttered, tears thick in my throat, chest filled with helium wonder.
“’Course he is,” Z muttered. “He’s a Garro.”
“He’s a member’a The Fallen,” Priest declared, but he wasn’t just lookin’ at the kid.
He was lookin’ at me.
And I knew that even if he hadn’t forgiven me yet for leavin’, he would.
This man who believed he didn’t posses a heart didn’t seem to understand he had one livin’ outside his chest, pieces of it in every single one’a us.
There was a knock on the door and then Lila, who’d left to gather the troops, peered her head around the door and arched her brows at us in question.
“Come in,” I told her, cradlin’ my woman closer, palmin’ the back’a my son’s soft head in the centre of my palm.
And in they came.
Buck and Maja, Nova, Kodiak, Bat, Dane, Axe-Man and Skell.
Wrath with Eugene and Curtains pushed forward somewhat unwillingly by a laughin’ Boner.
One by one and two by two, the entire Fallen MC poured into the large room and crowded around the bed.
Bea collected Angel and Monster from Phillipa and brought them to their parents.
Dad accepted a bag from Ransom, pullin’ out a familiar leather jacket embroidered with the patch of The Fallen.
Without a word, he tugged the fabric around my shoulders like a fuckin’ mantle and clamped me on the shoulder.
His eyes were bright as he wordlessly accepted me back into the club and then ran a thick finger over my son’s crown like he was dubbin’ him a knight of the same order.
Nova held Lila close, kissin’ the side’a her neck and murmurin’ about makin’ their own kid. Lion went to Harleigh Rose, sunk both hands into her hair and pinned her still to plant a big kiss on her that left them both breathless.
Family, family, family.
The word echoed through my body, throughout the room under the song playin’ on H.R.’s phone through the speakers.
“Only Love” by Ben Howard.
And that’s what this was, packed to the rafters of the house my dad had made to house his blood family and his chosen one. That what was there under the rebellion and the sinnin’, the brotherhood and the sisterhood, the layers’a grit that made the world think we were outcasts.
No one was an outcast in this home.
We were a family.
There would be more chaos, more fights to be lost and won, more members to accept as people fell in love, and ones to say goodbye to as they were ripped away by death.
But at this moment and through all the rest, there would always be this love.
And I was proud as fuck to give it to our son.
“Everyone,” I said, voice raw as I tangled my fingers with my wife’s and together we lifted our son’s head for everyone to see. “Meet Prince Harley Garro. Prince, welcome to the best family in the whole fuckin’ world.”
A cheer went rushing through the crowd, so loud it seemed like the roar of a ten-foot wave, and when Prince opened his mouth to cry at the sound, it seemed like he was a part of it too.
A part of us.
“Welcome into our hearts,” Cressida murmured, kissin’ his nose then kissin’ fingers.
Dad bent to wrap his hug arms around all three’a us and pressed his face into my hair. “Welcome home.”
I hope you enjoyed Fallen King!