Chapter 4 - Hannah
Theo is finally asleep.
I stand over the small twin bed in this guest room, watching his chest rise and fall with each breath. He's lying on his back the way the doctor instructed, tiny fists curled beside his head. His face has relaxed into that peaceful expression babies get when they're deeply asleep.
For the first time in three months, I let myself breathe.
The room is basic but clean. Twin bed with gray sheets, nightstand, lamp, dresser. There's a window overlooking the back courtyard. Bars on the outside, decorative-looking but functional. Everything about this place screams protection. Safety. Things I stopped believing in a long time ago.
Nora helped me get Theo settled. Showed me where the bathroom was, brought me a glass of water, asked if I needed anything else. Her daughter Grace signed something that Nora translated: "She says your baby is beautiful."
I thanked them both. Meant it. Then they left me alone.
And now I'm standing in this stranger's clubhouse, in a room I've been told is mine for as long as I need it, watching my sick baby sleep while downstairs nine bikers and their women plan shopping trips for supplies I can't afford.
The check is still in my pocket. Forty-two thousand dollars. Written without hesitation. Given without conditions.
My knees give out.
I sink to the floor beside the bed, back against the mattress, and the tears I've been holding back since I drove through those gates finally break free.
I cry silently, a skill learned young at Sacred Heart. Never let them hear you. Never let them know you're breaking. The moment someone knows what hurts you is the moment they can use it against you.
But nobody's here to use it against me right now. Just me and Theo and this room that smells like fresh laundry and motor oil.
I came here expecting... I don't know what I expected. Anger, maybe. Rejection. Wesley telling me this wasn't his problem, that I made my choices and now I had to live with them. The door slammed in my face. The kind of ending I've gotten used to my whole life.
Instead, I got a check. A room. A president who said "you're family now" like it was that simple. Women who immediately started planning how to help. Men who didn't question whether Theo was Wesley's, they just looked at his eyes and knew.
I got welcomed.
I don't know what to do with that.
The tears come harder. Months of fear and exhaustion catching up all at once. I bury my face in my hands and let it out: every hospital visit, every bill I couldn't pay, every night I lay awake terrified Theo would stop breathing before I could get him the help he needed.
Every moment of crushing, isolating loneliness.
I never expected to be received like this. Never expected people I don't know to care whether my son lives or dies. Never expected Wesley to look at Theo and immediately claim him as his own.
Never expected any of this to feel like a second chance.
I'm still crying when I hear very slow footsteps in the hallway. Someone trying not to disturb Theo.
The door opens.
Wesley stands in the doorway, taking in the scene: me on the floor with tears streaming down my face, Theo asleep on the bed above me.
He steps inside and closes the door behind him with barely a sound. Moves across the room and sits on the floor beside me, back against the bed, leaving a foot of space between us.
We sit in silence for a long moment. I try to stop crying and fail. Try to say something and can't get words out past the tightness in my throat.
"You don't have to explain," Wesley says. "I get it."
"You can't possibly get it," I manage to choke out. "I showed up out of nowhere with a baby, a sob story and demands for money. Your entire club just welcomed me like I belonged here. Nobody does that. Nobody has ever done that."
"We did."
"Why?" I turn to look at him. "Why would you do that? You don't know me. Not really. We talked for a few months years ago and then again recently. That's not enough to—" I gesture helplessly at the room, the clubhouse, everything. "This."
Wesley is quiet for a moment. Then: "You remember the fence?"
The fence. Of course I remember the fence.
Sacred Heart Orphanage had two facilities—boys' and girls' separated by a chain-link fence and fifty yards of grass.
We weren't supposed to talk to each other.
Boys stayed on their side, girls stayed on ours.
But during supervised yard time, sometimes you'd end up near the fence at the same time as someone from the other side.
That's how I met Wesley.
I was sitting against the fence reading a book I'd stolen from the library because I wasn't allowed to check out more than two a week and I'd already burned through those. He sat down on his side, back against the same section of fence.
"What are you reading?" he asked.
I told him. Some fantasy novel about orphans with magic powers who saved the world. Wish fulfillment at its finest.
"Sounds better than reality," he said.
"Everything is better than reality."
We sat there for an hour, backs pressed against opposite sides of the same fence, talking about books and music and the specific kind of loneliness that comes from being a kid nobody wanted.
It became our thing. Three times a week during yard time, we'd find each other at the fence. Sometimes we'd talk. Sometimes we'd just sit in comfortable silence, knowing someone else understood.
"I remember the fence," I say now, wiping at my face.
"I told you once that I didn't believe in happy endings," Wesley says. "I said the only people who got happy endings were people who had families to begin with. The rest of us just survived."
I don't remember him saying that, but it sounds like something kid Wesley would have believed.
"You told me I was wrong," Wesley continues. "You said maybe we couldn't have the kind of happy endings other people got, but that didn't mean we couldn't make our own. Different ones. Ones that made sense for people like us."
"I was fourteen and reading too much fantasy," I mutter.
"You were fourteen and hopeful." He shifts slightly, shoulder almost touching mine. "You lost that somewhere along the way. I get why. Life beat it out of you the same way it beat it out of me."
"Then why help me?" My voice cracks. "If we're both too broken to believe in happy endings, why are you giving me money and a room and—" I have to stop because I'm crying again.
"Because Theo deserves better than what we got," Wesley says.
"And because you're right. Neither of us believes in love or happy endings or any of that shit people promise each other.
But I believe in showing up. I believe in protecting what's mine.
And whether you planned it or not, whether we're together or not, Theo is mine. That makes you mine to protect too."
"I'm not yours."
"You're the mother of my son. You're staying under my roof. You came to me when you had nowhere else to go." His voice stays quiet but there's steel underneath. "Yeah, Hannah. You're mine."
I should argue. Should tell him he can't just claim ownership of people. Should remind him we barely know each other anymore.
But God, I'm so tired of being alone.
"Tell me a happy story," I say instead. "From Sacred Heart. Something good that happened."
“You remember Jack?"
Jack. Tall kid, year younger than Wesley, always getting into fights because he couldn't control his temper.
"The one who punched a counselor?"
"That's him. He aged out a year after I did. I ran into him three years ago. He's married now. Has two kids. Works construction. Coaches Little League."
"Really?"
"Really. He told me getting out of that place was the best thing that ever happened to him. Said it taught him exactly what kind of parent never to be."
I think about that. About turning trauma into purpose. About breaking cycles instead of perpetuating them.
"You remember Sarah?" I ask.
"Girl with the red hair? Quiet?"
"Yeah. I looked her up on social media a few years ago. She's a teacher now. Elementary school. Has this whole Facebook page full of pictures of her classroom and her students. She looks happy."
"Good for her."
We fall quiet again. Outside the room, I can hear voices, the women planning, the men talking. The sounds of people who aren't alone.
"I don't trust easily," I confess. "I don't know how to let people help me. And I'm terrified that if I let myself believe this is real, this second chance or whatever it is, it's going to get ripped away the same way everything else always does."
"I know."
"But Theo needs the surgery. And I'm out of options. So, I'm going to stay, and I'm going to let you help, and I'm going to try really hard not to sabotage this before it even starts."
"That's all I'm asking."
"Do you ever think about what would have happened if they hadn't moved me?" I ask. "If we'd stayed at Sacred Heart together?"
"Sometimes."
"What do you think?"
He considers the question. "I think we would have aged out together. Probably would have tried to make it work in the real world. Would have failed because we were eighteen, broken and had no idea how to be in a relationship."
"That's depressing."
"It's realistic. We needed time to figure out who we were separately before we could figure out who we were together." He pauses. "If we're going to be together at all."
"Do you want that?" I ask. "To be together?"
"Do you?" He shoots back.
I don't have an answer to that. Don't know what I want, what I can handle, or what's fair to any of us—me, Wesley, Theo.
"Can we just be parents first?" I ask. "And figure out the rest later?"
"Yeah. We can do that."
The pressure of having to define what we are to each other lifts slightly. Theo stirs on the bed above us. Makes a soft sound but doesn't wake. Wesley looks up at him, expression softening in a way I've never seen before.
"He really does have your eyes," I say.
"I know. It's weird."
"Try looking at them every day for eight months."
"I'm going to," he says. "Every day from now on. I'm not missing any more of his life."
"Tell me about your brothers," I say, changing the subject before I start crying again. "The club. I don't know anything about this world."
So, he tells me. About Phoenix who founded the Iron Phoenix after leaving a corrupt MC.
About Judge who spent twenty years in the military and knows sign language.
About Brick who thrives on violence but fell for a woman who'd been hurt by men her whole life.
About Canvas who's covered in tattoos and loves fantasy novels.
About Saint who's Demon's younger brother but chose the opposite path, and everything about the rest.
He tells me about the women. Ivy who ran from an abusive fiancé.
Nora, who was emotionally destroyed by her ex.
Eden, who's a trauma nurse and took a bullet for Canvas.
Rosie who was locked in a warehouse by her ex-boyfriend.
Quinn who can't have biological children but became a mother anyway to Mariah.
He tells me about the war with the Vipers. About the warehouse raid. About tonight's attack that burned their clubhouse down.
And I listen, trying to understand this world I've walked into. This family built from broken people who chose each other.
"They're all survivors," I say when he finishes.
"Yeah."
"Like us."
"Like us."
Theo stretches in his sleep, making that little sound babies make when they're dreaming. Both Wesley and I go still, watching him. Waiting to see if he'll wake.
He settles back into deep sleep.
"I'm glad I came here," I whisper. "I'm still scared. Still don't trust this won't all fall apart. But I'm glad I came."
"Me too."
We sit there on the floor, backs against the bed where our son sleeps, and for the first time in months, I don't feel completely alone.
Maybe Wesley's right. Maybe we can't have the happy endings other people get.
But maybe we can make our own.
Different ones.
Ones that make sense for people like us.