JUDGE #2
“I want her here. I want her waking me too early and leaving crayons where I step on them. I want to know what color cake she asks for when she turns five.” Shay's eyes shine.
“And I want you. Not because you're her mother or because I'm trying to rebuild some picture of what I lost. I want your clothes in my room, your shampoo in the shower. I want you arguing with me in the kitchen and climbing into my bed still mad enough to bite.”
Color rises into her face, but she doesn't look away. “I bought this for us. I want all of it.”
Shay looks past me toward the hall. “You can't promise the club will never bring danger to our door again though.”
“No.” The answer matters too much to soften. “I can promise you won't hear about it after I've already decided what happens to you. I can promise the truth, even when I know you'll hate it. And I can promise every man in Kingdom Come will stand between that danger and this house.”
“What if I disagree with you?”
“You probably will. So we’ll fight about it until we reach an answer we can both live with. I don't send you away because I think my fear matters more than your voice.” The old version of me would've told her what was safest, found the right lie, and forced the outcome while calling it love.
“But this time, I'm asking.”
Silence fills the little yellow room. Shay looks at the bed, the empty shelves, and the man standing in front of her without a decision already made. “What happens if I say no?”
“It'll hurt like hell.”
“And?”
“You and Evie still get my protection. I still show up. I still become her father at whatever pace you decide is right.”
Shay closes the distance between us. “I'm not promising I'll forget what you did.”
“I don't want you to.”
“And choosing you doesn't mean I disappear into your club. I keep the salon. I make decisions about Evie with you, not beneath you. If I think you're shutting me out again, I say it, and you listen before you start issuing orders.”
“I'll listen.”
“You might hate what I say.”
“I usually do when you're right.” That draws a shaky laugh from her.
“I'm not moving tomorrow,” she adds.
“All right.”
She slides both hands beneath my cut and looks up at me. “But I'm choosing you.” The words hit deeper than any declaration I could've demanded.
I grip her waist. “Say it again.”
“I choose you, Judge.” I kiss her before she finishes my name. Relief, hunger, and something dangerously close to joy tear through me at once. Shay's arms lock around my neck, and I lift her until her legs wrap around my hips. She laughs against my mouth. The sound wrecks me.
I carry her into the empty hallway and press her against the wall, kissing her until neither of us can breathe and she's tugging at my hair like she intends to make up for every night we lost. Her mouth moves to my jaw, then the place beneath my ear that she remembers too well.
Heat punches through me, immediate and familiar.
“We have to collect our daughter,” she whispers against my skin.
Our daughter. The words nearly put me on my knees. “In a minute.”
“Okay, one minute then.”
I use every second, kissing her until her legs tighten around me and the empty house no longer feels like a risk I took alone. It feels like the beginning of something we're choosing together.
“This doesn't mean you can order all the furniture,” she whispers.
“I already bought a bed.”
“Judge.”
“For practical reasons.” Her smile opens fully this time.
I've imagined Shay in a thousand places during the years apart. None looked as right as her standing inside the house I bought for our future, choosing to stay because I finally left the decision with her.
Judge has been teaching our four-year-old the difference between sockets for twenty minutes.
I lean against the open garage door and watch Evie sit cross-legged beside him on the concrete, wearing pink safety glasses that are much too large for her face.
His motorcycle stands above them, black and gleaming beneath the garage lights.
“Three-eighths,” Judge says, holding out his hand.
Evie studies the sockets with the serious frown she inherited from him. She chooses one and places it in his palm.
Judge turns it between his fingers. “Half inch.”
“That's the bigger one.”
“It is.”
She takes it back and searches again. We've lived in the river-road house for twelve days.
There are still boxes in every room, the living-room curtains haven't arrived, and Judge keeps discovering things Evie apparently can't survive without.
A stool for the bathroom sink. Pink safety glasses because she asked why she couldn't help him work on his bike.
“You know she starts school next year,” I say. “Not an apprenticeship.”
Judge glances over his shoulder. “She wanted to learn.”
“I wanted to learn,” Evie confirms.
“At this rate, she'll be fixing bikes before she can ride one.”
“She won't be riding one.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Ever?”
His mouth shifts at one corner before he turns back to the bike.
He's different here. Not softer exactly. The dangerous man is still present in every alert glance toward the road and every call he takes from Kane. But inside this house, his control no longer feels like something that might close around me.
Evie picks up another socket.
“Daddy, you need the little one.”
Judge stops moving.
The wrench remains suspended in his hand.
Evie looks between the socket and the bolt, apparently unaware that she has just shattered the most controlled man I've ever known.
Judge lowers the wrench slowly.
“What did you call me?”
She frowns at him. “Daddy.”
As though he's the one being strange.
His eyes close for a second. When they open, the raw emotion in them reaches straight through me.
“Yeah, baby,” he says, his voice rough. “That's the one.”
Evie drops the socket into his palm and leans against his arm, already focused on what they're doing next.
Judge looks at me. I cross the garage and crouch beside them.
“You all right?” I whisper.
His hand closes around the socket. “Yeah.”
He isn't. Not even close and I kiss the edge of his jaw.
Evie picks up the ratchet and holds it toward him.
“What does this do?”
Judge takes it from her, then pulls her onto his thigh so she can see his hands properly.
I settle beside them on the garage floor while he begins explaining.
The tools are still scattered. Half our belongings are still in boxes. Judge has grease on his hands and Evie's safety glasses keep sliding down her nose, Judge glances at me over our daughter's head.
This time, when happiness catches him unprepared, he doesn't try to hide it.