Chapter 11
Slate
My entire world stops spinning for a second when Katie says she’s turning four. She’s still holding up four fingers, not three. My brain doesn’t need long to do the math. The timeline all matches up perfectly for Katie to be my daughter.
I reach out to wrap one finger around a lock of her soft black hair. Me and my brothers all ended up with my dad’s dark hair. And my mom’s eyes. As I look down into her light blue eyes, I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. Her eyes are the same color as mine and it’s like looking into a mirror.
I ask her playfully, “You’re going to be four? When’s your birthday, Katie?”
“Soon, Mommy said I can have a chocolate cake,” she says.
Unless Christina was seeing someone else around about the time we were together, the truth is unavoidable.
Katie is my daughter. My eyes go to Christina, and I see the fear in her expression.
For some reason that makes me angry. As happy as I am to realize that this adorable little girl is most probably mine, why didn’t she tell me?
I do what I can to keep it together. I smile at Katie and lean down to kiss the top of her head. “You get some sleep, sweetie,” I say, keeping my voice calm. “Dream about that puppy.”
She nods, curling up on the bed with the little stuffed dog pressed tight to her chest. Her eyelids flutter, and within seconds she’s half-asleep, breathing slow and steady.
I turn and walk out of the room before I do something stupid like let my anger show. The moment the door shuts behind me, I start pacing the living room.
I struggle to get my head around why the woman I love, and I thought loved me, lied to me about being the father of her child.
Is it because I’m VP of an MC? Because she sees me as broken from the war?
Or is there something deeper at play here?
Maybe she sees some inherent wrongness in my character, something that makes me unfit. That thought sickens me.
Everything I missed insists upon crowding into my mind at once.
I would have proudly gone to every single doctor’s appointment with her, bought every single thing she needed for the baby, and rubbed her fuckin’ swollen feet at night.
I missed the birth and holding our baby for the first time.
I’m even upset that I missed the sleepless nights and night feeds, not to mention her first step and first words.
I fuckin’ missed her birthdays. She never got one single gift from her own damn father.
The more I think about it, the more furious I get. Christina robbed not only me of my rights as a father but also our daughter of having a dad.
White hot fury settles in my chest, and I don’t know what to do about it. I drag a hand through my hair and keep trying to reframe this in some way that makes sense.
I try to think back to our time in Kabul to see if I remember her having any problems with me.
If she had one, I sure as hell never suspected.
She was all easy smiles and jumping on my cock when we were alone.
I never gave her a reason not to trust me.
Hell, I even gave her my seat on the plane when I knew getting out on my own would be a long shot.
I saved her from that damn stalker in LA, and since she’s been here, we’ve gotten closer again.
We kissed in the liquor vault. I told her I still loved her and meant every word of it.
And now I find out she’s been lying to my face the whole time about one of the most important things in our lives.
There is no excuse for that kind of ongoing deception.
And that’s why I honestly can’t see myself getting past this.
I’m barely leashed carnage right now, but I still want her to explain to me why she did this. She must’ve known how deep it would cut once her secret was out. And still she chose to stay quiet, even after we got close again. After she let me flirt with her and fall in love with her all over again.
The door opens, and Christina steps out. She hesitates when she sees me standing there. Just seeing her makes my chest ache. I loved her, and that’s why she was able to hurt me so badly. I won’t make the mistake of trusting her so easily again.
“Slate,” she says, her voice shaky.
“What? Do you have more lies to feed me?”
She flinches as if the words were a physical blow. She doesn’t run away. Instead, she comes closer. When she does, I nod towards the sofa. She carefully perches on the edge, as if what she really wants to do is run off.
I start the conversation. My voice is rougher than I intend. “Did you know you were pregnant when you left Afghanistan?”
Her mouth opens, but no sound comes out.
She clears her throat and tries again. “No. I honestly had no idea and in the weeks after I got out, I was too wrapped up in work to notice I was late. Then… then there was the explosion,” she says.
“I woke up confused, thinking at first that I had been in a car crash. I learned it was an explosion, and it had claimed the lives of several members of my team.”
“You told me all that once before. Get to the part about when you discovered you were pregnant.”
“Almost immediately. It was part of the testing they did on me while I was comatose. When I could think clearly again, I knew you were the father because I hadn’t been with anyone else for a long time.”
“You should have called me. I deserved to know.”
“I tried to find you. I swear I did. I called every number I had, emailed your old unit. They said you had gone AWOL. I honestly thought they got you confused with someone else, or it was just a cover story. And you were on an important mission.”
“I was trying to claw my way out of Afghanistan.”
She tears up. “I know. You gave me your seat and had to fight your way out. Jesus, by the time I came out of the coma it had been over two months. How long did it take you to get out?”
“Almost three months. I had to lay low and work my way around Taliban units that were always on the move.”
“I’m sorry you went through that. If I had known then what I know now, I would’ve jumped on one of the first transports out of the country.”
“You could’ve come to the club,” I say. “You knew I was a member of the Sons of Rage. We talked about it.”
“My brain was Swiss-cheesed. I couldn’t remember the name of your club for a long time. And when I did, I didn’t think you’d want me.”
“Stop the bullshit, Christina. How could you think for a single fuckin’ second that I wouldn’t want my own goddamn kid? She’s my blood. Of course I would want her.”
Tears leak out of the corners of her eyes. “You don’t understand. I was scared. And then when Katie was born, I thought it was better to keep her safe—that the MC world was too violent. I saw what Kabul did to both of us, and I was done with violence forever.”
“Someone was following you, you didn’t think to contact me then, when you thought you were in danger?” My tone is incredulous.
Her voice breaks. “I just wanted to keep our child safe. To give her a fighting chance at a normal life.”
My jaw locks, and I grit out, “A normal life? That means you saw me as abnormal, right?”
“No. That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s what you just said. It sounds like bikers are good enough to fuck but not good enough to be fathers in your world. Not good enough to seek us out for protection unless it suits you.”
“It’s not like that. Now that I’ve been here and experienced it myself, I know better.”
“Gee, thanks for acknowledging I’m not a fuckin’ monster.”
Instead of arguing her point, she presses her lips together.
“I gave you my seat on that transport,” I say.
“You know what I went through getting out after that. The shit I did to survive. And the whole time, I thought maybe I’d get a chance to see you again.
I wanted something real with you. Now I find out you were carrying my kid, and you didn’t think I deserved to know? ”
Her breath catches. “I wanted to tell you. Every day. But you had this life, this brotherhood, and I didn’t know if we’d fit into your life.”
“You should’ve told me and trusted me,” I say. “That’s all you had to do.”
Her tears are coming faster now. My instinct is to hold her and tell her everything’s gonna be okay. But I’m worlds away from forgiving her, so I keep my hands to myself.
“I trusted you,” she says. “I always have.”
“Bullshit.” I rake my hand through my hair again, exasperated.
“You came here for protection and that was only because Rivera saw you and sent for me. If we hadn’t turned up that night…
” my voice trails off. I don’t even want to think what might have happened to her and my kid.
“You let me think I was just some man you used to know not the father of your daughter. You let me fall in love with you all over again and make love to you without telling me the truth.”
She wipes her face with her sleeve. “What do you want me to say?”
I take a long, hard look at the woman who raised my daughter without me.
“Nothing,” I say. “I just want you to understand all the things you took from me by not telling me. I missed out on everything, all because of you.”
When I turn towards the door, she asks, “Where are you going?”
“I need to get some fucking air. I can’t look at you right now.”
***
My boots thud against the floor as I stomp downstairs. I’m getting more furious with each step. When I hit the main room, I look around at all my club brothers and the girls. They’re all totally oblivious to my pain.
“Get out!” I say with barely leashed fury. When no one moves, I add, “Now!”
That gets them moving. Chairs scrape against the floor, and the room clears out almost instantaneously. They know better than to test me when I give an order. The last brother out shuts the door without looking back.
Then it’s just me standing there with a lifetime’s worth of self-control about to snap.