Chapter Four
York
A child.
I had a child.
A whole human being that was walking and talking and experiencing the world for the first time. And I had no idea.
I had to keep clearing my throat, like something was lodged there. My heart, maybe.
I was a father.
Not by practice—yet—but by blood.
I couldn’t really wrap my head around it.
I’d been bracing myself for running into Velle in the morning. With his concerned eyes and “I’m here for you if you need to talk.” All well-intentioned, of course, but not what I needed right then. I was trying not to overthink things before the trip to the zoo.
But it wasn’t Velle waiting for me to come down.
It was Huck.
He leaned back against the counter, a mug in his hand, nodding to me as I came down into the kitchen.
“So, it got around, I guess.”
“You didn’t really expect news that big to be kept a secret, did you?”
“Guess not,” I said, beelining for the coffee pot.
Understandably, I hadn’t done much sleeping. My eyes were sandpaper, my mind soup. I was hoping some caffeine would help.
“You had no idea?”
“Nope. It was a one-night stand. I used a condom. I had no reason to assume I had a kid out there.”
Huck sure as fuck had a reputation before he found his woman and settled down into monogamy. If anyone understood a one-night stand, it was him.
“But you do,” he said. “I’m not gonna ask you to get all heartwarming and share your feelings with me.”
“Thank fuck.”
“But I am going to give you a dose of reality.”
“Alright.”
“Doesn’t matter if you meant to have a kid. Doesn’t matter if you didn’t even want a kid. You’ve got one. It’s your job to be there for it now. Financially, but also in a more meaningful way. There’s no excuse for a man to walk away from their kid.”
“Her. Be there for her.”
He nodded at that. “The boys are fun,” he said, being a father of both genders. “Get to be rough and do crazy shit with them. They look to you to teach them how to be good men. But the little girls wrap their tiny hands around your heart and squeeze.”
“Maybe. When you’ve been there from the jump.”
“Nah, trust me. It won’t matter how late you came to the party. Does she know about you?”
“Runa told her I’m a friend. Told me she didn’t want to promise a father if I was going to be a dick.”
“That’s fair. Heard you’re going to the zoo.”
“Yeah. Runa wants to talk. She figures Denali will be distracted by the animals, so we can get a little privacy.”
“She’s, what, five?”
“Around there, yeah.”
“That’s a good age. I get that it might be awkward. Especially because you haven’t even spent much time with the club kids. But try to interact with her, not just her mom.”
“Yeah, that’s the plan.”
“Did Runa say why she showed up now?”
“She said she finally got a tip about where to find me.”
“But?” he asked.
“But there was something she wasn’t saying.”
“Well, when has a woman ever shown up in the vicinity of this club without some kind of trouble on her heels?”
“Yeah,” I agreed, sighing. “I guess I’ll figure all that out today.”
“Look, I get it’s a shock. But it’s an honor to be a dad. Treat it like that. You should get going.”
With that, he turned and made his way out the back door.
Alone, I sucked in a deep breath.
I agreed with him.
Was there shock? Of course.
Had I given having kids a lot of thought? No.
But now that I knew I had one, shit felt immediately different. There was a weight pressing on my shoulders, a sense of responsibility I hadn’t anticipated.
My mind raced with thoughts of not only what I’d missed, but what Runa had been missing out on.
Judging by that car she was driving, money had to be tight.
I could have been easing that burden. Lord knew, I had more money than I needed, especially because I still lived at the clubhouse.
And the club provided most of the food we ate too.
Runa should have been getting child support all along. And actual support with the whole parenting thing. Not that I knew what to do, but I would have figured it out.
And what about Runa?
She’d have been young, alone, raising a baby. When I met her, she’d been, what? Maybe twenty-three, twenty-four?
And while we hadn’t exactly done a ton of talking, I did know that she worked odd jobs to fund her camping, hiking, and exploring lifestyle.
What had she done once she found out she was pregnant? Gone home to her family? Did she even have family? Had she done the whole parenting thing completely alone?
I had no idea.
But they were all things on the top of my priority list to ask.
I grabbed something quick to eat, grabbed cash, locked my gun under my bike seat, then started off toward the zoo.
Nerves jittered up my spine, wrapping around my stomach, chest, and throat with each mile I drove closer to the zoo.
What the hell did you even say to a kid that age? One who didn’t know me from Adam? The club kids did occasionally speak to me, asking me random shit like my favorite cartoon character or if I’d ever eaten a bug. But they knew me. They saw me every time they hung out at the club.
Would Denali speak to me at all?
Would she, worse yet, be afraid of me?
I wasn’t exactly the most approachable man. It worked in my favor for my job. But I was tall, broad, muscular, bearded, and tattooed. That was scary shit to a kid, wasn’t it? Would I look like every villain in the movies or shows she watched?
I shook those worries off the best I could as I drove up to the zoo and found a spot before walking up to the gates.
I hadn’t seen her car pull in, but I caught sight of Runa as she walked between a set of cars to start to make her way toward me.
Then, there she was.
Denali.
My daughter.
She was a tiny thing in a pink t-shirt, multicolored shorts, pink sandals, and a big, chunky bracelet on her wrist.
Her hair wasn’t as dark as her mother’s or mine, but a light brown, long, and pulled half up with bangs hanging like curtains to the sides of her forehead.
I wish I could say I saw myself in her.
But I’d been a tank of a little kid. Tall, burly, with perpetually bloodied hands and knees from falling when I played too hard.
It was impossible to see anything of me in this tiny, delicate little human. That, somehow, I’d helped create.
But she looked up—not at me, I was sure, but the zoo sign itself—and I saw her eyes. Brown, but not dark like Runa’s. They were a lighter chocolate shade like mine.
I felt a stitch in my chest, sharp enough for me to lift my hand and rub at it.
But then they were just a few feet in front of me. Runa offered me a tight smile. Denali was half-hidden behind her mother’s leg.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” I said, exhaling.
“Denny, this is my friend, York. Do you want to maybe say hi?”
Denali watched me for a second with those big, round eyes, trying to decide if she would or not.
Eventually, though, she reached out a chubby little kid hand for me to shake. “Hi.”
“Hi,” I said, not sure how much pressure to put, so I gave just the tiniest of squeezes. “Mommy said you’ll be nice.”
My gaze flicked to Runa, seeing the tension around her eyes. Why would the kid assume I wouldn’t be nice?
“I will be nice to you,” I assured her, hoping kids had a knack for hearing sincerity.
“And to Mommy.” There was a firmness in her voice then, almost like she was trying to set a boundary, like maybe one had been crossed in the past.
Who the hell had been around my kid?
What had she seen them do?
“I’m going to be nice to your mom too,” I told her.
Denali gave me a nod at that and reached up for her mother’s hand. Runa took it and gave her daughter a smile. “Didn’t you want to ask York a very important question?”
My stomach tightened, wondering what the hell that might be.
“What animal do you want to see?” she asked, making some of the tension slip out of my spine. “Mommy wants to see a white tiger.”
“White tigers are cool. What do you want to see?”
“Elephants. And giraffes.”
“Well, let’s go see some then.”
We stepped up toward the ticket booth, and Runa reached to draw the pack off her back, but I was quicker, buying the three tickets, then leading them through the opening.
We were almost immediately greeted by flamingos, which Denali cooed and gushed over—seemingly because they were pink, which used to be her favorite color. But now it was purple. But she liked yellow too. And sparkles. And rainbows.
Any worries I’d had about her being shy flew out the window as I desperately tried to funnel away everything she was saying so I knew her a little better.
Runa and I were mostly silent, save to answer a few of her questions.
But outside the tortoise enclosure, she’d met up with another little girl, and the two of them got to talking.
Runa took a few deliberate steps back, and I followed.
“She’s chattier than I expected.”
“Yeah, she’s a big talker. Which I encourage. Especially when it’s other kids. She doesn’t get to spend a lot of time with them.”
“She’s not in school?”
“Not yet. Soon. Maybe.”
“Why maybe?”
“We… move around a lot,” she admitted.
“That why you’re here? Because you’re tired of moving around a lot?”
“Well, I mean, we’re here now because I got that tip. I’d all but given up hope about it.”
“How’d you get a tip?”
Runa’s face scrunched up. “Well, that’s a little humiliating. But I put up posters.”
“Posters? Of me?”
“Yeah. I found someone who did sketches, described you to them, and they produced something that looked a lot like you. So I had posters made up.”
“What’d they say?”
“That’s the embarrassing part. They said, “Help me track down my baby daddy.”
“Oof.”
“Yeah. Sorry. But I didn’t think anyone would give me any directions if they saw a picture of you. People pretty universally hate deadbeat dads. I mean, not that you are one. You didn’t even know you were a dad, but I—”
“Runa,” I cut her off. “It’s alright. You were trying to find me. I don’t care what you lied about to do that.”
She nodded. “I drove all around New York state and posted them up when I was over that way, not sure I’d get anywhere, but figuring it was worth a shot. I wanted you to know you had a daughter. Whether you wanted to be involved with her or not.”
“I do. For the record, I do want to be involved.”
Her gaze flicked away, but not before I saw the relief there.
“Been hard?”
“Raising Denali? No. I mean, yes. Babies are hard, obviously. Especially alone.”
“So you were alone.”
“Yeah, I was alone. But I was young. And didn’t sleep that much anyway. And Denny was a really good baby. I think she slept through the night by four months. It wasn’t that bad. The first year was actually pretty good. We had a nice little place, and I had a decent job. We were doing well.”
“Before all the moving around.”
“Yeah, before—”
“Mommy,” Denali cut in, making us both realize her little friend had moved on. “What’s next?”
I glanced down at the map I was holding. “Warthogs.” Denali’s face scrunched up. “They do have three warts,” I told her. “And big tusks.”
By the time we made our way past the otters—Denali’s favorite so far—she was begging for a piggyback ride because her little feet hurt.
It was a massive park. I honestly didn’t know how she’d gone so far without being picked up.
Instead of piggybacking, though, Runa swung the kid up onto her shoulders so she could still see everything without any obstruction.
But by the time we made it over to the gazelles and antelope and other deer-like animals, Runa was apologizing and lowering the kid back down.
“Mommy’s shoulders are hurting, munchkin. You’re going to need to walk for a little bit.”
It was the first time the whole day Denali looked anything less than thrilled. Her little lower lip popped out, and her brows came down.
“But my feet hurt too.”
“You know,” I said as a look of panic crossed Runa’s face. Understandably. We were only halfway through the park. There was no way she could carry the grumpy kid the rest of the way. “I have really strong shoulders.”
“They look big,” Denali said, craning her head back to look at me.
“Yep. I lift heavy weights just in case I need them to be really strong.”
“Like for carrying things?”
“Or little people.”
Denali glanced at her mother, a silent seeking of approval.
“And you’d be even higher than on my shoulders,” Runa said.
Permission given, Denali turned back to me and threw her arms up in the air.
There it was again—that odd stitch in my chest.
I reached down, turning her, then lifting her up by the waist.
She was so much lighter than I expected. I was half-worried I’d picked her up too hard, that she might go flying. But she was up and settled on my back, her tiny legs hanging over my shoulders, her hands patting the top of my head.
Runa shared a smile with me, then we were off again.
With Denali so close, though, we didn’t really get a chance to have any more grown-up conversations as we moved past the painted dogs, lions, and, finally, the elephants.
“Mama, can we picnic?” she asked as we moved past the orangutans—the final enclosure—and started back toward the entrance. “I can share with York.”
There it was again, more worry on Runa’s face.
Those money issues I’d wondered about earlier must have been worse than I realized.
“Actually, if it’s okay with your mother, maybe I can treat you to lunch at the cafe.”
“Can we, Mommy?” Denali gasped.
Runa’s smile was soft, and a little sad around the edges. “Of course we can.”
“What kind of sauce do they have?” Denali asked, then started a long list of various sauces she liked as we queued up behind a line of other people.
“Thank you,” Runa whispered.
“Think I’m the one who has a lot to thank you for.”