Shadow: Cerberus MC Book 3 (13 page)

“Bri,” I say loudly into the phone trying to get her attention. I can tell her conversation with him is going to turn into an argument quickly, and I rather not be on the line when it happens.

“Yeah,” she says back to me.

“I don’t need the fucking issues you have with that asshole to follow you to New Mexico. I don’t want his bullshit around my son.” I’ve tried helping her with that piece of shit more than once. Kincaid even offered to off his lazy ass, and I’m not one hundred percent certain that he didn’t mean it at the time. I have no patience where he’s concerned, and still can’t understand why she’s wasted years of her life with him.

“That sounds so weird coming from you,” she says with awe in her voice.

“What?” I can’t focus on anything but thoughts of wanting to murder her boyfriend and the beautiful, dark-haired woman that keeps walking back and forth holding my very fussy son.

“You said ‘my son.’ I never thought I’d hear that coming from your mouth.” I laugh because not in a million years could I have imagined it either.

Misty passes by again trying to calm him with soothing words and a gentle pat on his back.

“Is that him?” Bri asks. “Put him on the phone!”

“He’s a week old, Bri. He doesn’t talk on the damn phone.” Jesus, and I thought I had limited experience with babies. “Listen, I’ve got to go. I’ll let you know when I get called out.”

I tell her goodbye; she asks me what kind of snacks he likes. I hang up the phone wondering if her being here to help isn’t going to be more of a hindrance for Misty when I have to leave.

I pocket my phone and stop Misty on her next turn.

“He’s just so fussy,” she says standing still but rocking him by bending her knees and dipping her body weight. “I’ve changed him; I’ve fed and burped him. He’s just restless.”

“Let me,” I say holding out my hands for him.

She struggles to pull him out of the sling contraption, so I reach my hands inside to get him. I almost groan when her warm breath floats against the back of my hand.
Fuck I need to get laid.
I’ll add that to my mounting list of things to do.

I cradle him to my chest. “Hey now, Griff. There’s no reason to give your momma such a hard time.” I walk one full length of the living room and by the time I make it back to Misty, he’s gone quiet.

She just stands there with her hands on her hips glaring at me. “Un-fucking-believable. I’ve been trying to get him to calm down for thirty minutes. I’ve practically worn a hole in the damn floor.”

I shrug and give her a quick smile. “What can I say? I guess I have the magic touch.”

I can’t discern the look in her eyes at my remark. It’s heated and borders on dark, but it’s gone in a flash.

“I’ve missed him,” I admit.

“You see him every day,” she says quickly.

“Take a break,” I tell her. “I’ll put him down for a nap in my room.”

She doesn’t say anything, but I can feel her eyes on my back as I leave the room. I shift his weight to one arm and open the door to my new bedroom. I don’t know how many times over the last couple of days I’ve found myself standing in front of my old room. I don’t know if it’s a subconscious desire to see them or it’s muscle memory from walking there for so many years.

I place Griffin gently into the crib I put together yesterday. It doesn’t really fit with the ultra-modern furniture Kid was using in here before joining Khloe in her room, but it seems perfect now that he’s in here with me.

I sit down at my desk and begin to go through the piles of paperwork that has only grown in the last week while I’ve been distracted with Misty and Griffin. We get called out on a lot of jobs, but that’s not all that we do. Some of my work is done from the comfort of my computer. Hacking, tracking, and locating things, people, and organizations is a large part of the income the Cerberus MC brings in.

We have a very specialized skill set that sometimes requires us to go out in the field, but we have triple that type of work in the form of computer analyzation and accounting. We do our best to funnel each girl we find, each person we come in contact with that needs our help, through resources that are funded not only by us but by so very helpful sponsors.

Not every person who’s been abducted has people out looking for them. Either their own families sold them to pay a debt, or they don’t have the funds to seek our type of services. Usually, when we find the one we’re looking for, there are at least three or four others who haven’t been found yet. We found out rather quickly that just finding these girls and returning them home or setting them free was sometimes worse than where they were rescued from. We make sure they have what they need to survive. We set them up with a counselor, jobs, housing, whatever they need to get on their feet.

As the number of rescues increase, so does the diligence required to keep track of them, making sure we don’t drop the ball. I don’t manage those accounts directly, but I manage the people who manage them. It’s always a good idea to keep an eye on people with the best of intentions. Handling that much money can be a temptation for just about anyone.

An hour and a half is all the time Misty gives me with Griffin before I hear her knock softly on the bedroom door. I stand up and open it for her. He’s still sleeping, so yelling across the room for her to come in would be asinine.

“I didn’t realize you had a crib in here,” she says as she steps into the room.

I leave the door open because I assume she’s going to grab him and go back to hiding out in her own room. I sit back at my desk, leaning far back into my chair.

“I put it together yesterday. It’s the maiden voyage,” I say tilting my head at the piece of furniture.

“It’s very nice,” she says absently.

“I can get one for your room, too,” I tell her.

“What I have is fine,” she says sitting on the end of my messy bed.

“I realize it’s fine, Misty, but if you want him in a full sized crib, well get one for your room.”

She shakes her head. “No thank you.”

I scrub at my eyes. Things were so easy with her before she came here. We could talk and joke; things didn’t seem so off. I’m reminded of what she said a few nights ago.

I was no more than a quick fuck for you.

Guilt hits me again, just like it did that night. I couldn’t argue with her when she was correct. I refuse to tell her that I actually missed her when I came back home after our last night together. She would never believe that I’ve talked about her to both Kid and Kincaid, that I was frustrated beyond measure when I texted her, and she didn’t respond.

“Listen,” she says catching on to my growing frustration. “I appreciate everything that you’ve done for us. I know I don’t deserve it after handling this the way I did. I knew you were a good man, Shadow, and you’ve proved that time and time again since we got here. But I need to start helping myself.”

I sit up straight in my chair. “What are you getting at, Misty?”

My pulse begins to thump harder, and a cold sweat runs down my back. I wait as she tries to find the right words to tell me that she’s leaving. I prepare myself for the fight that is about to happen because over my damned dead body will she take my son and just walk away. I’ve grown attached to him in a matter of days. I can’t imagine him not being here, under the same roof as me. Even if I didn’t get the paternity test back yesterday, that confirmed he’s my son I wouldn’t just let her leave.

“I need to get a job, find my own place. I can’t keep living here, living off of you.” She turns her attention to Griffin, who has begun to wiggle slightly in the crib.

“You’re not living off of anyone, Misty. I’m providing for my son.”

She bites her lip to keep from speaking. Clearly, some part of that statement was the wrong thing to say.

She sighs and closes her eyes for a long minute.

“I have to provide for myself, Shadow. I’m not trying to keep him from you. This is just something that I have to do,” she says without opening her eyes.

“You can stay here and provide for yourself, Misty. You don’t have anything to prove. You don’t have to suffer and forage out on your own to do that.”

“We’re not together. I shouldn’t live here if…” She sighs again. “You know what? It doesn’t even matter. I have to do what I feel is right.”

I’m hanging onto my control by a single thread as I see her reach into the crib and pull my sleeping son out, the action symbolic of what she’s planning to do in the future. “I won’t let you take him from me,” I spit with less venom than I feel. What I want to do is snatch him out of her hands, but I know that won’t fix things.

Fighting her at this point is only going to make things worse.

“I would never take him from you. Do you really think I’m that kind of person?”

I huff out a laugh. “Would I even know about him if your parents hadn’t kicked you out?” The look on her face gives me the answer I already knew deep in my gut.

Her bottom lip trembles as my eyes widen in shock. She would’ve never told me. She honestly believed I was the type of man who wouldn’t want to know his own child. What does that say about the way I treated her? Fuck.

I stand from my chair and cross the room to her before she can escape out of the door.

“My sister is going to come spend some time here,” I tell her placing a hand on her arm. “If you want to work, that’s fine. I hope you’ll reconsider leaving, though.”

She nods her head and walks out.

I fall back into my desk chair. Every conversation, every interaction I have with her turns to shit. I know I have time. Well, I hope I have time. I’ve checked into her financials. I know she has some money in the bank. Not near enough to set out on her own and support a child, but what I am learning is she’s impulsive. That is a very dangerous thing, especially when she’s unhappy.

I’ve been at the Cerberus Motorcycle clubhouse for almost six weeks now. Shadow and I have managed to somehow co-parent Griffin without another argument. The first week that I was here was horrible, both physically and emotionally exhausting.

He backed off of the petty arguments after I expressed the need to get out on my own. I don’t know if I scared him or if he just decided fighting me to stay here wasn’t worth it. We haven’t discussed it since. It’s still always in the back of my mind. I’ve never felt like such a parasite in my life. Living with your parents is one thing; living off of a man who got you pregnant after being lied to is another.

Brighton showed up when Shadow and several of the others were called out for a job two weeks after I arrived. I’m not exactly sure what they do, but the sight of them carrying big black duffle bags out of here made me worry about his safety every second that he was gone.

He spent every second of the first couple days he was back with Griffin. It was clear that he’d missed him while he was gone. I know Brighton spoke with him several times while he was gone, getting updates on his son. Not once did she pass the phone to me. It hurts, but I’ve accepted it. Any small hope I’d had before arriving here of being a family was smashed within hours of my arrival.

“When is your first shift at Jake’s?” Khloe asks finally taking a break from her homework.

“Day after tomorrow,” I answer.

Jake’s is a small bar in town that hired me on the spot when Snatch took me there to apply. Not being required to fill out an application was weird, but Emmalyn told me she was hired there exactly like that last year. Then she smiled a weird little smile as if she knew some secret she couldn’t tell me.

I didn’t question it. I was just happy to have found a job so fast. I know Brighton is here to help with the baby, but I doubted her abilities to watch Griffin while I worked when I caught her putting chocolate syrup in a bottle of pumped breast milk. She claimed ‘all kids love chocolate milk.’

I explained it to Shadow, and he agreed that even though she’s one of the best real-estate agents in Tennessee, kids weren’t her strongest forte. I was relieved when he didn’t force my hand. I got the job at Jake’s because I can work evenings, and Khloe and Em have agreed to keep an eye on Griffin since all of their college classes are in the morning.

I offered to pay them, but both refused, saying it’s ridiculous to pay people to watch a baby they love.

Bri sighs when her cell phone chimes a text, again. She’s always getting texts. At first, I thought it must be work. She told me she has a pretty flexible schedule, and it’s no big deal for her to be away from home for weeks at a time. Em, however, let it slip one day in the kitchen that her boyfriend back home is giving her trouble. I should say ex-boyfriend. She told him to pack his things and leave when she came to New Mexico, but apparently he hasn’t heeded the eviction notice.

“You’ll like working at Jake’s,” Em says as she runs her finger over Griffin’s dark hair. “Tips are nice.”

“I’m not so much worried about tips. I’m just grateful to get out of the clubhouse, away from broody men,” I add when Shadow walks past us and out the front door without so much as a nod in our direction.

Khloe and Em laugh at the same time.

“What?” I ask looking between the two.