“Hey, Mel,” I call over. “When you said it was my fault she puked…you were right. I take full blame.” Melodi just makes a face, but she’s grinnin’ under it.
Luna burrows into my body, weeping quietly. I can barely make it out when she whispers in my ear, “I get to be a mother!”
“You’re gonna be the biggest badass mom who ever lived, Sunshine. And I can’t wait to see it happen.”
When Jake called to tell me he and Drew had a baby girl just a couple months ago, I knew it was comin.’ The jealousy.
Hell, I knew from seven months before when he’d called and told me she was two months in.
That phone call about baby Emma really fucked me up for a couple days.
Never knew ‘til I met my Sunshine I wanted to be a father, too.
I wanted it bad.
No protection and we fucked all the time, but it just wasn’t gonna happen for us. We both began to believe it.
Luna and I rode our bikes out to Atlanta to see the baby. Dad and I were stiff with each other — he still hates my lifestyle — but everyone else was the same as always, happy to see me and thrilled Luna and I were still together.
They don’t know we’re never gonna be apart, that we eloped…got married in Vegas six months after Jake’s wedding.
Someday I’ll tell ‘em.
No one was there except for Honey Badger and Jaxson, one to represent each family.
The Ciphers sure didn’t like not being there, but I explained to their growling objections when we announced the news, that Luna and I aren’t the big-wedding types. We didn’t want the fluff. Hell, Elvis conducted our fuckin’ ceremony just because it made us laugh.
After the wedding, when I said goodbye to Jaxson, he told me again he was happy to be there, but the brothers wouldn’t understand. I nodded that I understood, and we hugged each other really hard.
When I called to say Luna and I were comin’ to see the baby, I asked Jax to tell everyone not to ask Luna when she was gonna get pregnant.
People ask things before they think sometimes.
Not everyone can have babies, and that question can really stab you in the gut when you don’t see it comin.’
He warned the family. People kept their mouths shut. But I saw Mom watching me starin’ at my younger brother’s new daughter. Her smile was sad, and it cut me in two.
After we got back, I had to let it go.
I told myself I had a love I never knew could happen to a loner like me.
I had a woman who rode a fuckin’ motorcycle next to me, who kicked the shit out of sorry fucks who needed a wake-up call.
I had a teammate.
A best friend.
A lover.
All in one.
So I let it go, deciding, ‘Shit man, don’t be greedy. She’s enough.’
But damn if this isn’t a bonus.
While Luna showers off the sweat of her training, and the tears of her surprise, I walk out back to make a phone call.
My older brother picks up after two rings. “Hey Jett.”
“Jax, guess what?”
“What?”
“I get to be a father!”
“No shit!?!!” he yells, happy as hell.
Staring at the waning sun slipping behind the tops of our oak trees, I tell him the story. Afterward we catch up on what’s been going on in his life, with his woman.
He’s always pretty tight-lipped, but he tells me some things that make me smile, and say, “I’m happy for you, Jax.”
“If it’s a boy, you’re naming it after me, right?”
“Fuck no,” I laugh as the screen door bangs behind me.
My wife smiles as she catches my happy gaze. “That Jaxson?” she asks, knowing he’d be the first one I’d call.
“Yep. Selfish prick wants the baby named after him.”
Luna laughs and mutters, “Of course he does.” Leaning into the phone, she tells him, “No way. Your head is big enough.”
“I resent that,” he shouts. “Congratulations!!”
Grinning, I say, “I’ll call you later, Jax.”
We hang up and I pull my wife into my arms and grin at her. Tears spring to her eyes as she stares up at me. “Dammit!” she whispers. “I can’t stop crying. I just wept the whole time I was in the shower.”
Emotion pulls at me as I nod and kiss her deeply.
“I hope it’s a girl, Jett.”
“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”
“So I can name her after my mom.” As Luna breaks down, I enclose her in the biggest hug I can, wanting to take all of her pain away forever for not having her mom, and all those years she thought she’d never conceive, all the times she watched the children here and wished one was hers.
Seven months later, her wish will finally come true. Sofia Sol Cocker is born, and rocks our whole world.