Shift (The Disciples' Daughters #2) (17 page)

He left.

I’d stood there like an idiot and not said anything while he walked away.

Go after him,
some part of me was screaming,
fix this.

What was I supposed to do?

“Are you going to let him go?”

I turned and saw Jager standing on the deck, the powerful build of his body as intimidating as ever. At first, I thought it was anger in his gaze. I’d hurt his brother. I wondered if that would be the reaction I’d get from all the brothers. They hadn’t treated me differently because I’d left Sketch the first time, but maybe this would be too much.

“Don’t make that mistake,” Jager spoke again.

I realized then he wasn’t angry, he was disappointed in me.

“You don’t understand. There are things none of you know,” I tried.

“I imagine that’s true. Doesn’t mean you should let him go. Everyone’s got some skeletons in their closet.”

I asked the question that had been plaguing me. “What if I tell him and he can’t see me the same way? What if he can’t see Emmy the same way?”

“From what I understand, he’s been in love with you since you were four. I don’t think anything will change the way he sees you besides you pushing him out.”

I looked away. “I don’t think he loves me anymore.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

My head snapped back to him. “What?”

“He loves you. Just the same as you love him. You takin’ off might’ve been hard, but that doesn’t change how he feels about you.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because you might be keepin’ your eyes closed, but the rest of us have seen you two since you got back. It’s hard to miss.”

Crap.

Was that true? Had I missed it because I was trying to keep Sketch away?

“Life is short, Ash. You know that. We all felt the pain when we lost Indian, but I know you felt it more deeply than the rest of us. I know what that shit’s like. Believe me, I know.” His voice went rough on the last words and I saw the pain suffusing his face. It hit me with a sickening clarity that the pain he was allowing himself to expose was always there, hiding beneath his controlled features, lurking in the back of his eyes. It was a familiar pain, one I felt myself, but it was so much stronger.

Jager had lost someone, someone close—maybe even more than once.

What had he been through?

“Jager…” I wanted to say something to help, but I knew from experience sympathetic banalities didn’t ease the hurt.

“I don’t talk about it,” he clipped. “I won’t. It was a long time ago. Just know, I get you. I get that you’re still hurting, that it’ll always hurt. But you gotta know he’s hurting, too. He lost Indian with us, he lost Gunner, but worst of all, for those years, he lost you and lost out on that time with Emmy.”

I told him the reality the brothers didn’t know. “What if she isn’t his?”

He didn’t even blink. “Don’t think it’ll matter.”

I told myself to move, to catch up with Sketch before he took off, but my feet didn’t listen. Fear cemented me to the spot. He’d given me my chance. What if it was too late?

“Go,” Jager insisted. “He wants a statement. Go give it to him.”

That got me moving. One step, two, then faster, until I was running through the back door.

“I’ll watch Emmy if she wakes up,” Jager called after me.

I wanted to thank him, but that involved slowing down. I couldn’t do that. It would be half a miracle if Sketch hadn’t left already. I rushed through the house and came skidding to a halt when he walked from the hall where my and Emmy’s bedrooms were. The fear that I’d missed my chance gripped me again, and he misunderstood my wavering.

“Emmy was out of bed. I was just settling her back in,” he explained.

God, he was sweet. Even when he was pissed at me, he still stayed to take care of her.

I was an idiot.

“I’m yours,” I blurted.

He just stared at me.

I forced myself to keep going, despite being sure I was going to pass out.

“I’m sorry. You’re right, I’ve always been yours. I was yours the first time we met and you were so nice to me even though I was shy. I was yours all those years when we were kids and you were my only real friend. I was yours when you threatened an entire room full of people because some girls were bullying me. I was yours when you held me through Dad’s funeral. I was yours every single day since I left. And I—”

“Ash,” he cut in.

For a long, sickening moment, I was certain he was going to tell me it didn’t make a difference. I was so positive he was going to tell me he wasn’t mine anymore so none of that mattered. It felt like my heart was teetering on a precipice and I was watching as it tipped over the side.

“Yeah?”

“Shut up.”

I did.

Sketch’s face was blank, but his eyes were intense. I just couldn’t read what that intensity meant.

“Prove it,” he said.

And I did.

I threw myself at him, and he was there to catch me. I barreled into his chest and his arms dropped to my thighs to hoist me up. I wrapped my arms and legs around him and he held onto me tight. I slammed my mouth down onto his and he kissed me back harder than I’d ever felt.

Sketch tore his mouth away from mine. “Say it again,” he demanded.

I ran my hand down his cheek, smoothing it along his clenched jaw. He had a loose hold on his control and I wanted it to break.

“I’m yours.”

I felt the growl he released in response vibrate from his chest to mine, from his lips to mine as he kissed me. It was different than it had been the past few weeks. The intensity was nearly consuming.

“I want you in my bed,” he said against my lips.

“Yes.”

I expected him to put me down, but he started walking to the stairs. I yelped and gripped him tighter when he took the first step.

“I can walk,” I tried. Seriously, falling down the stairs seemed like a surefire way for me not to get him naked, and I really, really wanted that.

“And I can carry you.” Four steps up, I was thinking he was right. He didn’t seem to struggle at all.

One of his hands went to the back of my head, pressing me into his neck. I grinned against his skin and took the hint. I pressed my lips to his, my tongue darting out to taste him. His groan had me nipping at him, wanting to get him as excited as I was. Then, I stepped it up even more. I sucked deep on his skin, wanting to mark him.

“Fuck, baby. You give me a hickey and I’m never gonna hear the end of that shit.”

I released him and pulled back. “Do you want me to stop?”

“Fuck no.”

I gave another little pull on the spot, wanting to make sure I left a mark. The hand he had supporting my butt went away, then returned with a solid smack. I gasped, but it turned into a moan when he massaged my stinging butt down to between my legs.

“Are you set for me already?”

“Yes.”

“That word gets me so goddamn hard when you say it.”

“Yes?”

“Mmm,” he agreed. “And I’m going to make you scream it for me soon.”

I was sure he would. The thought made certain parts of me clench, a motion that carried down my thighs. He felt it and gave me a hot look.

“Soon, baby,” he promised.

Sketch carried me into his room, a place I hadn’t been. Every night we’d spent together had been in my room in case Emmy woke and came looking for me. At least, that had been my reasoning. We’d never actually had a conversation to the effect.

I didn’t get a chance to look around. Sketch kicked the door shut behind us, reached out to flip the lock, and within the next breath, I was on my back on his bed and he was on top of me. Our clothes were in the way, annoyingly so, and we ripped them off each other. There was no foreplay, no delaying at all. We didn’t need it. As soon as he kicked off his jeans, he spread my legs wide, settled between them, and slid inside in one motion.

“Oh god,” I moaned, arching to take him deeper.

But he didn’t move.

“Tell me, Ashlynn.”

“I’m yours.”

He circled his hips, rubbing against my clit in a way that had me crying out.

“Not that.”

“Then what?” I asked, begging for the answer.

“I want something else from you, something I haven’t heard from you in four years.”

He shifted his hips to punctuate his demand and I lost track of what he’d said. He was so deep, but I needed him to move. I needed more before I lost my mind.

“What?”

“Baby, give me what I want and you’ll get what you want.”

“What do you want?”

He leaned down and whispered in my ear, “Tell me how you feel about me, Firefly.”

I froze.

“Tell me,” he pushed, pressing into me.

I was freaking out and too aroused to deal with the situation.

“Please,” I begged.

He pulled out until the head of him was barely inside of me. I cried out at the loss.

“Tell me.”

“I…” I couldn’t do it.

“Sweetheart, tell me. I already know.”

“Sketch.”

He gave me a chastising look.

“Gabe,” I corrected.

“Just say it. I promise you won’t regret it.”

I stopped looking at him and really read what was in his eyes. They were warm, beautifully so. I felt the panic at what he was asking for ease. He knew, like he always did, how I was feeling.

“Say it,” he coaxed.

“I love you.”

He thrust inside me, taking me rough and deep, until I was screaming out, just like he’d said I would. He was relentless, not letting up even as I came the first time. He never slowed, only held my legs apart more as I attempted to pull them together in the throes of my orgasm. He kept right on fucking me until I came again and I knew he was going to go with me.

Right at the last second, as I was rocked with waves of pleasure, he growled, “Say it again.”

“I love you,” I moaned.

He buried his face in my neck and said on a groan as he came, “I love you, Ash.”

I watched my hands glide over Ash’s soft skin. She flinched away from me every so often, my touch tickling her. Her body wasn’t fully recovered from my fucking yet.

It was a familiar exchange. We’d done it years ago, and we’d been doing it over the weeks since she came back. Still, after her admitting she still loved me, it felt brand new. I felt lighter than I could remember being since before we lost Indian. I wanted to stay there as long as physically possible.

She looked around the room, seeming to notice the details of it for the first time before her eyes honed in on the pictures I had framed on the shelf.

“There’s pictures of us,” she whispered.

“Yeah.” She looked at me in shock. I knew why, but still, I said, “No reason to be shocked, babe. I never wanted to give you up. Part of me always held onto some hope I’d get you back.”

My girl, like she frequently did, didn’t know what to say. I knew it when she didn’t say a thing, she just pressed a sweet, lingering kiss to my chest that—I shit you not—was enough to make up for all the shit that happened in the past.

Her eyes went back to the shelf, moving over the pictures of us over the years, until they stopped on the last frame. “Gunner,” she whispered.

The familiar pain settled in my chest when I thought about losing my uncle. “Gunner,” I acknowledged.

“You miss him,” she guessed, knowing Gunner meant as much to me as Indian did to her.

“Yeah.”

“I’m so sorry you lost him,” she said, her voice breaking. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here for you.”

“I know, baby.” And fuck if pulling her in close to me didn’t ease that pain, too.

“I want to draw you,” I told her after a bit of silence, not wanting to dwell in the past anymore. I had Ash again, and we were going to focus on the future.

“You’ve done that before,” she pointed out.

I had, I’d drawn her more times than I could count.

“Yeah, but I’ve never drawn you like this.”

Understanding had her eyes widening. “You want to draw me naked?”

“Mmm,” I murmured in response as I kissed her shoulder.

“What if someone sees it?”

“No one’s going to see it.”

“I’m sure Rose thought that, too.”

“Who’s Rose?”

“From
Titanic
. Jack draws her naked and the crew searching the wreck sees the picture of her.”

How had I forgotten how ridiculous she could be? Damn, it was fucking cute.

“Baby,” I pulled her back to reality, “you gonna let me draw you or not?”

“Right now?”

“No, but sometime soon.”

She shifted away from me slightly. I didn’t like that shit at all.

“I don’t know.”

I pulled her back against me. “Why’re you getting shy with me?”

“My body’s changed a lot…”

“Ash, I’ve spent the last few weeks getting reacquainted with every inch of you. I know your body has changed, and I fuckin’ like it. We’ve talked about this before. You gotta let it go. I want to draw you, exactly how you are now, not eighteen-year-old you.”

She settled again, her body relaxing against my side, her leg sprawling across both of mine.

“Maybe for your birthday,” she said.

Maybe my ass. She was totally going to let me.

Her veiled agreement made a thought occur to me.

“When’s Emmy’s birthday? She said it was soon.”

“Two weeks from now. April twenty-first.”

I pushed back thoughts of the birthdays I’d missed as I told her, “We’ll plan something for her. Throw a party.”

“She’s never had a big birthday party. Last year was just me, my friend Jasmine, and her mom. Though, I wonder if she even remembers it. She was still pretty little then.”

“She’ll get parties from now on. The brother’s will love throwing them for her.”

We were both quiet for a bit. I was sure we needed to get up and get dressed soon. I didn’t know how long Emmy was going to nap, but I didn’t imagine we had much longer. There was one more thing I wanted to talk about first.

“I’ll talk to Gauge tomorrow about paternity testing. He had it done when that bitch was pregnant with Levi. He probably still has the info for the company he used.”

Ash shot up to sitting, gripping the sheet against her chest.

“What?”

“We’ll get a paternity test done and then have me added to Emmy’s birth certificate. They probably need the test for that, don’t they? Maybe not. Maybe if we both declare it, it won’t matter,” the last part was mostly said to myself, but it didn’t matter. Ash wasn’t with me.

“Paternity test?” she asked, like I’d suggested we play a round of Russian Roulette with Emmy instead.

“Yeah, babe.”

“I don’t want to do a paternity test.”

Yeah, part of me was worried about it, too. It didn’t matter, though. Emmy was going to be my daughter either way.

“It won’t matter, baby. I already love that girl. We’ll figure out the best way to make her my daughter, either way,” I tried to assure her.

“No.”

“No?”

“No test. I don’t want to do a test. I won’t.”

“Babe, it doesn’t matter what it says. I think we might need it to know what to do legally to make her mine.”

“It does matter. It matters a lot. I don’t want a test,” Ash kept insisting.

“Whoever the guy was, we won’t have to contact him. It won’t matter—”

“No!” Ash cut me off. “I won’t do it. I don’t want the results.”

“What if it proves I’m her father?”

“I don’t want to know.”

Ash got to her feet and started pulling her clothes from the floor. She was yanking them on as fast as she could manage.

What the hell?

“Firefly—”

“No! I said I don’t want to do it. You can’t make me do it. I don’t want those results. I don’t want to know!”

I was on my feet then, snatching my jeans from the ground and pulling them on.

“You don’t want to know? You don’t even want to know definitively that Emmy’s mine.” My own words, and the truth I feared they held, hit me and I felt fucking sick. “That’s it, isn’t it? You don’t want to find out she’s mine.”

“No, it’s not that,” she said, but she didn’t look at me, and she didn’t explain what it was. She just kept dressing.

“Fuck. That is it. You don’t want to find out I am her father. You’re still holding onto all your hate toward the Disciples. You’re still blaming the club for takin’ your dad from you. What, was your plan to admit you loved me and then try to convince me to leave the club again?”

“No, I…”

She didn’t finish, and I didn’t let her figure out what she was going to say.

“Fucking hell, Ash. You don’t even fucking know. It wasn’t the club who got your dad killed, it was Indian who got the club into that whole mess in the first place! But that doesn’t even fucking matter to you, does it? You’re going to hold onto this grudge and your fear.”

She looked shocked at what I’d said about Indian, but it was the truth. It was just a truth everyone had been keeping from her. They thought it was best, I thought it was bullshit. Not knowing was giving her a reason to continue trying to pull away from me. I wasn’t going to let it keep happening.

“You don’t want to do the test because you’re afraid it’ll prove I’m Emmy’s dad,” I went on, completely past the point of controlling the years of frustration that had built up. “You’re terrified of finding out her dad is a biker, just like yours!”

“No!” she shouted at me. “I’m afraid of finding out her father is a rapist!”

No.

Fuck no.

Fuck. Fuck.
Fuck no.

Tears poured down her face and she started to sway. Her knees were going to give out on her. I ran to her and pulled her into my arms. I sat us both on the bed, her body folding over until her whole torso was bent over my thighs.

“Shh, baby. I’ve got you,” I comforted her, all the while trying to top the echo of her words from repeating again and again in my head.

I was going to fucking lose it. If Ash weren’t clinging to me, I already would have.

I didn’t care what it took, I was going to find the motherfucker and I was going to fucking revel in killing him slowly. He was going to beg me to off him before I was done.

“I was going to come back,” Ash said between gasping breaths. “I missed you so much and I couldn’t take it. I was going to come back even though I was still scared. Then, he…” She let out a sob that felt like a blow to the ribs—no, it felt worse. There was no recovering from the damage she was dealing. “I didn’t know what to do. I felt so dirty. I didn’t want to come back like that. Then, I found out I was pregnant. What if it wasn’t yours? How could I come back pregnant with a baby that might not be yours? How could I…” her tears devoured her words.

She thought she couldn’t come back to me. She was going to; I was going to get another chance to get her to stay. He took that from both of us. He made my beautiful girl feel dirty.

I could feel myself shaking.

With my hands beneath her arms, I pulled Ash up and shifted us both until we were lying on the bed. I wrapped her up, bringing her as close as I could. We needed to hold on to each other. I needed her to ground me; she needed me to make her feel safe.

“You need to understand something, Ashlynn,” I told her. She didn’t respond, but I didn’t expect her to. “I don’t think you’re dirty. I would never think that. I hate that you experienced that, and I would give anything to change it, but you are not dirty. You never were.”

For a while, I didn’t say anything else. I just held her while her cries grew quieter, her breathing steadier. Only when I felt her start to relax did I say what I needed to. I needed to be sure she was hearing it.

“This changes nothing. It doesn’t impact how I feel about you, and it doesn’t impact how I feel about Emmy. Both of you are mine,” I declared. Ash gave a little hiccupping sob and I soothed my hand up and down her back, allowing the touch to calm us both. “We’ll see what we can do about having her declared my daughter without a paternity test. If there isn’t a way to add me to the birth certificate, I’ll adopt her. We can figure out what to tell her when the time comes.”

“You’d do that?” Her eyes were puffy and red, but it was the tentative hope that took my attention.

“Yes. In a fucking heartbeat. I would sign whatever I needed to right now if I could.”

She buried her face in my neck, but I could still hear her muffled voice when she said, “I don’t want to do the test. I don’t think I could handle finding out she isn’t yours. I would never wish Emmy wasn’t in my life, but how could I be happy that—”

“We don’t have to do it. Emmaline is a fuckin’ miracle. That’s it. We don’t have to worry about how.”

Ash shocked the hell out of me when she spoke.

“Sometimes, I don’t know how to handle it. I mean, if I hadn’t left, I wouldn’t have…experienced that. But what if that’s the only reason I have her? It makes me crazy. When I was pregnant, I used to wonder all the time if I was making a mistake. By the time she came, I wouldn’t even let myself think about it. I forced myself into a state of denial, insisting she had to be yours. Then, I held her that first time and…I can’t even put it into words. I fell in love with her the second I heard her crying.”

Fuck. She was so fuckin’ strong. I knew she didn’t think so. She’d always thought she was weak. She thought being shy meant she was fragile. She had no idea. When I looked at her, I saw nothing but fucking strength.

“Will you…” I had to stop and clear my throat to get the words out, “can you tell me what happened?”

I didn’t want to make her relive it, and I knew anything she told me would stay inside me like a scar on my heart, but I needed to hear it. I needed to help her shoulder that burden. If she could unload even a bit of it onto me, I wanted to take it.

And I needed any bit of information I could get if I wanted to find that fucker.

With a deep breath, my Ash, my fucking warrior, told me everything.

“When I left, I didn’t really know where to go,” she started. “I stayed in a couple motels, but I knew I couldn’t afford to do that forever. Then, Penelope called to check in on me.”

Penelope. That fucking cousin of hers. I’d hoped Ash wouldn’t have gone there. It was a lead I didn’t check into for a while, perhaps too long.

Penelope was Indian’s sister’s daughter. Indian and his sister weren’t close, but he’d tried once or twice over the years to connect, I think mostly out of a desire to give Ash more family. The sister was a shitshow who married a drug-dealing bum. I wasn’t sure if the dick was Penelope’s dad or not. What I did know was the girl pulled the short straw when it came to adults who raised her. I knew that straw, I’d pulled a shit one by biology too, but I’d been lucky enough to have Gunner. Indian tried to be the same for Penelope, but he’d reached out too late for her to be willing to take the hand he offered.

When social media became a thing, Ash and Penelope reconnected, much to my and Indian’s displeasure. Ash insisted it wasn’t an issue. She knew Penelope was a mess, but she wanted to be friendly. She wanted to be there in case her cousin decided to stop screwing around and using. Indian and I wanted her to stay far the fuck away, but it was a battle we lost.