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“Yes, and we didn’t reconnect until I stumbled upon you because you never bothered to come and find me, did you, Haze?” The words are out before I can stop them, but once they are out there, I realize how very true they are.

He was happy never to see me again.

He let me go.

He didn’t care where I was or who I was with.

He had moved on.

He grips my face tighter. “I told you why, Luella. I was letting you live a normal life. I didn’t deserve you. I knew it then, and I still know it now, but I’m too much of a selfish bastard to let you go. Your normal life left you the second you walked into this clubhouse.”

“I was meant to be having your children. I’ve had their names picked out since I was twelve,” I admit in a moment of vulnerability.

His eyes soften, and he leans forward to press his lips to my forehead. “And you will. What are the names you chose?”

“Lola for a girl, and Silas for a boy.”

“Beautiful. Save the names. You’ll need them.”

I want to scream.

I want to walk out.

I want to kiss him.

I want us to go back in time and change everything that led us to this moment.

“If you came here with a child already, I would have loved them even if they weren’t mine because they’d be yours.” His lips tighten. “If you came here and got pregnant by one of my brothers,” he lowers his voice, “… I’d have to kill them.”

“And that’s how I feel about Daisy!”

“Daisy is no one. No one else I fucked meant anything, Luella. They were faceless bodies who distracted me from my own shit. I tried to use women to fill a void, a void that no one but you can fill.”

“Daisy isn’t no one, Haze. You’re about to have a child that’s half her. Half her features, half her traits, half her genetics. That’s not no one.”

Our eyes connect and hold, and so much passes through his.

Loss.

Guilt.

Hope.

Fear.

Deep inside, he’s just as scared as I am. But he’s scared that I’m going to run. That I’m not going to accept him.

“It will be okay,” he promises me, and I bury my face in his chest and wrap my arms around him. “You’re the only one I want to be with, Luella. You’re mine. You have always been.”

“I’m afraid,” I admit.

“I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere, okay? I’m going to be so good to you.”

“Lu! Is lunch ready? I’ve been dreaming about having those meatballs in my mouth,” Lore calls out, stopping when he sees us embracing. “Haze, stop distracting her.”

“You need your own fucking woman, Lore,” Haze grumbles, letting me go and looking around the kitchen. “I have to go to the studio tonight, but I’m free now if you need any help?”

Luella smiles and shakes her head. “I’ve got it under control. You can sit here and keep me company, though?”