“Don’t worry about us, Sky. You should be saving your money,” says Logan, always the wise one.

  “Just let me say thank you,” I say. “I know it’s not much, but let me do this, at least. I’m very grateful to you both for making my move here such an easy, amazing one.”

  “Okay,” he says, grinning. “When do you want to do this? Tomorrow night? We can go to McDonalds.”

  Rolling my eyes, I say, “I was going for something a little fancier. You two can choose.”

  I stand up and kiss Logan on the cheek, then head up to my room.

  I have a program to enroll in.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The next night after dinner with Logan and Sabrina at a Sri Lankan restaurant, Saint texts and asks me if I can come to the clubhouse to spend the night.

  I bring some takeaway food with me for him and Hammer, and step into the clubhouse. There’s loud music playing, so the men must be drinking or maybe having people over, who knows. I didn’t see Hammer’s bike out the front, so he may not be here tonight.

  More food for me.

  I put the food in the kitchen, and then find Saint sitting out back with a beer in his hand, laughing with Renny about something or another, but he stands with a wide smile when he sees me.

  “Hello, beautiful,” he murmurs, strolling over to me and lifting me up in his arms. He gives me a quick kiss, and then pulls me down onto his lap. I notice that there are other members here tonight, new faces, and a few women around the place. All eyes are on me.

  “How was dinner?” he asks.

  “Good. I brought you some food,” I reply, turning on his lap to face him.

  “You spoil me,” he says with a grin. “Do you want something to drink? Beer? Juice? Soda? I stocked the fridge and cupboard for you. I think I might have gone overboard.”

  “I’m fine, but thank you,” I say, kissing him again quickly.

  “Hey, Sky,” Renny calls out.

  I move my face around Saint, who was blocking him with his body. “Renegade. How are you?”

  “I’m good. Even better now that we’re eating like kings since you came back,” he teases, lifting a beer up in cheers. “Although I’m going to have to do extra hours in the gym,” he grumbles, raising his white T-shirt, showing off a very toned six-pack of abs. I don’t think he has to worry about that just yet.

  “Happy to be of service,” I tell him, grinning, then glance back up at Saint. “What kind of stuff did you buy?”

  “I didn’t know what cereal you liked, so I got a variety. Bacon, eggs, stuff to make pancakes, juice. Snacks. Everything,” he says with a shrug. “I remember you used to like strawberry-frosted cupcakes, so I got some of those too. And mangoes.”

  “You are so fucking cute,” I say, warmth filling me. “Mangoes are still my favorite, and I still love those cupcakes.”

  The fact that he remembers all these things means so much to me. We’re both getting to know each other again, but a lot of me is still the same. He knows who I was, and now he’s getting to know who I am, and vice versa.

  “Good,” he murmurs, scanning my face. “Thanks for coming to spend the night with me. I missed you today.”

  “I missed you too,” I say. I’m about to open my mouth and tell him about how I enrolled in the paramedic course when the door opens and Hammer walks outside.

  With none other than my mother.

  “What is she doing here?” Saint asks, standing up and putting me next to him, protecting me.

  “I asked myself the same thing,” Hammer growls, jaw tight and face redder than I’ve seen it. He must have just arrived at the clubhouse. “I found her standing out the front and demanding to see Skylar, because otherwise she’s going to call the cops and tell them that we’re keeping her against her will.”

  “I’m fine, Mom,” I tell her, frowning. “And Logan told you I was fine. You didn’t have to come all this way.”

  We all know this isn’t about me—this is about her. She never wanted me to reconnect to the MC, because it meant leaving her behind in a different world. I think she sees this as her territory, her old family, and without her I’m not allowed to be in it.

  “My own daughter, a traitor,” she muses, shaking her head. “I should have known. I never trusted you, you know. From the day you were born, I wished you’d been another boy.”

  Anger fills me. “How am I a traitor? You are the one who brought Hammer into my life, to be my father figure and to raise me. Just because he broke up with you doesn’t mean he broke up with me, even though that’s what you wanted!”

  “Don’t let them fill your head with their lies, Skylar. I am your mother!” she shouts back, pointing at me.

  “Why are you here?” I ask, scowling. “No one wants you here, Mom.”

  She glances around the outdoor area, taking in all the faces and people, before bringing her gaze back to me. “Leave with me right now or you are dead to me, Skylar. If you don’t walk out of these doors, as far as I’m concerned, I have no daughter.” She lifts her chin and narrows her eyes. “And you will have no mother.”

  “Has she ever had a mother?” Hammer asks her, tone as violent as I’ve ever heard it. “I tell you what, the truth about what happened needs to fucking come out. I wanted to protect Sky from it, but maybe it’s better that she knows the truth. So she can understand what happened back then when you took her away from us.”

  I step closer, needing to hear this. “I want to know the truth.”

  “Don’t listen to a word he says,” Mom spits out, but I don’t miss the flash of fear in her eyes.

  What has she done?

  Hammer tells everyone to clear out, except me, Saint, him and Mom. I’m starting to feel really fucking nervous right now, and scared. As Hammer prepares to tell me the truth, hesitating and rubbing the back of his neck, I realize words can’t be taken back, and I feel like shit is going to change.

  He moves closer to me while my mother just stands there, knowing that she invited this. “Five years ago, we were having a lot of trouble with a rival MC, the Destined Killers,” he starts, looking me in the eye. “We’d always coexisted peacefully, but something happened that had them coming after us. Targeting us. Fights broke out, property destroyed, all of that bullshit, until eventually shit went too far. After being hit on the head, one of their members died at our hands. It was an accident. No one meant for anyone to die.”

  Swallowing hard, I don’t know what to say, so I say nothing. One of the Knights killed someone? Hammer doesn’t say who it is, and I don’t ask. I’m curious to know who, though. Saint’s hands squeeze into fists, as if the memory frustrates him.

  “Their president, Killer, was out for blood over it, and said he wasn’t going to stop until I was dead,” Hammer recaps. “This man is known for liking younger girls, younger than is legal, if you know what I mean. And your mother here suggested, to save my ass...” He trails off, struggling to say the next words. “That we offer you up to him instead.”

  My jaw drops open. “Offer me up as in...”

  As in give me to a fucking adult man?

  I eye the woman who gave birth to me, so much pain and anger and betrayal filling me. “You’d give me up to be raped to save your boyfriend? Is that how much I mean to you?”

  “No, it’s how much he—” she looks to Hammer “—meant to me. He was going to be killed. I was desperate and—”

  “You’re a monster. I was sixteen years old!” I scream, cutting her off. Saint’s arms come around me and I melt into him. I thought I was safe with my own mother, but I was wrong. I was never safe, and she never loved or cared about me. “So that’s why you broke up?”

  Hammer nods. “That’s when I realized just how fucking evil she is, even by my standards. I had fucked up, though, because she knew a lot of shit about the club, and after I dumped her, I told her I wanted to keep you here with me, that she didn’t deserve to have you as a daughter. She said if we tried to contact you in any way, she was going to the cops with the information she had on the club. And she knew about every deal we were a part of, our contacts, everything.” He looks at me, sadness in his eyes. “I couldn’t risk the club.”

  “So you knew that she didn’t give a fuck about me, would have given me to your enemy, but you sent me off with her anyway just so the club didn’t get into any shit?” I recap, my chest tightening.

  I know the MC is everything to him, but I was just a girl. A girl he claimed to love like his own flesh and blood, and I can’t help but feel betrayed over this. They knew, even more than me, what she was like and what she was capable of, but they allowed themselves to be blackmailed by her. They, in all their power, didn’t come up with a way to save me from her.

  “It’s complicated, Skylar,” he says, voice soft and broken. “The whole MC could have ended up in prison, and because I’m not your biological father, I wouldn’t have been able to keep you without her agreement anyway. She’s a spiteful bitch, so she would have fought just so I couldn’t have you. She’d have taken me to court, and I wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. They’d take one look at who I am and laugh in my face. There was nothing I could do.”

  Something. He could have done something. Or tried something.

  Anything.

  No one thought of me.

  No one tried to save me.

  Yes, Hammer wanted me to stay here, but in the end, he chose the club over me, and I guess this is the point Logan was trying to get across.

  The club will always be first.

  “Saint rode down to the country to try to see you without us knowing, did you know that?” Hammer asks me.

  “You men are all the same!” Mom yells, starting to pace. “Skylar is my daughter—you aren’t her father, Hammer, no matter how much you want to be. She is mine.”

  I push down my anguish at Hammer’s admission to face my mother. “What about the money, Mom?” I ask, moving closer to face her. “What did you do with my money?”

  “I was owed that money,” she sneers, pausing to look at Hammer. “For all the bullshit I did for you, and for this club. I walked away with nothing. I know how much you had in your bank, Hammer. You didn’t leave me a cent!”

  “I left that money for Skylar’s future,” he says to her, remaining calm somehow. “Not for you. I knew she wasn’t going to see all of it, because you’re a selfish bitch, but I thought you’d give her something. Something! I wish I never gave you that account, and I only did it because it was before that bullshit, before I saw you for who you truly are.”

  She lunges at Hammer, but I move quickly, stepping in front of him. “Don’t you dare touch him!” I yell, hands shaking.

  She stops, but I know she wants to hit me. She looks me right in the eye, and I don’t miss the hate there. Maybe it’s always been there, but I’m noticing it only now.

  “Touch her and see what happens,” Saint says from behind me, his tone as lethal as I’ve ever heard it. The threat is clear. If she puts her hands on me, she’s going to regret it.

  “That money was mine,” she maintains. “I clothed you and fed you, and you have never had anything to complain about, so don’t act all woe is me, Sky. It doesn’t suit you.”

  “So you took my college fund as child support? Or so you keep saying,” I fire back, jaw tight. “Have some dignity. You are pathetic—I’ll never be like you.”

  I look back at Saint, who looks as sad as I feel right now. “You came and saw me?”

  He nods. “I just had to see you with my own eyes and make sure you were okay. You were at school and with a girl, and the two of you were laughing.”

  “Shauna,” I whisper. I would have been laughing with Shauna, my best friend who passed away.

  “I left after that. I wanted to speak to you, but I know I would have jeopardized everyone, and Hammer would have fucking killed me,” he admits. “We just needed a little time to bury some shit; we weren’t going to let Georgia hold something over us.”

  “So she doesn’t have anything on you now?” I ask.

  Hammer shakes his head, glancing over at her with a smug look. “Nope. Nothing. It took us a while, but we handled what we needed to and got us some legitimate businesses. Everything she once had on us has no validity anymore. We made sure of it.”

  But even after they sorted shit out, they didn’t come for me. They waited for me to come to them, and that really does hurt.

  I absently rub my chest, which suddenly feels tight. “I don’t even know what to say right now,” I admit, looking Mom in the eyes. “But I know I never want to see you again, you disgust me, and you’re right. I don’t have a mother.”

  I storm into the clubhouse, straight to Saint’s room, where I dive into his bed and cry.

  Fuck everyone.

  Chapter Seventeen

  About ten minutes pass before Saint quietly slips inside and closes the door behind him. He slides into bed next to me and pulls me against him, kissing the top of my head.

  “I’m so sorry, Sky. I didn’t know the truth of what happened back then either, but then Hammer finally admitted it to me the other night. I told him he had to tell you. He’s right, it’s fucked up, and I can see why he never wanted you to know, but now at least the truth is out there. I think you’re right to be angry. I’m so fucking sorry this happened. Now you know why we never fought for you and why they broke up in the first place, and it might just sound like a bunch of excuses, but fuck. I’m just sorry, okay? If I could do it over, I’d do it differently.”

  I don’t know what he means by that exactly, but I don’t ask. If he means that he’d go against the club’s wishes and come for me, it’s best that he not say it out loud. It doesn’t change anything anyway. It’s all done, and now I just need to decide what I’m going to do with all this new information.

  “Maybe Hammer was right—ignorance is bliss. I don’t think this wound is ever going to stop hurting,” I admit, wiping my eyes. “I just don’t understand how someone could even suggest doing that to their own flesh and blood. I don’t get it. She never loved me, Saint, and that proved it. She said she never trusted me, but I never did anything to her.”

  “She’s crazy and jealous,” Saint tells me, rubbing my back in soothing circles. “You can’t expect rational thought from her, and you did nothing wrong, Skylar. She is the number one person meant to protect you, but she only cares about herself. Good fucking riddance, I say. Georgia is something else.”

  Great, I win the worst mother award. “Fuck my life,” I whisper, taking a weak moment to just feel sorry for myself. “I don’t want to see her ever again, Saint.”

  “She won’t be stepping in here again that’s for sure,” he says, kissing my temple.

  “What happened to the rival MC president? Hammer is obviously not dead, so did he just give up?” I ask, wondering what happened to the war between them.

  “Killer got put in prison,” Saint explains. “So no retribution happened. Not that he would have been able to kill Hammer, but he would have tried. And we would all have to watch our backs every second of every day.”

  “So it all worked out in the end.”

  For everyone except me.

  She loved Hammer more than she loved me. I don’t know why that hurts, because if I’m being honest I loved him more than I loved her too, but I’d never hurt her or throw her under the bus. I wouldn’t do that to anyone, never mind my own flesh and blood. Saint is right—she’s clearly not right in the head, or maybe she is just pure evil.

  Drying my tears, I look at Saint and gather all of my strength. I’m here right now, and I’m fine. I’m strong. I don’t need that woman, I guess I never did.

  I can’t change what has already happened. I’m going to do something with my life. I’m going to thrive, and I don’t need anyone in my life who isn’t going to cheer for me, celebrate with me, and just simply love me.

  Everyone else, blood or not, is being left behind.

  “I have to admit, I didn’t see that one coming,” I admit, closing my eyes and taking a deep breath. “At least it’s all out in the open now. I hated not knowing what had happened, and why you or Hammer didn’t even try and contact me.”

  “Hammer and I actually got into a fight over it,” Saint admits, pushing my hair back off my face. “I didn’t understand why we were letting Georgia dictate our actions. I was pissed. But Hammer said it was the only option for now, and before we knew it you would be eighteen and could do what you want. He said you’d come back to us.”

  “And what if I hadn’t? Would you have come to me?” I ask him. “Because I’m a little older than eighteen, and you only reached out to me when you were locked up.”

  “Because it made me think about what was important in my life,” he says, wiping away a tear from my cheek. “I didn’t know who you were anymore, if you wanted to talk to any of us after what had happened. I didn’t know much. Yes, we kept an eye on you from afar as best as we could, but we didn’t really know all the details of your life.” He sighs deeply.

  I ask the question that I’m not ready to hear the answer to yet. “Would you have done what Hammer did? Would you have put the club before me? Would you do that now?”

  “Things aren’t always as easy as you make them sound, Sky.”

  “They are to me,” I whisper, feeling uneasy by how noncommittal that answer was.

  He holds me closer, and eventually, I fall asleep.

  * * *

  When I wake up in the morning I jump in the shower and replay last night in my head. I can’t let this affect me or my life—I need to feel the pain and then let it go.

  Mom would want me to feel weak, helpless, and maybe even run back to her, but I’m not going to do that. I might not have been a perfect daughter, but no one deserves a mother like that one, and when I have children I’m going to make sure I’m nothing like her.

  Saint opens the glass door, seeing me naked for the first time. I don’t cover myself up; I let him have his fill, the look in his eyes making me feel sexier than ever.