Ride Steady (Chaos #3)(168)

“I don’t know what to think, sweetie.” It was a soft cry, probably so she wouldn’t freak Travis. “That meeting was nasty. I told you how nasty it was. Now this?”

“He had a change of heart.”

“Aaron doesn’t get those,” she muttered, putting both hands on Travis and setting him on the floor considering he was leaning that way and grunting.

Once on the floor, Travis boogied to where Joker was stretched out opposite her, pushed up to his knees and banged Joker on his hip with the duck.

Joker grabbed the kid and hauled him to his stomach.

He started crawling all over him.

“Then a miracle has happened,” he told her. “Roll with it. What else would you do?”

“I don’t want his money,” she was still muttering, her eyes on her boy.

“Carrie,” he called.

She looked to him. “I don’t.”

He hated the idea of her ex taking care of her.

But still, that was a shit-ton of money.

So it hurt, but for her, he had to ask, “Is that smart?”

“Maybe not, but, Joker, he was nasty. Or, his father was, and his father is an extension of him.”

“I get you, but—”

“LeLane’s hired me when I was pregnant,” she cut him off to say. “They work with my schedule as best as they can. They deserve loyalty. I want to be a stylist, but I want to make it so I’m a stylist. Not be giving some woman fabulous hair and thinking that Aaron was the one who made it so I could do that.”

Joker felt his lips twitch.

“So, I’ll take support,” she declared. “And he’s right. Travis is okay with this schedule, and if Aaron stops being a jerk, then it’ll settle even more for him because he’ll feel it’s settled for all of us. I’ll work for a while at LeLane’s, and with Travis’s support money coming in, save up for my own education. Once I’m there and I can give it to myself, I’ll go for it.”

“You’re turnin’ down a quarter of a million that, bottom line, that guy owes you, baby,” he said gently.

“I’m turning down guilt money that will make him feel better for being so mean to me,” she returned. “I don’t care if he feels better or not. I don’t care about him at all. I’ll take his support money for Travis because he’s Travis’s dad. Other than that, he doesn’t exist for me.”

He grinned at her.

“Your call,” he said.

“It is. Now, it’s time to feed my family. Are you doing the cooking and I’m doing Travis, or the other way around?”

“You ever gonna make that chili you promised me?”

She smiled at him. “Guess I’m doing the cooking.”

Joker smiled back then grabbed hold of her boy.

He dragged him up his chest as the kid squealed.

When he got him face to face, he said, “That means I get you.”

And for his troubles, he got clocked in the face with a duck.

* * *

Three weeks later, Joker was walking from Ride to the Compound when his phone rang.

He pulled it out, saw who was calling and put it to his ear.

“Yo, Lee.”

“You busy right now?”

“Nope,” he answered, seeing as he wasn’t. Carissa’s ex had Travis so she had an afternoon shift. He was done with what he wanted to get done on his new build that day, so he was headed to the Compound to have a few beers with his brothers.

“Need you at Children’s Hospital,” Lee told him.

Joker stopped dead.

“Why?”

“Callin’ a marker, brother,” Lee said quietly.

Fuck.

“I’m on my bike,” Joker told him.

“Maternity,” Lee replied.

Shit.

“Got it. I’ll be there.”

He shoved his phone in his pocket and went to his bike.

Then he rode to the hospital.

He hit maternity only to see Lee wasn’t alone.

Hank was with him.

“I’m here, what?” he asked when he stopped close.

“Need you to suit up,” Lee told him.

“What?”

Lee knocked on a door. It opened, a nurse peered out, looked at Joker, then raised her hand and crooked her finger.

Joker looked to Lee, to Hank, then to the woman.

He followed her.

Once inside the door, he suited up. Covers over his boots. Cut off and gown over his tee.

Once done, she led him to a room that had little domed cots.

She stopped beside one and he stopped with her, looked down, and stared at the tiniest baby he’d seen in his life. The kid couldn’t be bigger than his hand. He had tubes in his mouth and in his thin arm, cotton taped over his eyes, yellowed mocha skin, tufts of soft black curly hair.

“Preemie,” the nurse said softly. “Addict.”

Those two words sliced through his stomach, and Joker cut his eyes to her.

“She’ll be good,” she said. “She got this far, no stopping her now.”

Joker looked down at the baby, who was not a he but a she.

“Can she be held?” he asked.

“No, but she can be touched,” the nurse answered. “Through those holes in the sides. Let me get you a glove.”