Crash (Brazen Bulls MC #1)(101)

When Willa bared her breast—she did that all the time now, wherever they were, whenever Zach wanted to eat, and woe to anyone who tried to complain about it—Rad felt the same territorial, protective twist he always felt. Those were his tits, dammit, and he did not like them out where people could see. Where any random * could get an eyeful.

Like Barry, for instance, who didn’t seem to be looking, but Rad knew he would. How could he not?

But they weren’t actually Rad’s tits anymore. He hadn’t even been granted post-baby access yet. Those glorious puppies were all Zach’s. And Zach wanted them right the hell now.

Rad handed him over and watched Willa settle him at his meal, smiling down at him and talking to him in a soft, sweet voice, one that was both familiar and new. Zach quieted at once and got to sucking.

There was a moment, every time, just when Zach latched on to nurse, that was absolutely f*cking magical, a moment that stopped Rad giving a shit about who could see or what he was missing. The boy looked up at his mom. Mom smiled down at her son. Somebody should paint that scene. Hang it in the Sistine Chapel.

So far, in all things parental, Rad deferred to his old lady. After six weeks, the little guy was still mostly a puzzle to him. He’d gotten forty-one years in life thinking he’d never be a father, that he shouldn’t be a father, and any parental sense he might once have had had atrophied.

He’d been there for Willa; through the pregnancy and the birth, he’d been right there. He was happy to have Zach. He loved him. Holy Christ, did he love him. But there hadn’t been some sudden epiphany where he’d held his own son in his arms for the first time and had immediately known exactly what to do and how to be. His prevailing emotion, if it was an emotion, had been awe—every definition of it. He’d been thrilled. He’d been amazed. He’d been f*cking terrified.

But Willa spent her life taking care of people. She spent her career with newborn babies. So he followed her lead. He knew she wouldn’t lead him astray.

She said it was easy: food, diaper, sleep. All three were means of comfort. If numbers one and two were addressed, you gutted out the screaming until number three happened. If numbers one through three couldn’t get you to comfort, then you called the doctor.

Sometimes, babies just wanted company. And sometimes, they just wanted to cry. Like everybody else on the planet, she’d said.

Despite her reassurances that babies this young cried because they had no other way to communicate, Rad felt like he was doing it wrong when Zach cried. He wished he could ask.

For now, though, it seemed Rad’s son was happiest when he had the same thing Rad wanted most of all: Willa.

He walked around to see what Barry was doing on the back of her right shoulder. Rad’s flame. He’d let her pick the style, and she’d chosen an old-style piece, with a fat red heart, colorful flames rising up from its curves, and a fluid banner across it with his name. Tucked into the banner, she wanted a tiny yellow daffodil, the birth flower for March, the month Zach had been born.

Rad watched Barry ink the ‘a’ in his own name. His name. Right there on her shoulder. She wasn’t the first woman to keep his flame, but she would be the last. And she was certainly the best.

He turned over his own right arm. On the day after Zach was born, while he and Willa were still in the hospital, Rad had come here and had Barry cover over a faded piece of his own ink with a globe, blue and green, wrapped in two banners, one reading Willa and the other Zachary. His world. As long as he had them, nothing could pull him off his axis.

After a summer and fall of chaos, the club had quieted down again this year. The Rats had cowered before Irina Volkov and simply closed up shop in Lubbock. Smithers’ death got some renewed law enforcement attention after the Rats clubhouse was blown, but both of those were eventually ruled accidental. An overtired driver and a faulty gas line. Irina Volkov was a smooth operator.

The Dyson crew had been working with the Rats, dealing their horse and coke. Dyson had pulled intel from Chet as a favor for the Rats—a favor since regretted, after Irina took her pound of flesh for Dyson’s part in getting her son killed. Levi Oates was no longer a factor.

The once-solid truce between Dyson and the Bulls had blown apart, making a mess out of the end of last year, but that mutual need to keep their troubles out of town, combined with some Volkov pressure on Dyson, had brought them back together to talk it out, and a new truce had held since Christmas. The Bulls stayed out of Dyson territory now, and vice versa. No more hanging out at Terry’s.

Now, the club was doing its business and keeping everything mellow. The gun routes were smooth. The Night Horde and the Great Plains Riders were both pulling their weight. Everything was quiet. And Rad had a family.

His son had been born into a little life that was about as safe as Rad had any hope of making it. Safe and full of love.

It wasn’t, strictly speaking, good club form to take ink for a woman before she’d taken his, but Rad didn’t give a shit. They were his family, and he wanted them on him. Willa’s doctor hadn’t wanted her to get ink while she was pregnant, so she’d had to wait. He’d wanted her to wait until after her six-week postpartum checkup.

They’d come here straight from the doctor. She was all-clear—for ink and for everything else.

Willa turned her head and smiled up at him.

Eight weeks and two days since he’d had his old lady’s naked body against his own.