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I knew they were talking about Emmie. She was still at the hospital, taking care of security and press and everything in between for Gabriella Moreitti, the woman who had risked her own life to save Mia’s. After living with Emmie and Nik for over a year now, I knew that Emmie was hiding, that she was probably blaming herself, and she didn’t want to face what was going on outside of the hospital. I knew and understood her need to pretend that everything was okay outside the hospital doors.
“I’ll go talk to her first,” Drake Stevenson suggested. “If I can get her to talk to me, that is.”
Emmie hadn’t been answering any of the band members’ calls. They had given her the space she needed, but it looked like they were tired of her hiding.
“I’ll go with you,” Shane Stevenson offered. “She can’t run away from both of us.”
Nik grimaced. “You say that, but we all know she can.” His gaze went to his daughter, cuddled up against her Aunt Lana’s pregnant belly. The look on her pale little face had her father shaking his head and turning away from the sight almost in defeat. “Okay. Drake, you and Shane go on. Jesse and I will follow in a few hours. I want to make sure that Seller’s men are doubled up outside the bus.”
Drake and Shane kissed their wives goodbye and Drake dropped a kiss on top of Mia’s head before picking up his own daughter, Neveah, and giving her a tight squeeze. Seeing those two together did something strange to my heart and I had to look away from the love I saw shining out of Drake’s blue-gray eyes.
With the living room minus two huge rockers, it felt a little roomier. I grabbed a big mug of the strongly brewed coffee and sat on one of the chairs in the living room. No one spoke except for the three toddlers sitting on the floor, jabbering to each other while they played. Eventually Mia got off her aunt’s lap, complaining about being kicked in the stomach too many times.
Large green eyes so much like her mother’s looked haunted as she crossed the small space and climbed into my lap. She wrapped her arms around my neck and laid her head on my chest. “Will you rub my head?” she asked softly.
I instantly started stroking my fingers through her hair the way her mother had shown me that Mia enjoyed. We sat like that for the longest time and I thought for sure she was starting to fall asleep—something the five-year-old needed right then more than anything. She hadn’t slept more than a few hours in the last two days, poor baby.
Her head po
pped up off my shoulder, her little shoulders shaking, and I knew that the little nap she had just taken had been filled with nightmares. “Daddy?” she called out and Nik was across the room, lifting his daughter into his arms. Tears ran down her cheeks as she buried her face in his neck. “I want Momma,” she sobbed. “Please, Daddy. I want Momma.”
The torment I saw on Nik’s face had me lowering my eyes, unable to stand the sight of his pain. “Okay, baby doll. Okay. Daddy’s gonna go get her.”
He tried to soothe her for a few more minutes, more for himself than for Mia, before he left with Jesse. Mia’s crying didn’t subside after her father left, if anything it became harder, shaking her little body. Her three aunts tried to do everything to soothe her, but Mia needed her mother right then more than anything else on the planet.
Unable to take hearing her cry, I picked up Jagger, who was only a few weeks past his first birthday, and took him into the bathroom to give him a bath. I could still hear Mia sobbing from behind the closed bathroom door and let a few tears of my own fall as I took care of the little boy who looked so much like his father.
Jet
Max was in one of his moods this morning. I couldn’t blame my little nephew, though. I was in a mood, too. It was the kind of mood his mother’s large breakfast couldn’t cure, either. I sat at the kitchen table beside the highchair where the baby was screaming his head off, wanting his mother and only his mother. If the kid had wanted me, I’d have already had him on my lap, offering him the eggs that I was just picking at because they held little appeal to me.
Today was my final day on probation. Today was the day I went to find Flick and brought her home.
My stomach churned as I prayed she would come willingly. After getting nowhere with her boss, I had no idea how Flick would react to seeing me. She’d covered her tracks well when she’d left Creswell Springs and it had been a miracle that I’d found her in the first place. Seeing her by chance on one of the national news stations had been a one-in-sixty-billion long shot. If I hadn’t been watching TV that night, specifically that news channel, I might not have ever found Flick.
That just pissed me off.
Never finding Flick hadn’t been an option. Now that I knew where she was, and couldn’t even get her fucking super bitch of a boss to let me talk to her on the phone, each day that had led up to my probation ending had been hell. I just wanted to hear her fucking voice for two seconds, damn it. Two. Fucking. Seconds.
“Mommy, can I have pancakes?”
I turned my head to watch as Lexa took her usual place at the kitchen table. She wiped sleep out of her blue eyes before giving me a bright smile. “Hi, Uncle Jet.”
“Hi, kid.”
Raven set a plate of pancakes on the table in front of her stepdaughter—now her adopted daughter. Brushing a kiss over the little girl’s hair, she turned back to the stove where she continued to cook the huge-ass breakfast she seemed to make almost every morning these days. Raven cooked when she was happy, so I was glad for that much at least. Didn’t make my mood any better, though.
“Is he teething or something?” Hawk asked as he entered the kitchen. He stopped at the stove and took one of the plates Raven already had put together. Loaded down with eggs, bacon, pancakes, and potatoes, I figured he’d be going back for seconds if he could.
“Or something,” Bash muttered as he came in through the back door that led out to the driveway. “He’s just a momma’s boy. Can’t stand for her to have any other man’s attention but his own.”
“Sounds like his father’s son,” Hawk said with a smirk as he shoveled food into his mouth.
“Sounds like his uncle, too,” Raven teased from the stove. It was good to see her in a teasing kind of mood, but I couldn’t find the will to smile that morning.
“Shut up, Rave.”
“Say you’re sorry or you don’t get more potatoes,” my sister threatened, holding her spatula up as she gave Hawk a mock glare.
