AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Next, two beautiful brunettes enter the house. Blair notices one of them holding Succotash’s container. While her older sister rushes over to welcome the cat, Brooklyn spots the women and gets upset.
“Leave?” she asks me as her little mouth turns downward and tears fill her hazel eyes.
“No, we’re staying here.”
“My mommy,” she says, gripping my leg and starting to cry.
I realize she thinks these women might take her away. Neal’s stupid family used to tease Brooklyn over how I wasn’t her mommy.
“Your garbage people are coming for you. Get packed,” Tammy would say. Neal’s big blonde sister would then announce, “You’re going back to the trailer park!”
Brooklyn heard those lies so much that she thinks someone will take her away from me.
Hating the Coppers for messing with her heart, I’d spit in their food whenever I could. Of course, that didn’t help my daughter.
“You’re my baby girl,” I tell her as I pick her up. “I love you so much.”
Holding on tight, Brooklyn watches me with wary eyes. I see her blood mother looking back sometimes. After Neal brought Brooklyn home, I found the woman’s profile online. She seemed like a miserable person, barely holding on in a world filled with pain. Based on her family’s half-assed death notice, Sharron died from drugs or suicide. It was one of those “read between the lines” things.
“My mommy,” Brooklyn says and glares at the two women.
“Mama, she got scratched,” Blair tells me about the taller of the two.
“There’s witch hazel and cotton balls in the pantry.”
Blair frowns. “What’s a pantry?”
“That’s the closet where we keep our cereal. It’s bigger here.”
Blair decides she needs to supervise the woman’s injury. Meanwhile, a terrified Succotash hides behind a chair.
Holding Brooklyn against me, I watch a handsome blond man enter the house. His shaggy hair and beard give him a surfer stud vibe. He pulls off his mirrored glasses and sizes me up.
“You must be Landry.”
“Yes.”
“I’m Hoyt.”
“Okay. Are you Silas’s friend?”
Smirking, he asks, “Silas, huh?”
“It’s my special nickname for him,” I reply, wondering where Silas is when all these people are in his house. “Are you a biker, too?”
“I’m his club president,” Hoyt says as if offended by how I don’t already know that information.
“I’m unfamiliar with the biker hierarchy.”
“That’s fine,” Hoyt says and smiles at the unscratched brunette woman watching him from the kitchen.
Hoyt notices Beau standing nearby, studying people carrying boxes into the house. The club president ruffles my son’s hair, while his gaze fixes on the woman’s. She smiles at his gesture. However, Beau looks up to see who’s touching him, notices a stranger, and lets out a wail that sends Succotash bolting out of the room.
“Stop touching Beau,” Silas growls as he storms into the room. “He doesn’t know you.”
I smile at his protective tone, even while I squat down and soothe a horrified Beau. I don’t want to laugh at Hoyt, but he looks so damn startled.
“I’m good with kids,” he says more to the woman than to Silas and me. “I have one. Wynonna’s little ones like me. I’m a good dad and uncle.”
