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Quinn got two consecutive life sentences.
For me the future looked bright. And that future included one fiercely protective biker in a Kings of Mayhem cut.
He married me the following fall, and within months of him putting the crown pendant necklace around my neck, my belly swelled with his baby.
Two months after our daughter arrived, Wyatt and his brothers found my real mother. Her name was Kate and she was living in a trailer in Joshua Tree. We met on a hot night in July, at a bar in the desert. She was fifteen when she gave birth to me. Fifteen and scared. My father was a boy she knew in school, and because her parents were terribly strict, they planned to run away together to raise me. But they were both so young. He changed his mind and instead of running away, she gave birth to me in a deserted roadside restroom then went back to her life. Her parents were none the wiser thanks to her tight ballerina stomach and bulky clothes. She explained that because they were always out at one church event after another, she was easily able to hide her pregnancy and everything that happened afterwards.
She cried when she saw the hope necklace sitting next to my crown pendant. She had given it to me because it was the only thing she could give to me. Her hope for a good life.
After a few months of back and forth, she eventually moved to Destiny to be closer. Now she was becoming more and more a part of our lives.
For Chance and me, life had taken an amazing turn. Now we were living a life filled with love and happiness in the beautiful fisherman’s cottage with our daughter down by the river.
It was a life neither of us could ever have imagined. When we met we were both so broken. So scarred. Yet somehow we’d found each other in the darkness and lifted the veil to let the light back in.
The past was gone.
Vanquished by love.
By faith.
And by hope.
CHANCE
Something jabbed into my chest.
Again.
Then again.
It was a finger.
A demanding little finger.
I held back my grin as it moved from my chest and prodded my cheek, over to my lips, and finally to the side of my nose.
It was my daughter, and she was sitting on my chest, finger-assaulting my face.
I opened my eyelids and found her big blue eyes staring down at me.
“Did I wake you?” she asked in her cute three-year-old voice.
I raised an eyebrow at her. “It was the finger in my nose. Gets me every time.”
She grinned at me, and my heart melted like it did whenever Ava smiled at me. I was a sucker for my daughter, and she had me right where she wanted me—wrapped around her finger.
“Mommy’s making pancakes. But she says I have to pick the toys up from my bedroom floor before I can have some.”
“Best you do that, then,” I said.
“But there’s so many,” she whined.
“If Mommy says you have to pick them up, then you have to pick them up.”
She hit me with her adorable dimpled pout. “But it will take for aaaaages.”
I couldn’t help it. When it came to Ava I would give her the world. But going against my wife would mean a serious case of blue balls. So Ava was going to have to do as she was told.
“I’ll tell you what, you get a head start and I’ll come and help you.”
Her little face lit up. “You will?”
“Of course.”
She struggled off the bed and then stood in the doorway, waiting.
“It’s not much of a head start if you stand there and wait,” I said when she didn’t move.
“That’s okay, I don’t mind,” she replied with all the logic of a three-year-old.
I couldn’t help but grin because my daughter was so damn cute. But getting out of bed right now wasn’t really doable. I had a raging morning wood I needed to calm down first.
“I’ll tell you what, you go and start picking up your toys, and I’ll pay you two dollars.”
“Five dollars.”
I laughed at my precocious daughter. “What are they teaching you at preschool? How to hustle?”
She looked at me blankly then repeated, “Five dollars.”
I couldn’t believe my daughter. I pointed toward the door. “Toys. Off the floor. Now.”
She sighed dramatically. “Ohhh-kaaaaay.”
She wandered off and I waited a few minutes, strategically thinking about my taxes in order for certain parts of my body to relax. A few minutes later, I was up and dressed and helping my adorable daughter clean up her room. Once finished, I scooped her up in my arms and we headed downstairs to the kitchen for pancakes.
Cassidy was dishing up fat, doughy pancakes sprinkled with both blueberries and chocolate, just how Ava and I loved them. My wife was the pancake queen. It was no accident my jeans fit tighter after marrying her.
