The past week of my life has been a blur of chaos. The same night Ryker came to the club to win me back, Tiny gave birth. What began as a routine delivery turned into a nightmare when the doctors couldn’t stop her postpartum bleeding. She hemorrhaged right there in the delivery room while the staff struggled to save her life. Ace and Sofie had blown up Ryker’s phone for hours, but he was too busy with me… in that room.

He should have been there at the hospital. He should have been there for that baby boy. Now this child has no mother, no one knows who his father is, and he is living in the nursery of the hospital until the DNA test results come back. Only Ace and Ryker were swabbed, it seems as though claiming a random baby isn’t a priority for the guys Tiny had been sleeping with.

In the wake of this tragedy for the club, Seven and I canceled our trip. We figured our time would be better spent here helping the club prepare her arrangements and sending her off with a bit more dignity than she got when she was alive. She may not have been an old lady, but club sluts become part of the family no matter how much the women don’t like it.

It breaks my heart that this poor girl had no family to come forward and claim her, or even help. Was there really no one in the world who cared enough about her to mourn her loss? The whole thing has me twisted around on the inside. I thought I would be ready for everything that comes along with Ryker and this club, but… it’s all just been a realization that my life will probably be constantly filled with some kind of a soap opera drama.

At the end of the day, I can’t live without Ryker though. Since the day I met him, I’ve craved him with my entire being. From being hours away in upstate New York to living so close to him. At the end of the day, I found my soul mate in the form of a fucked-up biker with more baggage than the fuckin’ airport. But, really, don’t we all?

Ryker rolls over and pulls my body closer to him in his sleep. Every night he comes back like clockwork. Doesn’t leave me wondering, or thinking about where he could be or what he could be doing. I never knew exactly how much I loved him until he came back to me.

His phone buzzes against the nightstand and instantly he jumps up and grabs the phone and answers.

“Hello?”

He is quiet for a couple minutes listening to whoever is on the other end of the line. Every once and a while he will say yeah, or uh huh. I sit on pins and needles waiting to find out what is going on. We’ve been waiting to hear for days as to what is going to happen to the baby. The poor little guy doesn’t even have a name yet. There is no one to name him. The whole thing is such a cluster fuck. What kind of start to life is that for him?

“Yeah, at the hospital?” Ryker says to the person on the other end of the phone. All I can do is stare at his fully tattooed torso with muscles as far as the eye can see. He’s naked in my damn bed and while it took a lot of bullshit to get here… It was worth every fucking minute of it to have this.

“Okay, thank you for the call,” Ryker says before disconnecting and tossing the phone onto the bed and collapsing against the mattress.

“Is everything okay?” I ask while he rubs his hands over his face.

“I have no idea yet,” he says, looking stressed.

“I’m assuming that was about the baby?”

“Yeah, the DNA test is complete,” he says with apprehension.

“Okay, well, what’s wrong?” I ask him in a panic. We’ve been over a thousand different results of this in the past couple days. We’ve talked it all out. I can’t figure out for the life of me what he is panicking about now.

“He’s mine,” he says, closing his eyes and letting a deep breath out.

“Isn’t that a good thing, Ryker?”

“Yeah, I guess. I just wasn’t prepared for it at all. They want me to come to the hospital and pick him up. Like… I don’t even have a car seat or a fuckin’ car. I can’t put a baby on the back of a motorcycle.” He looks stressed out about the implications of the baby’s paternity.

“Relax, I’ll call Seven and borrow a car seat for a couple hours and we will get whatever it is we need for a baby. I told you I would be here and help no matter what the outcome was. Come on!” I try and pull him out of whatever hole he is falling down.

“I didn’t plan for this.”

“None of us plan for life. And when we do, we get thrown a curveball. All you can do is go get that baby and give him a better life than either of us had growing up. Right?” I try to reassure him of this entire situation but I’m having a hard time with it myself. I mean, we just found each other and finally decided to really make a go of it and now there is a baby. With no baby momma. No time to split, just the two of us with this baby we have no idea what to do with. Can I send out an SOS yet?

“I don’t know what to do with a baby.” He shrugs his shoulders.

“I don’t either, but we have enough people around us that do, right?” I think I am even starting to fool myself at this point. Ryker stands from the breakfast bar and makes his way over to the living room where I am sitting on the couch already starting to look for baby stuff online.

“I didn’t plan for all of this, Lyric.” he says with a serious look on his face.

“I don’t blame any of this on you. Stop it.” I wave him off.

“Lyric, there is a lot you don’t know about me. How I was raised. Why I won’t make an awesome dad. There are more layers to me that I don’t openly advertise to the world,” he admits with a look of shame.

“Babe, you’ll be a great dad. It doesn’t matter what happened to you in the past, or what kind of parents you had. We all learn from the way we were raised and move on to give our children better. Isn’t that what we are supposed to do?” I say, trying to talk him down.

“My mom… she was so fuckin’ mad my dad left. She blamed it on me, my entire life. Between the needle in her arm and the revolving door of dudes, I don’t know the first thing about being a dad. Or a mom, because now I have to fuckin’ be both! FUCK!” he yells. I inch closer to him on the couch where he came to sit with me and put my hand on his leg.

“You don’t have to be both, Ryker. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. I may not be the best material for a mom, but I’m here to help. I’m here to do anything for you and this little boy to make sure you both have a good life from here on out.” The whole thing is downright scary but I can’t leave him alone with all of this going on. What kind of a person would I be?

I’ve been chasing after him all this time, I’m not going to let all of this kill the life and love that we could have because of a curveball in life. What kind of person would that make me? Plus, Seven has like a flock of kids, I think I can deal with one little newborn. I shrug my shoulders and move a little closer to him on the couch. I touch his face and look into his beautiful eyes.

“We’ll do it together.”

“What did I ever do in my life to deserve you?” Ryker’s eyes meet mine once again and I can tell he is in pain because he wears his emotions all over his face.

“You’re a good person. You deserve all the happiness in the world despite what you’ve been told your whole life.” I press a kiss to his cheek and wrap my arms around his neck.

“It’ll all be okay. I promise.”

* * *

“What do you need a car seat for?” Seven asks through the phone.

“Well, remember that whole possible baby daddy saga?” I reply.

“Yeah…” Seven’s tone is flat.

“It’s a boy!” I exclaim with sarcasm and a slight bit of sheer panic in my voice.

“Seriously?” she deadpans.

“Yes, and Tiny is dead. So you are now looking at Momma Lyric and I have no idea what to do with a baby. Neither does Ryker, so we are going to need quite a bit of help,” I admit to my big sister who is a baby pro at this point. She’s cranked out so many kids with her husband Levi they might as well start their own army.

“Okay, I’m gonna have Jordan put together some stuff to send over. We’ve got tons of baby shit I’ve held onto for whoever needs it. Clothes, car seat, swings, accessories, you know all the shit a baby needs.” She drones on, but really… I don’t know.

“Okay. Actually, can I swing by and pick up the car seat on our way to the hospital? We actually have to go pick him up now.”

“Does he have a name yet?” Seven asks, and it dawns on me that we haven’t even thought of that. This poor little boy doesn’t have a name. He doesn’t have parents. He’s just been chillin’ in the nursery of a hospital with a bunch of strangers taking care of him for the past couple days. My god, what a horrible start to life!

“Not yet. Gosh, we didn’t even think of that.”

Hanging up the phone, I pace back and forth for a couple minutes waiting for Ryker to emerge from the shower.

“You look like you are deep in thought.” Ryker scares the shit out of me. I was so lost in my own mind that I didn’t hear him sneaking up on me. Gah!

“I am. Have you thought about what you are going to name this little boy? He doesn’t even have a name!” I’m yelling at this point, letting my nerves and anxiety get the best of me.

“Yes, I’m leaning toward Jennings.” It’s different, but then again everyone within the club and our family has gone out of their way to name their kids something so different they will never have another kid in their class with that name.

“After Waylon Jennings, the old country singer. He was an outlaw, a Highway man. Kinda like me.”

“Babe, you can name this little boy anything you want. You’re his father.” A smile starts to tug at the corners of his mouth, the first smile I’ve seen since he got the phone call from the hospital.

“He’s my son,” Ryker says, affirming it out loud.

“Yes, love. He’s your son. Now you do right by him.”

“He’s our son. We’ll both do right by him,” Ryker says completely stunning me. I never thought about it like this.

“He needs a Momma, Lyric.” Tears form in the corner of his eyes.

“I can’t do this alone. I don’t want him to end up like me.” It’s heartbreaking to me that Ryker thinks so little of himself that this would even cross his mind.

“We’ll make sure Jennings is loved, and taken care of the best we can. And so will the club, and Seven, and all of these crazy family members we have. He will be loved and spoiled to shit.” I smile and laugh while holding my own tears back.

“Come on, we gotta go to Seven’s and get that car seat so we can go pick him up and get him out of that hospital,” I say. A lump starts to form in my throat, and I have to stop talking. What have I gotten myself into? I think I can only hope that I can be as good of a parent as this little boy deserves. One day I am just trying to win the love of my life, and the next we are playing house.