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“Where else would I be? I love you.”

Jenny’s heart raced and leapt, like it was trying to claw its way to freedom. Maverick stood right there, not ten feet away. She wasn’t ready.

She’d known he would be released today, and she’d spent most of the day in a jittery state of watchfulness, expecting him to do exactly what he was doing now: pop up right in front of her. But then the hours had waned, and the night had gone quiet. The bar had emptied, and she’d begun to believe that he was going to do what she’d asked. What she’d demanded—leave her and Kelsey alone.

It was what she’d demanded, but now, with him standing there, telling her he loved her, she admitted to herself the thing she’d refused to acknowledge all these years: it wasn’t what she wanted. She still loved him; she’d still harbored a tiny, frail, fluttering hope.

Things were so much more complicated than that. Kelsey didn’t know about him, not in any concrete sense. She knew her father was ‘not here,’ and she hadn’t yet asked any more incisive questions. As precocious as she was, as curious and insistent about answers, she’d so far been content to be told that not every family had a mommy and a daddy.

Now her daddy was here. Her father, at any rate. No—her daddy. Jenny couldn’t, wouldn’t pretend that Maverick didn’t want to be his daughter’s daddy. He’d wanted that since they’d been sitting on the side of the tub, staring at the test stick. He’d barely blinked before he’d asked her to keep the baby, before he’d committed to their family wholeheartedly—this big, bad biker, who’d spent great chunks of his free time punching people in the face, who rode and drank and fought and loved and fucked hard, had turned into a squishy marshmallow at the thought of having a child.

Things were so much more complicated than that now. It was more than Kelsey. It was her father, too. What Maverick had made of him. What he’d made of her life. He’d ruined it and left her in the rubble, alone but for their daughter and what was left of her father. He’d left her to raise their little girl on her own and to care for a man she’d been trying to escape.

She’d told him no. Again and again, throughout their relationship, she’d told him to stay out of the mess that was her relationship with her father. But he’d always believed he’d known better, that it had been on him to handle it his way, since she wouldn’t do what he’d thought she should. He’d thought her way was weak, that she was weak, and he’d done what he wanted and then left her on her own.

But he’d been wrong—she was strong. She was still standing, and she’d gotten through these years on her own.

And now here he was. Saying the words she’d once had to cajole out of him.

He was changed. He’d always been fit and cut; he’d been a professional boxer and had continued to fight recreationally afterward, and he’d spent a lot of time working out. But now he was noticeably bigger, even more muscular. His plain black t-shirt strained under the swell of his body. But he seemed leaner, too. His jeans hung low and loose, almost as low as a lot of younger men wore their jeans now. His thick black leather belt—she’d bought him that belt, with its sterling silver buckle—cut across his hips.

More than anything else, his face had changed. There was a kiss of grey in his stubble, and his nose bulged oddly at its center, like it had been broken repeatedly and inexpertly reset each time. Scars bisected both eyebrows, and a thick scar hooked around his left eye, which didn’t open quite as much as his right. His left ear was misshapen—more than it had been before. Its top was thick and tipped out from his skull noticeably.

His dark hair was shorter—almost shorn, with just a skim of stubble wrapped over his skull. There was grey in that, too. He was only thirty-four; that seemed young to be going grey.

Prison had aged Maverick severely.

During the past four years, Jenny had thought about him often, but she’d been careful to wrap her anger around her like a suit of armor first, to protect herself from despair. She hadn’t allowed herself to think long about what his life was like. She’d done what he’d always said was the way to get through: ‘head down, shoulder to the day.’ She’d kept her mind on getting through each day of her own life, of her daughter’s. Of her father’s.

Now, seeing the ravages of prison life carved into his face, Jenny knew deep guilt. She had abandoned him, too.

An odd, choked noise came up her throat and out of her mouth, and she put her hand over her lips to prevent any more of them from following. When he moved, she realized that that sound had been the first she’d made since he’d said the words I love you.

He strode toward her, his hands—oh, his poor hands—came up and cupped her face, displacing her own from her mouth, and before she could take even one breath, his lips were on hers, fierce and desperate, and his tongue plunged deep.

She was overwhelmed, beyond resistance. He’d always overwhelmed her, pushed her toward new places, new sensations, bigger feelings than she could process, but this was different. This was four years of anger that had crystallized into hatred suddenly blowing apart, sending shards all through her. This was pain and despair and loss and fear slicing through every part of her. And love. God, so much love. Oh God.

Her hands hooked over his forearms—so warm and strong and familiar—and she kissed him back, rolling her tongue over his. He grunted and shoved his hands to the back of her head, grabbing fistfuls of her hair. His breathing was loud and frantic.

In four years, no one had touched her like this. Her life had been consumed by Kelsey and by her father and by this fucking hole of a bar, and she’d never spent a moment of these years in any other way. Her father’s nurses and the regulars at the bar were the closest things she had to friends.

Maverick had been the last man to touch her, and the only one who’d ever mattered.

The scruff of his almost-beard dragged at her skin, made it burn and tingle, and she pushed closer, wanting more. Letting go of his arms, she circled his body and caught her hands in his t-shirt, grasping for hold against the snug pull of the cotton across his back.

He grunted again and dropped his hands from her hair to grab her hips. He lifted her from the stool she still sat on, and, following his lead, she hooked her legs around his hips as he slammed their bodies together. The thick, granite-hard ridge of his cock pressed between her legs, digging the seam of her jeans into her clit, and she cried out into his mouth.

All at once, he turned to stone, still clutching her, keeping them pressed as tightly together as their clothes would allow. Even his tongue went still and receded from her mouth. He groaned, his hands clenched, driving his fingers into the meat of her hips, and Jenny felt a throbbing between her legs that was more than her own body’s need.

He’d come. She realized that even before his body sagged and he set her back on the stool.

“Fuck,” he muttered shakily and let her go. “Son of a bitch. Goddammit.” In a burst of temper, he shoved at the papers she’d been working on, and they scattered over the bar and fluttered to the floor behind it.

She was on the verge of saying it was okay, which was nonsense considering she had no clue if any part of anything that was happening was okay, when he stalked away without another word, toward the bathroom.

Quivering and breathless, Jenny slid woozily off the stool and collected the strewn papers—vendor receipts, inventory tallies, and the beginnings of a restocking list. She shoved them in the drawer under the register and went to lock up and turn out the sign. She still had to close out the register and do her usual closing work, but that was obviously going to have to wait a few minutes.

Maverick was back.

Jenny tried to think, but her mind and body were full of noise. And need. And...

Maverick was back.

She poured herself a finger of Jack, and poured a couple for him as well. She had just finished hers when he came back from the bathroom. When she nudged the glass toward him, he picked it up and swallowed it down at once.

He set the empty glass on the bar, and they stared at each other.

Jenny couldn’t stand it. Though she didn’t know how to make sense, she needed something to fill the silence. “Mav—”

“I need back in, Jen. I’m so pissed at you, and you’ve made it fucking clear you don’t want me. Believe me, I got the fucking memo. I feel like a goddamn pussy for saying it, but I don’t know what this is out here, or who I am. I can’t do this on my own. The club’s not enough. I need you. I need...” His voice caught, and Jenny’s heart broke. “I need Kelsey.”

She wanted to say yes. For all her efforts to keep her anger stoked to the heat of hatred, she wanted him back. But it wasn’t that easy. “It’s not that easy.”

“You’ve got somebody.” He said the words as if he were handing out a death sentence, but she didn’t know whose.

“No. There’s nobody. There hasn’t been anybody.”

Something in his face changed, softened. “Then why?”

“She...” Jenny stopped, afraid to say it. Swallowing hard, she made the words happen. “She doesn’t know about you.”

His head dropped. There was a jagged scar across his crown. He’d worn his hair longer when they were together, so she’d never seen his scalp, but she could tell that this scar was one he’d gotten in the past four years. She wondered how it had happened.

When he looked up again, the blue of his eyes seemed deeper. “Nothing?”

“No. She hasn’t asked much yet, and I haven’t told her.”

“What did I do to make you hate me so goddamn much?”

She didn’t hate him; that had been a lie she’d told herself because it had given her energy to get through her life. She understood that now. “You know what.”

“I protected you. Jesus Christ, Jen. You think he ever would have stopped? Why would he—you let him go at you and apologize, over and over in a cycle for your whole life.”

That day came roaring back to the foreground of her consciousness, and with it the anger she’d gotten so comfortable with reclaimed its central place in her heart. “He did it because I was breaking away from him. I was done with him. And now I never will be. You didn’t listen to what I wanted, what I needed, you didn’t even let me get the words out, and then you left me, and I was alone with that man and a new baby. You told me we’d make a great family, and then you tore it all apart before she was even here. That’s what you did.”

She was shaking again. When she poured more Jack into her glass, the neck of the bottle rattled on the rim. She poured some for Maverick, too.

“I was protecting you,” he said again before he drank his whiskey.

“You were doing what you wanted, without listening to me. What you always do.”

“I remember that day, too, Jen. It’s burned into my fucking brain. I remember you saying that you provoked him. That’s bullshit victim talk. Why should I have listened to that?”

“Because you said you loved me, and I was telling you what I wanted to do with my own father. What I needed. If you loved me, that should have mattered.”

His hands clenched the edge of the bar, and he spoke in careful, measured syllables. “I let him threaten you. I let him grab you and leave a damn bruise on your arm. I didn’t do shit about that because you said you had to handle it yourself. I fucking hated it, but I didn’t go for him. I brought you to me instead. But then he hit you while you had our kid inside you. My kid, while you were huge with her. It wasn’t just you he hurt. I’ll never sit back when somebody goes at my kid. And I’ll never sit back when somebody goes at my woman. Not ever again.”

“If you’d listened to me, if you’d waited even one minute to hear what I had to say, I would have told you that I was done with him. It was over. If you’d heard that and let it be, we could have been together all this time. Raising our little girl together. The family you promised me.”

Maverick shook his head. “I hate that I missed all this time. Not a day has gone by that I haven’t been torn up inside with missing you and her. I’m so fucking sorry I wasn’t here with you. But I don’t for a second regret what I did to that piece of shit old man of yours. Only thing I regret is he’s still breathing at all.”

Jenny regretted that, too. It made her feel guilty to wish her father dead, especially in his helpless state now, but she did. The pendulum of ambivalence she’d felt for him for most of her life—love and fear, guilt and hate, swinging ceaselessly back and forth—had settled into resignation. She felt nothing for him but the weight of his burden—and that vestige of guilt, the knowledge that a truly good person would have more compassion and forgiveness for such a compromised soul.

“He is breathing, though, and I’m stuck with him, and with this stupid fucking bar. I’m stuck in a life I hate, and that’s your fault, Maverick. I had it handled, and you destroyed it. Your need to have your way and work your fists was more important than what I needed. That’s what you did to make me keep Kelsey from you.”

“That’s not fair, babe.”

The word babe struck her like a slap, full of the memory of the life she’d had, they’d had, when he’d used that word routinely, as often as he said her name, maybe more.

“No. It wasn’t fair, what you did to us. You’re right.”

Again, they stared at each other. Jenny kept her arms wrapped across her belly so that Maverick wouldn’t see how hard she was shaking. She wanted him to hold her again, to kiss her the way he had, to make her feel safe and loved again, but now that they’d said all this, she remembered why she’d cut him out. It hadn’t been petty. He really had torn everything down.

Finally, he sighed. “Don’t keep her away from me, Jenny. I need to be her dad. I’ll be a good one. You know I will.”

“Do I? If some kid at the park is mean to her and makes her cry, are you going to beat him up?”

“A little kid? Jesus! What do you think I am?”

“Or that mean kid’s dad? Are you going to beat him up? Right in front of her?”

That made him blink—they both knew that yes, if such a dad gave him lip, Maverick would lay him out. Right in front of Kelsey.

“Jen, come on. There’s a lot of shit I need to work on, I know. But I’m fucking lost here. I don’t know how much of me is left. I want to be a good dad. I want to be good for you and our girl. I want it all back. I need it.”

They’d come full circle, and Jenny could only say the thing she’d started with. “It’s not that easy.”

“That’s not a no. So tell me what I need to do.”

Jenny thought about what they’d had before. She thought about that kiss, the feeling of being overwhelmed by him again, and how badly she’d needed it. She thought about the love for him that burned again in her heart, fighting with the anger and quelling it. She thought about the Bulls—that thick envelope, and Rad’s threat.

There was no question that she would let Maverick in in some way. She wanted it. He needed it. The club would demand it. And he would be a good dad—flawed, but good. She was plenty flawed herself, but she thought she landed in the good range most of the time.

The question was how she would let him in, and how far. She didn’t know, but she couldn’t put off figuring it out any longer.

“I need some time. I need to figure things out.”

That seemed to be a sufficient answer to give him hope; his body visibly relaxed, but not that sag of defeat that had happened earlier. “Can I at least see her?”

Always pushing. She let out a frustrated breath, making sure he could hear its sharpness. “I need some time, Maverick. Give me time.”

“You had four years. How much more do you need? I’m laying myself out here, babe. Wide open.”

Four years of anger and denial didn’t count. This half hour—if that—had changed things, but they were moving into old territory now. They’d rarely fought as a couple, but not because he hadn’t pissed her off routinely. He was just so pushy and relentless, never raising his voice, rarely even sounding angry, but always asking for a little bit more, under the guise of ‘talking it out,’ until she was too exhausted and insecure to continue and simply gave in.

Back in those days, she hadn’t been good at standing her ground at all. It had been difficult to feel safety in her own strength, growing up as she had, never knowing whether she was going to get a slap or a hug in response to any word or deed.

These four years had taught her how to stand up. So she replied, “You need to get out, Mav, and stay away for now. I’ll call the clubhouse when I have something to tell you.”

He held her gaze for a few more seconds, then nodded and walked out of her father’s bar.

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~oOo~

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She was home late that night, and, after another finger of whiskey after she’d locked the door behind Maverick, was a bit more buzzed than she should have been for driving. The trip wasn’t long, though, and she got home without trouble.

Darnell was dozing on the sofa, with some old movie playing quietly on the television, its undulating glow the only light in the room. She eased quietly to the sofa and pressed on his shoulder. He woke at once.

“Hey there, girl.”

“Sorry I’m so late.”

He grinned and sat up. “Not a problem. You don’t make a habit of it, so I don’t mind. No place I was goin’ but bed, anyway. This sofa’s more comfortable than my bed.”

It was a good sofa—lots of cushy padding, the kind a weary body could sink into. “Thank you. You’re awesome.”

Jenny was lucky with Darnell, because he loved kids, had been single for the past couple of years, and, for a little extra cash on the top of his home-nurse salary, he happily added Kelsey’s care to his duties on the evenings that she had the bar. He really was awesome.

He got up and stretched his long frame until his hands touched the popcorn ceiling. “Everybody’s settled down to a good night’s sleep around here. Little incident tonight I should tell you ‘bout. Earl got agitated over something on the news—who knows what with him, you know—and lashed out. Kelse was standing next to his chair the way she does, patting his arm and watching television with him. His elbow got her in the face.”

Her father had little control over his body, but he wasn’t paralyzed. Sometimes he lashed out in ways they couldn’t predict, and sometimes he simply spasmed. Jenny had been popped repeatedly by her father’s flailing limbs, but he’d never hurt Kelsey before.

“What? Oh God! Is she okay?” She turned and looked toward the doorway, as if she could see her daughter from there.

“She’s good, it’s all good. Cried a little, had a red mark on her forehead for an hour or so, but no lump and no bruising. I talked to her about how his body works, gave her a rainbow Band-Aid just for the kick of it, and she was good. Kissed Grandaddy good night just like usual. No fear. We read Stellaluna for bed, and she had a million questions about bats. She’s probably gonna be askin’ for a pet bat tomorrow.”

Calming down, Jenny laughed. “Happens every time we read that one. I’m thinking about getting one of those bat houses, but then she’d probably try to climb the pole so she could see inside.” She’d done that when they’d put a wren house in the back yard. It hadn’t been enough that the wrens could use it and she could watch them flying around. She’d wanted to see them ‘in their house.’ Jenny had been working on her little vegetable patch when she’d turned to see her daughter trying to climb up a stack she’d made of random objects—including an upended wash pail, a brick from the flower bed edging, a half-deflated four-square ball—as high as her head.

“Thank you.” Suddenly, Jenny was utterly fucking exhausted. What a goddamn day. She yawned obnoxiously, and Darnell laughed.

“Get yourself to bed, girl. I’ll see you Monday.” He patted her arm, and they walked to the kitchen, where he gathered up his stuff and Jenny saw him out, locking the door behind him.

He’d done the dishes, and they were arranged tidily in the drainer. Too tired to put them away, Jenny turned on the light over the sink, turned off the overhead, and went to check on her family.

She went to her father’s room first and peeked in. He was sleeping in his hospital bed, his big wheelchair standing beside it. His CPAP was in place and turned on, making its usual ponderous hum. All the other machines—heart monitor, blood pressure, pulse ox—were doing their thing, and the readout on the screen looked normal.

Someday, they wouldn’t. Someday, the trouble alerts would wake her up, or maybe she’d sleep through them and simply wake up one morning to a steady tone. When that day would come, she couldn’t say, and neither could his doctors. For a man in his condition, he was fairly healthy. He could live for many years.

She didn’t go in. Tomorrow afternoon and evening, and all day Sunday, she’d be on her own to deal with him, and she’d get plenty of father-daughter time then. She crossed the hall to her daughter’s room.

Kelsey was sound asleep, curled into the snug little ball that was her most common sleeping position. Tucked under her chin was Mr. Spotsie, a panda she’d gotten for Christmas. He’d made the slumber-party cut tonight. The big pink daisy on the wall that was her nightlight gave its cozy pink glow to the room.

Perfectly centered on her forehead was a little Lisa Frank Band-Aid, rainbow colors with leopard spots. Jenny brushed her daughter’s hair back and felt her forehead—no bump.

Kelsey sighed and moved her head, getting closer to her mother’s touch. “Run, puppy, hurry,” she murmured in her sleep. A sweet giggle followed before she settled back into deep sleep.

Leaning close, Jenny kissed the bandage. “Night, pixie.”

As she got to the door, she turned around and considered her little girl, sleeping so serenely, hugging her stuffed panda and dreaming of puppies. There was so much of Maverick in her—her bright blue eyes alight with curiosity, the shape of her smile, her refusal to be dissuaded, even her temper, flashing hot and flaming out in a blink. She saw herself in Kelsey, too, but there was no way to deny that her daughter was more than only her. And there was no way to deny that Kelsey needed more than only her. Teachers and neighbors and nurses were raising her daughter as much as, if not more than, she was.

Temper or not, Maverick would be a good father. At least as good as she was a mother. He’d love their little girl with a fierce and quiet fire. He would take care of her. He would protect her—and that would be the thing Jenny would have to show him how to control.

But there was no question in her mind or her heart, no honest question, that he would be a good father. In fact, it was the first thing she’d ever thought about him.

Okay, the second. First, she’d thought that he was smoking hot. Then, she’d thought that he’d make a good father someday.