RIDING DIRTY (Steel Titans MC Book 4) by Franca Storm (best books for students to read txt) 📗

started up the truck, he took my hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

EPILOGUE

~Slade~

 

Fifteen Months Later

 

“WILLA.”

She groaned, keeping her eyes closed.

“Come on, darlin’,” I pressed.

“No,” she murmured, turning her head away from me. “I’m fine. Just resting my eyes for a little while longer.”

I smiled to myself. She was so fucking cute when she was all sleepy and out of it.

She wasn’t the only one.

So was the swaddled bundle sleeping soundly against her chest in the rocking chair of the nursery.

Dawn Mitchell-Rose.

Our six-month-old daughter.

The name meant the first sign of light, which was exactly what she was for us. It fit better than anything.

I reached out and wrapped my arms around her, gently pulling her from Willa’s hold.

She didn’t stir even a bit. She’d been milk-drunk ten minutes ago when Willa had given her the bottle and she’d crashed hard. It was late evening, time for her longest stretch of sleep, about six hours.

I’d just stepped away from the rocking chair, when Willa’s eyes snapped open, going wide when she realized Dawn weren’t still tucked against her. When she moved to speak, to give me shit, I held up my free hand, signaling her to keep quiet so she didn’t wake our daughter.

I settled Dawn into her crib, then took Willa’s hand and helped her out of the chair, leading her out of the nursery.

I closed the door quietly, then brought Willa down the hall and into the living room, far enough away out of earshot. Into the safe zone, as we’d come to call it, where we could talk at a normal level without worrying about waking the baby.

Willa pulled her hand from mine and gave me that look that let me know she weren’t happy with me. “She was cozy against me.”

“I know, darlin’, but we agreed that she needs to get used to sleeping in her crib at night.”

Having Dawn had really brought out a soft, sweet side of Willa that neither of us had been prepared for. It’d also gotten her real unsure of herself, doubting her abilities as a mother, which had her overcompensating a lot and feeling guilty for any second she weren’t right there next to Dawn, or doing anything that weren’t directly related to taking care of her.

That included the new career she’d started up since we’d left everything behind.

She designed hi-tech, top-of-the-line, and hella expensive security systems, putting her technical skills and all that coding know-how into good use, rather than the other set of skills she’d been using as Shadow all those months ago. Because we had to be careful and keep off the grid in order to keep the peace and freedom we’d worked so hard to achieve, she couldn’t contact, or work with, the clients directly. So, she’d employed somebody she trusted as the middleman to take care of that side of things. Rick Vale had become her business partner. I’d been wary of his intentions when it came to Willa at first. But after everything we’d suffered through, I’d come to see the lengths he’d gone to for her. He had her back, no question. And she needed it. She needed a purpose beyond me and Dawn. She always had to be working toward something professionally. It was just how she was wired.

She weren’t the only one.

I’d finally managed to get to work on the commercial space I’d bought a while back when I’d first figured out my retirement plan. I’d been building up a bike shop in the town a few miles down the road from our off-the-beaten-track home.

The whole parenting thing had been a shock to the system.

For us, the limited sleep thing had been the least of it. With the wild, fast-paced, insane lives we’d led beforehand, that was old hat. Nah, it was the rest that had been a hell of a thing. Trying to figure out what the right thing was to do with Dawn in a ton of different scenarios. All the shit you had to learn just to take care of a baby. And the most intense of all, was the need to keep her safe, to protect her in every fucking way. Of course, that weren’t always gonna be possible, but the need was there, burned in deep as parents. I’d never been so intensely worried about anybody for every second of the day, with every move they made, every sound that came out, every cry. It was like an iron-fisted grip around my heart that I just couldn’t shake off, or even loosen just a bit.

I figured that would just take time. And, more than that, it really showed just how much I loved my baby girl. It was proof that I was capable of that kind of love after so long being closed-off and standing at a distance to everything and everyone. It was safe now, safe to do that, be that way, and have more.

And, fuck, I really did have it. Love. Peace. Freedom. Family. Happiness.

“You’re doing an amazing job with her. You’re a hell of a mom,” I told Willa, giving her hand a squeeze.

She smiled. “You know, I think I am now. I’ve… got it down for the most part.”

Good, she’d gotten to a good place with it.

“You are too, you know,” she said, giving my hand a squeeze. “You’re a great father to Dawn.”

“Thanks, darlin’. Getting there, for sure.” I drew her closer and slid my hands down to her hips, holding her to me. “You know, we got around six hours to play with right now?”

“I know. Want to catch up on some sleep?”

It’d been a while and a major whirlwind lately becoming parents, so I must’ve been off my game when it came to the flirting, because she weren’t getting it.

“Nah, I got something else in mind.”

She reacted to the heat flaring in my gaze. “Oh. That.”

I laughed. “Yeah, that.”

A sexy grin spread over her face. “Sure, we can knock one out,” she said,