Page 19 of Ghost's Sin
I put Lily back in the crib. Carefully. She didn't wake. I stood over her for a minute.
Back in bed. Lola was half awake.
"She go down okay?"
"Took about ten minutes."
She rolled toward me, fitted herself against my side, her head on my chest, her hand on my stomach. "You were gone longer than ten minutes."
"I was watching her sleep."
She smiled against my skin. "You watch everything."
"Not everything." I pressed my mouth to her hair. "Just the things that matter."
Quiet for a second. Her fingers traced a slow circle on my stomach.
"Are you happy?" she asked.
I thought about it. The rocking chair. Lily's hand on my collarbone. The house around us, the mountains outside the window. The truce that held, grudging, uncomfortable, real. Her father visiting once a month, holding Lily with his rough hands, his face doing an expression he'd never admit to. He left without saying more than a few words to me. That was fine. I didn't need his words. I needed him to keep showing up, and he did.
"Yeah," I said. "I'm happy."
She kissed my chest. Closed her eyes.
Stone had come by last Sunday. He'd stood in the doorway of Lily's room and looked at her sleeping in the crib and his face had done something I'll carry with me for the rest of my life. The president of the Iron Jackals, a man who'd held his world together through force and will and a love that looked like iron, standing over his granddaughter's crib with tears he'd never admit to sitting behind his eyes.
He'd picked her up. Held her against his chest with those big, rough hands, and she'd grabbed his finger and held on and he'd looked down at her and the cold I'd faced in his clubhouse wasn't anywhere on his face. Just a man. Just a grandfather. Just a father who'd lost his daughter to the enemy and found her again in the smallest, most unexpected way.
He never said much to me on those visits. That was fine. We didn't need words, Stone and I. We needed time, and the grudging respect of two men who'd looked each other in the eyeand decided that the woman between them mattered more than the war.
I lay in the dark with my family breathing beside me. A sleeping baby down the hall. A woman warm against my side. The peace of a life I'd never expected to have, never planned for, never believed a man like me deserved.
I closed my eyes. And I slept.
