Butch (Black Shamrocks MC: First Generation Book 3)

by Kylie Hillman

  Now, I’m tired and pissed off. I was looking forward to spending the rest of the night and most of today sleeping. The uninterrupted slumber I desired was the only reprieve I was going to get from the disaster that is my life.

  Now the unwilling VP of the Black Shamrocks MC’s newly founded Emerald Chapter, the moment I open my eyes today, I’m going to be forced to accept the cold hard fact that my life in Brisbane is at an end. Delaying the dawning of the new day is the only way I can avoid the inevitable.

  My girl will choose to stay behind to study.

  My sister refuses to leave Vic’s house.

  My friendship with my life-long best friends is broken.

  My father is up to his neck in dirty business.

  My club is on the cusp of falling apart with dirty deeds and back table deals galore.

  And I’m being sold down the river to facilitate everyone’s plans.

  So one night of solid slumber, complete with a decent sleep-in next to my girl, shouldn’t be too much to ask.

  Unfortunately for me, that’s not on the cards.

  Struggling to my feet, I rummage through the pile of dirty clothes on the floor at the end of my bed and pick out a half-clean pair of jeans. My eyesight is still bleary when I close our bedroom door softly behind me, and hop down the hallway on one leg, dressing as I go. Once I have both legs encased in denim, I stop to collect my spare hand gun from the hat stand next to the living room entry and shove it down the waistband of my jeans before making my way slowly to the door.

  The incessant crying gets louder as I near the front door, and I don’t even bother to button my pants before I pull it open. My head is pounding, and I just want to deal with this noisy intrusion quickly so I can get my arse back to bed with Anita.

  Knowing my luck, the mouthy demon kids spawned by the druggies across the road have found their way into my front yard in search of a free feed once again. Hopefully, I have enough in the fridge to satisfy their little tummies.

  I guess, I should’ve listened to Paddy when he warned me against feeding the motley, ragtag crew of kids, but I didn’t have it in me to say no whenever they asked. Not when their parents were so obviously preoccupied with getting high and couldn’t care less where their kids next meal came from. Since I’ve been there myself when one of my mum’s manic episodes coincided with a whole club drug run, I know how hard it is to rely on the kindness of others.

  I’m not going to hold it against the kids. Although, after the night I had, their fucking parents are going to cop a mouthful of colourful expletives.

  I’ve never understood why people have kids when they haven’t an iota of desire to actually raise them properly.

  “Holy shit,” I splutter at the sight that greets me when the door is all the way open.

  Closing my eyes to block out the view, I count backward from ten then lift my eyelids.

  Nope, still there.

  Doing another double take, just for luck, I’m forced to admit defeat and face the fact that there is a crying toddler tied to my front porch. I unlatch the front screen door and, after looking both ways to make sure this isn’t a set up, I step out onto the porch and squat down in front of the little kid.

  “Hey,” I speak softly. The toddler barely glances at me through the tears that runs down its face. Sizing the child up, I decide it’s a boy. “Where’s your mum, little man?”

  It’s futile. The kid just keeps crying. The noise makes my head thump harder, but I know there will be no more sleeping for me until I can find someone who knows the little boy and can take him off my hands.

  In my shock at seeing a strange kid on my porch, I didn’t notice the gym bag sitting on the first step, next to where the little boy is tied up until now. Unknotting the rope, I grind my teeth together, so I don’t scare him when I realise that he was bound by a dog leash. After one final look up and down my street, I lift the kid with one arm and scoop up the bag with the other, then walk back inside.

  Knocking the front door shut with my heel, I try to ignore the way the kid clings to me like I’m his only lifeline. It takes me a minute to work out the logistics, however I eventually manage to seat myself on the couch, with the kid safely wedged between my body and the soft cushion of the arm of the seat, and the gym bag at my feet.

  “Hush, little guy,” I croon when he wails louder and clutches at my arm after I let him go. “I need to find out who you are so I can get you back to your folks.”

  The kid doesn’t listen. I pick him up, balance him on my knee and bounce him while I rifle through the content of the bag. He finally quietens a little, and I thank my lucky stars for the basic skills I’ve learned as Kaden, Mik, and baby, Lucas’s favourite uncle.

  Who knew that Cole and Vic’s inability to keep from knocking up every woman they fuck would come in handy one day?

  “What do we have here,” I muse out loud when I find an envelope amongst the baby paraphernalia. The little fella seems to like the sound of my voice, turning to look at me with wide eyes every time I speak.

  Spinning the white rectangle over in my hands, my heart skips a beat when I see my name printed on the front in neat handwriting. My fingers shake as I run my nail under the seal and extract the single sheet of lined paper. The trembling takes over my entire body as the words I’m reading begin to make sense.

  Brian,

  I can’t do this anymore. It’s time for you to have him.

  His name is Samuel Salvatore Kelly. I call him Sam. He was born on the fourteenth of August last year. He’s healthy, perfect really, and he needs his dad to save him.

  Don’t try to find me. I’m not made to be a mother. Please believe that I’ve tried. I’m just no good for him.

  Look after my baby and give him the life I can’t.

  Shari

  The paper flutters out of my fingers and floats to the floor. I watch it fall with stunned eyes until it hits the carpet and I can’t use it to distract me any longer. Staring at the toddler on my knee, I swallow hard and make myself look him over with fresh eyes.

  His blond hair, light-olive skin, and green eyes confirm his mother’s truth.

  The little boy sitting on my lap is my son.

  Fuck.

  Fucking hell.

  Fucking Shari.

  I can’t breathe. A steel band crushes my chest. The room spins. My body doesn’t feel like I’m in it. I’m a silent observer, separate from the blond man who looks like me sitting on my couch with a kid who closely resembles him perched on his lap.

  The kid—Sam—reaches out and touches my face. I recoil from his damp fingers and regret it as I soon as I do it. Thankfully, he giggles; the sound at odds with the dry tears that still streak his face. Scrunching up my face, I cross my eyes and poke out my tongue.

  He laughs again. The heavy weight around my lungs that’s hindering my ability to inhale finally lifts. My hand shakes as I brush my fingertips over his plump cheek. His smooth skin is warm.

  “Woah,” Anita gasps as she bursts into the room. She pulls my Shamrocks t-shirt lower on her thighs and looks around the living room. “Where’s his mum?”

  The truth is going to come out anyway, so I decide to lead with it.

  “She’s gone,” I reply. “Shari left him tied to the front porch with a bag and a note.”

  Anita’s mouth drops open. Her dark eyes widen. She starts to say something.

  I wave her into silence. “He’s mine. She wants me to keep him.”

  “Oh, my...”

  Standing, I place Sam on the seat I just vacated and close the distance between me and Anita in three, long strides. She walks into my chest, leaning her forehead against my heart, and locking her fingers together at the small of my back. I circle my arms around her slender waist, hugging her tight, and we just stand there holding each other in silence.

  The thoughts that race through my head are also coursing through hers, I’m sure.

  All the what ifs, and how comes, and what will we dos?


  This problem—God, I feel like an arsehole for calling this poor kid a problem—is solely mine to deal with. Knocking up Shari is my mistake. Believing her when she said she had an abortion was my error. The fact she didn’t tell me until now is on my head, too.

  Raising my son is my job.

  I’m almost twenty-two, a grown man by anyone’s standards, but Anita isn’t even eighteen yet.

  She has her whole life ahead of her. I know she wants to go to university like Alanah. She would have received her acceptance or rejection today if she was at home with her family like she should be.

  My selfishness is keeping her from her real life.

  On a subconscious level, I’ve always known we had tough choices to make in the near future.

  Four months was the arbitrary deadline I had in my head, long enough to get past Christmas and all the way through to the first few months of next year when university restarts.

  Instead, all my hens have come to roost and dumped their eggs in my lap in the past twenty-four hours.

  How do I juggle it all without letting any of them crack?

  “He’s a little cutie,” Anita breaks the quiet that’s gripped the room. “I can see a lot of you in him.”

  She steps around me and approaches him. Crouching in front of his seat, Anita holds her arms out, grinning when he goes to her without hesitation. Her technique speaks of similar experience to mine when I watch her perch him on her hip like a pro and walk back to me with a satisfied smirk lifting her pouty lips.

  “Do you know his name?”

  “Yeah,” I reply, chucking my son under the chin lightly. “Anita, I’d like you to officially meet Samuel Salvatore Kelly.”

  My girl gets a weird look in her face. Before I can question her, she shakes it off and concentrates her attention on Sam again. I let it go. She’s allowed to act a little strange after waking up to all this.

  “Well, hello, handsome man,” she coos. “It’s lovely to meet you.”

  He smiles at her. I find his easy acceptance of strangers a little worrying, and wish I had the time to track down Shari so I could question her about the first fifteen months of his life. I’m going in blind, with no prior knowledge of this child and his likes and dislikes, how to make him comfortable and happy, or any of the other information a father of a toddler should already know.

  “Stop it,” Anita whispers. I glance her way, surprised to find nothing but sympathy and understanding in her expression. “We’ll get through this. It won’t be easy, but we’ll manage if we work together.”

  Rising onto her tip toes, she lifts her face to mine, angling her head for a kiss. I drop a quick peck on her lips, gratitude at her calm reaction to the bombshell I’ve just dropped on her filling my veins, then place my hand slightly to the left of the middle of her chest.

  “You have the biggest heart. I’m a lucky man.”

  Anita beams, happiness radiating from her beautiful face.

  She is a kaleidoscope of sunbeams and rainbows, cotton candy and softness, all the way to her beautiful soul.

  “I’m just as lucky,” she vows, earnestly. Dropping her gaze from me to Sam, Anita plants a kiss on his cheek. “Now, let’s go and see what we can find you for breakfast.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Anita

  Guilt wraps itself around my brain, twisting tight like a vine, piercing any excuse I try to conjure with its thorns.

  My lies are beginning to mount up. One after the other. I keep telling myself that this one will be the last, until I open my mouth again and another falls out.

  I should have told Brian that I’ve seen Sam before. He deserves to know that Shari tried to reach out. That she didn’t just dump her toddler on the front doorstep and run.

  Because I remained silent when Brian “officially” introduced us, I’ve made it impossible to tell him the truth.

  “Geez, he’s got an appetite,” Brian remarks. Apart from the occasional glance my way, he hasn’t taken his eyes off his son. Wild wonder and a million questions dance behind his eyes; however he hasn’t put speech to any of them yet. Pointing at his own overflowing plate, he chuckles, “I guess it’s like father; like son.”

  I laugh appropriately at his joke. He laughs with me. Sam looks up at his father, then at me, and back to his dad, before adding his own childish giggle to the mix. It’s all an act on my behalf. My head is scattered, my worries flying off in a dozen directions, remaining a mere fingertip out of reach whenever I try to pull them together as a rational thought.

  “I need to tell you something,” my boyfriend ventures in a voice I’ve never heard before.

  His tone is thin and reedy.

  He sounds scared.

  “Okay.” Plastering my best smile on my face, I regard him with what I hope is acceptance. “I hope you know that I have your back no matter what? It’s not even been a month, but that is the truth.”

  Brian nods, a flicker of disbelief sending a shadow across his face before he turns his expression blank again. Picking up a piece of bacon with his fingers, he takes his sweet time chewing it. I toy with my muesli, pushing it around my bowl with my spoon.

  The only person who isn’t affected by the tension in the kitchen is little Sam. He continues to sit on Brian’s knee and make a mess on the table in front of him. Every now and then, his fat little fingers manage to get some of his breakfast into his mouth and his little shoulders shudder like it’s the best thing he’s ever tasted when he swallows.

  “Do you know if you were accepted to uni?” Brian asks. My hands fall still. I grit my teeth, all the while trying to decide if adding another lie to my growing pile is still the best plan. “Alanah received hers yesterday, but I wasn’t sure if your family passed yours on to you.”

  The emphasis he places on the word family sets the hair on my arms on end. So far, I’ve managed to gloss over his questions about my home life with excuses about being disowned because I don’t want to go into the family business and how not being ready to talk about it with him just yet.

  I know the time will come when he’s going to demand better answers.

  I pray it’s not going to be today.

  A long time in the future. Months, and even years, would be my wish.

  Well, actually, that’s not true. Never would be my ultimate preference.

  “Ah, yes,” I stammer. Sam distracts Brian by touching his chin with sticky fingers and I use the diversion to lie to him while he’s not looking at my face. I can feel the panic trying to overwhelm me, so I know he’ll be able to read my expression if he looks close enough. “They delighted in telling me that I missed out.”

  Reaching across the table, Brian lays his hand over mine. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay. There’s always next year.”

  “True,” he replies, his voice distinctly cheerier. “It also makes what I’m about to tell you easier.”

  All oxygen flees my lungs. My mouth runs dry. I lay my spoon down next to my bowl.

  Please, God, please. Don’t let him be about to break up with me.

  “I promise that I was going to say this before.” He waves a hand at Sam. “It’s just, we got a bit side-tracked last night and I thought I’d have plenty of time today to work out how to say it.”

  Holy crap! He is breaking up with me.

  Why? Does he know about Serge? Is that what the meeting at the Black Shamrock clubhouse was about?

  Wracking my brains, I run over his behaviour last night. He was upset—definitely. He spoke about his disillusionment with the MC and its leaders. He lamented his inability to bring Alanah home. He told me I was the only person he trusted.

  No, he doesn’t know. We were fine last night.

  That leaves one thing. He doesn’t want me around his son.

  “Listen,” I begin. “I’m—”

  “The Shamrocks are sending me to Emerald,” Brian cuts me off. I don’t have time to process his statement since he launches into a massive speech straightw
ay. “We’re opening a new chapter there. They’ve named me VP under Cole’s dad. I thought you were a certainty to get into uni so I wasn’t going to ask you to come because I know how much you wanted to get your degree, but now… I know it sucks and you must be disappointed, but now you’re free to come with me. I want you with me. And I know you just said it’s not even been a month… it feels right, though. Like fate or something… Plus I have Sam now, which might change your mind. I hope it doesn’t. I know I can be a good father and a good biker on my own… With you by my side, I’ll be even—”

  As he purges his soul with a verbal stream of conscious, I let this wonderful insight into his feelings wash over me.

  Me and Brian are on the same page.

  Moving to his side with speedy steps, I flatten both my hands over his mouth to stop him from speaking.

  “Shhh,” I say. He blinks rapidly, then nods. “I want to come with you. I want to help you with Sam. Wherever you go, I will follow, and I know when it’s time for me to chase my dreams, you’ll do the same for me.”

  Brian nods again. His green eyes shine, filled with hope, love, and suppressed tears. My own burn as I fight back the desire to cry with sheer happiness.

  “Thank you,” he says against my palm.

  I pull my hands from his mouth and kiss him.

  This crazy, beautiful, thing we share is perfect.

  There’s only one more thing to do to secure our future.

  “You need to speak to Sam’s mother,” I tell him. He shakes his head, denial darkening his face, but I persist. “At least try to find her before we leave. It can’t hurt to hash things out with her.”

  “Okay,” Brian agrees after a significant pause. “But I’m only doing this for you. As far as I’m concerned, she’ll never get her hands on him again.”

  There is no reasoning in the entire world that could make me understand how a parent can leave their child. Unfortunately, as a child who has been left, I also know that trying to find answers can help.

  No one went looking for my mother when she abandoned me, and I still live my life under a cloud of why and what if.