"Oh hush now, you can call me Grace, and it's fine with me that you don't want one because more for me," she said downing half of her drink. "So you're the girl..."

"Her name is Thia," Ray interrupted. "Thia, this is Grace."

"Thia is such a beautiful name, Abel told me it's short for Cynthia, is that right?"

"Yes," I said. The name Abel sounding oddly familiar, although I didn't know who Grace was referring to.

"Welcome, welcome. I am so happy to meet you. I wanted to come pluck you out of that dark garage, but I was warned to give you some space and that you'd come out when you were ready, and HERE. YOU. ARE." Grace reached over and with a strength I didn't think the frail older woman had, plucked me from my seat and pulled me in for a hug that threatened to crush my lungs. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you."

"Likewise," I said out of the side of my mouth, my cheek pressed up against her clavicle as she smushed me to her boney chest.

Ray chuckled. Grace pulled back and set me back down onto the chair. She sat and recrossed her legs, taking another sip of her drink. "Thank you for bringing my boy home," Grace said.

"Your boy?" I asked.

"Abel," Grace said.

"Who?"

"Bear," Ray said.

Abel.

Bear was Abel. I'd known that. He'd told me that when we first met but I'd always thought of him as Bear and almost completely forgot that he'd told me his real name.

Abel.

"I didn't bring him home. I needed his help and, I didn't know where else to go..." I said, unsure of how much I should be telling her. "It's a very long story."

One I didn't want to talk about. Not then.

Not ever.

Grace waved me off. "No need to explain. You're here now and so is my boy and that's all that matters."

"Are you Bear's mom?" I asked.

"No, but I'm the closest thing he's got to it. Someone has got to look after these boys. Before Ray here came along all they had was me and I did my best to make sure they knew that my home was their home," Grace said. Ray twisted a silver ring on her left hand and I wondered if it was an engagement ring or a wedding band. "And now that you're here I won't have to worry so much about Abel."

"I'm sorry, but I'm not staying," I said. "I'm leaving. Really soon, actually."

They didn't have to know how soon.

Grace tossed the newspaper she had been reading onto the table in front of me and I caught it before it slid right off the table. The headline on the front page was the same as the one from Bear's phone a few days earlier. Except this time there was a picture of a girl under the headline.

A picture of me.

"Well, it doesn't look to me like you're going anywhere, anytime soon." Grace sighed and leaned back like it had been settled, and I was staying regardless of my argument to the contrary. Which I noticed was a pattern with Grace. Ignoring anything she didn't want to believe was true and settling for her own skewed version of what was going on.

"I'm so happy my boys have found you girls," Grace said, despite my argument that Bear and I were not together. I wanted to argue but Ray shot me a look like she was telling me that I was fighting a losing battle. "I've loved Abel like he was my own since the very day Brantley brought him over to the house."

"Brantley?" I asked.

"King," Ray corrected. "My King. My fiance."

"Abel had ridden his motorcycle right up on my lawn after a downpour, leaving deep valleys all the way up to my plant beds, then he left a grease stain the size of North Carolina on my love seat." She cupped her glass with both of her hands and looked into the ice like it was replaying the day she'd met Bear right there in her drink. "He was too young to be driving that damn thing, told him so myself, but by the next time he came to the house he was a natural. That boy was born to be on a motorcycle. The man and the machine."

I'd only seen him on a bike once and it was driving away from the gas station and even though I was just a kid at the time I knew exactly what Grace was talking about when she said he was born to be on a bike.

"He was a funny one too," Grace said.

"Funny?" I asked. Bear was a lot of things. Rude. Crude. Sexy as hell. INFURIATING. But funny was a side I hadn't seen.

"Very. Used to tell me a new joke over my mama's meatloaf on Thursday nights. The most ridiculous jokes that he probably heard around the club. Most of them the filthy kind you couldn't repeat louder than a whisper and couldn't say within ten miles of a church, that's for sure." She shook her head. "As he got older, slowly but surely, the light in that boy's eyes grew dimmer and dimmer, by the time he rode off a few months back, there was nothing left in them. Broke my damn heart." Grace wiped a tear that spilled from her eye. "He deserves better than to walk around this world alone and with his own broken heart."

Ray stood up when the baby stirred on the monitor. "I'll be right back," she excused herself, and headed down the hall, emerging a few minutes later with a tiny little baby wrapped in a pink blanket.

"Isn't my grand baby beautiful?" Grace asked proudly.

"Yes, she really is," I agreed. She was a tiny little thing with a headful of chestnut curls. She yawned and opened her eyes, and I had a strong urge to want to hold her, but I didn't want to ask. Ray didn't know me very well and I'm pretty sure there was some sort of Mom rule out there about how long you have to know someone before they let you hold their babies.

Ray must have seen my warring expression, because she asked, "Would you like to hold her?" Before I could answer she gently placed the baby in my waiting arms. Her itty bitty hands and feet were wrinkly, her cheeks so chubby they pushed up into her huge eyes making them appear much smaller than they really were and slightly slanted.

"Not a kid person huh?" Ray asked, leaning against the counter, calling me out on my earlier lie.

"When it's your turn I think Abel will be a really great father." Grace chimed in. "Just like my Brantley is."

"Grace," I said, unable to take my eyes off the tiny little one in my arms, "I'm not just denying it for the sake of denying it. Bear and I aren't together. I'm a problem for him, not any sort of solution."

"Grace used to tell me the same thing and I used to deny it too. But it turns out I was wrong," Ray said, leaning forward on her elbows.

Grace brushed her finger across the baby's cheek, the contrast of old and wrinkled hands against plump and innocent skin was a beautiful sight that made my heart sing a little.

Just a little zap like a mini heart reviving machine.

"What's her name?" I asked.

"Nicole Grace, but we're going to call her Nikki," Ray said, looking proudly over the baby in my arms. Grace beamed at the mention of her name as part of the baby's name.

"I saw Abel this morning for the first time since he's been back," Grace locked eyes with me. "He still looks angry as hell, but I can tell that something is shifting and I just know the light will be coming back soon. Mark my words, my Abel will be back for good. So I'm gonna say right now that you're wrong too, you just haven't realized it yet." She smiled at the baby and then up at me. The wrinkles around her eyes changing shape as her lips curled upward in a knowing smile. "I'm not a well woman, Thia. I'm feeling good now, but my time on this earth is limited."

"I'm so sorry..." I started, but Grace cut me off.

"Oh hush now. Don't be sorry. Just don't hurt my boy and I won't have to spend my remaining time alive hunting you down and making you pay." She leaned back in her chair and I glanced up to Ray to see if maybe I'd misunderstood the meaning behind Grace's words but Ray just stood there hiding a tight-lipped smile. "Now who wants lunch?" Grace asked, popping out of her chair and heading over to the refrigerator.

Ray stood on her tip toes and opened a cabinet, taking out some plates and setting the table, while I just sat there, baby in arms, with my mouth agape. "What the hell just happened?" I whispered to Ray.

She shrugged. "Congratulations, you've been threatened by Grace."

"What does that even mean?" I whispered, not wanting Grace to hear me and not wanting to wake the little girl who had drifted off to sleep in my arms.

"In a way," Ray said, setting a plate down in front of me, "it means welcome to the family."

Grace had brought over some sort of cheesy potato casserole and a big leafy salad. Although Ray had been bringing me food for the last few days it was the first meal that I actually remember tasting.

And it tasted fantastic.

Grace fell asleep shortly after lunch on the couch and the kids went down for a nap after refusing to eat anything but salad dressing and chocolate milk. "Thanks for dragging me up here. It actually felt pretty good to be in the land of the living again," I said as Ray walked me to the back door. "It's nice to know that no matter how much horrible stuff happens in life that the world still manages to keep turning."

"Listen Thia, I know you're going through a lot, and I know it's really hard, but you have to remember that you're not the only person who has lost family, and you're certainly not the only person here who has gone through some seriously horrible shit. I don't know what Chop did to you at the MC, and wondering about it makes my skin crawl, but you have to know that you're not the only one in this house who has been through something awful like that."

"You?" I knew there was more to Ray and her story then the beautiful young mom before me.

"Yeah, and I'll tell you the entire tale some day, but it's actually not me I'm talking about."

"Grace?" I looked over to where she was sleeping on the couch. Her deep snores growing louder and louder with each inhale. "Who would hurt Grace?"

Ray shook her head. "No, not Grace."

"Then who?" I hoped to God she wasn't going to say one of the kids.

Ray looked out the door toward the garage and then back to me. "Bear."

It was the last person I expected her to say, but after she said it, it made sense. Why he hated that I'd been hurt. Why he wanted to heal me. Why he hated me all at the same time.

Why he wanted me gone.

I was more than just a burden. I was a reminder. No wonder he walked away from me last night. He was dealing with his own shit.

He didn't need to deal with mine too.

If I wasn't sure before, I was definitely sure now.

The second I could figure out how, I would be gone.

Consequences be damned.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

Bear "You got any weed?" I asked Ray who was on the couch in the living room.

"I don't know, Bear, do you know how to knock?" Ray asked, shooting daggers at me with her eyes.

"Never knocked before."

"I wasn't breastfeeding before," Ray said, and that's when I noticed the little bundle of pink pressed up against Ray's bare tit. I'd never seen anyone breastfeed a baby before. Not in person at least. I always thought it would be something gross, but I was wrong. Baby attached to it or not, a bare tit is still a bare tit and although I knew my feelings for Ray had never been anything real, she was still fucking beautiful...and her tit was still out.

"You got any weed?" I asked again, trying not to look at her tit but in the process managing to only look at her tit.

She grabbed a small blanket from over the couch and slung it over her shoulder. "You can look now."

"Don't think I ever stopped," I admitted. "But do you? It's kind of important." It was actually very important. I'd fucked up. I kissed Thia. I pressed my tongue into her pussy and in all my life I can honestly say that I'd never tasted anything so fucking amazing.

But then I got up and left her sitting there probably wondering what the fuck she'd done wrong when she'd done nothing wrong. It was the opposite. She'd done everything right.

Too fucking right.

She was so responsive and I knew that if I spent any more time with my mouth on her or touching her in any way that she would have come.

It was the mere thought of her coming around my tongue that set me off and made me start to lose control. Shit it was probably that first fucking kiss. Her innocent tongue finding its way to mine.

My cock was so hard it fucking hurt and I was seconds away from taking her right there at the edge of the fire pit. If it wasn't for a crackling of the fire, a reminder of what I'd been through in that very same spot bringing me back to reality there was no doubt that I would have done just that.

The weed was my peace offering to her. My way to show her that I really did want to make her forget in a way that didn't involve me plowing through the barrier of her virgin pussy with my cock. I also had something else to tell her. Something that kept me on track with my original plan to get back on the fucking road.

"You think I can smoke weed while breastfeeding?" Ray asked, calling me back to the present.

"I take it from the way you're looking at me like I'm a fuck up that the answer to that is a big resounding motherfucking no?" I asked.

"You would be right," Ray said. "King is in his studio, he keeps everything locked up pretty tight these days with the kids around, but he probably has something." She shifted the baby and her shirt before sliding the cover off. "Now was that so hard?" I liked arguing with Ray almost as much as I liked arguing with Ti.

HA HA you just admitted you like fighting with her. You have a crush you big fucking pussy!

I rolled my eyes at Preppy's mental commentary.

King was in his new studio, on the other side of the garage from the apartment, just as Ray had said he would be. He was hunched over an angled desk, his pencil moving quickly over the page. I leaned over to check out what he was drawing, it was an old school style dragon, breathing flames and it was one of the most detailed sketches I'd ever seen him do. Dramatic. Bold. "Nice digs," I said, looking around his new studio. His old one was just a small room in the house, outfitted in neon and posters. This one was cleaner, more grown up. More sterile. Pictures of previous tattoos he'd done hung in frames on the wall, a KING'S TATTOO sign with a skull wearing a crown hung over the door.

"Thanks. Feels good to have a workspace again since the kids take up every inch of the house and then some. Never knew kids had so much shit," he said, smudging a line with his pinky, wiping the top of the page with the side of his hand.

"You always surprise me, brother. This is next level shit right here," I said, pointing to his dragon.

"You'll never fucking guess who it's for," King said, spinning around on his stool.

"Who?"

"Ray's dad."

"No fucking shit. Senator asshole is getting tatted up? What happened to the good old days when we were planning his quick and timely demise?" I asked as I continued to look around the wall at the different types of tattoos he'd done.

"Things change. He's got all sorts of scars where he took the bullet in his chest and his shoulder. Wants a dragon to cover up part of it, reminds him of the old Jet Li movies he likes or some shit like that."