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“I’m okay, sweetie.” She wrapped me up in a big hug. I had missed feeling her arms around me so much, all I could do was lean into her and cry.
After everything she had been through, I should’ve been the one to comfort her, but she seemed more pulled together than I was at the moment.
“We have so much to do to get our lives back.” My mom scrubbed her hands down her face. “I’m sure our landlord has evicted us from the apartment in Chicago by now. It’s been so long that he might have gotten rid of all of our stuff, too. We’re probably going to need to bunk in a cheap motel for a little while, unless you want to go back to the place the Hounds of Hellfire got us instead. If we do that, maybe they’ll let me keep my job. In Chicago, I’ll have to start looking for a new one right away.”
“Oh…um…” My gaze darted toward Shaw, and my mom’s eyes narrowed.
“Who’s that guy?” she asked. “He’s been watching you the entire time we’ve been talking.”
“Shaw,” I whispered. “He’s the Iron Rogues Captain here at the head chapter.”
She quirked a brow. “And why is he looking at me like he’d gladly strangle me for talking about where we’re going to live?”
“Because he’s…um…” I struggled with finding the right word to describe our relationship without telling her that I loved him since I hadn’t said the words to him yet. “Stone. My boyfriend.”
It sounded almost ridiculous to use that word since he was so much more, but it was all I could come up with at that moment.
“You hooked up with Stone? The guy you’ve been thinking about for the past two years?”
Shaw closed the distance between us and slid his arm around me. “She did.”
His answer didn’t make my mom happy. Planting her fists on her hips, she huffed, “I might not know everything about MC life, but from what I understand, my daughter has not been claimed unless she’s wearing your name on her back.”
Shaw slid a loaded look at Fox, who headed down the hallway leading to Shaw’s room. “Britta is very much mine.”
“She’s young and?—”
Fox returned, holding a scrap of leather in his hand that he tossed to Shaw, distracting my mom from whatever she’d been about to say.
Turning to me, Shaw showed me the back of the smaller version of his cut. I traced my fingers over the patch that said, “Property of Stone.”
Happy tears streamed down my cheeks as he slid the leather vest onto my back. “How long have you had this?”
“Two long years.”
His answer blew me away. “Really?”
He gripped the front of the vest and tugged me closer, his blue eyes filled with emotion as he confirmed, “It was the only comfort Fox could give me when he wouldn’t share your location. I struggled hard with not knowing where you were. Knowing that I was going to make you my old lady as soon as we took care of the bastards who were after you and your mom was what allowed me to hold on for so long.”
“That is…wow,” I breathed.
“I almost gave it to you a dozen times, but it didn’t feel right with what was going on with your mom,” he explained. “I wanted to get you answers about her first.”
“And you did better than that,” I sniffed. “You brought her home to me.”
There was a slight gleam of uncertainty in his eyes as he asked, “So this is home now?”
I nodded. “My home is with you, and you belong here. In Old Bridge. With the family you’ve built.”
“Thank fuck because I wasn’t looking forward to talking to Fox about me transferring to the chapter up in Chicago.” He shook his head with a laugh. “I still hadn’t come up with a planfor what to do if you and your mom decided that you wanted to head back to Hounds of Hellfire territory.”
“Let me get this straight.” Mom looked between the two of us. “You two barely interacted with each other the last time we were here but never forgot each other. Now you’ve been together for barely more than a week, and you’re already his old lady?”
I beamed a smile at her. “Yeah, that’s exactly right.”
“Actually, it’s not,” Shaw corrected. I turned toward him, my eyes widening when he pulled a diamond solitaire out of his pocket. Sliding the ring onto my finger, he added, “She’s not just my old lady. She’s the woman I’m going to marry as soon as I can get her down the aisle.”
“Oh my gosh.” I blinked down at the sparkling gemstone, even more stunned than I’d been when Shaw had shown me the property patch. “How about tomorrow?”
