How can this kid believe that I, as his father, would think less of him? No, I think less of myself for not being there when he needed me the most. He deserves better, and I know he’ll be eighteen in a year, but I’m still going to be there for him in whatever way I can. Tor will know I’m not fuckin’ around. If I’d known what’d been going on and for how long, I would’ve come off the road and made a home for him years ago.
“Runes—” I hold a hand up, stopping her from speaking further.
My phone rings in my pocket, and I pull it out to find Tor calling. I immediately answer, putting it on speaker. “Hey, son, what’s up?”
“I wanted to see if you’re cool with me ordering a pizza?” Tor asks.
“That’s fine. You’re staying in your room at the clubhouse, right?” I meet Fern’s wide eyes. She’s shocked and rightfully so. She hasn’t been around lately to know I’ve got a son. I haven’t told her about him yet. I don’t put that shit out there unless I know a woman is going to stick around. Since there haven’t been any I wanted to keep around, it’s never come up.
“Yeah, Dad, I’ve been chilling out playing Call of Duty with Nate and Trevor,” Tor says, mentioning two of his friends.
“All right, text Rati and let him know you’re ordering a pizza. Tell him I said he needs to bring it to your room. I don’t want you in the main room tonight,” I state firmly. He doesn’t need to see the shit that goes down in the clubhouse when there’s a party, and the guys need to unwind.
“You got it. Are you coming back tonight?”
“I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon,” I inform him. If I come back tonight, it’ll be late, and I don’t want to wake him up. Finishing my conversation, I slide my phone back into my pocket.
“You have a son?” she whispers, taking a step backward in surprise.
“Yeah, I’ve got a son, which is why I need you to marry me. I need your help getting custody of him. You’re the only shot I have at getting custody, Fern, so please hear me out,” I say, praying to the Gods they’ll help me during this trying time.
Chapter Six
Fern
The way he’s staring at me with focused eyes tells me he isn’t kidding. There’s not a ‘got ya!’ moment coming, and I doubt people on Punk’d are going to come busting into the house. I inhale deeply and swallow, trying to form the right words. Why is he asking me this? Me, of all people, really?
He could’ve gone up to anyone and asked them. An ex-girlfriend maybe, or one of his brothers’ sisters. I don’t see any viable reason he would ask me to be the one to marry him. “What’re you thinkin’ right now?” Runes asks after a few minutes of silence. He takes a seat back on the couch and sits across from me, and while I form my thoughts, I remain quiet.
Eventually, I open my mouth and my feelings come rushing out. “I can’t make sense of this, Runes. I’m trying, but I can’t understand why you would ask me to do this for you. Of all people, why me?”
Runes inhales deeply and licks his lip. “I’ll be honest with you, sweetie. There’re not many women I get along with. A lot of ‘em don’t have the drive to be successful in their own right, but you’re not like that. You’re a business owner and want to succeed in life, plus you’re not constantly hangin’ around. Even when we were foolin’ around, you were fine bein’ on your own for a few days. You weren’t naggin’ me askin’ when you’d see me again. None of that shit. You did your thing, and when I hit you up, you were cool with it.”
As flattered as I am, I’m not buying it. “Runes, what aren’t you telling me?” I sense it in my bones. Something else is going on here. I know he wants to get his son back, how he’s aiming to get custody. He’s already told me that part, but he hasn’t gone on to tell me the reasoning for it, though.
“My lawyer told me I don’t have a shot in hell if I don’t prove to the courts I’m a stable person. Told me marriage looks good when it comes to custody cases, and I’ll do what I need to get him back. Fuck, Fern.” Emotion floods over this brute of a man, and I can’t help but take his hand in mine. My heart aches for him and I don’t even know why yet.
“She was abusin’ him, my fuckin’ baby boy. She was . . .” He pauses, and I witness a shiver take over his whole body, but it’s obviously from anger. His eyes lock with mine, and he continues speaking, “She was fuckin’ sellin’ his body, and I’m not gonna go into more details than that. I’m sure you can put the pieces together on what the bitch was doin’. For the love of Odin, the hatred I feel toward her. If I could kill her and get away with it, I would. She hurt our kid, the one she swore to me she’d always protect. She broke every unsaid promise a mother makes. Fuck!”
I frown, and his words pull at my heartstrings. His pain is evident, but his anger is obvious as can be. I sense the way he’s conflicted in doing this the legal route and taking vengeance into his own hands. Yet, I empathize with the way he’d do anything for his son. If my little girl was here and the roles were reversed, I’d damn well be doing the same thing to keep her safe.
“I’ll do it,” I state in the midst of the silence, and Runes’s eyes widen in shock.
“What?” he says like he’s so shocked.
“I said I’ll do it, Runes. You’ve already told me you’ll help me overcome everything going on in my head, plus paying for the surgeries to fix what the fire did, and . . . and I want to help you get your son out of this situation. If it means taking him away from his vile mother, I’ll do it.” I’d normally never speak so rudely of a baby mama, but from what Runes’s told me, she deserves to be called so much worse.
Runes squeezes my hand and nods, emotion overcoming him. “Thank you. From the bottom of my fuckin’ heart, thank you so much. I’ll never forget what you’re doin’ for us, Fern.”
I squeeze his hand back and look into his crystal-clear blue eyes. Every time I stare into them, it’s like I’m staring into the ocean. “Whatever I can do to help.”
Runes clears his throat and runs his thumb over the back of my hand. “You wanna know why else I asked you to do this, why I chose you?”
I give him a curt nod and wait for his answer.
Runes snakes a hand around my waist and ends up pulling me closer. He stares into my eyes and looks at both sides of my face, the untouched side and the scarred. “It’s ‘cause you have one hell of a heart. I swear you have the soul of a Valkyrie. From the moment I met you, I knew you went through some shit, and just like the day of the fire, you survived.”
Runes’s words hit me deep. He doesn’t know anything about my past, yet it’s like he can see the pain I’ve been burying for years. I doubt he knows I’m able to empathize with his son, but I am. My ex-boyfriend, the father of my daughter, put me in situations where he acted like my pimp. He filmed it and put it online, made a sickening profit off it, and degraded me at every opportunity. Hell, I don’t even know if he was my daughter’s father. That’s how often he had me ‘work’ for him, as he called it. Shaking my thoughts back, I focus on the man in front of me.