Page 70 of Colt
Today they were at the clubhouse, so she came to the clubhouse.
I watched Holden see her through the window first.
He’d been at the bar, not paying attention to much of anything, half a beer in hand. Then the gate camera beeped and he glanced at the monitor and went very still in a way that had nothing to do with threat assessment. He set down his beer, straightened up, and ran a hand through his hair once—a gesture I’d never seen him make in my life.
“Relax,” I said, passing him on the way to let her in.
“Shut up.” But there was no heat in it.
Bea came inside with a canvas bag over one shoulder. Knox spotted her from across the room and shouted her name loud enough to make Handful flinch. She laughed and crouched down to his level, letting him drag her over to show her whatever card trick he’d been perfecting. Luca drifted over with more dignity, waiting for a pause in Knox’s performance before showing her the pool shot his Uncle Holden had taught him.
I glanced at Holden. He was watching from the bar with his arms crossed—the posture of a man trying to look like he wasn’t watching.
Bea looked up at some point and her eyes found him. She nodded—professional, easy. He nodded back.
That was all.
But I filed it away.
Later, as I was loading the boys into my truck to take them home, Luca hung back.
Knox had already climbed in and was chattering about what trick Uncle Handful had promised to teach him next time. But Luca stood on the gravel, his hands shoved in his pockets, looking at the clubhouse with an expression I couldn’t quite read.
“You okay?” I asked, crouching down to his level.
He nodded slowly. For a long moment he just looked at the clubhouse. Then he finally met my eyes, and there was something vulnerable in his expression that I hadn’t seen before. “And they call me and Knox family. Like we belong here.”
“You do belong here. If you want to.”
“I wasn’t sure before.” His voice was small. “If I wanted to. You were so scary at first, and I thought maybe you’d go back to being that way. That the nice part was fake.”
My chest ached. “It wasn’t fake, Luca. I was never going to hurt you or your mama. I was just—”
“I know.” He cut me off, and there was a certainty in his voice that hadn’t been there before. “I know that now. I’ve been watching you. For weeks and weeks. Waiting for you to mess up.”
“And?”
“You didn’t.” He said it like it surprised him. Like he’d been expecting me to fail and was still processing that I hadn’t. “You just kept showing up. Kept being nice to Mama. Kept being patient with me even when I was mean to you.”
“You weren’t mean. You were protecting your family. I respect that.”
Luca was quiet for a long moment. Then he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around my waist, his face pressed against my stomach.
I froze for a second, stunned. Then I hugged him back, holding him close, feeling his small body tremble.
“I decided,” he mumbled against my shirt.
“Decided what?”
He pulled back just enough to look up at me, and his green eyes—my eyes—were bright with tears he was too proud to let fall.
“You’re my daddy.” The words came out rough, like they’d been stuck in his throat for weeks. “For real. Because you earned it.”
I swear my heart stopped. “Luca—” My voice cracked. I couldn’t help it.
“Don’t cry,” he said quickly, even though he was blinking hard himself. “It’s not a big deal.”
“It’s the biggest deal.” I pulled him back into the hug, my face pressed against his hair. “It’s everything. Everything.”
