Page 40 of Shattered King

“Did you kiss Mommy better?” she whispered.

Josh nodded his head, his dark curls bobbing, then he leaned in, resting his head on her chest and popped his thumb in his mouth. Lulu brushed her hand over his hair, kissing him again.

“Lulu?” Her name was torn from my throat. My voice was guttural, question and demand combined.

She still wouldn’t look at me. “Not now,” she whispered.

I was breathing heavily, so many emotions firing through me. My hand dropped to the bed, not touching them, but resting beside Lulu’s hip, a centimeter from Josh’s leg.

Mine.

The word roared through my head.

They were mine, both of them, and because of Pierce, I’d been forced to give them up. I’d been without my woman for three fucking years. Didn’t even know I had a son.

Rage exploded though like a gale force wind, and my fingers curled into a tight fist. Pierce would pay with his life for that. I let my hand drop away. I needed to get the hell out of here, before I lost my shit, before I scared them both.

Turning, I walked out and kept on walking.

“Hunt, wait up.” Van’s voice echoed down the hall after me.

I spun to face him. “You knew?”

He shook his head. “I only found out when Sara called the office about Lulu. She thought Lulu told you while we had her locked down.”

I gritted my teeth. “You should have told me.”

“There wasn’t any time. I thought she’d tell you when she woke. I sure as hell didn’t expect you to find out like that.”

I started back down the hall.

“Where are you going?”

“I need some air.” I kept on going until I was outside, sucking in oxygen, my head spinning.

I tilted my head back, the sun beating down on my face. For a moment, the anger subsided and I let the emotion trying to fight its way through, loose. An emotion I was almost too afraid to believe in, but couldn’t contain another moment.

Joy.

Despite everything that had happened, despite all the pain and lies and heartbreak, it built and grew, took root.

For a long time, too long, I’d felt like I was standing in a storm, clouds so black and low and heavy I could barely see my own hand in front of my face. For the first time in three years, the clouds were parting and the light, the warmth was breaking though.

I had my Lulu back.

And there was a little boy back in that hospital room with my eyes.

The man who carried the title of father in my life had been an abusive asshole. He’d hated me from the minute he found out I was in my mother’s womb. The man who planted me there, even worse, a monster in the shadows, no face to put to the pain and agony he inflicted on my family.

I’d carried that anger and hate inside me all my life, had never known what it was to truly be loved until I found Lulu. Then I’d lost her and all that anger had returned, along with a need for revenge that consumed me, became part of me.

But that anger that I’d lived buried under, it didn’t come close to how I felt about Lulu . . . or that little boy.

To be what they needed. To be what my own father never was.

It was so much bigger.

Lulu