“I have no idea what you’re talking about half the time,” Bruno grumbled as he finished off his beer and went for another one.
“So, who do you want to be?” Laric pushed, looking at me.
“Why do you have to put labels on it at all?” Six asked curiously. “Just be.”
“Do you even ride, State?” Laric asked.
I felt a strong pulse of anguish pierce through my heart at him calling me ‘State.’ I’d never be ‘State’ again.
That part of my life was gone.
“Don’t call me that,” I growled. “It’s Trouper. Or Troup.”
Laric gave me a thumbs up.
“No State. Got it. Now, have you ever ridden before?” he asked.
I grinned then. “I rode all the time. I just have to find another bike.”
“About that…” Beckham shifted in her seat. “I didn’t sell your bike. I, uh, took out a loan and paid it off while you were in there.”
I looked at her.
“Did you do anything that I asked you to do while I was in there?” I grumbled. “I wanted you to take care of yourself. I wanted to take care of you.”
She hadn’t sold my car. She hadn’t sold my bike.
I mean, I knew why she hadn’t. She knew that I’d loved them.
But I’d also wanted to take care of her. That’d been the only way that I could do it.
“How about we have this discussion later,” she suggested.
The baby that I was holding woke up with a flourish, and everyone blinked in surprise.
Everyone but Beckham, though.
“He wakes up starving,” she sighed. “Just like his father.”
A whisper of warmth flooded through me.
“Speaking of dinner, now that we’ve established that she’ll help, what are we having?” Laric asked.
I easily transferred a really awake, getting madder by the second Hiro to Beckham’s arms. As much as I’d love to help, I just didn’t have the right equipment.
“She didn’t agree yet, moron,” Six said.
“She agreed. I can tell by her body language.”
I looked at my wife.
“I’m in if you’re in,” she whispered.
I nodded once. “I was in or I would’ve never left that hellhole.”
Two hours later, we were on our way to the house that Beckham had rented out in the middle of nowhere.
“This is nice,” I mused as I looked at the small log cabin home in front of us.
She sighed, not commenting on the house at all. “I need to tell my parents that I’m home.” When I looked toward her to gauge her reaction, it was to see her grimacing. “And it’s time that they met my real husband.”
We hadn’t even gotten out of the car yet.
Reaching for the seatbelt that I’d just taken off, I clicked it back into place.
“Let’s just take care of everything then,” I suggested.
She looked over at me with terror in her eyes.
“It’ll be okay,” I promised, offering her my hand.
She took it and held on to it like her life depended on it.
She didn’t let it go. Not once. Not when I sneezed and needed the use of my other hand. Not when I shifted gears. And not even when she wiped the tears from her eyes.
CHAPTER 23
This is my drinkin’ shirt. I don’t know if I wear it every day.
-T-shirt
BECKHAM
“Let me go in first,” I said as I stood at the bottom steps of the police station. “Give me, like, two minutes.”
“They’re not going to be happy,” Trouper said as he deftly moved the sleeping baby in his arms to his shoulder. “I don’t want you to do this alone.”
I looked over at my husband.
“I’m not doing it alone,” I corrected him. “And you can stand outside the door once my brother gets to the office. Okay?”
He sighed. “I guess that’s all that I’m going to be able to do. I don’t want you to get any shit, though. If they start pissing me off, I’m coming in, whether you want me to or not.”
I nodded. “That’s fine.”
He gestured for me to lead the way, and I did.
Dad’s office was actually in the SWAT building out back. Instead of entering the main office buildings, I walked around the side and led the way toward that back building.
When we got there, it was to find quite a few of the SWAT team members in attendance, a few of those being my cousins and people that I knew from growing up.
They were busy training, though, and didn’t notice me.
Thank goodness.
I walked past the gym area and toward the back office where my father was.
“You can wait here.” I pointed to a break room. “Even though you’ll be a few leaps and bounds from the office, you should be able to hear.”
Trouper caught me around the hip and pressed a kiss to my face. “It’ll be okay, baby.”
It wasn’t going to be okay.
I was going to not only tell my father about who Hiro’s real father was, who my husband was, but I was also going to tell him about what happened to me and what I’d been doing at the time of that happening to me.
My father wasn’t going to like hearing that I was FBI and kept it from him. Nor was he going to like that I was married to a man that he hated.
This was going to be a nightmare.
Trouper kissed me one more time, and then I slipped into the hallway and looked toward the gym, wondering if Louis had gotten my text yet.
He would. His watch alerted him to when he got them, and he was very quick to respond when it was me.
Shoring myself and dragging a deep breath into my lungs, I peeked around the corner of my dad’s office and saw him sitting behind his desk, writing something.
Likely a report.
I felt the bile rise in my throat.
I took one last deep breath and walked into the room.
The moment I stood in the doorway, I spoke.
“There’s something that I need to tell you.”
My father looked up from the paperwork at his desk,
