Page 14 of Biker's Dark Revenge

And I would be damned if I let myself get distracted from them.

Chapter Nine – Liana

"See, if you play the cards like this," Lee explained to Kara, as he lay on the floor a few feet from her. "You make Liana pick up two. And then she can’t beat us, can she?”

"Oh, my God, I was so close," I protested playfully, but to be honest, losing the game didn’t bother me one bit. Kara laughed – oh, I loved hearing her laugh so much. She rarely did, but it felt like the gaps between these little explosions of joy were getting smaller and smaller, and I wanted her to feel like she never had to hold them back.

We were playing cards together, all three of us – some elaborate game that I was pretty sure I understood the rules of since Lee had explained them to me, but I was still losing dismally. Well, I was pretty sure I was, anyway, after she had just pulled that move on me.

Lee had arrived back earlier today – we hadn’t had a chance to talk about the freak-out he’d had on me the other day, but I got it, I did. I wasn’t going to rush him into telling me what was going on. I knew he had bigger things on his plate right now than dealing with me, but still, I was curious.

Kara seemed to relax when he was around – something in her unwinding, unfurling, and giving way like a cat settling down on a comfortable spot on the couch. Ever since he’d told her about how the giraffe would take away her bad dreams, she had slept hugging it close every night, and she seemed to wake up less often – I noticed that the mumbling and murmuring she’d done so much of when she’d first arrived seemed to have eased, too, though I knew it was likely far from gone.

I had gone out of my way to make this place as comfortable for her as I could. I had no idea, of course, how long she was going to be here – hell, if I was even remotely qualified to step up and be some kind of parent to her, for however long it took to find her someone more suited to the job. But, whenever I had my doubts, I thought about what I had whispered to Hadley when I had held her in the moments before I had run from that compound. I had promised her that I would take care of her little girl, and I would be damned if I failed at that task.

I had ordered a kid’s bed online, and it had arrived earlier today – though, of course, I hadn’t gotten around to putting it together yet. I was no good when it came to putting furniture together and never had been. All the flat-packs I’d tried to build had wound up upside down or inside out or something of the kind. I wasn’t sure how I intended to go about building this one, but I would have to give it a try. For her.

For now, though, I was happy to have Lee around. I'd made Kara dinner, spaghetti, about the only thing I knew how to cook. Luckily, she seemed to like it well enough. I hadn’t asked much about what she had eaten before, but I guessed she had probably subsisted on the same crappy food I’d been given – takeout fries, pizza, the bare minimum.

She yawned as we finished up the last game, and Lee grinned at her.

"You getting tired?" he asked, and she nodded. She didn’t talk a whole lot yet, but I figured that would come in time. It seemed a miracle she wasn’t just cowering in the bed, refusing to talk to anyone at all. Kids were resilient, I had to keep telling myself that – I had to keep reminding myself that she would get over this. It was just a matter of time, and it would feel like everything she had been through was a bad dream.

I sighed and glanced over to the bed, which was still sitting in the box, waiting for me to put it together.

"I’m sorry I didn’t have time to get the bed ready for you, sweetheart," I told her. "But tomorrow I’ll get it fixed up, okay?"

"I can do that for you if you want," Lee offered. I glanced over at him, surprised.

"You don’t have to," I replied at once. I didn’t want him feeling as though he owed us anything right now – like he had to stick around.

"I know I don’t," he replied gently. "I want to. That alright?"

I managed a smile.

"I guess that would be okay," I agreed and got to my feet. "Come on, Kara, you want to get washed up and then you can go to bed...?"

I led her through to the bathroom – she was still getting used to taking care of her personal hygiene, and, for the most part, I had to guide her through every step of the way. But I didn’t mind. It wasn’t as though she had asked for any of this, had she?

I took her to bed and laid her down, sitting with her and chatting quietly until she started to doze off – I had offered to read her stories, but she struggled to keep up with them. It made my heart hurt to think of all she had missed out on, all the little things that I had taken for granted.

When I was sure she had fallen asleep, I made my way back through to the living room – and stopped dead in my tracks when I saw the bed unpacked and laid out across the floor.

"What are you doing?" I laughed, as I knelt next to Lee, who was sitting in the middle of it.

"The best way to get a feel for what needs to be done is to lay it all out first," he replied, as he grabbed for the instructions and turned them the right way up in his hands.

"Maybe that’s where I go wrong," I sighed. "I don’t know how to do all of this right..."

"It’s not easy," he agreed.

"You’re just saying that to make me feel better," I shot back. "Of course it’s easy. Everyone and their mother wouldn’t use them if they weren’t easy. I’m just...useless when it comes to this stuff. If you could see what I did to a bookcase that was meant to be easy to put together..."

He chuckled, a warm smile broadening on his lips.

"Alright, point taken," he agreed. He ran a hand through his hair, and I couldn’t help but notice the way his muscles flexed as he moved. There was such power to him, coiled, like a cobra ready to strike when the moment was right.

"You don’t have to stick around and help, you know," I told him softly. "I mean – I mean if you have places to be -"

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