Page 66 of Biker's Baby

TWENTY-NINE

Abe

I didn’t want knowingthe truth about Tristan to change me, but there was no denying the truth.

It did.

It wasn’t that I was angry with Iris for not telling me. And it wasn’t that I was upset about the idea of now being a father out of the blue. It was the fact that I had fallen for Iris, and I loved her little boy.

And I now knew that he was my own flesh and blood.

There were so many things going through my mind. I didn’t know how to handle it. I didn’t know what to say. All I knew was that I wanted to be a good dad. I wanted to be there for him as he grew up. I wanted to do the right things. Say the right things. Show him how to be a good man.

I wanted to do all those things, and I didn’t have a clue where to begin.

But I was also stubborn. The thought of telling Iris I was scared to be a father or, worse yet, that I had no idea what to do was enough to make me want to bury my head in the sand with shame. She was such a good mother. She loved her little boy and just seemed to know what he both wanted and needed without much effort.

And she still had the time to look amazing while she did it.

It blew my mind, that was for sure, and I wanted to measure up – but I had no idea how I could even begin to compare with her. I knew mothers and fathers had different expectations on them, but that didn’t change the fact that I wanted to be as involved as a father as I could be, while at the same time not doing anything that would fuck up Tristan.

My father had practically raised us on his own after Mom passed, so I didn’t know much about what a mother was supposed to do versus a father. My dad left us to fend for ourselves much of the time. We took care of each other. Tristan didn’t have any siblings. It was up to me so show him what it meant to be a good man.

I had to talk to Glenn.

As much as I didn’t want to admit it, the whole thing freaked me out, and I didn’t even know how to start telling people that I was. I just wanted this to make sense for me, and it didn’t.

It didn’t help Tad was still angry with me over the fact I hadn’t told him about my neighbor. Though he wasn’t riding me specifically any harder than usual, he was taking out his frustration on everyone with some voracity.

I was on a gun run with Ben and Kohler, two of the guys I rarely ever had anything to do with. I didn’t care for them. They were both hotheaded and stupid, and I didn’t want to be on this assignment with the cartel without Glenn.

I was pissed that Tad had made me the man in charge, and I was the one who had to make sure the whole thing went smoothly, when I wasn’t sure how we were going to go about getting the weapons anyway.

The cartel was already pissed off with what Tad was doing over the prices. They were asking for more, and he was barely giving them anything these days. He felt that he was making up for it with the money he was spending on the drugs, and he left me or Glenn to be the people to explain this to the man holding the gun and demanding us to give him more money.

It wasn’t an ideal situation by any means, and I had no idea how any of these deals would end when we stepped into them.

There was always the chance for any of these deals to go south, and if they did, someone could wind up dead. And if someone wound up dead, that was a surefire way to get into a war with the cartel. I knew Tad didn’t want that, and if we did, we were going to need the help of other MCs to have a prayer of lasting through the onslaught without things really falling apart for us.

The best thing to hope for was a smooth transaction that didn’t lead to any guns being fired or anyone being hurt.

I sat back on my bike in the abandoned parking lot, watching as Kohler attempted to make the transaction. There were other cartel members as well, hanging back and watching as their man rode forward and worked out the deal with our man.

They were discussing the little details, leaving me to my thoughts as I half listened to what was going on. I didn’t want to babysit, and it seemed Kohler was doing a fine job of sticking to the script, whatever that happened to mean these days, so I wasn’t getting overly involved.

My mind drifted back to Iris. Of course, it was nothing new to be thinking about her, but the fact that she had now told me that we shared a child together left me wondering about the possibility of us being together. Not just to be parents to that little boy but being together in the sense that we could actually have a relationship.

There were things I would have to work out. Details I knew she would want taken care of before I approached her with the idea. But I also wanted to talk to her about it. I had fallen for her. There was no denying that. And, considering the fact she was always giving me those looks and touches herself, I had a feeling she felt the same toward me.

The only problem was that she was planning on leaving. We hadn’t discussed what we were doing about that, and there was still the issue of Joel, too. There were little details that had to be worked out before we were able to really concentrate on what was happening with us, and again, I was growing frustrated with how I was even going to approach the subject.

It would be a lot easier if I was able to talk to Glenn about this. Not because he had more experience in any of this than I did, but because of the fact that I wanted more than anything to have an ally. Someone I could talk to about Iris and who I knew was going to be on my side with her. Someone who would help me make the right decisions and make it work.

Glenn had been that so far, and it sucked having him laid up with his broken leg.

I could see him, but he was out of work and hadn’t been coming to any of the meetings at the club, either. I knew it was only temporary, and he would be back soon enough when he was well enough to be getting around faster. But in the meantime, it really sucked having to wait to talk to him about any of this shit.

He was the closest thing I had to family in town, and he had good advice on top of it. I trusted him more and more every time we talked, and I knew he would have something to say about my situation now. Something that was bound to help me in the long run.

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