Page 34 of Ruined (The Knights of Ruin)

‘What do you think? I’m moving in.’

My mouth dropped open—to say what, I had no idea. Because at that moment Annie came charging down the hallway, screaming, ‘Smoke!’ at the top of her lungs.

The fierce look vanished and a heartbreakingly beautiful smile crossed his face as he stepped past me.

‘Hi, kiddo,’ he said, opening his arms as Annie flung herself into them.

I shut the door and leaned against it, stunned by his announcement and by the fact that watching the pair of them together made my heart ache like someone had hit it with a large baseball bat.

He hadn’t smiled at me. He’d saved it for Annie and that was okay. It really was. But seeing them together after that phone call with Justin hurt for reasons I didn’t want to examine.

You should never have said that he wasn’t her father.

No. I shouldn’t have. Not when what was happening right in front of me proved what a lie that was.

Smoke had picked her up and was carrying her down the hallway.

‘Can I read you a bedtime story, or do you want Mommy to do it?’

‘You!’ Annie said excitedly, then patted his shoulder. ‘What’s that big bag?’

‘That? It’s a unicorn. It was too big to carry, so I put it in the bag.’

Annie giggled, delighted. ‘It is not!’

‘No, it’s not. It’s only boring stuff like clothes.’

‘I like clothes.’

‘They’re not for you, kiddo. They’re for me. I’m going to be staying for a while.’

I watched Annie’s face light up at this as they both disappeared through the doorway into her bedroom, belated shock moving slowly through my system.

Staying for a while...

He hadn’t mentioned moving in when he’d told me his plan on the way back from Lucky’s that night. All he’d said was that he wanted me to go to the party.

Panic turned over inside me and I didn’t know why.

Ignoring it, I went down the hallway and into my bedroom, deciding I might as well get ready. He’d be with Annie awhile. I would wait to talk to him about this moving-in business once she was asleep.

Pulling open my closet, I grimaced at the lack of decent things to wear hanging in it. What the hell did you wear to a biker party anyway? The one and only party I’d been to had been the one where I’d caught Smoke getting that blow job, and none of the women at that party and been wearing anything at all.

God, I was so not going naked.

Pulling out a selection of things, I laid them on the bed, discarding my one and only little black dress as too dressy and the denim mini as too slutty. There was the plain black pencil skirt I wore to work at the call centre on occasion, but that seemed a little...boring.

This isn’t a fashion show. You’re not your mother.

I pulled a face, remembering my mom getting ready for the few parties Dad used to take her to. She’d always been so excited, thinking it meant something. Thinking that finally he was going to make her his old lady and everything would be different. She’d dress up in the few designer dresses she had left—the remains of her old, socialite life—and get herself looking beautiful.

But it never made any difference. And she always came home alone.

I always thought I’d never end up like her, and yet now here I was, a single mom, trying to find something to wear to a biker party. Even the fact that I was going as someone’s old lady didn’t change it—not when I wasn’t a real old lady.

I was just like her. Struggling to make ends meet, to feed and clothe my kid. The only things I had going for me were that I wasn’t an addict and I wasn’t in love with a biker.

‘Are you ready?’

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