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  “She was barely that, even before I found out that she kept my child a secret all this time.” I turned my back on her grave. “I spoke to her once a month, like clockwork. At first, I was checking to make sure she’d be okay with me gone. Then it was to make sure she got her hush money and didn’t attempt to make up sob stories to sell to the press. Once a month for nineteen years, and not once did she ever mention him to me.”

  “What a mess our parents made for us, huh? Didn’t matter which side of town we lived in. They both messed up equally.”

  “You still talk to yours?”

  Kendra offered up a distant look. “My parents were gone before Chevy turned a year old.”

  “Chevy?

  “That’s his name,” she told me as a sweet smile bloomed on her face bringing with it a blush that reddened her cheeks.

  “You didn’t,” I laughed out loud, the sound ragged and ravaged by the crying I’d just done.

  Her shoulders rocked up and down. “You loved that car. I figured,” she stopped and sighed. “I don’t know, I gave him a piece of you that I wasn’t sure he would ever have otherwise.” I chuckled at the thought that this woman, who I had been so in love with, had raised my son all alone for nineteen years and she named him after my prized possession back then. A goddamn, shit-condition, Chevy Camaro.

  “Chevy though?”

  “Would you rather a son named Camaro?”

  “No,” I laughed. “I guess not.” I thought about it a moment and then without thinking, I tested my son’s name on my lips. “Chevy Northman.” It was only a whisper, but Kendra’s gasp shifted my attention quickly. The sadness in her eyes was palpable.

  “It’s Chevy Kendrick.”

  “You named him after my car, but wouldn’t give him my last name?”

  “You weren’t there, and your mom, um…”

  “Spit it out, Ken.”

  “They required the father sign off on the birth certificate, or that I had a DNA test done previously, in order to put your name on the birth certificate. He could change it,” she mentioned, but then dashed my hopes all over again. “Only if he wanted to, though.”

  I took a moment to breathe in and blow the frustration I was feeling back out. None of this was her fault. If I hadn’t taken that stupid opportunity her father taunted me with, then I would have been around for my kid. My dreams of becoming a famous musician would have probably died, but there was a part of me – most of me – that knew that was the far better option. Fame wasn’t everything I had always dreamed of. It was actually a damn lonely existence. “You know what?” I finally managed to say. Her eyes were misted over again with unshed tears as I came to terms with the reality I was now facing. “It’s probably for the best. This way the press had no reason to come snooping into his life and turning everything into a circus.”

  “Yeah,” she replied with a weak smile, taking my words for what they were. “You should know,” she said as I watched her fidget and wring her hands together nervously. That was odd, because Kendra – the girl I once knew – never got nervous. “He’s a musician too.”

  I couldn’t contain the grin that spread across my face even if I wanted to. “Yeah? Does he play an instrument?”

  “Several. Actually, he can pick up anything and play it. He’s a musical genius, but he favors the guitar and sings too.”

  “Does he write?” I asked as pride filled me to the fucking brim inside to know that my son was following in my footsteps even though I wasn’t around to influence him.

  “He does. Gabe, I don’t know how he’s going to take this news.”

  Dread filled me with her words, pushing back the pride that had filled me up moments ago. “Why is that?”

  Kendra chewed on her full bottom lip before looking me in the eye again and giving me a sheepish grin. “He’s a huge fan,” she explained. “I didn’t tell him about you, but I always made sure he had you in his life. I played your music for him all the time, and…”

  I didn’t need to hear anything else. She had done right by me and by my son with what she was given, and I couldn’t thank her enough for that. I leaned over and picked her up into my arms, wrapping her in a hug that was probably a tad too tight. “Thank you for being there for him, and for giving him that part of me.”

  “You wanna put my woman down and move the fuck back?” A giant of a man growled down at me as he moved from behind a tree nearby. I’m sure he wasn’t simply lurking there. He just happened to walk up from that direction. It was then, when I glanced past him, that I saw the motorcycle I’d passed when I came in. He had been sitting on it alone then. Apparently, he’d been giving Kendra time to come pay her last respects to a woman who never deserved them. I gently set Kendra back down on the grass beside me.

  “It’s not like that,” she quickly explained to her man while rolling her eyes at him. “He just got excited when I told him about Chevy and his music.”

  “Yeah?” The man asked. He must have stood about six feet, three inches tall but was built like he owned his own gym. Long, dark brown hair fell down his back in a tight braid and there was a braided beard hanging to mid-chest to match. The man looked every bit the badass he was trying to show me he was. “Where the fuck was he when Chev was first learning any of it?” His nearly black eyes were narrowed on me with menace dripping from every fucking pore. He was obviously a biker. If the Harley hadn’t clued me in, the leather vest shit he was wearing sure did. He was a member of a motorcycle club. Suddenly, I was a little more concerned about what kind of life my son had been living. I shook it off as Kendra corrected him.

  “He didn’t know.”

  “What?” The man asked. The disbelief was loud and clear in that one word.

  “She lied,” Kendra told him while pointing to my mother’s grave. “The manager lied. My parents lied to him when he came back for me. It’s a big mess, Josh, and Chevy is the one who lost out because our parents were too damn narrow-minded to do the right thing.” The man grunted in response, but never took his narrowed, assessing eyes off of me. He didn’t believe what she was saying and that was fine. She may have called him Josh, but his leathers told a different story of a hardened man named Hex. That still had me wondering what type of environment my kid was growing up in.

  “Take my number,” I finally said, having enough of the epic war being waged against me in the dude’s eyes. “Let me know when and where. I’ll be there.”

  “When are you leaving town?” Kendra asked me as she used my cell phone to insert her information.

  “I’m not. Not until I get to meet my son. Already lost a lifetime,” I muttered, choking on the emotion clogging my throat at the reality of what I’d just said. “Don’t want to lose anything else.” I’d lost her too along the way, but it didn’t seem right to say it with her current man standing there.

  I had so many questions. How long had they been together? Had this man been raising my son all along? Were they married? I hadn’t seen a ring on her finger. Not that it mattered to a lot of people. Did they have other kids together? Shit. That was a hard pill to swallow.

  “You know Ford and Dakota are going to flip their shit when they find out too,” the man – who I still hadn’t been properly introduced to – said.

  “Oh, don’t I know it.”

  “Ford and Dakota?”

  Kendra looked rather sheepish as she finally said, “My other boys.”

  “You have more kids?” I asked as if she hadn’t just said exactly that. She had more kids, and had named them after someone’s car too.

  Her face was full of sunshine as she proudly proclaimed the rest. “I have four. There’s Chevy, then Ford, Dakota, and my baby girl Harley.”

  “Our baby girl,” the man who was now standing behind Kendra with his arms locked around her waist insisted. Yeah, I got ya, buddy. You’re marking your territory. I couldn’t blame him either. I should have done a better job of it when she was mine. Then, maybe I would have known I had a kid. Hell, then
maybe all four of Kendra’s children would belong to me as – as would the woman herself.

  2 – The Rock Star Life

  Chevy. My son. I was going to meet my son, who had just turned 18. My brain was on overdrive with the attempts to wrap my head around all that I’d missed out on. Letting myself dwell on the fact that I’d also missed out on his mother being in my life simply because I was too stupid to fight for her, wasn’t an option. She had a man now, whom she seemed happy with. That didn’t mean I hadn’t put my private investigator on him to find out all there was to know about the man, and apparently the motorcycle club, who was in their lives. I hadn’t been able to catch a glimpse of the back of his leather to see which one he belonged to, but it wouldn’t take long to find that out.

  I stood there, outside of the house that I once had been very weary of approaching. I couldn’t believe she still lived in her parents’ ostentatious mansion. I would have thought Kendra would sell it and move to something more her style.

  “You gonna go in, or just stand there all day?” I turned to see the man who was with Kendra in the cemetery a couple of days ago.

  “I can’t believe she still lives in this house,” I admitted.

  “Seems like she was making sure it wouldn’t be difficult to find her,” was his grunted response.

  Well fuck. I guess he had a point there. “I did find her, twice, and both times she was with someone else, so I stayed away.”

  “That just makes you an idiot. She was still a little bit in love with you when I met her. Why the hell you never fought for a woman like her, I will never understand, but I will thank you for it. She’s mine now. Just keep that in the back of your mind while you’re interacting with her.”

  “Afraid of what me being here will mean for her?” I asked, all cocky bravado.

  He laughed and there wasn’t even a touch of menace in the sound. He legitimately thought what I said was funny. “Nah, I ain’t afraid of you entering her life again. She’s well and truly over you now. That happens when you have a man in your life who sticks and fights after so many disappointments before.” The fucker winked then and moved right past me to let himself into the house. It didn’t take long for me to follow behind him, but the dick slammed the door shut behind him as he bellowed out, “Honey, I’m home!”

  “Asshole,” I murmured under my breath as I opened the door and just waltzed in right behind him.

  “Oh! Hi, Gabe,” Kendra said as she removed her lips from the fucker who just tried to warn me off and shut me out. Not gonna lie, my gut clenched tightly at seeing them together that way. I had not been a monk in the years that passed us by, but living a hollowed existence, chasing pleasure, and having to see the person you thought was the love of your life, loving someone else, they were two very different things.

  “Yeah, Hack here tossed the door in my face when he came in, so it took me a minute longer.” I had zero qualms about throwing that fucker under the damn bus and made sure it rolled over him too.

  “Josh!” Kendra hissed his name. “You said you would behave. If you can’t do that, then you can leave. This isn’t about me. He’s here to meet Chevy and you will not ruin that for either of them. Imagine if you and Harley were in their shoes right now.”

  “I’d never have allowed that to happen, Beautiful, so that’s not something I can imagine.” Kendra’s hands flew to her hips as she cocked one out to the side and narrowed her eyes at the man who stood head and shoulders above her.

  “Hex!” She hissed his road name instead of his given one. Then, he stood a little taller and started taking her more seriously.

  “Sorry, Beauty. Won’t happen again,” he murmured before kissing her forehead and walking off deeper into the house, calling out, “Where’s my other girl?”

  “Sorry about him,” Kendra turned to address me. “He’s a little on edge with this visit.”

  “Worried I’ll sweep you off your feet?” I joked.

  “Not at all,” she dismissed me quickly. “He’s worried you’ll get Chevy’s hopes up and then leave him behind the way you did to me.”

  “What the fuck, Ken?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “It’s a concern we all have, quite frankly. Let’s be honest, things didn’t exactly go well the last time you left town unannounced. What happens when you make plans with Chevy and then something comes up with your career and you suddenly have to be somewhere else? What then?”

  “I can promise you right now that no matter what, that will never happen. I would have given it all up back then had I known the truth, Kendra. You have to know that.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she insisted.

  “It does matter, because I need you to understand that my being here to meet my son isn’t just some whim that will go away. He’s my son, and I plan to get to know him and remain in his life unless he chooses otherwise. I really fucking hope that it never comes to him making a choice like that.”

  “Come on then, let’s get the introductions out of the way so that everyone can hop off the ledge they’re all hovering on.” She glanced down at the case I was carrying in my hand and raised a brow. “Plan on playing a concert for everyone?”

  I turned it so she could see the bow on it. “Nope. You said he was a musician and he just had a birthday. I figured this was one thing I could do – come bearing presents for the first time.”

  Kendra’s eyes misted before she ducked her head and allowed her blond locks to flow across her face and obstruct my view. “He’ll love it,” she whispered before swiping at her face then moving further down the hall.

  One thing I noticed as we moved through the space, was that while Kendra had kept the house, it was now very different from the space she had grown up in. Instead of the forbidden air the house once held, with its museum quality everything, the place now looked lived in and full of life. There was color everywhere, art on the walls that didn’t make sense when placed in proximity to the next piece. There were framed photographs that would have never been allowed on the walls when her parents were alive. I understood why she had kept the house in that moment. She turned her own prison into a wonderful home for her family, for our son.

  “Love what you did with the place,” I told her just before we made our way to what used to be a formal sitting room. Kendra glanced back at me over her shoulder and grinned.

  “You ain’t seen nothing yet,” she laughed as we rounded the corner and I was stunned stupid by the colorful array of furniture blended with so many instruments, I didn’t know where to look first. At least, that’s what I thought. Then I spotted the three boys off to the side arguing over something they were looking at. It must have been something on one of their phones because that was all I saw. My eyes landed on each one, wondering, and then it hit me the moment he looked up and his eyes met my own. I knew exactly which one was Chevy because damn if the boy didn’t look just like me.

  His eyes rounded out in surprise and then his jaw dropped, as if he were going to say something, but was stunned silent instead.

  “What the hell, Chev?” One of the other boys asked before he followed his brother’s gaze and realized why he’d suddenly become a statue. “Holy shit! It’s true. She wasn’t lying,” the kid said. I turned in just enough time to catch Kendra’s amusement as she threw a pillow from the nearby couch at the boys to snap them out of their stupors.

  “Watch that mouth, Dak,” she chided first. “Guys, this is Gabe – Chevy’s father.” Then Kendra turned to me, “Gabe these three, lifeless idiots are my boys, Chevy, Ford, and Dakota.”

  “Dak,” the third boy, who seemed as though he might be the youngest, called out as I nodded his way. “Awesome to meet ya,” he stated coolly, before taking notice of the case in my hands the same way his mother had. “Came prepared for a private concert to win us over, huh?”

  “Dakota!” Kendra huffed out, but I didn’t miss the humor in her voice as she did. She had to know he was so much like her.

  “Actually,”
I twisted the case around to show them that it had a bow on it. “I brought this one for Chevy. I hear I just missed your eighteenth birthday.”

  “Along with all the other ones,” Ford hummed out.

  “Ford!” It shocked me to hear that Hex was the one correcting his behavior. “What’s wrong with you right now? The whole situation was explained to you.”

  “Shit!” The kid hissed before glancing my way quickly and ducking his head down a bit in shame. “Ignore me. I’m just jealous. If you had come back for them, maybe you’d be my dad too and I wouldn’t have…” he cut himself off when Chevy threw an elbow into his stomach.

  “Get your own rock star dad,” he teased his brother, and it was the first time hearing my son’s voice. Jesus, it was so like my own. Immediately, I wondered what kind of crazy harmonies we could put down on tracks and I had to shake off the thought as I pushed forward and handed the guitar case over.

  “Got this for you. I know it’s not much, considering how much time we’ve missed out on, but I didn’t want to show up empty handed. From what your mom tells me, I couldn’t go wrong with music.” Yep, that was me. Smooth as syrup while babbling to my son for the first time.

  “Holy shit!” He choked out as he reached for the case that I held toward him.

  “Chevy,” Kendra reprimanded.

  “Ah, come on mom, he’s a fucking adult now,” Ford teased.

  “And you’re not, so watch that mouth too” Kendra corrected with that sass I used to love so much. Hex hid his grin behind the beer he tipped up to his mouth. It made me wonder if the boys pushing their boundaries with the bad language was a common occurrence. “Besides, he still lives in my house, he lives by my rules,” Kendra added as she narrowed her gaze on her son – our son.

  “Sorry, mom,” Chevy apologized as his brother rolled his eyes.

  “Kiss ass,” Ford called out to his brother under his breath.

  “I heard that,” Kendra warned.

  “Momma’s gonna beat your ass if you keep it up, Ford.”

  “Dakota Andrew Kendrick!” Kendra ground out, clearly losing her patience with her sons at that point.