I flopped down on the couch next to her and grunted as the rapidly growing ball of fur that was Jimbo plopped his heavy body across my legs.

“I’m in love with him. Like real and forever.” The words rushed out and I wasn’t even sure that was what I had intended to say to her, definitely not before saying it to him. Poppy nudged me with her shoulder.

“Duh. You think I would have helped him abduct you if I didn’t know that? You were miserable this entire week and for no reason. I want you to be happy and in love, and the only person you’ve ever felt that way with was Rowdy.”

I threw my head back against the cushions and scratched Jimbo hard between his floppy ears.

“For something that sounds so easy, why does it seem to be so hard? Like why can I just blurt it out to you but the idea of telling him makes me want to hurl?”

She rested her head next to mine. “I don’t have the answer to that, but I wish I did. Love is complicated and can hurt so much.”

“You aren’t going back to Loveless, are you, Poppy?” She couldn’t. I don’t think I would let her even if she was an adult and in charge of her own life.

“Eventually.”

I gasped and turned to glare at her. “No way!”

“Calm down, Salem. I just meant I have to go back and get my stuff. I’m not sure how to do that and not have an ugly showdown with Oliver, but yeah, I need to go back to show him and Dad I’m not afraid and that what they did is wrong.”

“Well, I’m going to go with you, then. You aren’t going to face either of those ass**les alone.”

“It was a fight I should have fought a long time ago. Just like you did.” She was quiet for a long minute and then told me in a soft and broken-sounding voice, “I love you, Salem.”

“Back atcha, Poppy.”

I had spent the day surrounded by love, spent it watching family of all different kinds of relations fight for each other and help one another. It made me realize how alone and solitary my life on the move had really been all these years. I was just starting to build a family tree of my own and it wasn’t surprising at all that the roots of it rested at Rowdy’s booted feet. He had always been the one single constant in my life even when miles and memories separated us.

I could stomach the idea of returning to a place I had sworn I would never set foot in again only because I knew he was where I would be going back to. He would always be my lighthouse, guiding me home through any kind of storm, just like that sprawling tattoo on his chest said.

CHAPTER 17

Rowdy

I WAS NERVOUS WALKING into the Bar. I think I had asked her to meet me here instead of one of the classier, more upscale places in LoDo to try and put us on more equal footing and I was never one to squander the home-field advantage.

I was early by a good twenty minutes, but the longer I sat around thinking about sitting down with her one-on-one, the closer I was to talking myself out of doing it. So when I entered the dark interior of the Bar on that Friday night two weeks after Asa’s run-in with the law, I was relieved and surprised to see Rule sitting at the bar talking to Rome. The Archer brothers were bound to keep my mind off my own little reunion that I had on the schedule for the night. I should have manned up and approached Sayer and had this powwow a month ago, but I just now was able to think about talking to her without wanting to bolt in the opposite direction.

I took a seat next to Rule and clapped him on the shoulder as Rome lifted his scarred eyebrow at me.

“Where’s your lady?”

My lady . . . I would never get sick of hearing Salem referred to as mine. “She’s with Saint and Royal helping Saint pack.”

It seemed like it had taken forever to get Nash’s girl to agree to move in with him, and now that she had he was wasting no time in getting her and her belongings under his roof for good.

“I’m actually meeting someone else for a drink.”

Both the brothers turned to me, and if it was possible to burst into flames or be frozen on the spot from the disapproval in both pairs of blue eyes, I would have been a dead man. I held up my hands in surrender from all the disapproval and shook my head.

“No. Not like that. Jeez, have you met Salem? She would cut my balls off and feed them to me if I was screwing around on her.” I lifted up my own eyebrow and curled my hands on the edge of the bar. “I found out a few weeks ago that the guy that contributed the other half of my DNA was out there all along and knew about me. His daughter—my half sister—found out about me after he died and left me half of her inheritance. She tracked me down and has been trying to get to know me for a couple months. She’s actually the one that found the lawyer for Asa.”

Rome let out a low whistle and turned to get me a beer. “That’s some straight-up soap-opera shit right there.”

Rule and I both laughed. “Tell me about it.” I shoved Rule on the shoulder hard enough that he almost toppled off the bar stool. “Why aren’t you home with your pregnant wife?” I never thought the original wild child of the Marked family was going to settle down, but Rule had taken to being domesticated like a champ and I had to say it looked damn good on him.

He righted himself in the seat and snatched the beer out of my hand so he could take a long swallow out of it. He gave it back after making sure to slobber all over the top of it and I could only fake-glower at him while I laughed at his antics.

“We went for the ultrasound today and I think we both needed a minute to get our heads around it. I guess it kind of made it all real. I’m gonna be a dad. I’m having a kid with the last person on earth I ever thought I was going to fall in love with, and now I don’t have any kind of life without her in it. I heard the heartbeat and almost f**king cried.” His pale eyes got huge in his face. “What am I supposed to do if he turns out just like me?”

Rome chuckled and I asked, “You’re having a boy?”

He rubbed his hand across the back of his neck. “Yeah. I think a girl would maybe be easier. She would be sweet and soft like Shaw. God help us all if this kid takes after his old man.”

Rome snorted. “I have a baby girl, and while she is sweet and soft she is also ornery and demanding.”

I smirked at him. “Just like her mama.”

“No kidding, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.” He told Rule, “You’ll be fine. If he is like you then you know what you need to do to keep him in line and remind him that it’s okay to be difficult and to make your own way in this world, but that he also has to let the people that love him in.”