Free Shadow & Soul by Susan Fanetti

apologize for hurting her. She’d told him about the baby and said it was his. Demon didn’t know why he’d just believed her, but he had. He’d brought her home to his trailer, and he’d tried to help her kick the junk. He’d tried and tried, and he’d failed and failed. But he’d stuck it out with her, finding her again and again in some flophouse, her belly getting bigger and bigger, trying to figure out how to keep her away from trouble and never coming up with the answer.
     
    Tucker was born with his mother’s habit. He’d had a rough first few weeks. But the first time that boy’s eyes met his own, Demon had known for an absolute fact that he was looking at his son. And he’d known purposeful love for the first time in his life.
     
    DCFS didn’t take Tucker from her, despite the addiction she’d shared with him. They put her in an outpatient program and gave Tucker a caseworker, and they sent them home. Kota moved out of Demon’s trailer right away and took his boy to live with a girlfriend.
     
    His fight to be a father to his son had started then and still hadn’t stopped.
     
    He stared hard at his lawyer. “Go ahead and look. You better know your business, though. Keep her the fuck away from me. Don’t tell me where she is. Just do your thing. But if this blows up in my kid’s face, then I’ll know who to blame for it.”
     
     
    ~oOo~
     
     
    Demon pulled up to Hoosier and Bibi’s house later that afternoon, and he was relieved and disappointed that Faith’s car wasn’t around.
     
    When he’d left that morning, he’d stopped cold on the sidewalk. She still drove Dante, and the car itself was in the same cherry condition it had been in before. But now it looked finished, completely covered from top to bottom and front to rear in art. It was beautiful, and so very Faith.
     
    He’d had an urge to hug the fucking thing—that urge, at least, he’d been able to master. But he’d ridden off with his stomach in knots.
     
    She was gone now, though. That was a good thing. He needed time, and if she hadn’t been gone, even though he’d been as prepared as possible for her to be there, he’d have panicked—which would have led to stupidity. But he didn’t know if she was gone for good or just for a while. He had no idea why she’d even been there in the first place. Maybe last night had just been a special torture for him, stirring up everything and then coming to nothing.
     
    Inside, he found Hoosier and Tucker in the family room. Tucker was playing on the floor with his beloved wooden train set, and Hoosier was watching ESPN. Bibi wasn’t around, but Demon had known that when he’d pulled up—the garage door was open, and the space for her Caddy was empty.
     
    His gratitude and trust for Hoosier and Bibi was boundless. They were giving him the best chance he’d ever had to be a father to his son. They’d been the closest thing to parents he’d ever had. Since he was nineteen, when he’d started hanging around the clubhouse, they’d treated him almost like a kid of their own. They’d given him a home and a family.
     
    He didn’t blame Hoosier for taking it away. Demon had done that to himself.
     
    Hoosier had kept it from being worse. He hadn’t lost his patch or his life, and both of those had been on the table for a vote. He’d been exiled, not excommunicated. Not ended. And things had turned out more or less okay.
     
    As much as he’d been torn apart to be sent away from his only home, he’d felt like he fit as a Nomad right away. Rootlessness was something he understood. He’d partnered with Muse right off, and he’d found his first actual friend. They’d been rootless together, except when one or the other of them was inside, and that had been okay.
     
    And damn, the shit that the Nomads of their old club had been into. It was life or death business in those days, and they were up to their shoulders in it just about nonstop. Demon had found stability in the