Find Me or Forget Me Book 5 A Brotherhood of Steel MC

Nova POV

My mother had been dead for twelve days when I found the photograph that changed everything.

Twelve days.

It sounded like such a short amount of time, but long enough for the flowers from the funeral to start dying, for people to stop sending messages asking if I was okay, the casseroles and sympathy cards to stop arriving.

Apparently, twelve days was also long enough for me to realize I had absolutely no idea how I was supposed to grieve my own mother.

I sat cross-legged on the floor of her bedroom, surrounded by boxes I'd been avoiding for almost two weeks. Clothes. Shoes. Jewellery. Photographs.

A lifetime of belongings belonging to a woman I'd spent twenty-five years trying to understand.

I picked up one of her silk scarves and ran it between my fingers, her perfume still clung to the material. For a second, my chest tightened, then came the guilt, because I missed her.

I did. She was my mom, but there wasn't a huge, aching hole inside me like people talked about when they lost a parent.

There was sadness, confusion, and if I was being completely truthful with myself...A little anger. What kind of daughter felt angry at her mother twelve days after she'd died?

I dropped the scarf into the box beside me and rubbed both hands over my face. "God, Mom." My voice sounded too loud in the quiet room. "Why did you make everything so difficult?"

No answer. Of course there wasn't.

Marcy had always been good at avoiding difficult conversations when she was alive. Death apparently hadn't changed that.

I leaned back against the bed and looked around the room. Growing up, I'd had everything and I meant everything. Private schools, designer clothes before I was old enough to understand why anyone cared about the label stitched inside them, expensive holidays. A car waiting for me on my sixteenth birthday.

Birthdays where the number of presents had always seemed more important than the number of people sitting around the table.

Money had never been something I'd worried about. Love? That was more complicated.

Nannies packed my lunches, picked me up from school, sat beside my bed when I was sick. I could still remember being eight years old, standing backstage in a ridiculous silver costume, peeking through the curtain and searching the audience for my mother before a dance recital.

She hadn't come.

She'd had a spa appointment she'd forgotten to cancel. The nanny recorded the whole thing and Mom watched it two days later, then bought me a necklace.

That was Marcy.

She wasn't cruel, sometimes I thought cruel would have been easier to understand. She was simply distant. Like there was always a part of her somewhere else or wanting more.

Dad was different.

Jerry worked ridiculous hours and travelled constantly. Being a high-profile financial lawyer apparently meant his phone never stopped ringing and there was always someone more important demanding his attention. But when he was home, he'd make an effort.

He brought me presents from whichever city he'd been working in, asked about school, praised my grades. He'd tell me he was proud of me, I'd always known his work came first, but I'd never doubted that he loved me.

Even when I got pregnant. I closed my eyes briefly. God. That felt like another lifetime.

I'd found out a few months after my sixteenth birthday. Calum and I had been together for a while, I'd waited to give him my virginity. My V-card, as my friends had jokingly called it back then, and he'd waited too.

He hadn't pressured me, hadn't slept with me and disappeared the next morning. Nothing like that. We'd been happy.

Young and stupid enough to believe that meant we'd always be happy, we'd talked about doing everything properly. College. Careers. Maybe marriage one day. Kids much, much later.

Then two pink lines appeared on a pregnancy test and everything changed.

I could still remember sitting on the edge of Calum's bed, my hands shaking as I told him. He'd stared at me. "What do you mean, pregnant?" I almost laughed.

Even at sixteen, I'd known it was a stupid question. "What do you think I mean? He stood and started pacing. "No." My stomach dropped. "No?"

"I can't do this, Nova."

"You think I can?" He stopped and looked at me. Fear. That was what I'd seen, not anger or hatred but fear. "We've got plans."

"I know."

"College."

"I know, Calum."

"Football."

My heart cracked a little. There it was, his future. "I know." He dragged both hands through his hair. "My parents will fucking kill me." I stared at him. "What about me?" His eyes met mine.

Neither of us spoke and somehow I knew. Before he even said it.

"I don't want a baby." My throat tightened. "Okay."

"Okay?"

"What do you want me to say?"

"I don't know." He looked away. "I just... I can't be part of this."

That hurt. God, it had hurt. I'd waited for him, trusted him. Loved him in that enormous, all-consuming way only a sixteen-year-old experiencing her first real love could, and when things got difficult...

He left.

That was that, he didn't want a baby ruining his life. I never chased him, never begged him to change his mind, and I never made Ruby grow up waiting for a father who had already decided he didn't want to be one.

Mom and Dad hadn't exactly celebrated when I told them. There'd been a lot of silence, a lot of talk about my future. My education. My opportunities. They'd given me a choice. But they'd also made it very clear what they thought keeping my baby could cost me.

I listened, then I chose Ruby. Every single time. I stayed home, finished my studies, built a life around being her mom.

It wasn't always easy.

There were nights I'd sat on the bathroom floor crying because Ruby wouldn't sleep and I had an exam the next morning, parties I never went to, trips I turned down, plans that changed. But not once—not for a single second—had I looked at my daughter and wished I'd chosen differently.

Ruby hadn't ruined my life. She'd changed it, there was a difference.

"Mom?" I jumped. "Jesus, Ruby." A little giggle came from the doorway.

My seven-year-old daughter stood there in unicorn pyjamas, one sock on and one sock missing, her long blonde hair sticking up in every possible direction.

I narrowed my eyes. "Didn't I put you to bed?" She nodded. "And yet..." Her lips twitched. "I'm thirsty."

"There's water beside your bed."

"I drank it."

"All of it?" She nodded again. I stared at her suspiciously. "Ruby."

"What?"

"Are you actually thirsty?" Her little face scrunched up while she considered whether lying was worth the risk. Finally, she sighed. "No."

I bit the inside of my cheek to stop myself laughing, at least she was honest. "Come here." Her face immediately brightened. She hurried across the room and dropped down beside me, snuggling against my side. My arm automatically wrapped around her.

Seven years, nearly eight. Sometimes I looked at her and couldn't understand how the terrified sixteen-year-old I'd once been had managed to keep another tiny human alive this long.

Then Ruby opened her mouth and reminded me it had mostly been luck. She picked up one of the photographs. "Grandma was pretty."

I looked down at it. Marcy couldn't have been much older than I was now. "Yeah," I murmured. "She was."

Ruby shuffled through another couple. "Do you miss her?"

The question caught me off guard. I looked at my daughter, her blue eyes remained fixed on the photographs. "Yeah, baby. I do." She nodded. "Me too." My arm tightened around her.

Ruby hadn't been particularly close to Mom either, another thing I felt guilty about. Mom loved her in her own way. She bought Ruby beautiful clothes, expensive toys. A ridiculous dollhouse Ruby played with twice before deciding the cardboard box it came in was more exciting.

But she hadn't really known her, not the way I thought a grandmother should know her granddaughter.

Ruby reached into another box. "Can I have Grandma's blue jewellery box?" I looked at her. "You've been waiting twelve days to ask me that, haven't you?" She grinned. "Maybe."

"It's almost as big as you."

"I know."

"What are you going to put in it?" She shrugged. "Stuff."

"Very specific."

"Important stuff."

"Ah." I nodded seriously. "Well, that's different." Her grin widened. "So can I?"

"We'll see." Her face immediately fell. "Mom."

"Ruby." She groaned dramatically and dropped her head against my shoulder. I kissed the top of it. "Bed. Now."

"Fine." She stood and pointed at me. "But don't give the blue box away."

"I won't."

"Promise?"

"I promise." She made it halfway to the door. "Ruby?" She turned. "Yeah?"

"Your sock." She looked down at her one bare foot. "Oh." I waited, she waited. "Where's the other one?"

"I don't know."

"How do you lose one sock between your bedroom and here?" Another shrug. "Talent?" A laugh burst out of me. "Bed, trouble."

"Love you!"

"Love you too, baby."

She disappeared down the hallway, I sat there smiling for several seconds after she'd gone.

That girl. My whole heart wrapped up in unicorn pyjamas and one missing sock.

I turned back towards the boxes. "Right, Mom. Let's get this finished." Photographs. Receipts. Birthday cards. Letters. Pieces of her life. Pieces of a woman I thought I knew.

I lifted another stack of photographs from the bottom of the box, one slipped free.nIt fluttered to the floor and landed face down. "Shit." I leaned forward and picked it up, then froze.

Mom. Young. About twenty-three, if I had to guess, but it wasn't her age that caught my attention.

It was her smile. I'd seen thousands of photographs of my mother, perfect poses, perfect hair, perfect teeth, but this was different.

She looked...Happy.

Her arm was wrapped around a man I'd never seen before. Tall. Broad. Dark blonde haired. Rugged in a way that didn't fit with any of the polished men I'd ever seen Mom associate with.

One arm rested around her waist and standing in front of them was a little boy. Maybe five years old. Dirty-blond hair. Bright blue eyes.

There was something about him, something that made me stare longer than I should have. I brought the photograph closer. "Who are you?"

My gaze moved over his face. His nose. His eyes. The shape of his mouth.

A strange feeling settled in my stomach. I slowly looked towards the full-length mirror across the room. Blonde hair. Blue eyes. Then back at him.

"No." I gave a nervous little laugh. "Don't be ridiculous, Nova."

I almost put the photograph aside, then I noticed what was behind them. Motorcycles. Lots of them. Men wearing leather cuts, and a building.

I narrowed my eyes, bringing the photograph closer to the lamp. Faded lettering stretched across the front.

BROTHERHOOD OF STEEL MC.

"What the hell?"

I flipped the photograph over and stopped breathing. Six words were written across the back in faded blue ink.

Me, James and our son Greyson.

Mom's handwriting. I'd recognise it anywhere.nI read the words again, then once more.

Our son Greyson.

My eyes snapped back to the little boy. "Son?" I sat completely still.

Mom had a son. My mother had another child, a little boy she'd never once mentioned to me. I looked at his face again.

"Greyson."

Half brother? Maybe, I didn't know. I didn't know anything.

I turned the photograph over again, the man had to be James. Greyson's father? Mom's boyfriend? Husband? Who the hell was he? And why had she never told me about either of them?

My chest tightened, I flipped it again. Brotherhood of Steel MC, then the back. James. Greyson.

Three pieces of information.

For most people, maybe not much. For me? I stared towards my laptop, more than enough to start digging. Computers made sense to me. Data made sense. People left traces everywhere without realising it, and I'd always been good at finding them, but before I went searching through twenty-five years of my mother's past...

There was someone downstairs who might already have the answers.

I stood and slipped the photograph into my back pocket. Jerry had spent twenty-five years with my mother.

If anyone knew who James and Greyson were... It was him.

And judging by the strange feeling twisting through my stomach, I had a feeling I wasn't going to like what he had to tell me.