by A. M. Myers
“Are you the one making my daughter scream like a banshee?” Ali asks, stepping into the spare bedroom she let me use last night before leaning against the doorway and crossing her arms over her chest. I laugh again as I nod.
“She tried to pout to get her way so I told her a bird was going to poop on her lip.”
“For fuck’s sake,” she whispers, rolling her eyes as she fights back a smile. She knows how ridiculous her daughter can be better than anyone else. “You’re lucky Logan is busy or he’d already be charging up the stairs.”
I flash her a grin. “Thank God for small miracles.”
She scoffs and pushes off of the door frame to make her way into the room. I watch her as she walks over to the bed and sits on the edge of the mattress, her eyes roaming over my face.
“How are you feeling this morning?”
“Sore.”
She arches a brow. “Anything else?”
“I don’t know, Ali,” I answer, fiddling with the edge of the blanket as I try not to think about what happened only twelve hours ago. “I was literally just woken up by your spawn so I haven’t given it all much thought yet.”
“You sleep okay?”
I nod despite the bizarre dreams that had me tossing and turning for hours and the three times I had to get up to pee.
“Here y’all are,” Carly says, walking into the room and I offer her a smile as she makes her way around the bed and perches on the edge of the mattress just like Ali. “How are you feeling?”
I scoff. “Y’all are so damn obvious.”
“What?” Ali asks, blinking in surprise, but I’m not buying it. I shoot her a look and she sighs. “Okay, we did want to talk…”
“I figured.”
“We just want to know that you’re okay,” Carly adds and I let out a laugh as I shake my head. After what happened last night, I know I’m not okay but it hasn’t really hit me yet either and I’m not sure when it will.
“I’m as okay as I can be.”
Ali sighs, her gaze flicking to Carly for a second before coming back to me. “And the baby?”
“What about it?”
“Look,” Carly says, her gaze flicking to Ali again and my brows furrow as I study them. Clearly, they’ve had another conversation that I wasn’t a part of and they have something to say to me now. “We started talking after you went to bed last night and… well, we’re just wondering why the hell you kept this from us for so long?”
After Logan came back into the house last night, we all sat around the table and talked for a while - the guys asking me for more details about the incident with Luca and the girls pestering me with pregnancy questions - but there are still secrets I’m keeping from them and they know it. Starting with the father of my baby. That is one secret that has to stay hidden for the time being though.
“Did you think you couldn’t come to us with this?” Ali asks. “That we wouldn’t understand?”
I shake my head. “Absolutely not.”
“Izzy,” Carly adds, looking unconvinced and a little irritated. “You’ve kept it a secret for over half of your pregnancy. How much longer was this going to go on? Were you going to give birth before you let us in on the secret?”
I take a deep breath as I start fiddling with the blanket again. “It’s complicated…”
“Yeah, that’s what you said last night but I still don’t know what that means,” Ali snaps, arching a brow and crossing her arms again as she waits for an answer that I can’t give her right now.
Shit.
This is such a damn mess.
“Look, when I first found out, I was only five weeks along and I was… fucking shocked. I mean, you guys know about my past so you can understand how blindsided I was when I saw that positive pregnancy test and then, I didn’t know what to do. I wrestled with the choices in front of me for two damn weeks before I made the first appointment to terminate…”
Ali gasps. “You were going to get an abortion?”
“Yeah,” I whisper with a nod, my eyes burning with unshed tears as I think about the fact that I almost went through with it. “I showed up on the day of my appointment and I sat in my car, crying for an hour and in the end, I couldn’t force myself to go inside so I went home but I still wasn’t sure. I made two more appointments that I later ended up canceling and even then, I didn’t know what I was going to do or if I even wanted this baby.”
“We could have helped you figure things out, Iz,” Ali says, scooting across the mattress to grab my hand, giving it a squeeze. I nod.
“I know but I wasn’t ready for it to be real and telling y’all… it would have made it real.”
Carly tilts her head to the side, studying me. “So, when were you going to tell us?”
“Now,” I answer with a laugh. “Even if everything hadn’t gone crazy with Luca, I still planned on coming over here today and telling y’all after I talked to the father.”
“He doesn’t know?” Ali asks, her brows shooting up toward her hairline and my stomach does a little flip. I’ve been working up the courage to tell him for months but based on her reaction, maybe I waited too long.
“I’ve been trying to work up the nerve to tell him.”
Carly shakes her head, the disappointment evident on her face. “Please tell me you told someone about this.”
“My mom and sister know but they were the only ones until last night.”
“Jesus Christ, Iz,” Ali groans, closing her eyes and pinching the bridge of her nose. I wish I could shrink under the blanket and hide which is a completely unfamiliar feeling for me. I’m so used to being the loudest, craziest girl in the room and I don’t care what anyone thinks of me but this baby has flipped my life completely on its head. I don’t even recognize myself anymore. “Will you tell us who he is?”
I shake my head adamantly. “No.”
A look of betrayal splashes across her face and it pulls at my heart, urging me to tell her the truth but I can’t. For starters, I’m so not ready for the conversation that would follow that information and I really should tell him that he’s going to be a daddy before I reveal it to anyone else. My mind drifts to the long weekend I spent locked away with him that resulted in this pregnancy and warmth rushes over my skin. God, if I closed my eyes now, I swear I could still feel his hands on my body and the way he touched me like I was a treasure and his possession at the same time. Blowing out a breath, I quickly push those thoughts away and meet Ali’s eyes.
“I really need to tell him first.”
She studies me for a moment before sighing and nodding her head. “Okay… but however he reacts, we’re here for you. Logan, me, Chance, Carly, and this whole damn club. You are a part of this family and you will always have a home with us so even if the father doesn’t want to be a part of this baby’s life, you are not alone.”
“Thank you…I love you guys,” I whisper, tears welling up in my eyes as I reach out and grab their hands. Carly wipes at her eyes and shakes her head.
“God, Iz. You gotta stop crying, you’re really starting to freak me out with this shit.”
A laugh spills out of me. “I thought Chance was going to lose it last night when I started crying. He looked at me like I had tentacles growing out of my back.”
“Oh, he freaked out when we got back home last night. He swore up and down that he must have gotten into some of Hawk’s edibles because that was more believable than you shedding actual tears,” Carly admits and a laugh bubbles out of me as I try to pretend to be offended.
“Wow. So, I’m just a heartless bitch then, huh?”
Ali purses her lips. “I was going to go with ruthless bitch but essentially, yes.”
“God,” I scoff, pressing my hand to my chest in mock outrage. “Thanks, y’all. Freaking love you, too.”
“Oh, stop. You know we love you and in all seriousness, after he got over the fact that you cried, Chance was wired up and ready to wage war on this Luca guy.”
Ali glance
s at the door before turning back to me. “Speaking of which, Logan is waiting for us downstairs. He said he had some new information to share.”
“And you waited until now to tell me?” I ask, throwing the blanket off of my legs and scooting to the edge of the bed. She shrugs, completely unbothered.
“We needed to talk first.”
I roll my eyes as I climb out of bed. “Y’all came in this room acting all innocent this morning but I knew you were up to something.”
“We have no idea what you’re talking about,” Carly answers, fighting back a smile. I shake my head as I grab my leggings off of the floor and slip them on. When I glance up again, Carly is glaring at me.
“What?”
She scoffs. “I cannot believe how small your bump is. It’s actually infuriating.”
I laugh as she rolls her eyes. “I’m sorry?”
She nods as she links her arm with mine. “You should be. When I’m as big as a house in a few short months, I’ll remember this and secretly hate you for it.”
“Okay.” I laugh as my stomach growls again. “As long as you keep it to yourself.”
“Bitch,” she hisses but her smile takes any sting out of the comment and I nudge her with my shoulder as I turn to Ali.
“Let’s go. I’m dying to find out what your husband learned about the incident last night.”
Even just mentioning what happened to me last night brings the memories back full force as the three of us make our way down to the kitchen and I struggle to block them out, Luca’s face flashing in my mind like a warning. What could have Logan possibly learned in the last eight hours that will be of any help to me? If it were anyone else handling this, I would be an absolute mess, unable to give up control and probably get myself into even more trouble but I trust Logan and the rest of the club to keep me safe. And I may not know exactly how yet but I know that they will find a way to get me out of this mess.
Hell, it’s only been eight hours and it seems like Logan already has a lead for us. Who else could do that?
“Mornin’, ladies,” Logan calls from the dining room table as we reach the bottom of the stairs and I glance up to greet him. The smile falls from my face and my breath catches in my throat at the sight of the other man sitting across from him, staring a hole through me.
Oh, hell.
A wave of warmth washes through me as our eyes meet and my belly does a flip. He looks even better than I remember and images from the weekend we spent locked up together in my house flash through my mind in rapid succession, reminding of just how damn good it felt when he pressed his lips against mine and the way he made me laugh like no other man ever has. It was maybe the first time, in years, that I spent so much time in bed with a man, not having sex. Don’t get me wrong, there was lots and lots of sex over those three days, but it was also more.
So much more.
My hand itches to touch my belly, feel the life the two of us made together, but that would be an absolute disaster so I keep it at my side, locked in place, as I try, desperately, to make my brain function. God. That’s so damn hard to do when he’s staring at me with those warm brown eyes like he wants to undress me right here, in front of everyone. Not that I’d complain. The baby delivers a hard kick, pulling me back into reality and I suck in a breath as I rip my gaze from his.
Oh, God, I’m not ready for this.
My muscles ache and I will them to relax as I try to think of something to say to them, anything other than the truth, but it’s not very effective. Ali stares at me intently from my side, trying to read the tension in the room and knowing her, she’s not far from figuring it all out. Plastering a smile to my face, I force myself to relax and pray like hell that it’s convincing.
“Morning, boys. Is there coffee?”
Logan scowls into his own mug before glancing over his shoulder at me. “Should you really be…”
“Do you really want to stand between me and coffee right now?” I snap, cutting him off as I shoot him a glare. My heart jumps into my throat and my mind screams as I wait for his response, hoping he’ll let this go and not reveal my secret. I peek over at Ali. Her brow is knitted together as she glances between the two of us and I swear, I can see the wheels in her mind spinning.
Jesus Christ, this is a disaster.
Most of the people in this room know about my pregnancy except for the one person who desperately needs to know and I can’t tell any of them to not reveal that information without outing myself in the process.
Fuck.
I know I didn’t have a plan for how I was going to tell this man that he’s the father of my child but this scenario is worse than anything I could have imagined. We should have been alone, somewhere private, where he could have a total meltdown if that’s what he needed to do. Not stuck in his president’s kitchen with three other people watching his life change. Logan holds his hands up in surrender, pulling me out of my thoughts.
“Suppose not. There’s a full pot on the counter.”
I nod, swallowing past the lump in my throat as I tear my gaze away from them and turn toward the kitchen, my heart hammering in my chest like a jackhammer. Ali follows behind me and I can feel her gaze burrowing into the back of my head like she’s going to crack open my skull and figure out why I’m acting so damn weird from the sheer power of her glare. She probably could, too. Stopping at the coffee pot puts me just out of the boys’ line of sight and I breathe a sigh of relief as I grab a mug and fill it. Ali is at my side in a second, though, arching a brow and crossing her arms over her chest.
“What the hell was that out there?” she hisses, her gaze flicking to the dining room like I might not know what she’s talking about and I shrug, refusing to meet her gaze as I raise the coffee cup to my lips and take a sip. The hot liquid burns down my throat as I turn away from her.
“What do you mean?”
I don’t even give her a chance to respond before I start walking back out to the table with my mug in hand. There isn’t a single part of me that wants to be trapped at a table with my baby’s father, who is still completely in the dark about said baby, but I want to be trapped in the kitchen with Ali and her FBI level deduction skills even less.
Shit.
Is it hot in here?
Logan is flipping through a folder full of paperwork when I walk back into the dining room and I catch the logo for the Baton Rouge Police Department at the top of one of the forms. I nod to the folder as I sit down between them.
“That about me?” My mouth feels dry as hell and my heartbeat is thrashing in my ears, making it hard to hear much else as I try to navigate this fucking mess and wait for Logan’s answer. He nods and slaps the folder closed.
“Yeah. Diego picked it up from one of his police contacts last night.”
My gaze flicks to the man next to me for just a fraction of a second but our gazes meet and my belly does a flip. “Anything good in there?”
“We’ll see,” Logan answers, pulling my gaze back to him as he leans back in his chair and sighs. “My first priority is making sure you’re safe which is why I had Diego sitting on your house last night.”
I nod, a lump in my throat. “Did something happen?”
“Yeah,” Diego answers, his deep voice hitting me like a wrecking ball as my stomach does another little flip and I glance over at him again. Sympathy fills his eyes. “Two men showed up around three a.m. and broke in, tore the place up pretty good, too.”
“Oh,” I whisper, an ache springing to life in my chest as I imagine Luca and his friend in my home, going through my things. Tears sting my eyes and I grit my teeth in an attempt to fight them off. I know people will say it’s just stuff, not important and logically, I know that, but I was damn proud of the home I had managed to build for myself. Now… it just feels tainted.
“Obviously, you can’t go home, Izzy,” Logan says and I nod, staring at the grain of the kitchen table like it’s the most interesting damn thing I’ve ever seen. He’s right, of cou
rse. If they were able to find out where I live so easily, it’s not safe for me to go back even if I had some of the guys from the club there to protect me. “I’m assigning your case to Diego so I think it’s best if you go stay with him.”
Oh, fuck me.
This is bad… so, so bad.
“Oh… I, uh… I don’t want to be an inconvenience. I could just go stay at the clubhouse or something. I’m sure you guys have an empty room or two there.”
Logan shakes his head. “I don’t want you up near the front of the property.”
“Yeah, but…”
“I’m not going to argue about this, Izzy,” he snaps, shaking his head and shutting me up in a second. My heart is racing and I’m acutely aware of just how close Diego’s arm is to mine without even looking at him, like there is electricity jumping from his skin to mine. I can’t even glance in his direction because every time I do, I remember just how damn good he looks sans clothing and I’m pretty sure my heartbeat is moving between my thighs as I think about the way he commanded my body with ease.
And then there is the baby. As if on cue, my… our little peanut gives me a swift kick just under the ribs and it takes all my self-control to not react.
Fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck.
I’m not ready for this. There is so much we have to talk about and I don’t know what I’m going to say to him yet…
I can’t go stay with him.
I just can’t.
“I just don’t want to…”
“Izzy!” Logan yells, leveling a glare at me before he sighs and scrubs a hand down his face. “Listen, I know damn well that you don’t like being told what to do or giving up control but, in this situation, I fucking need you to trust me to keep you and your baby safe. This is some serious shit you stepped into and these guys are not playing fucking games.”
