by Brook Wilder
Ben had stayed quiet. They had no idea where he ran off to and after the first two weeks, Chance gave up trying to track him down. It had been a slight obsession of his for a while in the beginning but the less and less he was able to find, the more he was willing to let it go. Ben was lying as low as possible and Hannah decided it was for the best. Let him sit around and have his own wound licking. He may have gotten away from the confrontation at the old bottling factory, but he was far from winning. He hadn’t come out with any of his hostages and was now on the run, with half the Satan’s Knight’s out looking for him, fighting to be the one to drag him back in front of the brother’s he betrayed. A sadistic part of Hannah was a little too pleased with the idea of him being quartered and brought to justice in front of all the men. She wanted to watch him squirm and suffer.
But those thoughts subsided as the weeks went on and there was no sign from him, no sound. There was just her and Chance and their own happiness. It was lighter than she’d been in a long time, since giving up school to go into the protection of the knights.
“I was thinking,” Hannah said one day, they sitting together out on Kat’s patio in the backyard, a pitcher of margaritas on the rocks sitting between them and in their glasses.
“That’s never a good sign,” Hannah said and Chance gave her a sneer. “What was it?”
“About this living arrangement we have going on here.”
He leaned forward and put his nearly empty margarita glass down in front of him. He leaned back and stretched out in the chair. She knew at this point it was his way of pretending he wasn’t completely nervous, which meant he had something to be nervous about. For being a big bad biker of a local gang, he could be some kind of high schooler sometimes.
“Living arrangement?”
“Yes, that part where you’ve been living in my mother’s guest bedroom for over a month now, or did you miss that?”
She rolled her eyes and tossed a lime wedge in his direction. He swatted it away and sat up, taking a breath and letting it out slowly.
“I’ve got a shit-hole apartment but maybe it’s because I need someone to fix it up, you know? And you can’t exactly go back to your old place with the BD practically running nightly patrols all over it. So, I was thinking—”
“You were thinking you wanted me to clean your apartment for you?”
“You’re a real pain in the ass sometimes, you know that?”
She smiled and shrugged her shoulders, leaning back in her chair to suck down more of her drink and look at him with teasing eyes. She knew exactly what he was saying, of course. But she didn’t want him to know how much her heart was fluttering at the idea of it. They’d tiptoed around his family so far, dodging their glances and finding excuses to excuse themselves to the guest bedroom. They’d even once rode out to a motel for the night. It wasn’t Hannah’s proudest moment, but she wasn’t going to complain about how free she felt to be as loud as possible when it was clear they were alone for the night.
“What I’m trying to say is: move in with me,” he said. “You can think about it, I don’t need an answer now or anything. But I thought I’d bring it up because—”
She launched across the table and kissed him soundly, her hands running through his hair. He was quiet instantly, except for the moan coming from deep inside his throat.
“I’d love to,” she said and meant it, running her hand across his jaw, feeling the stumble there.
He smiled back at her and it was goofy and dumb but the most beautiful thing she remembered seeing in a while. When had she gotten so sentimental about all these things? A month and a few weeks ago she wanted to get as far away from this man as possible and now she was excitedly thinking about the possibilities of living with him.
They stayed like that, a couple of beaming idiots over their pitcher of margaritas, until the sun went down.
Chapter 18
As fun and romantic as moving in together sounded, the actual process of moving in together was another story entirely. They enlisted the help of Moose and Cindy, who was back to full health, her bruises and bumps and wounds were a fading memory of something terrible, like it seemed Ben’s entire existence had become. The bribe, of course, was pizzas and beer for the helpers but it was a small price to pay to get in and out of Hannah’s apartment as quick as possible.
They had to avoid the gang members stationed outside her place. Who thought moving would involve so much danger? It took a few days of recon to figure out their pattern. The biggest window was in the middle of the day when they broke for lunch and left the apartment unattended for an hour so to get some kind of sloppy sandwich down the road at Cluck’s Diner.
They pulled up to the street, this time in Kat’s van, and pretended to park at a building a few stretches of the sidewalk down the way. They watched for twenty minutes before the men got on their bikes and moved to leave, chuckling about something as they sped down the road, right past them, and never once seeing them.
They quickly sped over, pulling up in front of the apartment building and Hannah fumbled with the keys to get the right one out as she trotted to the door and hoped those BD idiots weren’t smart enough to change the locks on her. She got the door open and shuffled inside, Chance and the others soon following.
Everything was virtually how she left it. There was no sign Gabe had been here in a while and she felt her clench slightly over that. There was a bit of a rank smell from the kitchen where she was sure the garbage that hadn’t been taken out and the leftovers in the fridge were battling for dominance in the air. She avoided that area. She really only need clothes and books. She wanted to finish her degree and she wasn’t going to let a bunch of imbeciles on glorified bicycles ruin that for her.
“Get as many clothes as you can in that bag from my dresser,” she instructed Chance. “I’ll get the stuff in the closet.”
“Panty raid,” he smirked, walking past her and she gave him a shove for good measure but he chuckled his way into the room.
Moose and Cindy were grabbing her school things and running them out to the car. Hannah picked through her closet of clothes quickly, grabbing several essential pairs of shoes and some business outfits she had been meaning to have ironed and pressed for some internship interviews. She shoved them in the bag, she could worry about how they looked later.
Chance had managed to shove the vast majority of her dresser clothes into the two ply garbage bag and even snagged her hamper and whatever was left in it when he nodded for her that it was time to head out. She took her own bulky bag and moved out of the room, going through the living room one last time and allowing herself some nostalgia over the days when she would be up all night at that coffee table doing homework. She let it pass and moved out the front door, locking it again.
They moved quickly to the van and shoved all the things they could in the back hatch before getting back into the seats and Moose hitting the accelerator almost instantly, driving off with them.
“Not a bad heist for some fucking girl clothes,” he said and Chance gave him a dead arm.
Hannah ignored him, picking through the pile of books and school things that Moose and Cindy had managed to grab for her. It was enough. She never thought her entire existence would be rooted down to a couple garbage bags of clothes and her school books, but here she was, technically homeless until she walked through the door of Chance’s apartment. Then things would turn positively magical.
***
Chance’s apartment was a bit of a shit-hole, he hadn’t been lying about that. He claimed that he did some clean-up work after she agreed to move in with him, as a way to get the apartment ready for her but if this was the clean version of the place she was terrified to know what the unclean version looked like. It didn’t smell too bad at least, it was all tobacco and the twinge of weed. The trash was mostly picked up, though he’d missed a few beer bottles and bags of chips. But movies and old DVD cases and half used cartons of cigarettes were sitting around. His shoe
s were drooped wherever he seemed to take them off.
The kitchen was sparse; all take out boxes in the fridge, beer, and some packets of condiments from various Chinese restaurants he’d gone to. It at least had the benefit of the kitchen itself being clean; no dishes were used so none were sitting in the sink, growing mushrooms while they begged to be cleaned. His bedroom was a mess as well. The bed was unmade and the comforter was contorted from his sleeping patterns, never fixed. He had more clothes on the ground in here, more empty cigarette containers, and the window was permanently stuck open and he had yet to have a handyman come in and fix it.
It was a bit of a mess and seemed to belong more to some college frat boy than a grown man but she wasn’t exactly complaining. She could see the clean version of it, some new paint, maybe a Febreeze can ready and waiting on the windowsill. She could see herself cooking them dinner or breakfast in the kitchen, could see herself making that bed in the morning after they positively destroyed the sheets in the night. She could see a bookshelf in the corner where she could put all her things, the closet filled with her clothes. She could even see herself in the morning walking out in one of his t-shirts, just slightly too big for her, and making coffee to bring back into bed to cuddle the morning away.
She could see a glorious future for them in this place and she tried not to be too obviously giddy about it because Moose was already on the teasing warpath and she didn’t need to give him more fuel.
“If that’s it then I’ll leave the unpacking and cleaning to you two and go get the food and beer,” Moose said.
“Bring back that hot sauce they have.”
“Hot sauce on pizza is disgusting, but will do, boss.”
Cindy and Moose walked out the door and Hannah’s first thought was to rush forward and kiss Chance like there was no tomorrow. This was their home now. She lived here, with him. They’d go to bed together tonight and wake up together tomorrow morning. They’d make love on that bed and on that couch. They’d have Halloween decorations and Christmas decorations and a New Year’s Eve party and maybe a Fourth of July barbecue on their patio where a small grill was sitting.
They’d have a home here, and God if that wasn’t an amazing turn on for her.
But they really needed to get some of her stuff put away and the rest of the place a little more habitable before they went around desecrating it. So she held in that impulse to rip off his clothes and his him everywhere on his body and in the apartment. She gave him the job of organizing her school things since she didn’t trust him to put her clothes in any conceivable order that she could decipher. Eventually Moose returned with the pizza and beer and Hannah scarfed down two slices happily, having not eaten anything since Kat insisted she have some toast before venturing out to sneak into her apartment. Moose and Cindy stayed late into the night as everyone drank and ate and laughed through games of cards and music on Chance’s old record player.
In a lot of ways, it was better than fucking him senseless for the night. She had friends; she had a found family that supported her, that liked her, that wanted to help her. Her own family had sold her out and the ones who once loved her were gone forever. But she could have this, a group of people surrounding her with love and not even realizing what they were doing. They were a hard group of people, and maybe even a little dangerous but she didn’t care.
This was everything she could hope for from a group of friends and family. She’d take it and then some.
***
In the morning something was off. She hadn’t had very many beers the night before. In fact, she’d only had the one after her two slices of pizza. Yet as soon as she woke up, she wasn’t able to revel in the feeling of being in Chance’s arms. Instead she sat up and felt everything her stomach shift dangerous close to feelings of nausea. As soon as she was up right she hurried to the bathroom where she only just managed to vomit into the toilet without making a mess of the tile on the floor.
She flushed it and took a minute to brush her teeth, swirl her mouth with wash, splash water in her face. She looked in the mirror at her pale face. Maybe it was food poisoning, maybe it she should warn Chance when he woke up that the pizza was a little bit dangerous the second time around. But she didn’t have time to think on it more as a second wave of nausea hit and she once again desecrated the pristine toilet she’d spent a half hour scrubbing clean the night before.
She performed the Hannahe ritual of brushing out her mouth. She gripped the edges of the sink tightly and waited to see if another wave would come. But ten minutes passed and her stomach remained settled. She rubbed more water in her face and massaged at her temples. She took out the cleaning supplies and scrubbed the sink, removing evidence of her sick and making the bathroom smell like lemon cleaner once again. It was her own need to vomit that had woken her up that morning but Chance was sound asleep and perfectly content. Perhaps it wasn’t food poisoning. Maybe she’d caught a stomach bug. That would be the worst way to spend her first few hours of her first morning in her new home. She took a couple bites of some bread that didn’t have mold on it in the kitchen and drank some water to see how her stomach would react.
After twenty minutes it was clear there was no danger. So what the hell happened?
She decided to take a walk. The sun was up fully now, castling golden morning light over the streets. She could go to the drug store and get some things they needed for the apartment that she talked about getting. She zipped up a hoodie to combat the slight chill in the morning air and walked outside. The overzealous runners were already making their way around the blocks of the neighborhood with vigor. A couple of moms were out pushing their children in strollers. It was a gorgeous Saturday morning, no matter how much Hannah’s stomach was looking to betray her. She walked down the street and even managed to wave at some people who waved to her.
She’d never really been friendly with people before but these were her neighbors now, people she might see regularly on this side of town. She wanted to shout at them that she just moved in and was incredibly happy but settled for kind waves and smiles in the morning air while everyone was still trying to get themselves fully awake.
She went to the drug store and grabbed some cleaning supplies, that bottle of Febreeze she’d thought of yesterday. She went to one of the medicine aisles and got herself some Tums in case her stomach tried to have a repeat performance later in the day. She went to the bathroom aisle to get some things for that and then to the feminine hygiene aisle where she giggled at how Chance had balked at the idea of having tampons in his apartment for the first time in his life.
Then her eyes caught something. Next to the rows of tampons was the “family planning” aisle that consisted of various condoms in brightly colored boxes and pregnancy tests. She felt something start to form in her stomach, like a lead ball or a black hole. She was considering the possibility before she even knew consciously that that was what she was doing. She was staring at the several different brands of pregnancy tests, all of them claiming 95% accuracy or above.
That couldn’t be it…could it? She remembered the night a few weeks ago when she’d told Chance not to pull out and she felt what it was like to have him reach climax while still inside her, no barriers in their way. Perhaps…
No. That wasn’t it. She wasn’t even due to get her period yet. She could give it another week before she started jumping to crazy paranoid conclusions. When she’d been a teenager and went to the doctor for so much as a stomach ache they always asked her if she thought she might be pregnant and she always turned red with her mother right there though she knew it was a ridiculous question with an obvious answer. Now the answer wasn’t so obvious and she was feeling the slight gnaw of doubt in her mind. But she walked to the counter and paid for her things, she could leave things like pregnancy tests for another day.
She walked back, the morning sunlight casting less of a magic spell than it had before while her mind was reeling with possibilities and then scenarios. She saw herself
9 months pregnant and running from Ben. She saw Kat and Link playing with a newborn baby and Scout finally getting her spirits back up at the possibility of being an aunt.
This was ridiculous. She wasn’t pregnant. She had some bad pizza and lack of sleep was going to her head. So when she got back to the apartment, Chance still very much asleep, she curled up and back into bed, trying to will herself to forget the whole thing for a while. Eventually she got herself to fall back asleep to the sounds of Chance breathing soundly next to her, his arms unconsciously wrapping around her in his sleep.
***
When the end of the following week came and her period, which was meant to have started days before, was nowhere in sight, she began to panic. It didn’t help that she’d thrown up three more times since the first day. She’d managed to hide it well from Chance but she could tell he was starting to notice that something was off because he looked at her strangely each time he woke up. She had a feeling he wasn’t as asleep as he made it seem in the morning when she rushed out of bed to go to the bathroom. But he wasn’t saying a word and she refused to as well until she knew for sure.
