Page 75 of Bolo's Curveball
“Invite them over to the apartment for a chat and get to know them better? Without all the guys there?”
“Sure,” he said, a smile playing on his lips.
I fell silent, considering my options. I decided honesty and full disclosure was the best route. He was doing that for me. “I want to ask them about their guys and the club and…” He remained silent while I searched for the words. “And how they feel about and deal with knowing what you guys do.”
Turning my head, I searched his face. He didn’t seem angry.
“That’s a good idea,” he told me. “I’ll let Camila and Rue know. Then from now on you three can set that kind of thing up on your own. Just let me know when I need to be out of the apartment and I’m happy to find something to do.”
“Thank you,” I told him, relieved that he wasn’t angry about me wanting to dig more into things.
“I want you to be comfortable with this, Dev. Because I want you to stay.”
“At the clubhouse?”
“At the clubhouse,” he agreed. Then he turned his head and stared at me. “With me. All of it.”
The way he was looking at me sent a delicious shiver over my skin. I was starting to really believe that he wanted us to be apermanent thing. I was starting to trust him. To look forward to being together. To what this could become.
“I’ll stay with you for now,” I told him. “...at the clubhouse, I mean.”
“Good,” he replied, grinning.
If we were going to keep building things between us, we needed to be close by to each other. Moving in together was a little crazy, and happening fast, but…we were having a baby, so really it was just matching pace with that fact. Now that I’d lived with him for a week, it didn’t seem like such a scary step to just stay longer. I could always leave and go home if something turned sideways. I was hoping nothing did. I was really beginning to want this to work out.
He was proving to me every day that he was the kind of man I wanted to build a life with. The kind of man I’d been dreaming of since I was a teenager. The kind I could easily fall in love with.
CHAPTER 25
Bolo
Tucking a piece of loose hair behind Devyn’s ear, I watched her sleep. Not in a creepy way. At least I hoped not—it wasn’t like I was sitting over her with a bag of Cheetos while licking the air. It was more that I couldn’t believe she was here with me.
It’d been about two weeks since her last doctor appointment and she was fifteen weeks along in the pregnancy. Everything had settled down a bit. The medication the doctor prescribed had helped lower her blood pressure into more normal ranges and she’d agreed to stay here at the clubhouse apartments with me. She also wasn’t throwing up as much anymore, though she still wasn’t able to eat a lot at any given time and had a lot of what they apparently called aversions.
Now I was watching the rising sun cast a glow over her, and wondering how the fuck I’d thought I hadn’t wanted something like this in my life when I was younger. I thought I wanted to befree. I was just free of responsibility, an overgrown Peter Pan. I hadn’t realized that this, a good woman, a baby, having them under my care and protection, this was true freedom.
Coming home and seeing her sitting there, waiting for me and smiling as I walked through the door. It was like something just clicked into place. Something I hadn’t realized I’d been waiting for. I’d brought her flowers the other day and the way her whole vibe just…softened…was nearly my undoing.
I wasn’t a very romantic man, but I found myself wanting to do things that put that look in her eyes, a smile on her face, and prompted her to give me a hug. It wasn’t just the sex, though that was admittedly great, it was just being around her. I’d bring her flowers every day if it meant getting that smile. Well, maybe noteveryday. The apartment would be packed.
Fuck. I sounded like I was going soft. Maybe I was, but only for her.Part of me would always be hard for her.I chuckled out loud, then froze as she huffed out a small breath and shifted in her sleep.
She was the only person I would be soft for. So far. I knew once our baby was here that number was going to grow by another person. Let someone threaten either of them, and they’d find out real quick what a murderous bastard I could be. But she and my baby would only ever get the best of me.
Everything was going well, but there was this undercurrent of foreboding. Something I’d come to realize was that club business was always going to be harder now. Before I hadsomethings to lose. My MC brothers. My parents and brothers. That had concerned me before, but I always knew it would work out. They all knew how to take care of themselves and each other.
But now? With Devyn under my protection? Just the idea of taking on The Collective made me want to find them and rip them apart piece by piece, as quickly as possible so that they didn’t have the chance to do anything. Actual fucking dread wasbuilding in my gut because we hadn’t found them yet, and we knew they weren’t done with us.
We’d made them take a step back, my father, brother, and I. What should have been an easy hit for them turned into losing a dozen men. They’d have to reconsider what an ‘easy hit’ was now. That didn’t mean they were done. Not by a long shot. And every day that passed where we hadn’t found them was amping me up more and more. I was a live wire, raw and ready to do some damage.
I slid out of bed slowly, doing my best not to shift the mattress. Devyn was exhausted most of the time right now. It was killing me to watch her drag herself off to work, but she wanted to go. We weren’t at the point yet where I was going to risk getting my head bitten off by suggesting again that she quit. And she wanted to save her leave for closer to the birth so she had more time for the baby afterward. Understandable.
Thankfully, she’d talked to her chief after that last appointment with Dr. Natalie—as Dev liked to refer to her—and she was riding the pine with full support of her chief and crew at the firehouse. No more field work for her until she came back after having the baby. There were a couple other fire inspectors from other stations that would be taking over any cases that would’ve come her way. That put me at ease.
It meant she would be spending her days at the firehouse, doing paperwork. Her co-workers would keep an eye on her and wouldn’t let anything happen to her. I knew they were all close. She spoke of them like they were all a bunch of brothers to her. They sounded a lot like us. Got into shit every opportunity they could and were always thrill seeking.
I shut the bedroom door softly and went over to one of the spare rooms. I’d moved some gym equipment into the apartment because I didn’t like leaving her, unless I had to. Thismeant I could get a quick workout in while she slept before having to wake up for work.
