Page 7 of Nitro
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Nitro
The door shut behind her.I stood in the hallway, my hand still raised where I’d let her go first, and felt something shift in the space between my ribs.It had been four months since I’d seen her.Four months of wondering where she’d gone, what she’d been thinking when she walked out before dawn.Four months of a particular kind of quiet I’d gotten used to.And now she was back -- her shoulders straight, her voice level, and her hand resting on the slight curve of her stomach in a way that wasn’t casual at all.
I didn’t move right away.
Let the moment settle.That was rule one -- don’t act on impulse, don’t let surprise make decisions for you.I’d learned that lesson twenty years ago, in circumstances far more likely to get a man killed than finding a woman in his hallway with a child in her belly.I made myself stand there, breathing, counting to ten in my head, while my thoughts rearranged themselves with a speed that should have worried me.
She was back.
She was pregnant.
And she was under the Reckless Kings’ roof.I exhaled slowly.My jaw had gone tight without me noticing, the muscle there pulled taut enough to ache.I forced it to relax, forced my shoulders back down from where they’d crept up toward my ears.Control.Always control.It was what had kept me alive this long, what had earned me my position, what had made me the kind of man women like Willa walked away from before dawn.
I hadn’t even had time for denial.My mind had skipped straight from surprise to certainty -- the angle of her body, the tension in her posture, the protective instinct written in the curve of her arm across her middle.I’d seen it immediately, a flash of understanding so complete it felt like someone had dropped ice down my back.She was carrying.She’d come back.And the moment our gazes met, I’d known with the same bone-deep certainty I felt about my own name that the child was mine.
I pushed off the wall.Started down the hall, got three steps, and stopped again.The energy building under my skin had nowhere to go -- controlled on the surface, sharp underneath.It made my hands want to move, to find something to do with themselves, to act before I’d finished thinking.
I kept them still.
Mine.
The word formed first as a thought, then hardened into certainty -- not a question but a fact my body had known before my brain had caught up.She was mine.Had been from the moment I’d crossed that room at the party four months ago, no matter that she’d walked out and stayed gone.And now there was another life attached to hers, another part of her that I’d claim without hesitation.The baby was mine too.Our blood.Our making.Our responsibility.
I’d had little time to process this information.Willa was back.Willa was pregnant.
I needed a moment to get past the first wave of reaction -- the white-hot flash of possession, the immediate question of why the hell she hadn’t come to me sooner, the slightly less immediate question of what the hell I was supposed to do with any of this.Needed them to settle into the kind of clear thinking that had nothing to do with how it had felt to watch her walk through the door, her eyes wary and her chin up.
She’d try to leave again.Once she’d stabilized, once she’d gotten what she needed from the club’s resources, she’d start looking for the exit.I knew it as surely as my own name.She’d done it once already -- slipped out in the dark without a word, leaving nothing behind but the ghost of warmth on the sheets.It was what people like her did.People who knew how to disappear, how to make themselves into questions rather than answers.
Not this time.
The thought landed clean and hard, a decision made before I’d realized I was making it.Not this time.Not with my child in her belly, not with my blood in her veins, not after four months of wondering where she’d gone and if I’d see her again and why she’d left at all.She’d walked back into my life with her pride intact and her defenses up, and I wasn’t letting her walk out again.
My mind locked into decision mode -- the gear I shifted into when something needed handling and I was the one to handle it.No more circling.No more questions that didn’t have answers yet.This wasn’t temporary anymore.I was already choosing the outcome.
I’d have to talk to Beast.The club had rules about situations like this -- not written down but clear enough that everyone knew the score.A brother’s child, a brother’s responsibility.A brother’s woman, a brother’s to protect.She’d be given space at the compound, medical care, whatever she needed, but there would be expectations in return.Mine to manage.Mine to make sure she understood.
I’d have to figure out what she wanted.Why she’d come back at all when she’d been so careful to leave no trace of herself the first time.What had happened in the four months since she’d walked out of my room and my life?
I’d have to decide what happened next.What kind of father I was going to be.What kind of man I was going to be to her.What kind of future we were going to build on the foundation of one night and one child and the gravity that had pulled us together in the first place.
One thing at a time.
I walked to the door and put my hand on the knob.The day was nearly gone, the club’s business waiting on my attention, a hundred details that needed handling before I went to bed.I set them all aside, pushed them into the part of my mind that would keep track until I could get back to them.Right now, there was only this woman.This moment.
I needed to find out exactly what I was dealing with.
Chapter Two
Nitro
The next morning, I stood at the head of the table, my palms flat against the scarred wood, and waited for Church to settle.The room was packed -- every patched chair filled, a Prospect standing guard at the door, and Willa just inside the threshold, her back straight and her eyes alert.I’d called Church an hour ago, given no explanation, and the brothers had filed in reading my face.None of them had asked questions.They’d seen this look before, recognized the edge I carried, and knew better than to push.
Willa stood with one hand pressed against her stomach, her dark hair pulled back in a hasty ponytail, yesterday’s wrinkled clothes covering her.She scanned the room -- taking stock of the leather cuts, the hard faces, the visible weapons -- with her jaw set and her eyes sharp.I’d told her only that I needed her in Church.Nothing about why, nothing about what to expect.She’d followed me down the hall with that same measured confidence she’d shown last night, waiting for information I wasn’t ready to give.
Now she was getting it.
