by Franca Storm
They all stared at me for a good few moments, taking in my words, trying to wrap their heads around my strategy, I figured. Although, it didn’t usually take them that long to jump on the bandwagon and get to work on a task.
“What?” I asked.
Was there an issue about them taking orders from me right now, because I’d technically deferred command to Liam?
My gaze swept over each of them in turn.
And that was when I saw it.
Emotion bleeding from them. They’d realized that this was the last time I was going to do this, give an order, lay out a strategy. It was the last time I’d be leading them.
Liam cut through the rapidly building intensity. “Let’s make this last mission count, brothers.”
A chorus of yells of agreement sounded.
I sat back in my chair and smiled bittersweetly.
I’d miss this.
The camaraderie.
Having one another’s backs no matter what.
The close-knit brotherhood.
The family.
That was gonna be a big regret to shoulder.
But as much for them, as for me, it was time for me to walk. They deserved the best. They needed the best. And that weren’t me anymore. It weren’t the me I wanted to be anymore.
***
Fifteen minutes.
I shot a look at the bathroom, wincing as I heard it yet again.
Willa suffering.
I finally forced myself to stop pacing right outside the door like I had been ever since she’d bolted from the bed and locked herself in there, then chucked up over and over again.
The club doc had been by to see her a few hours ago, pretty much right after I’d finished up that meet with the boys. He’d checked her out, taken her blood, urine, and whatever the hell else, but he’d had to take it back to his lab to get it all tested.
Right now, he’d tentatively marked it as being some sort of exhaustion brought on by everything, but he weren’t willing to make a definitive diagnosis until he got the results back. I knew it wouldn’t be that long, maybe by the end of the day. The guy worked fast. But right now nothing seemed fast enough while Willa was going through all this.
I leaned against the wall beside the bathroom door and blew out a weighty sigh.
Fuck, she was sick. In a real bad way. It had to be that. It screwed with people’s emotions and shit, the way they handled things and those close to them, as well as causing symptoms like weakness and what she was suffering through in the bathroom. Stress could bring it on, too, worsen it, speed all that up, and there’d been a lot of it lately.
“What’s wrong?”
I jerked my head up to see Willa emerging from the bathroom.
The sight of her had me doing a double take. What the hell?
She looked… normal. Fine.
Sporting a pair of gray jeans tucked into her go-to combat boots, and a white, strappy tank that had my eyes riveted on her tits for several moments, she strode toward me with that sassy, verging-on-arrogant swagger of hers, each step as strong and as powerful as usual.
The only signs that she’d been ill, were the shadows under her eyes and her cheeks being a little red.
I saw her squinting at the lightbulb in the center of the ceiling. “Do you have a pair of sunglasses I can borrow?” Her eyes darted to the go-bag we’d picked up at one of her properties on our way back to the clubhouse the other night. “I just have the necessities. I didn’t think shades would qualify, but my head is killing me.” She blew out a breath. “Fuck, it feels like I’m hungover, even though I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol.”
My gut twisted at her hurting.
“Sure, yeah,” I said as I crossed to my nightstand and opened the top drawer. I pulled out a pair of Ray-Bans and handed them to her.
“Thanks,” she said, sliding them on. “Better.”
“Fucking warrior, ain’t you, darlin’,” I said wrapping my arms around her and holding her tight to me.
“You know it,” she spoke against my chest.
Hell, I really did.
29
~Slade~
DAMN.
I’d never seen anybody type so quick.
Willa’s fingers were flying across the keyboard faster than my eyes could track.
She was in a state of hyper concentration. She had been for the last four hours since I’d brought her down to the surveillance room to help Mason extract the intel that we needed from Nolan’s files. After a few moments of seeing what she could do, Mason had surrendered the computers to her. He didn’t let pride get in the way of doing what needed to be done. He didn’t let anything.
And that was exactly what I was normally known for too. With everything going on, the threats still out there, the stakes of the entire fucked-up thing, I should be sticking to that more than ever.
But I couldn’t take it there.
Because of Willa.
Everything was different now.
The way I saw things.
Tried and true strategies had gone out the window.
My list of priorities had been revamped.
She was at the top of that list.
Last night had been a fucking revelation. It’d been a major turning point between us. I’d made a commitment to her. We’d made a commitment to each other. It’d surprised the fuck out of me that she’d agreed so easily. Not only agreed, but been real enthusiastic about it too. She wanted it as badly as I did. To walk away from all of this together, to start a better life. It’d taken me years to get to this point, to let somebody in like this, to have somebody by my side again, so I was hellbent on doing whatever the fuck I had to in order to protect what we had. To protect her.
I pushed out of one of the rolling chairs and went up to her. Laying my hand on her shoulder, I told her, “You need to take a break, darlin’.”
She hardly reacted to my touch. Didn’t respond neither.
“Willa,” I tried again. “Time to take a break, eat something, get some fresh air, and all that.”
Her focus stuck to the monitor, she muttered, “In the zone.”
“I get that, but—”
“No break,” she grunted.
I stepped back and scrubbed my hand over my face.
The door to the surveillance room opened and Mason strode on in. “How’s it going?” he asked, his gaze flicking to the back of Willa as she continued rapidly typing, coding, or whatever the hell. It settled on me and he winced, realizing that she’d been at it for way too long. “When you’ve got a rhythm going with that, it’s hard to stop. You have to see it through.”
I cursed under my breath.
“I wish I could’ve accessed his damn office when I was right outside his club the other night.”
“Getting that close was bad enough, a hell of a risk.”
He murmured his agreement, then studied the screens in front of Willa. “We’ll get it anyway. She’s good.”
If she wasn’t going to take a break, she at least needed something to eat. She’d already chucked up everything earlier this morning. She was running on empty.
I got up to go get her something, when the sound of her phone ringing pulled me up short.
She really was in the zone, because she didn’t even seem to register it at all, even though it was right beside her.
“Willa,” I called.
No reaction, no response at all.
Sighing, I walked over there, intending to just turn it off to stop the irritating ring. But when I saw the caller ID, I changed my mind. “It’s the doctor,” I told her.
“What?” she asked distractedly.
“Take the call. It’s the doctor with your test results.”
She waved her hand dismissively. “He’ll call back.”
I’d been waiting on edge long enough already, freaking out about what could be wrong with her, worrying that she could be really sick. I wasn’t going to wait a second longer to find out what was going on. Screw e
verything else. Nothing mattered more to me than her. I answered the call and shoved the phone at her, forcing her to take it, or let it drop into her lap.
Her eyes met mine briefly and I saw that flash of anger in them. She didn’t like having her hand forced in any way, even when it was in her best interests. Hell, I didn’t want to be doing that with her. But this was an exception, and she’d left me no choice.
She fumbled with the phone for a few seconds, but she managed to get a grip, nestling it between her chin and shoulder, as she continued on with her work.
I rolled my eyes. Unbelievable.
It was then that it really hit me.
It weren’t just focus with her right now. Nah, I’d seen her focused before. This was way more than that. It reminded me of how I’d been the night of the Strikers MC takedown. And there’d been a hell of reason behind that.
This weren’t just a mission to her. It’d become intensely personal. Freeman had pushed her too far and that was what I was seeing from her now.
Insistence.
Determination.
Resolve.
Obsession.
She wanted more than just ending this to find peace.
She wanted blood.
Vengeance.
Shit. This was the last thing we needed right now.
We were so close.
So close to being out.
So close to really being together.
So close to freedom.
So fucking close to the peace that’d only seemed like a flickering hope for so long.
I was supposed to be the off-the-books, wildcard. Not her. She was the rock, the stable element counteracting me. But once you had that desire for vengeance take hold of you, it wouldn’t fucking leave. It took you over, consumed everything, overrode everything else, until you damn well got it. There weren’t nothing that could cut through that.
Willa spinning around on her chair, caught my attention.
I tensed at the wide-eyed look on her face. “No, that can’t… you’re absolutely sure?” she spoke into the phone in a rush of anxious words. It weren’t a regular thing to see her shocked, unprepared, or none of that. But that was what I was seeing from her right now.
“Willa? What is it? What did the doctor say?”
She was staring right at me, but there weren’t a focus there in her gaze. Her mind was on whatever she was hearing down the line from the doctor.
Fear threatened to cripple me. I stepped forward, pressing, “What’s wrong? You sick?”
She didn’t say nothing. She looked down, then slowly, in some kind of daze, rose to her feet. She shook her head vehemently.
The next thing I knew, she was walking up to me and shoving the phone into my hand. She snatched her jacket off the hook on the back of the door, then threw the door open, and rushed out.
Mason and me exchanged a what-the-fuck look.
I heard the doctor’s voice coming from the phone, asking if she was still there.
Swallowing hard, I brought it to my ear and spoke, “It’s Slade. Whatever you told her ain’t gone over well.”
“I see. Well—”
“She sick?”
He hesitated.
I weren’t surprised. There were rules and the guy had taken an oath and all that. She was the patient, not me. They were her test results. It was her news.
But he weren’t just any doctor.
He worked for the club, for me. I’d brought him on board years back. And I paid him a mint to do things our way.
“Doc,” I pressed, a clear edge in my voice. “What’s the deal?”
There was another beat with him hesitating. But then I heard him sigh in resignation, as he spoke the last words I’d ever expected to hear. “She’s pregnant.”
30
~Willa~
CURVEBALL DIDN’T EVEN COVER IT.
The doctor’s words had sounded foreign, distant. Surreal was what they were, what this whole situation felt like.
For once, I hadn’t known how to handle it, how to react. Strangely, the first instinct that had kicked in had been to head to the local bar. It was my normal reaction to swallow down something highly-stressful. Not being able to do that was jarring. The reason behind that denial was the very reason I’d wanted to head to the bar in the first place. Talk about a vicious circle. A pointless one at that.
I’d settled for the back corner booth in the local coffee shop, Java Joint. The redhead behind the counter had given me an odd look and a curious once-over. Judging by the necklace she was sporting with the Steel Titans crest, she was involved with one of the club members. Talk had clearly spread about my presence on their territory. Whatever. That was the least of my problems.
I sank back against the booth, clutching the bottle of water that I’d ordered. My throat had been so dry all morning, raw almost, from the brutal vomiting.
At least now I knew why.
I was pregnant. Pregnant! Me, pregnant. A soon-to-be-mother.
I shook my head to myself. It didn’t even sound right in my own head. It seemed so far-fetched and so completely out of place for me. It wasn’t even something I’d ever thought about, definitely not a road I’d considered going down. Then again, the same could be said of my relationship with Slade.
“Shit,” I muttered, resting my face in my hands.
“So… motherhood?”
I started in surprise and shot my head up at the sound of the voice. I’d been so out of it, so disconnected from my surroundings, that I hadn’t heard or sensed his approach at all.
I took in Ricky’s wary expression. I wasn’t really surprised by his reaction, given the way I’d bolted from the surveillance room, stormed out of the clubhouse, then borrowed a Titans truck and driven into town. It had been more than a little manic and frenzied. I could understand why it would be assumed that I’d be unapproachable right now. It probably hadn’t helped that I’d been ignoring Slade’s many calls and texts for the last two hours.
“He sent you into the fray, huh?”
Ricky smiled and slid into the other side of the booth. “Well, he figured with you ghosting him, you weren’t gonna exactly welcome him showing up here.”
His words rang too true.
I didn’t want it to be the case. I didn’t want a distance between Slade and me. But without that I’d have to… decide. And I wasn’t ready. How the hell could I be? This wasn’t something I’d ever considered, that I’d ever actively wanted or sought out. I wasn’t… equipped to handle this, to be in this position. Not to mention, we were basically at war right now and that should be our number-one priority, our only focus.
It hit me then.
I’d just left right in the middle of a task. Jeez, I was losing it.
Ricky’s hand touching mine on the table between us had me emerging from my thoughts.
God, I couldn’t even keep my mind straight right now. There was just too much to circumvent.
“Talk to me,” he implored.
“I wouldn’t know what to say.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “How’s that?”
“Things aren’t sorted in my head yet.”
He laughed, actually laughed. “You really are something else, sweetheart, you know that?”
“What does that mean?”
He chuckled again and sank back in the booth, stretching his arms over the top of it. “I mean, you just had a major bombshell come your way, it’s barely been two hours, yet you think you gotta have it all figured out already? This ain’t a mission we’re talking about here, Willa. Nah, this is a different breed altogether. This is life. It’s what it looks like beyond the very limited existence of Shadow.”
“Limited existence?”
“Yeah, you know?”
“No, I really don’t.”
He rubbed the back of his neck roughly and hesitated for a moment, before going on, “It’s the client and the job, then the next one after that. That’s all. That’s your life. Until this thing you got go
ing with Slade, your personal life was just a hookup to take the edge off here and there.”
Oh my God.
It was like a knee to the gut. Jarring. And, if I was being honest, a little bit painful to hear, because the truth in it wasn’t easy to acknowledge.
I was in my thirties and I’d barely experienced anything outside of darkness and violence. I’d barely experienced life. The good, clean, innocent aspects, especially.
“This pregnancy could change all that,” he pointed out.
I scoffed at the notion. “I’m not mother material.”
He frowned. “Why’d you say that?”
“Well, first off, my world is a whirlwind of violence and danger. Not exactly a conducive environment to raising a child, is it?”
“That’s all coming to an end soon.”
“Even with me leaving my current line of work, I still need to do something, to be something. I haven’t figured out what that will be yet, but I do know that I’ll be just as obsessive about it as I have been with Shadow.”
“So, you can’t have a career and be a mother?”
“No, that’s not what I meant. I—”
“You’ve always been one hell of a multitasker. This wouldn’t be any different.”
“It’s completely different!” I argued, raising my voice enough that I noticed the redhead behind the counter looking over at our booth. Great, now I was making a scene in a public place. Talk about a far cry from how I usually operated. There was nothing covert about it.
I made an effort to lower my voice, going on, “I have absolutely no clue how to raise a child.”