“Where are we?”
“Home,” she said with a smile. “I sort of drove around the country collecting my stashed money. If we’re careful in our spending, we should be able to hide out here for a while so you can recuperate.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, plus, we have the money from Levi.”
“We still can’t be sure that they aren’t tracking that money.”
“No, but if we don’t spend it all at once, the chances of them catching us are slim.”
“All it takes is them tracking one of those bills.”
“Yeah, but who’s going to be tracking those bills? Only bad people. If we buy some food at the grocery store, it’s not like they’re looking at the serial numbers. But if it’ll make you feel better, we won’t use it unless we have to.”
I nodded and we got out, me leaning heavily against the car. My side was killing me, but I didn’t need Carly worrying about me any more than she already was. I could see it in her eyes, the fear that I was going to pass out or start bleeding out in front of her.
“I’ll grab the bags. Why don’t you head inside and check it out?” she said, tossing me the keys. I grabbed them and nodded, slowly making my way inside. I was halfway there when I stopped and rested. It was so obvious that she was taking her time so I could make it there before her. Blowing out a breath, I made it to the door and opened it, taking in the rustic interior. We were going to need firewood chopped. There was barely any wood by the fireplace. I knew I wasn’t in any shape to chop wood right now. In fact, making it to the couch was as far as I came to checking out the place.
Carly came in with the bags and a big smile on her face. While I rested, she put away stuff, stashed weapons around the cabin, and busied herself with checking out the heating.
“You should run into town and grab some firewood,” I suggested.
“We have trees all around us,” she pointed out.
“Yeah, and if you chop off an arm, who’s going to make sure you get to the hospital?” I asked.
“Fine, but only until you’re doing better. We don’t need to waste money on firewood when I’m perfectly capable of chopping wood.”
“Thank you. So, how certain are you that we weren’t followed?”
She sat down beside me and stared out the window. “Well, I zigzagged around the country for a week and we weren’t attacked. I’m guessing that means we’re in the clear. I switched cars three times, and the last time, I got a car that wouldn’t be traced.”
“How?”
“I traded it.”
“For what?”
She glanced down at her hand and I noticed that a ring she usually wore was missing. She rubbed a finger over the bare spot on her finger and looked back out the window.
“That was your mother’s ring.”
Her eyes snapped to mine. “And she’s dead. She would have wanted me to do whatever I had to, and that’s what I did. That ring was worth way more than the car we’re driving, but it ensured that we got away safely.”
“How can you be sure that whoever you traded it to won’t talk if he’s questioned?”
“Because I told him that if anyone ever came looking for me or the ring and he talked, he would end up dead. That seemed to be a pretty good motivator. Besides, the man didn’t really seem to care too much about holding on to it. He wanted the money, and the ring will bring him plenty.”
“So, now we just stay here and recoup?”
She smiled at me. “After a week of driving around, I’m ready to sleep for a week.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Carly
I woke to a cold bed. When I shifted my feet across the bed looking for his legs, I was disappointed to find that I really was alone. Sitting up in bed, I pulled the sheet up above my breasts and shoved my hair out of my face. It had gotten longer in the last year, resting just past my shoulders. When we got here two months ago, I dyed it black and gave myself bangs. I didn’t really like the bangs, but it was a different look for me.
I heard a chopping noise outside and slipped out of bed, pulling on some warm clothes. It was the dead of winter out here, and getting colder every day. I pulled on my warmest socks and then grabbed my jacket off the back of the chair, but as I was pulling it on, my stomach flipped and I found myself racing to the bathroom. Flipping up the toilet lid, I just barely made it before throwing up what little was in my stomach. I felt drained, but not sick. Flushing the toilet, I rinsed my mouth and stared at my pale face in the mirror.
Dread crept into my bones as a sinking feeling took over. This was not good. My last birth control shot should have been renewed around the time we came out here. With everything that had happened, with Josh having a bullet hole in him, birth control was the last thing on my mind. We’d been here two months now, and lately, had been having a lot of sex. Dropping my head in my hands, I allowed myself just a few moments to feel the panic, then pulled myself together and took a deep breath. Everything would be fine. We still had money. We could hide out here for a while and then…
I walked out of the bathroom and pulled my coat on and walked out the front door. I found Josh cutting a massive amount of wood, and as I looked at the sky, I understood why. It looked like we were going to have a huge snow storm.
“Morning,” he smiled, resting on the axe handle. “You slept in.”
I smiled tightly. I wasn’t going to tell him yet. Not until I helped him get prepared for the storm. “Sorry about that. I must have been tired.”
“Have I been keeping you up too late?” he asked with a devilish grin.
I pointed to the huge pile of wood. “Don’t you think you’re overdoing it just a little?”
He glanced up at the sky. “A storm’s coming. I just want to be prepared.”
“I know, but…” I didn’t say, you were shot two months ago. He didn’t want to hear that anymore.
“I’m fine. Still a little sore, but this helps work out the aches.”
I chewed my lip, wondering if he was telling me the truth or if he was just saying that because he didn’t want to feel useless. I grabbed a pile of wood and headed toward the house. There was too much to do, and I needed the distraction to take my mind off what was rushing through it. No, I wasn’t one hundred percent sure that I was pregnant, but what were the chances that I wasn’t?
I made trip after trip, hauling wood inside as he continued to chop wood outside, and then stacked a large pile against the cabin. When he was done, he covered it with a large tarp. By the time he came inside, the snow was already coming down pretty hard and his hair was covered with a thick coating of snow. I finished adding the vegetables to the soup I started a little while ago, and came over to take his coat. I hung it by mine in front of the fire to dry and stiffened when he wrapped his arms around me.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
I laughed like nothing was wrong. “Your hands are cold.”
He slid them down into my pants, the cold making me shiver. “I can think of a way to warm them up.” I gasped when a cold finger slid inside me and slowly started pumping in and out. His other hand worked up under my shirt and slowly massaged my breast. I moaned and dropped my head back against his shoulder. Then he pressed open mouthed kisses against my neck, warming my skin instantly. I shook from his touch, and the harder he pumped his fingers, the more my body bent to his will.
We dropped to the floor, his pants long gone before I even got my shirt over my head. The heat from the fire warmed our skin, but when he laid his naked body on top of mine, the sweat between us started to build until his body was sliding over mine, his cock thrusting in and out of me. I was panting hard, my heart hammering out of control as his eyes watched me. His mouth slanted over mine, and then he was kissing me hard, swallowing my cries as I came apart in his arms.
Shivers wracked my body as I came down from my high. Josh pressed kisses all over my face and down my neck, his fingers running through my hair over and over. I wi
shed that we could stay here in this cabin forever, just the two of us. But that wouldn’t happen. Soon, there would be a third, and we had to think about what was best for a baby. A life on the run was no life at all for a kid. I couldn’t even think about what would happen if my child was killed because of me.
We laid there for hours, just staring into the fire. His hands ran up and down my back until he fell asleep. He still tired easily, and I had a feeling that had a lot to do with how we had to run after he was shot. He didn’t get proper treatment and had spent a week in a car. He’d had a catheter that I had to keep clean, but it was not a sanitized environment by any means. He was lucky that he was still alive when we got out here. But slowly, he was rebuilding his muscle and gaining his strength, but it would take a while before he was really healed.
He yawned behind me, stretched his arms overhead, and then pulled me back against him. “It’s snowing outside,” he said, sitting up slightly. “We should get up and eat.”
“Yeah,” I said, thinking still about what I had to tell him.
He got up and pulled me to my feet. I pulled my clothes back on, fighting off the chill in the cabin. I grabbed some bowls and started dishing out our soup, but when he leaned on the counter across from me, I knew he knew that something was wrong. The way he was staring at me said it all. So, I didn’t give any preamble.
“I think I’m pregnant.”
He stared at me for a moment and then nodded. “That’s a problem.”
“I know.”
He ran his hand along the back of his neck and sighed. “We just barely escaped with our lives last time. We can’t take care of a baby on the run.”
“I know.”
He paced back and forth through the cabin for a few minutes, every once in a while sighing or grunting. Then he stopped and stared hard at me. “You have to go back.”
“What?” I asked in shock, sure that I had heard him wrong.
“You have to go back. It’s the only way that the baby will be safe.”
I came around the counter and walked right up to him. “Do have any idea what you’re asking me to do? You’re asking me to basically hand my child over to the mafia.”
“But it’ll be safe. Do you really think your family will kill your child?”
“And what am I supposed to tell them? How am I supposed to explain faking my death and running with you? They know about you. They’ll kill you!”
“But you’ll be alive and so will our child.”
I shook my head, scoffing at him. “You’re crazy. No, there is no way I’m going back to them. I’ll have an abortion before I go back to them.”
“Don’t say that,” he gritted out.
“Why? It’s true. I would rather not have this baby than hand it over to my family. No, I’m not doing it.”
“Then what the hell should we do? You know that a baby will slow us down. There’s no way we can stay ahead of them if we have a baby. Let’s say they sneak up on us and you have to hide with the baby while I try and get us out. Then the baby starts crying. Instant giveaway and you’re dead. You can’t explain to a baby that it needs to stay quiet.”
“Well, in case you’re forgetting, every time they’ve come after us, they weren’t exactly open to conversation. They wanted to kill us, so what makes you think that they would even accept me or my child back into the family?”
“Fuck, I don’t know, but…”
He shook his head in defeat. I knew that this wasn’t about whether or not he wanted the baby. This was about doing what was best for all of us. A baby was a complication that neither of us needed. It would be too difficult to plan anything.
“What if…” I swallowed hard as he looked up at me. “What if we stay here until the baby is born. Maybe a few months after, and then…and then we take the baby to your family. They would take it in, right?”
He shook his head slowly. “You’re asking me to put all my family at risk. They’re being left alone right now because everyone assumes that I’m dead. It’s been five and a half years. If I step one foot in that town and someone sees me, my whole family is dead. You know they’ll go after them.”
“They haven’t yet. They’ve been safe so far. We can plan it out. We can make it so that we’re in and out. No one would see us. You said yourself that you live in the country. What are the chances that someone would see us?”
“We don’t even know how your family found us two months ago. How the hell do we stay off their radar when we don’t know how they’re tracking us?”
“I don’t know, but I can’t just give my child up to anyone. Your family makes sense.”
“And what would they say? You don’t just take kids in off the streets these days. It doesn’t work like that!”
Tears filled my eyes. “Do you think this is easy for me? Do you think I want to think about giving away my child?”
He sighed, running his hands through his hair. “Look, we don’t even know for sure that you’re pregnant. Let’s find out for sure, and then we can figure this out, okay?”
I nodded and sat at the table, taking small sips of my soup. I stared out the window at the snow, but I felt just as numb and cold as it was outside despite the warmth of the cabin. Josh reached across the table, taking my hand in his.
“I’m sorry. I should have been more careful.”
“This isn’t your fault. I forgot about my shot. I should have gotten a new one when we got here.”
“Well, in your defense, you were taking care of me. I think you had bigger things to worry about.”
I sighed and stared down at my forgotten soup. I was in no mood to eat right now. All I could think about was what would happen if I really was pregnant.
“Hey, I’ll keep you safe,” Josh promised. “I know you’re the bigger badass and everything, but I’ve learned to take care of myself.”
I tried to smile, but it came out as more of a sigh. He stood from the table and held out his hand to me. I took it and followed him to the couch. “Stay,” he commanded with a smile.
He walked around, shutting off all the lights until all that was left was the glow of the fire. He grabbed a blanket off another chair and draped it over me, then climbed underneath and pulled me against him. Together, we sat in front of the fire in silence.
The snow fell heavily outside, reminding me that Christmas was close. I leaned my head against his shoulder, taking all the warmth his body could give.
“When I was little, my mom used to get so excited for Christmas. She couldn’t wait to put up the tree and sit with all the lights off. I miss doing that.”
He squeezed my other shoulder, pulling me in closer. “How did she die?”
I never told Josh about this. He had tried to get me to tell him before, but I was tight-lipped about my family. I hated to talk about them and he knew it. It brought up painful memories that I wished I could forget. But now that we had this life tying us together, I wanted to share with him.
“My dad said that she died of a heart attack.”
He shifted so he could look at me. “What do you mean he said?”
“My dad obviously had a lot of enemies. I remember that night, he invited someone to the house. I don’t know who he was, but I can still remember how it seemed like the room chilled when he walked in. We were all dismissed to our rooms, but I snuck out to get a drink. There were loud voices and it was clear that my father wasn’t happy. And just when I was about to sneak into the kitchen, I heard this animalistic groan come from the dining room. I ran over to the door that led there, and I peeked inside. My mom was laying on the ground and my father was on the floor beside her, trying to wake her up.”
I swallowed hard as I stared into the flames of the fire. “I remember the man’s cold eyes as he looked up at me, and then he casually stepped over my mother’s body and walked out.”
“He killed her?”
I shook my head. “I still don’t know for sure. I always assumed, but my father never confirmed it. My
father had all the food and beverages thrown out of the house that night. I watched from the stairs as he yelled at the staff, ordering them to make sure there was nothing left.”
“She was poisoned.”
“That’s what I always assumed. Well, years later when I could really understand what had happened that night.”
“What about your brothers?”
“We never talked about it.” I was quiet for a moment as I sat there with him, and then I looked up at him. “My family can never get their hands on our child.”
“I won’t let them,” he promised.
Josh
Pregnant. Shit. What should have been a happy moment for me was like a punch to the gut. I hadn’t ever really thought too much about having a family, and when I ran with Carly, any thoughts of actually settling down with someone completely disappeared. This was like a death sentence for us. There was no way to protect a child while on the run. But I could tell Carly was freaking out right now, so I had to stay calm and figure this out.
“I found a doctor in town, a small practice, and I made an appointment for you.”
“What about keeping our names out of it?”
“I don’t know. We’ll have to find a way to convince her.”
She chewed her lip as she thought about it.
“We don’t have another choice, Carly. You need to see a doctor and if you are pregnant, we need to make sure that you have regular appointments, and someplace to deliver.”
“If she doesn’t agree, we’ll have to find someplace else.”
“I know.”
Moving again wasn’t ideal. We had a good place to hide out right now. We were isolated out here, and aside from our trips to town, nobody really knew we were here.
“I got an appointment for this morning, so we need to leave.”
She nodded and grabbed her coat, glancing around the cabin one last time. We had no idea how this doctor would respond to helping us, and if she called the cops on us, we would have to leave in a hurry. I had already packed the essentials in the car just in case.
Wanted Dead or In Love: A Small Town Romance (The Cortell Brothers Book 3) Page 12