“I’m safe now, but I stumbled into something here in Georgia, connected to Carson’s crash.” I squeezed my eyes shut to hold back my tears, then I told them most of what had happened over the past few weeks.
The information we’d pieced together, skipping over how Wizard had gotten the black box because my dad was a stickler for the rules.
There was a moment of silence after I broke the news that the crash wasn’t Carson’s fault or a mechanical failure. That someone had murdered him.
Then Dad spoke, his voice cracking in a way I’d only ever heard before at my brother’s funeral. “You’re sure?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
Mom started crying, which made my eyes burn even more. Dad thanked me, then insisted I stay out of it from now on so nothing happened to me too.
When we hung up, I needed air. So I went downstairs and slipped outside to the patio on the side of the clubhouse. I sat on one of the weathered wooden benches, my knees drawn up as I zoned out.
I wasn’t out there long before I heard footsteps approaching. Stella appeared around the corner, carrying a plate with a sandwich.
“Figured you could use some food.” She set the plate beside me and handed me a napkin. “You missed out on the BLTs Elena made. She’s in the craving bacon stage of her pregnancy and blaming Onyx all the way.”
“Thanks.” I picked up half the sandwich and took a bite, but my mouth started to water for the wrong reason before I could swallow.
My stomach lurched, and I barely made it to the bushes before I was heaving, the bite I’d taken coming right back out along with what felt like everything else I ate today. Whenthe spasms finally stopped, I braced my hands on my knees, breathing hard and feeling embarrassed. “Sorry, I usually love bacon, but…”
Stella’s hand rubbed slow circles between my shoulder blades with an amused look I didn’t understand. “First time?”
I wiped my mouth with the napkin. “What?”
“Come on.” She tugged on my arm and steered me around the side of the clubhouse to a smaller building. Pushing the door open, she waved me inside what looked like a medical clinic. “Razor, we need a test.”
Razor, one of Keegan’s club brothers who was a doctor, looked at Stella and shook his head. “Knocked up again already? King’s gonna have to start building another wing at this rate.”
Stella snorted. “First of all, Cadell is fifteen months old, so it’s not like our children would be too close together if I were pregnant, which I’m not.”
“And second?” Razor asked, quirking a brow.
She jerked her thumb at me. “Tomcat’s old lady is the one who needs the pregnancy test.”
I opened my mouth, but no words came out. I wasn’t sure what surprised me more—that Stella thought I was carrying Keegan’s baby or that she’d referred to me as his old lady. “I’m not…I mean, he hasn’t…”
Both of them snorted at the same time.
“You have to know by now that he’s planning on it.” Stella nudged me with her elbow. “Don’t you remember what I said on your first morning here?”
I bit my bottom lip and nodded. “I guess once everything with Aegis is over, I’ll need to define what’s going on between us.”
“There’s nothing to be defined.” Razor shook his head as he crossed his arms over his chest. “Tomcat will make sure you have no doubts that he’s already claimed you as his.”
The certainty in Razor’s voice left no room for doubt, but I still whispered, “Do you really think so?”
“Even if I set aside the fact you’ve been walking around here in his spare cut”—he jerked his chin toward my belly—“no way in hell would he put a baby in a woman he didn’t plan on claiming permanently.”
I sank onto one of the chairs. “We don’t know that I’m pregnant.”
“Only one way to find out for sure.” He left the room for a moment and came back with a pregnancy test. “Started keeping these on hand since my brothers seem determined to have so many kids we won’t need to recruit new members in twenty years.”
“There’s a bathroom in here,” Stella suggested. “Unless you want privacy.”
My hands were shaking so badly that I almost dropped the box. “I think I’d better take it now.”
“We’ll be right here if you need us.” She guided me to the bathroom. “Whatever it says, you’ve got a whole club behind you. And Tomcat is gonna lose his damn mind in the best way if it’s positive.”
