He shook his head, slow. “Same as before. Leatherbacks are moving on the north side. Seneca thinks they’ll hit before dawn. Damron’s got the club on lockdown.” His eyes flicked to the cot, then to my face, then to the floor. “You okay?”
I wanted to laugh. Instead, I just stared at him, tasting the bile in the back of my throat. If I waited, maybe the right words would come. But they didn’t.
He waited, too.
Finally, I said, “I think I’m pregnant.”
The words just slipped out, raw and naked, and hung in the air like a gunshot that hadn’t decided who to kill yet.
Augustine didn’t move. Didn’t blink, didn’t uncross his arms. His face did a whole circuit: shock, then confusion, then something else—hope? No, not hope. Something uglier and better, all at once. He ground his jaw, and I could see the little muscle spasm there, the way it always did when he was about to do something reckless.
I kept going. “I’m not sure,” I said. “Just a feeling, and my body feels…” I made a helpless gesture, like maybe I could just peel off my own skin and point to the part that was wrong.
Augustine let out a sound, half-laugh, half-cough. “Fuck.”
That was it. Just that one word, but it said everything.
He stepped in, closed the door behind him, and then stood there, staring at the floor. The silence was so heavy I thought it might push me through the boards. I started to pace again, couldn’t help it, boots ticking out the rhythm of panic as I circled the room. I hugged myself, fingers digging in at my ribs.
He finally looked up. “You sure?” His voice was low, the kind of voice you use when you’re checking for survivors in a disaster.
I shook my head. “Not one hundred percent. But I know what my body feels like. I know we just had sex, but I know. I just know.”
He nodded, jaw set, eyes dark as a bad memory. He ran a hand through his hair, made a face when his fingers came away sticky with sweat and blood. “Okay,” he said, like maybe this was just one more problem he could solve if he hit it hard enough.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know this is the worst fucking timing in the history of timing. We could be dead in twelve hours, and—”
He cut me off. “Don’t. Don’t apologize.” He uncrossed his arms and closed the space between us, slow, like I was an animal that might bolt. He put his hands on my shoulders, heavy and real. “If it’s true, we’ll figure it out.”
I started to shake. It was adrenaline, or maybe fear, or maybe something so old and deep it didn’t have a name. Augustine just stood there, holding me up, waiting for the next bomb to go off.
I pulled away and sat on the cot, folding up tight. “I keep thinking, maybe it’s just the stress. Maybe I’m making it up because I want something to focus on that isn’t a death squad full of Leatherbacks. Maybe I’m just crazy.”
Augustine sat down beside me, careful to keep a little space. “You’re not crazy. But if you are, so am I.”
For a second, we just listened to the noise below: a table slammed, then voices roaring up through the vent. Augustine’s body was a furnace next to mine, every musclewound up like he was ready to take a bullet and spit it back out.
I glanced at him, tried to read his face. It was a new expression, something I’d never seen on him before. Not fear. Not anger. More like… fuck, I didn’t know. Something fragile, hidden under all the armor.
He cleared his throat. “How long have you known?”
I thought back—really thought back—and the timeline got blurry. “Not long,” I admitted. “I kept telling myself it was just a fluke. But every time I tried to eat, I puked. I thought maybe it was food poisoning or nerves. But… It’s not. I shouldn’t have said anything. At least not until I took a test.”
He let the words settle. Then he said, “Do you want to keep it?”
I looked at him, really looked, and tried to see what answer he wanted. But it wasn’t about him. It was about me, about the way my insides twisted when I thought about the future, about the way my hands always went to my stomach, like I could already feel the ghost of a heartbeat there.
“I don’t know,” I said, voice thin. “I don’t know what’s right. I’ve never had anything that belonged to me before, not really. And now—” I cut off, tears prickling at my eyes. “Now I don’t knowwhat to do.”
Augustine nodded, slow, like every word weighed a pound. “You don’t have to decide tonight. Hell, you don’t have to decide ever. If you want to run, we’ll run. If you want to stay, we stay.”
He leaned in, elbows on his knees, and stared at the floor. His hands were shaking, just a little. “I never thought I’d get to be a dad,” he said, so soft I barely heard it. “Didn’t think I deserved it.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I didn’t think I’d live past twenty-one.”
We sat in that, the two of us, the space between us full of what ifs and maybes and every awful possibility. I could hear the war in the walls, the plotting and the fear and the certainty that somebody would die tonight. But up here, it was just us. Just two fuck-ups with a future neither of us had planned for.
I closed my eyes and leaned into his shoulder, just enough to let him know I wasn’t going to disappear. He wrapped his arm around me, careful of my ribs, and held me there. His heart thumped under my cheek, steady and loud.
