Page 1 of Reckless

Chapter One

SAGE

Nobody warns you that Defiance clubhouses are loud. There’s the obvious stuff—boots thudding across worn floorboards, pool balls cracking together, somebody laughing hard enough to choke on their beer, coffee brewing somewhere nearby, and Deek arguing because apparently oxygen alone isn’t enough to keep him alive.

I swear the man could start a fight in an empty room.

Then there’s everything underneath it—the easy insults, the casual trust, and the belonging you can’t fake. That’s the comfort that comes from surviving hell together.

Three months ago, I’d have called it intimidating.

Today, it just feels like home.

The thought makes me smile right as water sloshes over the rim of the jug and splashes across my hand. “Shit!” I twist the tap off, shaking the water from my fingers, when something breaks through the soundtrack of Deek arguing with somebody in the main room and Koa telling him to shove his opinion up his ass. There’s a quiet rustle, and I glance over my shoulder. Five pale fingertips are spread against the edge of the kitchen island, pressed so hard the knuckles have gone white.

My eyes follow the hand, then the arm, to see Victoria. She hasn’t noticed me looking, or maybe she has and doesn’t have the energy to care. Her head is bowed, dark hair spilling across one side of her face, and every line of her body is fixed in place with a concentration that feels strangely out of step with the easy noise rolling through the clubhouse behind us. Music threads through the room beneath the burst of laughter from the bar and the familiar clink of bottles. Over it all, Deek keeps talking, because apparently silence took one look at Deek and walked the other way.

Victoria doesn’t move. Not until a slow breath leaves her. It is not a sigh. It’s more like she’s trying to ease it out without letting me hear it. For one long heartbeat, neither of us says anything, then she lifts her head. Our eyes meet as I stare at her heavily pregnant belly that she is currently grasping like her life depends on it. “Well…”

That single word lands somewhere in the pit of my stomach. “What?” I ask, suddenly a sense of dread flowing through me.

“I appear to have made a small error in judgment.”

I frown. “What kind of error?”

She glances toward the floor, and I follow her gaze to see water spreading steadily across the kitchen tiles, curling around the legs of the island before creeping toward the cupboards.

Not from the sink.

But from her.

“Oh, hell.”

Victoria lets out the smallest breath that almost resembles a laugh. “Yeah,” she says. “I was rather hoping to keep this between me and the tiles for another minute.”

I shove the jug onto the counter and turn. The smile she’d been wearing only a second ago is gone. Now she’s frozen at the counter, gripping the edge so hard her knuckles have gone white. “Vic?”

She doesn’t answer me straightaway.

Then Victoria slowly lifts her head, and my pulse stutters. The expression on her face steals every smart remark I’ve ever had. It’s the look of someone who’s finally put the pieces together and wishes they hadn’t.

“So,” she says, and her voice is so even it makes the hair along my arms rise. “I need you not to overreact.”

I stare at her. “That is a terrible opening sentence.”

“I know.”

“Victoria!”

She glances down, almost absently, her eyes following the water spreading across the floor.

“How long have you been having contractions?”

Her mouth presses together.

That is not an answer.

That is an admission wearing lipstick.