AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Then that set off a chain reaction in me, because I knew without a doubt that Nash wasn’t happy right now.
In fact, I knew that he was very, very upset.
He was just trying to protect me from what he perceived as something bad.
And I wasn’t about that life.
“What can I get y’all to eat?”
“I want a hamburger with ketchup and extra pickles. A short stack of pancakes. Two pieces of bacon, extra, extra crispy. Bonus points if you almost burn them. Then I want a fruit cup if you have them, with whatever dipping sauce you have that comes with it,” I ordered.
Val choked. “That’s even more weird and extra than normal.”
I shrugged. “Says the woman who’s literally about to order just as much food.”
“Yeah, but I’m literally stress eating right now. I deserve to eat as much as I want,” she said, then turned to the lady. “Can you double that order? But instead of crispy bacon, I want it soft. Like, almost under done.”
The lady shook her head. “I’ll see what I can do on the bacon. My cook freakin’ hates cooking bacon any other way than he wants to.”
We both nodded, then Val sighed and picked up the phone that was buzzing away on the table between us.
“Winston is calling,” she said as she pressed speakerphone. “Hello, darling.”
“I’m not your darling,” Winston said. “Why am I getting frantic phone calls from Nash Christopherson looking for your sister?”
“Why don’t you just call my sister?” Val feigned ignorance.
“Because your sister, according to Crimson, threw her phone out the window so that Nash would stop being a little bitch. Crimson’s words, not mine. And now I’m being threatened within an inch of my life to not answer his phone calls. But he’s freaking out, and I feel bad.”
“Fuck him,” Val said. “You married into this family. Act like it.”
Val hung up on him, causing me to snort. “That was a bit harsh, wasn’t it?”
“It might’ve been,” she admitted, “but seriously, there is no bro code when it comes to this family. It’s family first. Friends second.”
That was true.
The family tended to always collapse inward, leaning on each other before we leaned on the outside world.
That was the way it’d always been.
“I forgot to take y’all’s drink orders,” the lady shouted from the counter, her phone once again in her hand. “Y’all want anything special?”
“We’ll take a Dr. Pepper,” Val called out, but I raised my hand up, as if she could actually see it.
“Actually!” I admitted seconds after Val’s shout. “I would like a root beer.”
“Eww,” Val wrinkled her nose up at me. “Since when do you like root beer?”
I thought about that for a long second then said, “Actually, I’ve never liked it before. But something about that sounds amazing right now.”
“Gross.” Val tilted her head. “Are you pregnant?”
I was already shaking my head. “No. Definitely not pregnant. I had my…”
I hesitated, thinking back to when I’d had my last period.
And couldn’t come up with a day.
My mouth opened and then closed.
“You can’t remember when your last period was, can you?” she asked, rolling her eyes. “Jesus Christ, Zip.”
“I can remember!” I cried out. “It’s just been way too long!”
Way, way too long.
Over four months long.
I was… holy shit, I was four months late!
“I have a pregnancy test in my pocket,” she said as she pulled out not one, but freakin’ four.
As well as a couple vials of what looked like medication. Something I knew she probably wasn’t supposed to have. As well as about a billion Band-Aids.
“Those don’t look like any pregnancy tests I’ve ever seen,” I said, eyeing the small white box.
“Take it to the bathroom and pee on it,” she ordered.
I did as instructed, coming out with the pee stick on a napkin.
I placed it on the table in front of us, and then we waited for it to do its thing.
The lady came back with our drinks, and a commotion down the road had me glancing up and out the windows.
Nash had arrived.
CHAPTER 20
If she’s hungry, nothing is funny and everyone is ugly.
-Nash to Felix
NASH
I’d failed to realize how attached to her I was until the alert came over my phone.
Crash detected.
Zip.
Then a photo of her face.
Seconds later, I was getting a call.
“Hello, this is…”
Those words, telling me that the woman I adored had been in a collision, was enough to send my chest to aching for a whole different reason.
It took me all of three seconds to unblock her number.
It took me less than that to call her.
Not only did I have her on speed dial, but I knew her number from heart.
I called, and the phone went straight to voicemail.
And not because she’d blocked me in kind.
Because her phone was broken.
From a fucking car crash.
“Shit,” I said as I pushed myself off the bed, my lungs screaming.
