“When possible,” she finished for me.“I remember.”
We stood in silence for a moment.She’d walked out before dawn four months ago.She’d come back with two lives growing inside her and nowhere else to go.I’d claimed her in front of the club without asking.We were strangers with a shared past and a complicated future, and neither of us had a map for what happened next.
“You’re really keeping them,” I said.Not a question.A statement of fact that needed confirming.
She nodded.“Yes.”
“Good.”
The single word carried relief, gratitude, and the sharp-edged joy of a man who’d been given something he hadn’t known to want.I’d spent my adult life being careful about attachments, about commitments that couldn’t be walked away from.Now I was standing in a room with a woman I barely knew but was tied to forever, and the only thing I felt was certainty.
“I meant what I said,” I told her.“You’re mine.The babies are mine.That’s done.”
She looked at me for a long moment, her gaze moving over my face like she was memorizing it.“And if I’m not ready to be yours?”she asked finally.“If I came back because I needed help, not because I wanted to belong to you or your club?”
“Then you get the time you need,” I said.“But the outcome doesn’t change.”
She almost smiled -- a quick, involuntary movement at the corner of her mouth.“You’re very sure of yourself.”
“I’m sure of you,” I said.“The rest is details.”
She shook her head, but there was no heat in it -- just a kind of bemused acceptance.“I don’t know what to do with you.”
“Start by letting me take you to breakfast,” I said.“You need to eat.They need you to eat.”I motioned toward her stomach.“We can figure out the rest after.”
She considered it for a moment, then nodded.“Breakfast,” she agreed.“And then we talk.Really talk.About what happens next.”
It was a start -- not the one she’d expected when she’d walked through the gate, not the one I’d planned when I’d called Church.But it was ours.
I held out my hand.Neither a demand nor a request.Just an offer -- my palm open, waiting for hers.
After a moment, she took it.
Chapter Three
Willa
The house sat apart from the main compound -- a solid structure with a porch that wrapped around the front and sides.Nitro walked ahead of me, his stride unhurried, giving me time to take it in.The breakfast he’d insisted on had been quiet -- coffee for him and juice for me, eggs, toast with no butter because he’d noticed I’d pushed it aside.He’d talked about the club’s schedule, the Prospect rotation, a dozen other things that didn’t matter while I picked at my food.Now we were here, the house looming ahead, and my chest felt tight enough to crack.
I’d been claimed in front of what had looked like twenty men.Heard the word family used like it was something I was already part of.Watched the room rearrange itself around me, making space I hadn’t asked for.All because of what was growing inside me -- the twin heartbeats that belonged to the man walking three steps ahead.
“This is mine,” Nitro said as we reached the porch.“The club has security at the gate.I have cameras.”He nodded toward the corners of the porch.“Nobody gets in without me knowing.”
I followed him up the steps, my hand on the rail, my canvas bag against my back.It held everything I owned -- three changes of clothes, a hairbrush, a paperback with a cracked spine I’d read three times already.The only proof I had a life before this moment.
He unlocked the door with a key he pulled from his pocket -- no electronic keypad, no fancy locks, just metal and the turning sound it made.The door swung open into a space that felt immediately like him -- spare, ordered, the air inside carrying the scent of leather and faint cigarette smoke.
“Living room,” he said, stepping aside to let me pass.“Kitchen’s through there.Bathroom at the end of the hall.Two bedrooms.”He moved through the house ahead of me, turning on lights, opening doors just enough to show the spaces beyond without lingering.
The living room held a leather couch worn smooth at the arms, a TV mounted to the wall across from it, a coffee table with nothing on it but a remote control and a motorcycle magazine.The kitchen had clean counters and cabinets with the doors closed, a refrigerator humming quietly, a coffee pot with an inch of black liquid still in the bottom.He opened the door to the second bedroom -- a smaller space with a bed that looked like it had been made with military precision, a dresser, and a window with blinds drawn.
Then he was back in the kitchen, moving past me to the counter where he set down a key -- a flat metal thing with nothing attached to it, no keychain, no label.
“Here,” he said, placing it between us on the counter.“There’s another one in the drawer if you need it.”
I picked it up.It was warm from his pocket, slightly worn at the edges.I closed my fingers around it and let my gaze move over the room -- taking in the back door visible through the kitchen, the window above the sink with its half-drawn shade, the hallway that led to the front.Exits.Options.Ways out if I needed them.
Nitro noticed me looking.I saw it in the slight shift of his expression, the minute tension that appeared at the corners of his eyes.But he didn’t say anything, just moved to the sink and filled a glass with water, which he set on the counter near me without making me ask.
