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“We won’t be strangers because we’ll be living and sleeping together, which means we’ll grow to trust each other. I’m going to trust that you won’t poison me or run off with my shit.”
“And I’m going to trust that you’re not as bad as the guy I’m running away from?”
I smirked at her smart mouth. Despite her hippy dippy outer shell, Rocky was tough. She was scrappy and that was sexy as hell. “For now, I just need you to trust that I can take care of you and our kid for as long as you need me to, okay?”
I couldn’t believe I had to convince her to let me take care of her. In my experience that was what most women were looking for, at least the ones I knew. The Reckless Bitches wanted to become someone’s old lady, random chicks wanted the bad boy biker persona to make them feel better about the boring accountant they’d left at home, and the rest of them were looking to land a rich husband.
“No! It’s not okay, Lasso. Nothing about this is okay. I can’t be dependent on you…I can’t.” Tears began to pool in her eyes and I got nervous. “Just forget this, okay? I’ll find another way to work.”
“Rocky, no. Here,” I pulled cash from my pocket and peeled off a few bills before handing them to her. “That’s seven fifty, more than enough for you to feel like you’re not dependent on me okay?”
Another rejection was poised on the tip of her tongue. Instead, her gaze took on an inquisitive glint. “Why? Just tell me why this is so fucking important all of a sudden?”
“It’s not all of a sudden, goddammit! You’re not the only one who needed time to think, Rocky. We’re having a fucking baby and that is huge! There’s no way in hell I can let you walk away and not know where you’ll be or how you’r
e both doing.”
Her pale, freckle-covered shoulders slumped as my words sank in. Then she straightened up and hit me with a sledgehammer. “And if I decide to terminate?”
“What? Are you thinking about that?” I already thought she was firm about keeping it.
She opened her mouth ready to tell me the lie that would get her out of here, paused and then snapped it shut again. “No.”
“I’m not trying to control you, Rocky. I just want to keep you safe from those fuckers.”
She scoffed. “The baby. You want to keep the baby safe.”
I frowned, not understanding the goddamn difference. “Yes, I do, and that means keeping you safe, too. Are you going to fight me on every little thing?”
“What would be the point? You’ll just strongarm me to get your way, anyway.” The stiff set of her shoulders said that was what she absolutely fucking believed, that I would disregard her feelings in favor of my own.
“Good,” I told her, standing tall and flashing my sexiest cowboy smile. “Because I think we should get married.”
Chapter 9
Rocky
Married? He thought we should get married?
I squeezed the trigger over and over, three, four, five, six, seven times until there were no more bullets to fire. With the nine-millimeter clasped between my hands, I did exactly as the biker who’d helped me said. Max was his name.
Aim. Breathe. Fire. Married. I reloaded and squeezed again. Each and every damn time the word popped into my head, hovered on the edge of my mouth, I squeezed that damn trigger. Not that I wanted to hurt Lasso, I didn’t. He was a good guy who I’d put in an impossible situation. Married. Like that would just fix everything. Married. Married.
“It makes sense,” he’d said like it would make me feel better about my wholly emotional and completely irrational feelings of hurt and rejection.
“This way you can take care of all the baby stuff under my insurance.”
Just what every woman wanted to hear. How romantic. Squeeze! Squeeze! Squeeze! “Put me on the birth certificate,” he’d said like that required a fucking priest and government forms.
When the final bullet left the gun, it took the last of my anger right along with it. What was the point in being angry about it now? I was hormonal and would be for the next few months. But married? Like he was the type to stick around forever. Like he wanted a life where he got up in the middle of the night to change diapers or go to little league games or play tea party. Because those were the simple, normal, boring as shit things I wanted for my kid.
“Just think about it,” he’d said. Like I would think about anything else for the next few days just because he told me to. It wasn’t very smart on his part to spring that on me and then send me off to a gun range, but then again, Lasso probably thought I should be jumping for joy at his offer.
I knew he was right about Genesis tracking me down, and I hated that it hadn’t crossed my mind that all the tweens and hipsters and old ladies who bought my stuff could be friends of his. It was a rookie mistake, which was why I agreed to come to the gun range today, though right now I was regretting it.
The more I thought about his offer, the angrier I got. If I ever got married it would be because I found a decent man and fell in love with him. Not because he knocked me up and not because it was a practical decision. I’d already compromised too much.
No more.
