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One-Mile turned the question over in his brain for a few minutes while absently staring at the overhead TV. But he could only think of one.
Brea was pregnant.
“Hey, man.”
A slap on the back had him spinning around to find Zy sliding onto the stool beside him and motioning the bartender for a brew.
One-Mile felt too frozen to nod back.
Had he actually fucking knocked Brea up?
That made sense in a way nothing else did.
Given Brea’s upbringing, she’d be looking to get married ASAP so the good people of Sunset wouldn’t think she was a “fallen woman” or some other antiquated notion. Every time he’d taken her to bed, he’d been too fucking impatient to wear a condom. Since she’d been a virgin, he doubted she’d been on the pill.
It all fit.
Oh, holy shit.
Had she conceived when he’d last taken her to bed three weeks ago? Would she even know yet? Granted, he was no expert, but One-Mile doubted it. That meant she’d conceived in August—three fucking months ago.
“You okay, man?” Zy asked, gripping the neck of his cold one. “You look shaken. Friday treating you all right?”
“Yeah,” he managed to reply…but his head raced.
He pictured Brea in his bed, her belly rounding with their child. He imagined holding her hand while she birthed the life they’d created together. He envisioned feeding his own son or daughter sweet potatoes and looking into his or her cherubic face with a smile.
Everything inside him both roared in celebration and quaked in terror.
After the shithead example he’d grown up with, what did he know about being a father?
“Hell of a week, huh?” Zy prompted.
You could say that. “Yeah.”
Why the fuck hadn’t she told him?
Because she’d never intended him to be anything but a good time? No, that wasn’t Brea. She didn’t have a snooty or conniving bone in her body.
But after he’d seemingly walked away from her following his stupid-ass confrontation with Montilla, what had she felt were her options? Especially when she’d convinced herself he didn’t love her anymore?
Cutter Bryant was her backup plan.
The question now was, how did he convince her to have faith again and choose him instead?
“Look, I know you’re probably not thrilled that I want to grill you about why you decided Trees is the asshole around here but—”
“You hear that Cutter got engaged last night?”
Zy blinked at the abrupt change of subject. “Um…yeah. I overheard the bosses talking about it shortly after quitting time.”
“Did they say why?”
“Cutter popped the question? No.” Zy clapped his shoulder. “Look, I know you had a thing for the girl but—”
“Not anymore.” He didn’t dare tell anyone how he really felt about her, especially if she was having his baby. Time to compartmentalize his shit, get down to business, then figure out how to corner Brea again—alone—and wrest the fucking truth from her. “Never mind. Let’s talk through the evidence.”
Zy scowled at the abrupt change of subject. Then he shrugged. “I’ve talked to Trees about the night you were taken from the parking lot in Acapulco. He said you told him to leave.”
“Yep. But I expected him to put up a little more of a fight, bring backup—something. He just drove off.”
“What would you have done in his shoes?”
“Shot a motherfucker or two.”
Zy scratched the side of his head as if he was scraping for patience. “You know his specialty is computers and tech. He doesn’t have your gift with a gun. Pretty much no one does, man.”
He’d had this same argument with Hunter while he’d still been in the hospital. Maybe they were right. But something still felt off.
“Okay, but he didn’t come back or call anyone for hours, did he?”
“You didn’t realize your food had been drugged?”
Is that what Zy thought? “Why do you say that?”
“Trees made it to the parking lot of the police station about a mile away and passed out. Some cop woke him up, like, ten hours later. He didn’t even remember driving there. I assumed you’d figured out that you’d been drugged, too.”
Was it even true or just Zy covering for his bestie? “Since they beat my fucking skull in and I passed out, I didn’t get that chance. Why didn’t Trees tell me himself?”
“He’s felt so fucking bad about what happened to you, man… He didn’t know what to say.”
Maybe. And maybe it was all bullshit. But if Brea was really pregnant and planning to marry Cutter so she’d have a father for his baby, he couldn’t care about EM Security’s internal mole now or wait for Montilla to come to a fabricated local safe house.
He was going to have to wrest his future back now. He was going to have to take the fight to the drug lord.
“Well, if you can prove Trees innocent, then I’ve got no hard feelings. If you can’t, tell your pal to keep looking over his shoulder. Someday, I’ll be there.”
