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“Yeah,” Slash agreed, exhaling hard.
“What about a shop?” I asked, making them both turn to me.
“What?” Slash asked.
“Didn’t his dad run a bike shop? And then Rook ran it too. What about a shop? That would keep him busy. Can you run a business on parole?” I asked, looking between them, knowing next to nothing about that myself.
“I think you can,” Slash said. “I can’t imagine the state could stop you. The problem is having the money. Which he clearly wouldn’t legally have enough of yet.”
“What if he had a partner?” I asked.
“Is that… an offer?” Slash asked.
“I have the money. The club could use some more legitimate businesses. The area could use the revenue. And Rook could use something to focus on. It all makes sense.”
“If you’re serious, I’ll talk to him about it,” Slash said.
“I’m serious,” I told him. The more roots I could put down in this place I’d grown to love, the better.
“Alright. I’ll float it by him,” Slash said, getting up, and moving outside.
“That’s a lot to take on,” Sway said.
“Oh, I don’t plan to do any of it,” I assured him with a smile. “Actually. I have… a little distraction for us,” I told him.
See, well, it had all sort of… lined up.
I’d needed to take out my birth control implant because it was time.
But there was only one doctor in town. And he didn’t have any new ones to replace it with. So I’d agreed to come back in a few weeks.
And, well, Sway and I weren’t exactly good about keeping our hands off of each other. That, and we’d gotten used to not using protection, so it wasn’t always at the forefront of my mind.
Kids, they had been in the plans for us.
At least two.
Because I would have liked a sibling growing up.
But we hadn’t planned any timelines for that kind of thing planned.
Sure, I had a ring on my finger. But we hadn’t even gotten around to discussing when we were going to have the wedding yet.
“Oh, yeah?” he asked, sensing something, but not getting it quite right. “Are you having puppy fever?” he asked, since I had mentioned it a few times. But just a dog for fun this time, not protection. I had a sneaking suspicion I wasn’t going to need that anymore. At least not in the same capacity.
“Well, something very small and unable to take care of itself, yes, but less furry. I hope,” I said, watching his handsome face as the words sank in, as he made sense of them.
“You’re pregnant?” he asked, his voice a small, hushed sound.
“I know we weren’t planning on it yet,” I said, heart sinking a little at the idea that he wasn’t ready. “But the whole implant mishap happened and…” I trailed off, waving toward my stomach.
“And we are nine months away from having that?” he asked, pointing a finger toward the ceiling where I could just about make out the sounds of Morgaine and Crow’s new baby screaming their lungs out.
“Yes,” I said, that sinking feeling getting worse with each passing second.
But then he was grabbing me, hauling me against him, and squeezing hard.
“I’m going to teach them the wonders of Paris, Hilary, and Lindsay,” he declared after a long moment, as the sinking went to soaring in a blink.
“I will have to invest in noise-canceling headphones,” I said, getting a chuckle out of him.
“Hey, they say talent can skip generations. Maybe our kids will inherit my mom’s pipes,” he said.
“We can hope. I don’t think I can handle multiple dying-cat-singers in my family,” I teased. “So, you’re okay with this?” I asked, finding I needed the confirmation, bear hug aside.
“No, baby,” he said, pulling back. “I’m fucking over the moon about it.”
“Really? I know it’s soon…”
“Says who?” he said, shrugging. “We’re going to have to come up with cover stories for what we tell our kids we do for a living. Think them going to school saying ‘My daddy is an arms dealer and my mommy builds guns’ might raise some red flags.”
“Well, technically, their mother will own a bike shop. And so will their father when we get married,” I added.
“We should probably get on that, shouldn’t we?” he said.
“We’ve got nine months.”
“Know what we need to do for our honeymoon?” he asked.
“What?”
“Fuck on Cohen’s property,” he declared, making a laugh escape me. “I haven’t forgotten about that.”
“Think he will come to the wedding?” I asked.
We’d seen him exactly four times since the whole kidnapping thing. Each time when I’d gone to his property to test out my guns.
I mean, objectively, I probably could have tried out two of those guns in Shady Valley, but I wanted to keep giving the business to Cohen. And, more than that, I liked seeing him.
Everything had gotten warmer between us now that we had a mutually traumatizing experience to connect us.
