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She was dressed in an oversized sleep shirt and black leggings. Thick fuzzy socks were on her feet. She leaned against the door, looking anywhere but at me, standing on one foot while the other one rubbed at the back of the opposite ankle.
“Hey.” I set my bag on the floor before turning my full attention to her.
“Hey.” Her voice was small, and she wrapped her arms around herself.
For long moments we stood there. I had no idea what to say, and she looked like she didn’t want me anywhere near her.
The bathroom was in the bedroom part of the suite, which meant I’d have to invade her territory. I took a deep breath and pointed through the open doorway to the bathroom. “Do you mind if I clean up?”
Without a word, she turned and crossed to a chair on the other side of the room, putting the bed between us. Well. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
I snagged a change of clothes from my bag before heading to the bathroom. I took my time in the shower, enjoying the heat on my muscles after the ride in that fucking cage. Maybe I’d have been just as sore and stiff if I’d ridden my bike, but I didn’t think so. I was used to long rides. Enjoyed them. As I dried and dressed, I scowled. I’d come four hours to get Willa and she hadn’t said a fucking word to me when I’d gotten here. My ire built further when I opened the door to find her nowhere in sight.
“Willa?” I called out to her, but she didn’t answer. If she’d left the suite, I was going to spank her ass no matter how much trouble it got me in when we got back to Kentucky. “Willa!”
I stormed into the next room and came up short. She sat in a chair with her knees to her chest looking out the window. She didn’t turn her head or acknowledge me in any way. There was no way she hadn’t heard me, so this was deliberate. I ground my teeth in frustration.
“Willa, I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me.”
When she spoke, her voice was soft. Small. Lost. Fuck. “What do you plan on doing with your life, Cyclone?”
OK, that came out of nowhere. I took a careful step toward her, even though she was facing away from me. I didn’t want to startle her, though she could probably see my reflection in the glass. “I’ll continue to work at ExFil and help Cain all I can while helping my brother lead Bones. It worked for Cain. It will work for me and Ice too.”
“What about besides that? What about a family?”
I shrugged, not sure where she was going with this. “Hadn’t really planned on having a family other than Bones. I mean, I have my parents and brothers and sisters, but I hadn’t really thought about anything else.
She turned to look at me then, her wide, brown eyes glistening with unshed tears, but her face was an expressionless mask. “I’m pregnant, Cyclone.”
The silence stretched on while I processed what she was saying. Pregnant. Willa. I shook my head once, not truly understanding her words. “OK.” The statement didn’t compute, like, at all. “You’re pregnant. I’m sure Trucker and Helen will be overjoyed. I mean, unless you were going someplace to have an abortion?” Everything inside me rebelled at… something. The idea that she was pregnant? The fact she had a choice to terminate the pregnancy? I was a believer that a woman needed to be able to make her own choices, but I didn’t want Willa to get an abortion. And I couldn’t figure out why.
Her expression hardened. “No, dumbass,” she snapped. “I’m not going someplace to have a fucking abortion. How can you be so obtuse?” Instead of the scared waif who’d run from my bedroom six weeks before or the emotionless, resigned woman I’d first seen when I got inside the hotel room, this Willa was full of fire. A strong protector for the child she carried. The transition made me sit up and take notice. Did the same for my cock, too.
“I wasn’t trying to be insensitive, Willa. What the fuck is going on? This is about more than you being pregnant. Having a baby isn’t the end of the world and if you really don’t want the child you can get rid of it.”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. If I had to read her expression, I’d say she was inhaling for patience. When she opened her eyes again, they were filled with unadulterated fury. “You’re the father, Cyclone. You. Doesn’t take a genius to figure that out and you’re not completely stupid.” She held my gaze with her force of will alone. “I’m pregnant with your child, Cyclone.” If the tone of her voice and the angry fire she was spitting at me were accurate, she wasn’t happy about the situation. And not because she was pregnant. She didn’t want me as the father. Which suited me just fine. It did! Really!
I shook my head. “You got the morning after pill. Right?”
She rolled her eyes, clearly exasperated. Like she wanted to go, Duh, dumbass! “I did. But I was hungover the morning I snuck out of your room back to my own. So I didn’t go to the pharmacy until the next day. Apparently, the longer you wait, the less likely the pill is to work, and it already started at only sixty-five percent efficacy. I had little better than a fifty-fifty chance it would work, and I lost.”
Scrubbing a hand over my mouth, I sat on the couch next to Willa’s chair, never taking my eyes off her. “Pregnant.”
She stuck her chin up and her frown deepened. “Yep. Pregnant. You know. Knocked up. Bun in the oven. Preggers. Prego.”
When she would have continued, I shot her a look. “I know what it means, Willa.”
I waited for the panic I knew would follow to set in like a clue-by-four between my eyes. And waited. I stared hard at Willa, knowing she was right but not being able to process the whole situation. Her little pixie face reminded me of an angry Tinkerbell. I could all but see her arms at her sides, hands balled into fists as she stomped a tiny foot on the ground while fairy dust scattered around her.
A grin split my face. Holy shit. “Pregnant.”
“It’s not funny, you bastard!” She shot to her feet and kicked my shin. “Fucker!” Then she winced, not putting her foot back down. Obviously it had hurt her toes.
“I wasn’t laughing at you, honey. Honest.” My grin grew wider. “Come here.” I held out a hand to her.
“You’re delusional if you think I’m touching you right now. Not unless it’s to stab your eyes out with a spork!”
I stood and reached for her, not missing the fact that she didn’t pull back. Once she was in my arms, I rested my chin on the top of her head with my arms tightly around her. “I’m not making fun of you, Willa.” I tried to rein it in, as Data had told me to do. Tried to sound gentle and compassionate and understanding. “Not at all. I’m laughing at myself.”
