“That doesn’t mean that she didn’t consent to the sex. Nothing is ever a hundred percent effective and that’s the chance you take when you have sex. So chill out and worry more about the fact that your sister is struggling to feel happy about having a baby instead of offing the baby’s father.” Hawk seemed to relax a little and Gracie pushed just hard enough on his chest to make him take a few steps back and I breathed a sigh of relief. Murder averted.
At least for the moment.
The sound of tires squealing in the driveway told me that Raven had taken my advice, which surprised the hell out of me. I figured she might do the complete opposite of what I had suggested.
“She must have gone out the front,” Hawk said as he glanced out the kitchen window, watching his sister peel away in her Dodge Challenger. The thing was an SRT and fast as hell, so I could understand why he was looking concerned.
“Damn,” Bash exclaimed from behind me and I heard him pick up the keys to his bike.
“Oh no you don’t,” I snapped at him and snatched the keys from his hand before he could attempt to stop me. “She needs some time to clear her head. If you go after her the two of you will either kill each other or screw each other’s brains out. Neither are exactly helpful to the situation at the moment.”
The look on Bash’s face would have terrified the piss out of a lesser person. I glared back at him determined to stand my ground no matter how big of a rage he went into. I was standing between him and his lifeline but Raven needed some time to herself or she was going to go off the deep end.
“She’s driving crazily, Willa. What if she wrecks?” He raked a hand through his long black hair, his eyes full of lightning in his worry for Raven.
“Raven will be fine.” I put his keys in my pocket, knowing that he wouldn’t dare attempt to take them if they were in such a personal place.
“Fuck you, Willa.” Bash walked around me and faced Spider. “Go m
ake sure she’s okay. She will at least listen to you.”
I watched as Spider considered his friend for a long moment, his face emotionless except for the look in his black eyes. He stood slowly, making his height all that much more dramatic when he was finally standing straight. “I’ll take care of her. Like I always do. Getting really tired of having to wipe up her tears over you though, fucker.”
Raven
I was driving around with no set destination. My stomach was roiling and my hands were still shaking slightly. It was hard to figure out what I was feeling. For the last three days I’d kept the knowledge to myself about the baby, still too stunned to accept that the doctor had confirmed my suspected pregnancy with an ultrasound.
Last night after Bash had made love to me until I was exhausted I had realized that it really was true and that he had set me up to get pregnant from the very first time we had been together again. I had been angrier at myself than at him at first. The fact that I hadn’t realized he was deliberately not using protection had made me feel all kinds of stupid for trusting my body to a man that had already shattered my heart once. Then my rage at Bash had taken over and I’d been pissed off ever since.
Bash claimed to love me so why was he taking all the choices away from me? There was a difference in loving someone and being a possessive control freak. For me the two didn’t go hand in hand and I wasn’t going to put up with it.
The real problem however was that I was struggling hard to wrap my mind around the fact that I was pregnant. One minute I was excited. I was having Bash’s baby. That was something that I had always wanted. The next minute I was an angry mess. I wasn’t ready, nowhere close to being ready. How dare Bash take my right to choose when we got pregnant away like that? It wasn’t fair. Plus Lexa and I were still stumbling around getting to know each other. I wanted her to be more settled in, comfortable with me as her stepmother before I added another child to the equation.
I’d thought Bash and I would be married and have the house renovations finished before we even started talking about having a baby. I’d also thought that Jet would be home and Felicity would come back to help me through it…
I needed both of them right now. Jet had always been my father figure. Even when our dad had still been alive he had taken on the role. He’d been the one to understand me the best out of my four brothers. He could help guide me. Felicity… She was my best friend, the only female I had in my life that I trusted and could help me with anything female related. When I had realized I was pregnant my first thought was to call her and ask her to go to the doctor with me. I wasn’t the kind of person to need someone to constantly hold my hand through tough times, but right now I really needed her.
Knowing I wouldn’t be able to talk to Felicity any time soon, I did the only thing I could. I turned my car around and headed out of town. I called ahead to see if I could get an appointment to see my brother at San Quentin and was told I would have to wait until morning as it would be way too late by the time I got there.
Five hours later I was in a cheap motel room, lying in bed as I gazed sightlessly up at the ceiling. I’d turned my phone off hours ago when Bash and my brothers had started blowing it up. Even the few calls from Spider had gone unanswered because I couldn’t handle talking to anyone right now. No one would understand why I needed to see Jet, maybe not even Jet himself. He didn’t want me to see him in prison, had forbidden me to visit, but right now I didn’t care what he wanted.
I didn’t sleep much that night. My mind wouldn’t shut up and by the time I sat down in the visitors’ room in front of my brother I was pale with circles under my eyes so dark they looked like bruises. Honestly, Jet didn’t look much better. He was bigger than I remembered him, his muscles bulging and flexing with every breath he took, but he was pale, in need of a shave and looked as if he hadn’t been getting enough sleep.
Jet’s safety hadn’t been something I had really worried about while he was in prison. We had members of brother charters in San Quentin that would have my brother’s back when his reputation wasn’t enough to protect him. Few people wanted to mess with Jet Hannigan though. He was ruthless, scary as hell, and more often than not had a menacing look on his face that would radiate around him and could cause grown men to piss themselves.
Maybe I should have been worried about him though. For a moment my own problems were pushed to the back of my mind as I reached for my brother’s hands. “Are you okay?”
His fingers tightened around mine and he gave me a smile that eased some of the tightness in my chest. “I just have a lot on my mind, Rave.” His eyes were eating up the sight of me and he clenched his jaw. “You weren’t supposed to come here. I told you this isn’t a place for you.”
“I had to see you…” I whispered, swallowing the tears that were suddenly burning my throat.
Eyes identical to my own narrowed. “If you’re here to give me some shit news like Flick then I don’t think I want to hear it.”
I closed my eyes. Hawk had had no choice but to call Jet when Felicity had run away. That she had stopped to see him before moving on had been like a slap in the face for me because I had had no clue that my best friend and my brother had created and lost a baby. I hadn’t been completely blind because I had known that Felicity had been just as much in love with Jet as I was with Bash, but I had been so stuck in my own problems that I hadn’t had a clue things had actually gotten serious between them.
“Raven..?” Jet’s voice was firm, forcing me to open my eyes. “Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”
A tear escaped my eyes and I bit my lip to keep it from trembling. Why was I crying so much lately? Was it the baby doing this to me? If it was then I didn’t think I was going to like being pregnant at all. Finally I cleared my throat and shook my head. “I’m pregnant.”