But he’d been busy with their son, Carter.
Carter Folsom, almost-five going on eighteen, was everything that Johnny deserved and more.
Poor June didn’t know what kind of trouble she was getting into when it came to Johnny.
See, out of the offspring of Sebastian Mackenzie, I was the perfect one.
Johnny was the bad seed. The rebel. The kid that was so wild that nobody thought he’d live to his eighteenth birthday.
So, it was funny as fuck to see him have a kid that was exactly like him.
Carter screamed from somewhere beyond him, and I sighed.
“Maybe you should go check on Carter,” I suggested. “And leave me alone.”
“June has him,” he answered. “Now walk your wiener ass up to the counter and look. So I’ll know if I need to go visit a prison.”
My heart started to thunder in my throat.
“How…” I started, but he interrupted me.
“Because I’m going to go to jail once I find out who the father is,” Johnny continued. “Seriously.”
Relief swamped me.
Oh, shit.
Everyone was going to freak the fuck out.
Not only because I was pregnant, though.
But because who I’d gotten pregnant by.
And when, for that matter.
I was sure they wouldn’t be too happy to learn that I’d conceived during a prison riot…
I took two more steps toward the counter when I felt Sarge’s nose practically up my butt as he nudged me even closer.
“Hey!” I yelped at Sarge. “I’m going, I’m going!”
“See, even a dog thinks you have no balls,” Johnny continued.
I looked at the test and felt a happy flutter of excitement roll through me.
“So what’s it say?” Johnny pushed.
• • •
SIN
I honestly didn’t expect to be in here much longer.
Lynn, my new boss for the foreseeable future, was making it happen.
I would be getting out.
Four years early.
It felt… freeing.
So when they said I had a visitor, I fully expected that visitor to be Lynn.
Who I did not expect it to be was Blaise.
When I saw her from behind the plexiglass wall, I felt my lungs constrict and my heart start to pound.
Remembering the way she felt in my arms, the way she tasted and smelled, was enough to bring me to my knees.
Good thing I was fucking sitting.
I’d missed her.
I’d missed seeing her. Smelling her. Tasting her. Hell, just looking at her from across the yard.
“How did you get in here?” I asked the moment she sat down. “It’s not visiting day.”
She looked around as if she was calculating everything with a couple of swift glances.
“I work here now,” she admitted.
I felt things inside of me stretch to life.
“I’m not going to be here much longer,” I admitted. “I’m getting out in a couple of days. Hell, it could be tomorrow at this point. And I thought we decided last time that once was all it could ever be.”
She looked at me curiously. “I know. Honestly, that’s why I’m telling you now and not waiting. I don’t want you to follow me.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked curiously.
“It means that I have something to tell you, and I have a feeling that you’ll want me around, even if you don’t want anything to do with me,” she continued. “And my brother’s close to here. I… he’s letting me stay in one of his rental houses for the time being. I start here.” She gestured with her finger. “In a week.”
I frowned.
“Why are you thinking you will need to be close?” I asked, trying to sound aloof and apparently succeeding by the crestfallen look on her face.
I mean, other than I really fucking wanted her close.
Not that I would ever tell her that.
I didn’t need to encourage her.
I didn’t need to encourage myself.
But knowing that after I got out, she’d be only a hop and a skip away from me, was damn terrifying.
These bars were the only thing keeping me in check.
When they weren’t there anymore…
“I’m pregnant.”
I hadn’t heard her correctly.
“I’m sorry, what?” I asked, thinking I’d misheard but knowing in my gut that I hadn’t.
“I’m pregnant,” she repeated. “About six weeks. I… I thought you might want to know.”
With that, she stood up and left, not looking back.
By the time that I’d processed her words, she was already past the security gate and wouldn’t be able to hear me call out.
I tried anyway.
I was right.
She didn’t hear me.
CHAPTER 6
My brother started unloading the dishwasher before I asked, and I’ve never been more confused in my life.
-Sin’s secret thoughts
SIN
Four days later
“Where are you going to go on your first day on the outside?” Cora, my big brother’s wife, asked.
She’d been the one to pick me up from the prison.
I hadn’t told anyone that I was getting out, and she was the first person I could remember the phone number of.
The first stop I needed was to go get my truck and motorcycle from Coke’s garage. The second I needed to go get my driver’s license renewed. My third would be trying to find Blaise.