hitched when I read the text saying that I was pregnant.
Jaron closed the distance between us and cupped my stomach. “Thank you. Let me know when you want to collect.”
“I will.” Ricky left the room, leaving Jaron and me alone.
Sammy and Cyrus, along with Greyson and a few other guys from the club, took that moment to join us in the room. Even though it was big, being stuck in there with them, made it seem almost smaller.
Jaron sat on the bed behind me, wrapping his arm around my middle.
“You can’t.”
“I can.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“I will.”
Jaron was arguing with someone, but I didn’t care to look up to see who he was talking to. I didn’t care. About anything. It felt like a piece of me had been ripped away. Like an appendage was torn free from my body, leaving my sorrow to bleed out on the ground beneath me.
I was pregnant. Again. With Jaron’s baby. Our second baby.
Pain consumed me.
Agony threatened to tear me apart.
Rage coursed through my veins, making every nerve ending inside my body tingle beneath my skin.
As Jaron crushed me back against him, these dark thoughts took hold. They destroyed and yet gave me some sort of solace at the same time.
“We’ll get her back,” I heard him say.
Words. That was all they were. Nothing more. Nothing less. They were empty promises because how could he know? How did Jaron know that we would get her back? He was smarter than that. Than this. Than us. He lived and breathed destruction. He tore through my life like a hurricane, unleashing every feeling, every emotion he felt, on me and me alone.
He took. He gave.
He loved. He hated.
And right now, when he turned me around and stared into my eyes, without saying it, I knew, because I felt it too.
He was scared. He knew his words were fake and that I didn’t believe them. Hell, neither did he, but he said them anyway. Why? Why would he make a promise when he wasn’t sure if he could keep it?
He fisted my hair, keeping a tight hold on my head and making me look into his eyes. “I will get her back,” he said, that deep raspy growl brushing over my skin like thousands of tiny kisses.
And there he was, the man I loved. The man I knew who would destroy everything in his path to get what he wanted most. That was the Jaron I wanted. Not the one promising me lies.
I wasn’t sure anymore what was going on. What was real? What was a dream?
Voices sounded around us. Some high. Some deep. Some soft and gentle. Others rough and demanding.
Jaron placed a soft peck on my forehead before pulling from my clutches. He left the bed and began pacing.
A soft cry escaped me, and I reached out for him.
His dad, along with other club members, his brothers, with their dark eyes and jaws as hard as granite, mumbled amongst themselves.
I was vaguely aware of someone enveloping me in a hug. Who? I had no idea. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t take my eyes off of Jaron.
His mouth moved, talking to Cyrus and Sammy as well as the other guys standing with him. But his eyes never strayed away from mine.
Something switched between us in that moment. In the beginning, it was like we were treading water. We walked on eggshells around each other. The passion was thick, the love was intense, but the fear that something would come between us, was suffocating.
I didn’t know why. I probably never would. I trusted him. I trusted him with every fiber of my very being. It was the other women I didn’t trust. The quiet whispers whenever I had gone to the store. The looks and stares. The jealousy that seeped into the air every time I picked Sammy and Cyrus up from the club.
Jaron didn’t trust the guys I had been with either. Even though I wanted nothing to do with them romantically. Ashton had caused problems for our other friends, so I got it. I understood Jaron’s fear. Even though I had basically shoved them out of my life for no apparent reason but to wallow in my own self-pity.
Jaron said something, his words curt and to the point. He shoved the guys off of him and came back to me. He cupped my face, brushing his fingers over every crease, every line, every freckle. With each touch, he followed it with a kiss. A soft peck. A silent