can sum it up in a few words? Hex did beat me. Just not that night. Why would he let me leave with his baby? I needed help. Dammit, Ama, can’t you see that?”
“I’m sure some of that’s true,” Ama replied pleasantly.
“All of it’s true,” Kenzie groused, sounding so miserable that damn, if I didn’t believe her.
“I doubt that. You always were a lying bitch, Kenzie. Two words in ten were always a lie. I just don’t understand why you’d want to come home when home was somewhere you ran from all those years ago.”
“I knew you guys would help me with the baby,” she said on a huff.
“So, you wanted free daycare?” Ama snorted. “Sounds about right.”
“It was more than that. I wanted help knowing what to do with the baby. I’ve never looked after a kid before, and I thought Dorie or your ma would help me out.”
“How did you even get involved with the Knights anyway?” Ama questioned, her pencil making scratching sounds as she spoke.
“I was in El Paso for a little while. They drive up there some weeks. Cause a bit of mayhem. I got caught along with them and returned to their clubhouse… I just never left.”
“You were their sweetbutt?” Ama mocked.
“No,” Kenzie snarled. “I thought Hex loved me.”
“Apparently if you had sex without protection. You’re lucky you’re just having a baby and not an STD.”
“Like you can talk about someone being a slut. How many guys do you have panting around you? Three?”
“Yep, aren’t I lucky?” was the bright and breezy reply.
“I wouldn’t call it lucky. Tied to three men?” Kenzie scoffed. “Being with one is trouble enough.”
“Then you’ve never met the right men,” Ama retorted.
“Listen to you. Jesus. Selling the next American dream, huh? Happily ever after. They’ll do what Hex did to me. Start fucking around when you get too sore. Or God help you if you get morning sickness, then you won’t see them for dust.”
“You know he got arrested, right?”
I couldn’t stop myself from getting to my feet and peering in through the sliver of the open door. Kenzie was tense but settled back into the sofa, while Ama was on an armchair, her feet curled up underneath her with her notepad on her knees. She didn’t look like she was involved in a verbal war on words, but Kenzie’s tension told me she was in full on defensive mode.
“When?” my sister asked, her tone sullen.
“When do you think? On the run that he left on.” Ama peered over her sketchpad. “My granddaddy wasn’t happy to lose so many good men.”
Kenzie gulped.
She fucking gulped.
“Oh?” she said warily.
“Yeah. Oh. He was pissed. Thinks there’s a rat in his nest. Gone back to scour the MC out for the dirty snitch.”
Kenzie’s face morphed from bright pink to white at Ama’s declaration, but when she thought Lucifer had returned to find the rat at the club there? She looked relieved.
A gulp and a few facial expressions weren’t exactly a signed confession, but I knew my fucking sister. Maybe not well, not like some people, but well enough to register fear—I’d seen it on her face when Mama had died.
She cleared her throat when Ama’s attention averted to her pad once more. “Is that what they think I’ve done? That I was the snitch?”
“Don’t think you’d still be sitting here if that were the case, do you?” Ama replied sweetly.
“Even if I was the rat,” she hedged. “They’d never hurt me because I’m pregnant!”
“Momma said she saw your belly so I guess you must be.”
Kenzie’s mouth gaped wide open and pulsed a few times like a goldfish’s. “That’s what that was about? She was checking to see if I was pregnant?”
“Could have just been a mountain of foundation on your belly… you know, like it was on your face.”
Kenzie’s teeth ground down. “I can’t fucking believe this. I came home to—”
“To, what? Seems like you don’t really want to be here. Seems to me like you’ve never wanted to be here, so what’s your game?”
“I haven’t exactly been extended a welcoming hand, have I? Pretty much soon after I arrived I was on house arrest!”
“And now you know why. Especially after we were raided the same day you arrived. Two busts on one day and with you transferring from one clubhouse to the other?” Ama snorted. “You have to admit, it looks suspicious.”
Kenzie surged upright in an explosive movement. I tensed, waiting for her to attack Ama, but she didn’t. They were in