I answered it without thinking. “Did you kill any rabbits yet?”
I sighed at my brother’s words. “Shut up. I’m just about to check.”
He grunted. “Just do it. Stop being a pussy.”
I looked at the counter where the test was and wondered if I needed to get any closer to read it.
I did.
I was partially blind in one eye now, so it was obvious that I would need to get closer.
Dammit.
“Johnny,” I said carefully. “I will come over there and kill you.”
“You could try,” Johnny agreed. “Just go look. You said you were going to take it thirty minutes ago. We’re all judging you.”
I knew they were all judging me.
“Why do you even know that I’m doing it right now? I told your wife, not you,” I grumbled.
Johnny and June—yes, they really were Johnny and June—did everything together. Honestly, this morning when I’d called to ask June’s advice on what to do—it’d been more than obvious that I was pregnant now that June had called me on it—I’d expected to hear from my brother at some point.
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