"Are you, you know, okay with it?" he asked, likely picking up on my strange mood.
It was strange, too.
I'd been all over the map about it.
My initial response had been crippling fear. I guess because that was the general response of an unmarried woman in this country to a positive pregnancy test. I'd sat there in the bathroom with my heart slamming against my ribcage, paralyzed by uncertainty.
After that, I ping-ponged between disbelief and acceptance, thinking about how a baby would change my life.
Our life.
In quiet moments, I would stare at the wall and fantasize about a sweet little chunky baby in a bassinet with Huck's hair and my eyes.
But, almost invariably, those happy thoughts got interrupted by uglier ones.
Like a bassinet next to the bed while we slept at night, all of us getting woken up by bullets tearing through the walls, one of them taking our precious baby from us. Like someone coming up at a park and taking our little baby as retribution for some other feud.
How could we bring a baby into this world? Into this lifestyle?
Wasn't that the epitome of selfishness?
It wasn't bad enough that there were rampant issues not relating to the club that a child would have to inherit from us, but to add on something else that could literally mean life and death? I was just having a really hard time wrapping my head around that reality.
"I'm worried," I admitted to my brother.
"About what Huck is going to think?"
"That, yeah," I said. We had talked about kids, but it was always a "someday" talk, never something either of us seemed serious about making happen anytime soon, if at all. "But also about raising a kid in an outlaw biker club," I told him.
"To be fair, the whole world is unsafe these days," Jones reasoned.
"Maybe. But this is especially so."
"Or is it safer?" he asked. "I mean, I don't know anyone else with ballistic steel walls and electric fences and state-of-the-art security systems. Add in the dogs and the bikers with guns, and I think this place is pretty fucking safe, Harm."
"Please. Those dogs would help you carry out the TV if you came in to rob the place," I said, smiling. "But, yeah, everyone here would do anything to protect us."
"Exactly. And, I imagine, Huck will go into full Papa Bear mode when he finds out, making this place even safer than it already is. Besides, you also have me. And Teddy. Lots of places to go if things are feeling unsafe. Nothing is going to happen to this baby, Harm. None of us would let it."
That was fair.
These men would do anything to protect what belonged to them. It was ome of their most endearing traits.
"Whose car is that in the driveway?" Huck's voice called from the kitchen, making me stiffen on the couch.
"Jones's," I supplied.
"Spending that trust wisely, I see," Huck said, coming toward me, handing me the ginger lozenges I'd asked him to pick up, telling them they were for nausea, but not saying why I was feeling sick.
"Hey, that's my investment money out there in that driveway. Still plan on making good on that plan of getting rich and setting us all up for life," he said, even if everything about him and his tattoos and piercings and spiked hair said he fronted a punk band, not moved around his investment portfolio. "On that note, though, I have to get back to work. Harm, think about it," he said, giving me a nod, then moving out the front door.
"Think about what?" Huck asked, dropping down near my feet, pulling my legs up and over his lap, his arm sliding behind me.
"I have to talk to you about something."
"Christ. That is a terrible way to start a conversation," he said, grimacing. "But okay. What do we need to talk about?"
"Remember the night we got some alone time in the pool?" I asked.
"Yeah. Hard to forget that one."
"Yeah," I agreed, still smiling at the memory. It was a good one, even if the pool was likely the reason the condom failed. "Well, we got more than we planned on that night," I told him.
"Meaning..."
"I'm pregnant," I told him, the words rushing out, feeling foreign on my lips.
"You're..." he said, then said nothing else for what felt like a lifetime. "You're sure?" he asked when he started to get his thoughts together.
"Yes. I took five tests now. I wanted to make sure before I said anything.