I smile as I turn to look at my husband.
Maybe the world will always call him dangerous.
But Hunter Sterling was never meant to be tamed.
And loving him taught me something beautiful, too.
Neither was I.
The End.
EPILOGUE
Hunter
Six weeks later.
She’s been throwing up for three days.
Lola thinks it’s the leftover enchiladas Ace made on Tuesday. I think Ace’s enchiladas are a threat to public health, regardless, so I didn’t argue. But by the third morning of hearing her retch into the bathroom sink before the sun is up, something clicks in the back of my skull.
A click I’ve heard before.
I don’t say anything. Not yet. I just drive into town while she’s napping on the couch with Wyatt watching cartoons beside her, and I buy a pregnancy test from the pharmacy.
Two, actually. Because Lola will want to do it twice. I need to see it more than once, too.
When I get home, she’s awake. Looking at me with an expression I can’t quite read. “Where did you go?” she asks.
I set the bag on the kitchen counter.
She looks at the bag, then looks at me, then back at the bag. “Hunter.”
“Just a hunch,” I say calmly.
Hiding the fact that I am nervous as hell.
She pulls the tests out and stares at them in her hands like I’ve handed her a pair of grenades. “It’s Ace’s enchiladas,” she says.
“Maybe.”
“It’s definitely the enchiladas.”
“Then you pee on the stick and prove me wrong.”
She narrows her eyes at me. I hold my hands up with a smile. “I’ll be right here.”
She disappears into the bathroom. The door clicks shut. I lean against the kitchen counter, cross my arms, and stare at the ceiling.
My heart is hammering. And I am not a man whose heart hammers.
I’ve killed people with a steady pulse. I’ve stared down the barrel of a shotgun held by my own brother without flinching. I’ve sat in a holding cell for six hours and not broken a sweat.
But the sound of my wife peeing on a pregnancy test in the next room has me gripping the counter so hard my knuckles turn white.
Three minutes. That’s what the box says.
Three minutes is a fucking eternity.