Tonight I sleep.
30
LUCIA
Jude is making pancakes.
It is Tuesday. In this house, Tuesday means pancakes because Tyra declared it three weeks ago and nobody in this house has the operational capacity to tell a four-year-old no. Nick tried once. She looked at him with Jude’s dark eyes and saidbut it is Tuesdayand Nick, who has stared down cartel soldiers and MC hierarchy and a mountain full of men trying to kill him, folded in four seconds.
The temporary quarters are a converted two-bedroom unit attached to the back of the Broken Halos clubhouse. It is not large. It was not designed for three men the size of small buildings and a woman and a four-year-old and a grey wolf with opinions about the seating arrangement. But we have made it work the way we make everything work: by deciding it works and then refusing to acknowledge any evidence to the contrary.
The permanent cabin is under construction. Blake is handling it. We told him to add a fourth bedroom to the plans an hour ago. A porch that faces the mountain. A kitchen large enough for Judeto make pancakes without elbowing Rafe in the chest every time he reaches for the spatula.
That kitchen cannot come soon enough.
The grey wolf is propped against the toaster. Tyra is on her step stool beside Jude, holding the spatula with both hands, narrating the batter’s emotional state to anyone who will listen. The batter is apparently anxious about becoming a pancake. Tyra has reassured it.
Nick is at the counter reading something on his phone. Operational. Always operational. Even on a Tuesday morning in sweatpants with coffee in his hand and a four-year-old explaining batter psychology behind him.
Rafe is in the doorway. Leaning. Coffee. Golden eyes on the room. He has been standing in doorways since the day I met him and the doorway has changed but the stance has not. He watches us. Completely. Without announcement.
This is my life.
Loud. Chaotic. Full of people who track each other across rooms without thinking about it. Three men and a child and a grey wolf and a kitchen that is too small and a morning that tastes like coffee and maple syrup.
Nick’s phone buzzes on the counter. He glances at it. His face does the operational stillness. He turns the screen face-down without comment.
“What?” I say.
“The remaining cartel lieutenants are tearing each other apart.” He sets the phone down. “We don’t have to look over our shoulders anymore.”
A pause. The pancake sizzles.
“Meaning he is someone else’s problem now,” Jude says. His spatula does not stop moving.
“Meaning exactly that.” Nick picks his coffee back up.
The conversation closes. The morning continues.
Jude is explaining the structural integrity of a chocolate chip tower to Tyra, his scarred hands moving with the same precision he used to save lives.
The pregnancy test is in my back pocket.
I have known for four days.
I missed my period two weeks ago and told myself it was stress. My body had been through a war. Stress was a reasonable explanation. I was a Costa. I did not panic without evidence.
Four days ago I bought the evidence. Two pink lines in the pharmacy bathroom, clear and unmistakable, and I pressed my back against the grout wall and breathed for sixty seconds before I walked out.
Four days of carrying the information with the same quiet calculation I carried the USB drive out of Dominic’s compound. Patience. Timing. The knowledge that the thing in your possession changes the room the moment you reveal it and you do not reveal it until you are ready.
I am ready.
I set my coffee on the counter. I reach into my back pocket. I pull out the test. Two pink lines. Clear and unmistakable, sitting in my palm.
I set it on the redwood table. The surface is scarred from years of MC use. Knife marks. Ring stains. The history of a club carved into wood. My pregnancy test sits in the middle of it.
I step back. Cross my arms. Lean against the kitchen wall.