"What if I'm not the right man for this?" I look up at him. "I'm a prospect. I broke the heart of the only woman I've ever loved because I thought I was doing the right thing. I've spent six weeks getting through each day, one hour at a time. That's not exactly a strong foundation for a father."
Prez looks at me the way he looks at things he's decided about. "You've been in this club six weeks, and you haven't put a foot wrong. Not once. You work harder than brothers who've been patched in for years. You don't complain, you don't cut corners, and when something's hard, you go at it harder." He pauses. "That's exactly the foundation a father needs."
"I made a mess of things with Savannah."
"You made a choice," he says. "Whether it was the right one is between you and her. But you made it for the right reasons, and this club sees that." He stands. "What happened with Raven is not on you. You didn't invite this. She brought it to your door, and now we deal with it together. That's what the club is for."
I breathe out slowly. "Thank you, Prez."
"Don't thank me. Go find her. Bring her in here. I'm going to get Knuckles and Braxton."
Finding Raven is notthe problem. Her voice carries, and she has a way of placing herself in the centre of whatever room she's in that makes her easy to locate. She's in the lounge with three of the other girls, laughing at something on her phone, and when I walk over, the conversation dies. They know something heavy is coming.
The other girls read it. Raven doesn't.
"There he is." She gets up and moves toward me with the particular walk she does, the one she thinks I find attractive. "I was wondering when you were going to come find me."
"Raven," I say it quietly. "Come with me."
She looks at the other girls with a smile and starts to put her arm around my waist the way she normally would. I go still. Not away from her, just still, and she feels it and steps back.
"What's wrong with you?"
"Not here." I take her by the wrist, and I walk her down the hall to Prez's office. She comes because she doesn't know yet what she's walking into. She fills the silence on the way with talk that washes over me completely.
When I open the door, Prez is already behind his desk. Knuckles is at the wall to the left with his arms folded. Braxton is by the window. Raven stops in the doorway and reads the room, finally, and I can see the exact moment she understands that this is not what she planned.
"Sit down," Prez says.
She sits. I stay standing. I'm not sitting next to her.
Knuckles closes the door.
The room is very quiet. Prez lets it be quiet for long enough that Raven's composure starts to slip at the edges. Then he says, "We know about the condoms, Raven."
She goes white.
"And we know about the pregnancy." He lets that land. "So what I need from you right now is honesty. Not the version you've been telling the other girls. The actual version."
She looks at me. I look back at her and give her nothing.
"Who else?" Prez says. "Was it just Austin, or did you do the same to other brothers?"
"Just Austin," she says. Her voice is small. "I only wanted Austin."
"Christ," Braxton says from the window.
"You wanted to trap a prospect," Knuckles says. He doesn't raise his voice. He doesn't have to. "You wanted to trap a man who was in no state to see it coming because he was dealing with something private. You used that against him. That's what you did."
"It wasn't like that." She looks at me again, and her eyes have gone wet. "I love you, Austin. I thought if we had a baby, you'd see that we could be something."
"Don't," I say it once. "Don't try to make this into something it's not. You knew exactly what you were doing. You've been in this club long enough to know the rules, and you broke them deliberately."
"I just wanted..."
"I know what you wanted." I crouch down so I'm at her level, because I want her to hear this clearly, and I need her to see my face when I say it. "I was never going to be yours, Raven. Never. I was with you because I was trying to get through something. I'm not proud of that, but you knew what it was. You knew what I was doing every time. And you decided to use it." I stand back up. "That's what this is. Not love. Don't call it love."
She's crying properly now. It might even be real. I can't find it in me to care either way.