Page 27

TWENTY-TWO

DASH

Her quietness is freaking me the fuck out. For days she’s been withdrawn, even though she’s still trying to give me that sharp tongue I love so much.

Even now, walking along the street, she’s not herself.

Her hand is in mine, connected, claimed, but she might as well be on the other side of the city. The distance between us isn’t physical. We’re still fucking, still intimate, but it’s emotional. It’s like she’s switch something off and stepped back.

And I don’t know how to reach her.

Every time I try that mask she’s so used to wearing slips back into place and everything becomes ‘fine’.

She’s rambling about work, but all I can think about is what the fuck has shifted between us.

Fuck this.

Fuck it all.

I stop walking, done with tiptoeing around. The crowd parts around us, like waves crashing over rocks.

Her expression bleeds confusion. “I thought you wanted to get food. Do you want to do something different, because I’m pretty hungry so whatever we do needs to include carbs, probably something disgustingly greasy and?—”

“Are you done with me?” The question lands like a fucking grenade.

Her mouth slams shut. I didn’t know it was possible to shock her into fucking silence, but those five little words manage it.

She pulls her hand free of mine and that feels like a bigger statement than any words she could say.

I don’t move. Don’t breathe.

“Why would you think that?”

We’re standing less than a foot apart, but the chasm between us is so wide I don’t know how to cross it.

“You’re pulling back. You’re different, like you don’t want to be around me, but then sometimes I feel like you cling to me so tight you don’t want to let me go. I don’t know where I stand with you.”

She glances up the street, ignoring the people around us. Her eyes close for a second, as if she’s trying to centre herself, and that freaks me out.

“Let’s go somewhere we can talk.”

Talk is not the word anyone wants to fucking hear in a relationship. Talk means I’m going to emotionally rip your heart out and stick it in a blender.

But I nod. Because whatever she says at least then I know what I’m working with. “Yeah. Okay.”

But neither of us move. Her bottom lip slides between her teeth, something she does when she’s nervous, and now I’m really fucking unravelling. I have no idea what the hell is going through her head. I haven’t been able to read her for a while now.

“I don’t want to break up,” she says, and those barbs in my chest pull back.

“Good,” I say. “I don’t want to either.

Her lashes are wet. “I’m sorry I’m a mess right now.”

Maybe I shouldn’t, not with this wall between us, but I take her face in my hands. She’s the only thing standing between me and losing my sanity. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“I’m scared to.”

That confession is worse than any injury I’ve ever fucking had. She might as well have peeled my fucking skin off my ribs.

“If I’ve made you afraid to open up to me, then I’ve done something fucking wrong,” I say to her.

“Whatever it is just tell me so I can fix it.” I press my forehead to hers, still holding her face between my hands.

Her warmth, her softness is a balm I soak in case this is the last time she lets me take it.

Her breath hitches, her hands over mine. “It’s going to change everything,” she warns, and again that pit in my stomach opens.

“Then we’ll deal with it. Together.”

A van driving up the street catches my attention. I’m not sure what it is, maybe it’s the way it slows too much, the way it crawls up the kerb. But I glimpse metal as something pokes through the window.

“I didn’t know how to tell you. But, Dash, I’m?—”

I shove her down as the first shot rings out. She lets out a cry that slices through my chest, but all I’m focused on is saving her life.

Screams erupt around us, and I cover her with my body as more shots ring out. Glass from the car we’re hiding behind explodes, raining down on me, and I curl tighter around her.

It sounds like a war zone. The screams of panic ringing in my ears, my own breaths laboured and heavy.

It doesn’t last more than a beat in time, but it feels like an eternity before the shooting stops.

I don’t move.

Am I hit?

Is she?

I can feel Dayna trembling under me. Fuck. I lift off her body, my heart thundering.

I need to call for backup. I need to get her out of here. The panic fuses to my bones when she doesn’t move on her own.

“Dayna?! Fuck, Dayna are you hit?”

She doesn’t answer, her eyes squeezed shut. She’s breathing weirdly, her palms are pressed over her stomach like she’s hiding a wound.

I grab her hands, pulling them away from her sweater. I’m shaking and expecting blood, wounds that I can’t heal, but there’s nothing, just the soft curve of her belly and hips.

“Are you hurt?” I demand again, same question, different wording.

Her eyes open and the look in them scares the fuck out of me. “I don’t… I’m not…” She swallows, her hand over her stomach again. Did she hit it when I pushed her down.

“Babe, talk.”

She squeezes her eyes shut. “I’m pregnant.”

She says it so quietly that I almost don’t hear it.

“What?”

Tears slide down her cheeks, not loud, not ugly, just there. “I’m pregnant,” she repeats. “I don’t know if the baby’s okay.”

She sits up, slow and awkward, her hand never leaving her stomach. My eyes don’t either. She’s… pregnant ?

And now, the fear pounding through me is a completely different kind of terror.

She’s carrying my kid, and I just threw her on the ground like a rag doll.

I crushed her under my body while bullets flew around us.

I grab her face between my hands, and her fearful eyes find mine. “You’re pregnant.” The words catch in my throat. “You’re fucking pregnant?”

Something flickers in her eyes, something I don’t like. Guilt, maybe shame, I’m not sure which. “I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

I don’t care about that right now. I care that she’s got my baby in her belly and I might have hurt her… them .

I care that we’re exposed here. “We need to move.”

She flinches. I can’t blame her. I just cut the legs out from under her while she’s freaking out, but we don’t have time to deal with that now. They could come back. They could bring more men with them. Two shootings, and I’m at the centre of both of them.

That shit isn’t coincidence.

It’s a fucking hit.

I lift out of my crouch, peering through the broken car window. I can’t see shit, can’t see the van, can’t see any weapons or danger, but that doesn’t mean we’re safe.

My gaze drops to her belly, the place she’s protecting. To our baby.

Because it is ours.

Fuck. Our kid.

Suddenly, everything makes sense. Her tiredness, sensitive boobs, the emotional outbursts, the distance, feeling unwell…

All the symptoms were there, and I missed every single fucking one. I thought she was leaving me. I thought I’d have to drag her back into this relationship, and fuck, all this time she was spiralling over the life growing inside her.

Does she think I wouldn’t want this baby?

Another pregnancy. Another time.

It smacks into me, the memory of a life taken without discussion, without involvement.

Dayna isn’t Kendall, but she hid this from me and fuck if that doesn’t cut.

I grip her biceps, hauling her to her feet. Dayna wobbles, still protecting her stomach.

My head swims just for a second, weight pressing down on my shoulders.

Then I seize her wrist, tucking her in front of me, as I rush us both up the street to the only place close by I know that might offer safety.

My eyes are everywhere, my throat choked. The only thing keeping me tethered to sanity right now is her body in front of mine, even if she’s trembling so badly she can barely walk.

Because this isn’t about us anymore. There’s a life growing inside her. A life we made together.

A life we may have just destroyed before we even got to know it.