Page 28

TWENTY-THREE

DASH

“Dash, where are we going?” she asks in a small voice, fear threaded through her words.

“We’re nearly there. Just around the corner.”

I keep one arm wrapped around her, pressing her tight to me, as if it can hold back any storm that might come for us.

As we turn the corner, I see the bar ahead. It’s club-owned, not just someone we take protection money from.

I don’t see any danger, and somehow, that’s worse. I can’t see the enemy coming for us—for me.

I’m pretty sure this attack was fucking personal. They knew where I was. They slowed down to make sure I was their target, and then they shot a volley of bullets at me.

Fuck. And Dayna was with me.

Dayna, my fucking pregnant old lady.

I lead her around the back of the building, through the yard, past the bins. The door is open, and I hear music as we step into the dark corridor behind it.

I take point, stepping in front of her, my fingers wrapped around her wrist. When I shove inside the office, Sarah glances up. There’s a moment of confusion before she realises who I am.

“Need somewhere to lay low” is all I say. It’s all I have to.

She comes to her feet, glancing at me and then at Dayna, who is plastered against my side, her hand clammy in mine.

“Do you need anything?”

I shake my head. “Just don’t let anyone back here.”

She leaves, and I guide Dayna over to the couch pushed against one wall. I’m careful as I lower her onto it, watching how her hands still protect her stomach.

“You in pain?” Guilt claws at my gut, and my chest is tight as I wait for the answer.

But she shakes her head. My relief is short-lived when she covers her mouth, as if she can taste the fear on her tongue. “I think I’m going to puke.”

I grab the nearest thing I can find—a bin—and shove it under her chin as her body contracts.

I feel so fucking helpless as she throws her guts up like she’s possessed. I rub useless circles on her back, gritting my teeth as I will it to stop.

The smell of vomit is thick in the air, and her sobs between heaves cut through my composure.

Eventually, she stops, but her breaths are shallow and sharp, and her skin is clammy and grey.

I support her body when he slumps against me, like she has no power left in her.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologise.”

“I didn’t mean to get sick.”

“It’s okay.” I rub her back and sit her back on the couch.

She drops her head into her hands, little whimpers raising my blood pressure.

We need backup. Safety.

I don’t want to lose my connection with her, so I keep one hand on her knee and fire off a message to Riot with the other.

Dayna isn’t a fragile person, but the way she’s hunched over her stomach, her eyes heavy, is killing me.

I get a message back almost immediately, short, to the point: On the way.

Some of that tightness in my chest loosens at that. If something happens to me, my brothers will protect her.

My thumb brushes the inside of her knee, and she lifts her lashes just a fraction. It’s not enough. I need her eyes.

“Babe… look at me.”

She doesn’t. “I’m sorry. I’m just freaking out. We got shot at.”

I hate how scared she sounds, hate that I’m the reason for that. “You should never have been caught up in that. I never want my shit to touch you.”

Her eyes flare wide, and this time, she does look at me. “Wait, that wasn’t random? They were shooting at you ?”

“It doesn’t matter. You’ll never be in that position again, I fucking promise you that.” I stare at her stomach, like there’s a ticking time bomb under her shirt. “As soon as it’s safe, we’ll go to the hospital and get you and… and the… baby checked out.”

Her breath hitches. “I’m sorry you found out this way. I didn’t mean to blurt it.”

“How long have you known?”

Her gaze slides away, as if she doesn’t want to answer. “Not long, but long enough that I should have said something before now.”

“I’m not judging, Dayna, but I need you to explain why you were so scared to tell me you’re pregnant. Did I make you feel unsafe?”

“No. Oh, Dash, no.” A ripple of pain works across her face. “This is my fault.”

“I’m pretty sure I played a part in this, babe.”

She shakes her head. “I messed up. I forgot to get my shot. I thought we were protected, but all this time we’ve been having sex, we were rolling the conception dice.

” She swipes at a tear on her face, like she’s angry for letting herself feel.

“I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.

It wasn’t planned. It was just me and my squirrel brain firing on a completely different frequency to everything else. ”

My thumb stills on her knee for a second before I keep stroking her.

Maybe I should be pissed she forgot her shot. Maybe if she was anyone else, I might be, but Dayna is carrying my baby and, fuck, the image of her holding our kid does something to me.

“It doesn’t matter how it happened. It’s done.”

She lifts her head and finally looks at me. “You don’t have to do anything. I’m not expecting you to be involved when it was my mistake.”

She might as well have stabbed me in my fucking chest.

For a second, it’s not Dayna in front of me. It’s another life, another woman with my child inside her, telling me I don’t have the right to be part of something that’s mine.

It’s another chance to be a father taken from me without asking.

Powerless. Voiceless.

And like before, I can feel this slipping through my fingers before I’ve had a chance to grasp it.

But Dayna isn’t Kendall. She’s scared, not vindictive.

My anger flares before I can control it, rationalise it.

“You tell me you’re pregnant and your first assumption is that I’m going to walk away?”

Her arms tighten around her stomach at my tone, as if she’s holding herself together with sheer willpower. “I don’t know. We don’t know each other that well. Our whole relationship is built on fucking, Dash.”

That lands like another bullet to the chest. I’m trying to remember that she’s scared and also in a war with her own body right now.

“Is that all you see this as? Fucking?” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Babe, are you serious? You think I buy helmets for any fucking girl? You think I make them food? Change their locks? Spend all my free time with someone I’m just sticking my cock in?”

My words are harsh, and I know I need to pull them back, but I can’t.

She needs to hear this because I’m not even sure she believes half the stuff she’s saying.

She’s doing what Dayna always does.

Protecting herself by pushing me away before I can leave.

But the only fucking problem is I’m not going anywhere.

“I don’t know what to think,” she says. “Nobody ever stays in my life. I don’t even know how to hope for that anymore.

” She wipes her tear-stained face. “So, you don’t have to pretend to care.

You don’t have to say the right things just to get through this awkward conversation.

Though if we really want to talk about the elephant in the womb, then let’s do it.

I fucked up. This was my mistake, and I will take full fucking responsibility for it.

I don’t expect you to just step up and play dad.

I don’t see how it would work anyway. We were never going to be more than a good time.

Because at some point, you were always going to realise that I wasn’t worth the effort.

So, I guess what I’m saying is you’re off the hook.

I won’t come after you for child support or any help. ”

“Seriously?” She thinks I wouldn’t pay for my child?

She laughs drily. “You should be celebrating. You’re not chained to me for the next eighteen years.

You don’t have to be stuck with a neurotic mess who can’t even remember to schedule a fucking appointment without being reminded.

You can live your life, find someone worthy of you.

You’re not—” She chokes on her words, shaking her head. “You’re not stuck with me.”

She buries her face in her hands as she sobs so brokenly it caves my chest in.

I lift her chin, hating the way she tries to pull back from me.

“You done?” I don’t give her time to answer.

“I am not leaving you to do this on your own.” I drop my hand to her stomach.

We both suck in a breath as my palm spreads over the fabric covering where our child is growing.

“This baby is mine too. And it fucking destroys me that all this time I thought we were building something together, you’ve had one foot out the door, expecting me to leave. ”

“I don’t know how else to be, Dash. No one has ever made me feel like you do, and that terrifies me. Because if you do leave, I don’t know how to survive that.”

I bring our foreheads together, anchoring me into this moment. My hand spans over her belly, as if I can feel what’s growing inside her. Mine. “You think I’d leave the only real thing in my life?”

She sobs again, loud and ugly, painful. “I was so scared of losing you. The thought you might not be mine anymore… I can’t bear it.”

It’s the most real she’s ever been with me, the most she’s ever let me see that vulnerability. My fingers wrap around her nape, my thumb swiping under her ear. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“I thought you’d be angry.”

I kiss her tears. “I am, but not at you. Never at you. I’m angry that I didn’t give you a safe place you thought you could land on. But Dayna, let me be straight here—you’re not doing this alone. I’m in this. I want this baby. I fucking want you.”

She looks at me like she’s trying to stitch those words into every broken place inside her.

“That’s great, because I don’t think I can afford to raise a baby alone, and I doubt I would have made much trying to sell my feet on the internet.”

I stare at her for a beat. Even scared out of her mind, she’s trying to make me laugh. Fuck, I love her.

But I hate that she’s been worrying about money and whether she could afford to raise our child.

“I’m sure there are people who are really into hairy toes.” My lips twitch when she blinks at me.

“I don’t have hairy toes.”

“Sorry, babe, but don’t worry, there’s a weirdo for every kink.”

She laughs, wet and thin, but it’s the best sound I’ve heard all day. “I’m allowed to say my feet are ugly. You’re not.”

I press a kiss to her forehead. “I never said they were ugly. Just hairy.”

Her smile fades. She’s looking at me as if she expects me to disappear in front of her eyes. “What happens now?”

“What do you want to happen?”

“I don’t know. This conversation isn’t going how I imagined.”

Right. Because she thought the minute she told me she’s pregnant, I’d run.

“You want to keep the kid?”

It kills me to ask it. The thought of her having an abortion takes me back to Kendall, but I’m not that kid, not anymore. That grief that burned through me at what she did wasn’t because she ended the pregnancy. It was because she did it without involving me.

She doesn’t answer, so I keep talking. “I’ll support whatever you want to do, Dayna, but all I ask is that you don’t push me out.

Don’t keep me in the dark. If you want an abortion, we’ll do it together.

I’ll come with you and sit in that fucking waiting room until it’s done.

If you want to keep the kid. I’ll build a fucking nursery. Just… don’t leave me guessing.”

Don’t let me find out about the course of my life by accident .

The way her eyes soften tells me she knows my words come from a place of grief.

Her fingers tangling in my hoodie, as if she can keep me tethered to her. “As scared as I am, as hard as it’s going to be, I want our baby.”

Relief floods me, but I don’t let it slide onto my face.

“Then we’ll have our baby, Dayna. You and me.” I kiss her. My lips brush against hers gently, telling her without words how fucking grateful and happy I am that she’s giving me this chance to be a father.

“Dash?” Riot’s voice cracks through the moment.

She tries to pull back, but I hold her in place as the door opens.

Riot takes us in with a sweep of his eyes. Mace is behind him, and I can hear another voice that’s probably Nic.

“She hurt?”

I shake my head. “No.”

The room becomes small as the guys pile in. The tension blooms, and Dayna doesn’t let go of my hoodie.

“You see the shooters?” Nic asks, cutting through the bullshit to the meat of the fucking problem.

“No. But they were aiming for me. Crawled along the kerb, waited until they identified me, and then pulled their weapons.”

Dayna’s fingers curl deeper into the shirt.

“I don’t know about anybody else, but I’m starting to get fucking pissed off with this shit,” Riot mutters.

“I’ll check the cameras in the area, see if anyone caught anything.” Mace crosses his arms over his chest. “You should get her home.”

I glance at Dayna, pale, trembling. I want to lock her in my apartment and barricade the fucking door.

“We need to go to the hospital first.”

Riot’s head snaps up. “Thought you said you wasn’t hurt.”

“She’s not.” I meet her gaze, trying to tell her with my eyes everything’s going to be fine. “We’re still going.”

Because I’m not taking chances—not with her and not with our child.

I need to hear from someone that the baby I didn’t even know existed until five fucking minutes ago is still alive inside her.