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TWENTY-FIVE

DASH

Dayna sleeps in the taxi. The dark circles under her eyes are stark against her pale skin and I want to erase them. The fact she’s been going through this alone burns through me, but I push those feelings down. Getting angry or frustrated isn’t going to help.

Focus on the present, the future.

When the driver stops outside her place, I pay him and come around to Dayna’s door.

She doesn’t look peaceful. It’s the kind of exhaustion that settles into the bones until the body crashes.

I plan on making sure she sleeps tonight and every night after.

I rub my knuckles along her cheekbone. “Dayna?”

Her eyes flutter then open. There’s a flash of confusion before she locks her gaze on me. “Did I sleep the whole way?”

“And snored.”

She looks offended. “I don’t snore, and if I did, which I’m not saying I did, it was like a kitten.”

“You sounded like a jet engine. Can you walk?”

She arches a brow. “If I say no, are you going to carry me inside like some kind of highborn lady?”

I kiss her forehead. “I’ll carry you anywhere you need.”

“I guess chivalry is still alive and kicking, just in denim and leather, riding motorcycles rather than horses.” I keep my grip on her biceps firm as I help her out of the car. She frowns. “This isn’t my building.”

“It’s mine,” I say.

In the few months we’ve been dating, we’ve never come to my place. It just made more sense to be at hers.

But that was before.

Now, Dayna’s carrying our world inside her and someone is trying to kill me. I don’t trust her building security.

I wait for her to argue, but she doesn’t. “You’d better have some top quality snacks,” is all she says.

I keep my wits about me and breathe easier once we’re inside my building. Her gaze is everywhere as we head for the lift.

“You’ve been withholding, Maddox.” I don’t know why, but her calling me by my surname fucking turns me on. “Why in the hell have we been hanging out at my slum flat when you live here?”

And just like that, my good mood vanishes. I can see how she’s tried to make it her own, how she’s tried to create a space that feels like home. “I like your place.”

She arches a brow when I press the button to call the lift. “Now, I know you’re lying. You moan about everything.”

“No, I moaned about the security at the entrance and the fact that the lock on your front door was so shit a love tap would have opened it.” The lift arrives, empty, and I place my hand on the small of her back to guide her inside. “But I like your place. Everything about it is just… you.”

Her smile is real. “It’s home. Or it was.”

“Was?”

“Yeah. Home’s not a place, Dash. It’s your person. You’re my home.”

Fuck. I brush my fingers over her cheek. I like when she gives me those pieces of her that she seems to hide from everyone else.

“You’re mine too.”

When the lift doors open, I hold my hand out to her. I keep her close, just in case someone managed to get past the security in the building, but the corridors are empty.

She whistles under her breath as she takes in the thick carpeted floors and wood panels that look like something out of a designer’s magazine.

I open the front door to my place, stepping aside to let her in. She moves slowly through my space—our space, if I have my way.

I can picture her fairy lights hanging over my bed, her throw cushions on my couch, her toiletries in my shower.

I watch as she walks over to the window that spans the living room and peers out over the city. Birmingham stretches beneath us, a mass of lights and concrete.

I give her a moment to breathe before I wrap my arms around her stomach, my chin on the top of her head.

“Are you sure you’re okay with all this?” she asks. I kiss her neck, dragging a breathy moan out of her. “Because this is your last chance to walk away, Dash. I’m not letting you go after this.”

“I don’t want to walk away. I want to be a father to the baby we made, Dayna.”

She tilts her head to give me the long line of her neck. “We have to talk about something though.” She turns, pulling my mouth away from her skin. “Someone tried to kill us.”

I don’t want to talk about that. I don’t wanna scare her. “They tried to kill me, Dayna, not you.”

The look on her face is why I didn’t want her to be involved in this. “Why?”

“I don’t know.” I hate admitting that. I feel fucking useless. “But my club brothers, they’re looking into it. We’ll figure it out. Until then, I want you here. I need to know you’re safe.”

“And what about you? How do I know you’re safe?” Worry ripples across her face. “They shot at you in the middle of the day. They didn’t care who saw.”

“I don’t want you to worry about this.”

She stares at me as if I’ve lost my mind. “Right. I’ll just forget about the insane gunmen who tried to shoot you in the middle of the street like we were in a fucking movie.” She recoils. “This wasn’t the first time they’ve tried, was it? When you got that head injury… that was them too, right?”

I reach for her, but she steps back. “Dayna, it’s handled.”

“What part of this is handled? The part where you nearly died?”

This time, when I swallow her space, I don’t let her move away. My hands on her seem to ground the swirling panic in her eyes. “It’s handled,” I repeat. “The only thing you need to worry about is taking care of yourself and our baby.”

“If something happens to you?—”

“It won’t.”

“You can’t guarantee that.”

“I can.” And I mean every word when I say this. “I didn’t have anything to fight for before. Now, I do. There is nothing that is going to stop me from coming home to this every fucking night, do you hear me? Nothing. Now, do you want food, a shower, to sleep?”

She stares at me like she wants to throttle me, but eventually, her shoulders slump, the fight leaving her eyes. “All of the above. I’ll have to stop by my place tomorrow to get my uniform.”

“What uniform?”

She freezes. “Uh… for work.”

“You wear office shit for work.”

“I do. Hey, do you have any chocolate? I could really murder something sweet.”

She’s doing that thing where she avoids answering something she doesn’t want to by flipping into another topic. “So, why do you need to pick up your uniform?”

“For the coffee shop where I also work.”

What the actual fuck? “All these late finishes were because you were working a second job?”

No wonder she was so fucking tired. Two jobs, pregnant.

She shifts her shoulders. “Existing is expensive, Dash, especially for a girl living alone in a city.”

I rub my temple, a headache forming somewhere behind my eyebrow. She’s growing our baby and working two jobs while I’ve been coasting on club money. “You’re not doing that anymore.”

The shift in her demeanour is visceral. Playful has left the building. Now, she’s moving into irritated. “Am I? Are you going to pay my bills?”

“Yes,” I say without missing a beat.

She blinks at me. “What? No. That’s not how this works.”

“That’s exactly how this works. Do you really think I’m going to let you work yourself into the ground doing two fucking jobs?”

“I mean, it’s not ideal?—”

“It’s not happening.”

She drops her hands to her hips, her lips pouting, and fuck, I want to kiss her.

“You don’t get to tell me I can’t do things just because I’m having your baby now. That’s not how this works.”

I kiss her temple, and some of the fight drains out of her. “Let me tell you exactly how this works. I take care of you, and you don’t run yourself into the ground just trying to keep the lights on. If I’d known you were working two jobs these last few months, I would’ve stopped it.”

“I’m fine. I survived.”

The flippant way she sees it strikes a nerve inside me. “I don’t want you to survive, Dayna. I want you to fucking live. I want you to be happy. I want you to enjoy your life, not be worn down by it.”

I tear my fingers through my hair, needing to do something with my hands before I put them through something. “All this time, you’ve been breaking yourself in half and you didn’t even think to tell me that you were struggling.”

“I didn’t think you’d be here long enough for it to matter.” And there it is.

The way she says it breaks something inside of me. She genuinely didn’t think we were going to last.

I was building a future for us behind the scenes while she was creating backup plans for when it went wrong.

“It mattered.”

“I know that now, but I didn’t at the time.”

I take her face in my hands. “You’re everything to me. Even before I knew about the baby, I was all in this. I fucking love you.”

Her breath hitches, as if I punched her in the heart. I keep going, not wanting her to lessen the moment with a joke.

I’ve never been more serious in my entire fucking life.

“I’ve loved you since the first moment I heard you laugh in that fucking bar,” I continue.

“From the moment you opened your mouth and gave me that sharp fucking tongue of yours. You look at yourself and you only see the bad, but those parts of you that you want to hide, those are the ones I love the most. You never have to shrink yourself from me, Dayna. I want you to be unapologetically you.”

Tears brim in her eyes, and when they fall, I capture them with my thumb. It makes my chest ache to see them. “It’s really not fair of you to make a hormonal pregnant woman cry.”

“Every time you cry, I’ll just kiss those tears away.” I scan her face and then take a leap, hoping she’ll jump with me. “Move in with me.”

She blinks. “That’s a bit quick, isn’t it?”

“You’re standing here with my baby inside you. Quick has left the fucking building.”

She laughs. “Fair point. What if it doesn’t work out? What if you hate living with me? I’m really particular about where things go. I have annoying habits, like I never use the last finger of shower gel or shampoo. I really like fairy lights. And I definitely drool in my sleep.”

“You also steal my clothes, the duvet, and your taste in movies is fucking criminal.” I brush my mouth to hers. “But as long as you’re in my bed, in my space, I don’t care.”

“But—”

“Stop arguing with me.”

Her eye roll is weak. “I’m not arguing. I’m just pointing out very valid concerns.”

“I don’t want you to try to be more palatable. I want your shit in my drawers, your smell on my sheets. I want everything you are, Dayna. So, just fucking move in. Quit that second job. Quit both fucking jobs if you want. I don’t care. Just give yourself permission to breathe without drowning.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“You were worried about telling me you’re pregnant because you didn’t think I’d step up. Well, I’m stepping up. I got money, more than enough to look after you and a whole fucking house full of kids if you want them.”

Her lips part as she breathes. “Dash…”

“I mean it.

“I know you do, but let’s get through the first kid before we plan for a football team.”

“So, are you moving in?”

“The thought of not sleeping next to you makes me irrationally angry. Plus, I really like morning sex. It’s easier to do when we’re in the same place. Also, can we cycle back to the fact that you said you love me?”

It’s a typical Dayna deflection, but I’ll let it pass this time.

I kiss her like I’m starved for her. “I do love you.”

She smiles. “That’s good to know because I love you too, and it would have been lame if I’d been the only one out on this limb.”