Page 31 of Shadow’s Protection (Hurricane Heat MC #1)

Shadow

The second Violet falls asleep, I’m out of bed.

I close her door quietly behind me and head back to the living room.

I turn on all the lights, lock the doors, and take the groceries to the kitchen.

Her place is cute, generic and clean in a “flip it and rent it” kind of way, but she’s added a lot of character.

I feel like I’m getting to know her in a different way through her things.

Her kitchen is decorated in a strawberries-and-baby-blue color scheme, and by God, she leans into the theme.

The teakettle on the stove is sky blue. The oven mitts and dish towels have strawberries on them.

She has potted plants everywhere—like, crazy-plant-lady everywhere.

I recognize a few fresh herbs because they have those little chalkboard signs with the names written on them: thyme, sage, basil, and mint.

I unpack Stella’s groceries and send her a text.

Me: She’s sick. Puking up her guts, but nothing coming out. Soup okay?

I get a dozen sad-face emojis back and then a thumbs-up.

Stella: Make it plain. Nothing in it for now.

Just broth. Have her sip it slowly, a cup at a time.

See if she can keep it down. Then you can add crackers or rice.

Add a little salt to the soup, and if you think she can handle the electrolyte drink, serve that too.

Maybe room temperature. Cold might actually be hard on her tummy.

This is the longest fucking text message I have ever read in my life. I swear to fuck, I thought there was like a character limit on that shit. But I read it twice, making sure I get every piece of advice.

I thumbs-up it because I’m exhausted from reading it and don’t have the energy to reply. But then I think the better of it and text back.

Me: Thanks, Stel.

That was a huge freaking mistake, though, because she replies again. It’s just to ask me to check in later and let her know how Violet is, but I’m done reading and communicating.

Now’s the time for action. I go through every cabinet and cupboard and put away everything I bought. I find the pots and pans and go on the hunt for the washing machine because it grosses me out to have that towel just lying around.

I find the washer and spend way too long reading the instructions.

We have commercial machines in the compound—big things almost like what we had in prison, but this is so high-tech, all sensor-operated and shit, it takes me like twenty minutes before I feel confident where to put the damn detergent.

But I manage to start a load of laundry and am relieved that the machine seems quiet enough it won’t wake Violet.

I take a small blue pan that matches the décor in the rest of the kitchen and put it on the stovetop.

Dumping in a can of plain old chicken broth with a dash of salt from a strawberry-shaped shaker, I start the burner, then remember she said she’d put a tea someplace.

I see it on the counter by the plants where some paperwork and a brown paper bag are just sitting out.

I hesitate before looking at the papers, but I figure if this is the shit from the doctor, it can help me to take care of her if I know what the doctor told her. I scan the details.

Violet James, thirty-two years old. Dr. Sally Yamaguchi, OB-GYN.

My heart stops in my chest. Why would Violet go to an OB-GYN? My mind leaps to the worst-case scenario. She looked thinner than I remember, and she’s been vomiting. Could she have some lady problem? Cancer? An STI?

I’ve been fine since we were together, but it’s been a bit since I’ve seen her, so who knows. My eyes tear down the paper, braced for words like tumor or mass, but what I see shocks me even more.

Patient presents with hyperemesis gravidarum …

I grab my phone and punch in the term. What the actual fuck is that?

And then my heart plummets into my shoes.

Hyperemesis gravidarum… Excessive nausea and vomiting during pregnancy.

Pregnancy.

Violet is pregnant?

I scan the rest of the report.

Gestational age estimate nine weeks.

Follow-up by telehealth in two weeks.

I grab the brown paper bag and pull out the bottle. Prenatal vitamins.

Holy fucking shit.

I drop down onto a strawberry-shaped chair cushion on a bright-blue-painted kitchen chair, but then I startle when I hear the soup boiling.

“Fuck.” I jump up, turn the burner off, and let the soup cool since Stella said not to give her anything too hot or too cold.

I do the math in my head. If Violet is nine weeks pregnant, and we were together just over four weeks ago…

Was she pregnant when she met me? Is the baby even mine?

I rack my brain, remembering what she said when we were together.

The time we fucked without a condom for just a minute before I came all over her tits.

She’d said she was about to get her period.

That means she shouldn’t have been fertile.

I suppose she could have been pregnant then, but…

I pick up the phone.

“Stel, I need help.”

I explain the situation to her.

“So, does that mean the baby’s mine?”

“Oh, Shadow.” Stella sounds so happy, I am already braced for her to tell me it is mine.

But I listen anyway. “Pregnancy math makes no sense, and yeah, it’s possible that if she was with someone in the week or two before she met you, then you could have a paternity question going on.

But the math works for it to be yours, based on what you’ve told me. Did she tell you you’re the father?”

“She’s asleep,” I tell her. “We haven’t talked. She puked and passed out.”

Stella and I talk for a couple more minutes, and I swear her to total secrecy. I don’t need anybody knowing about this before I know what Violet’s intentions are. For all I know, she won’t want to carry it. Won’t want to keep it. I’m gonna keep my cool until she’s well enough to talk.

I make a second call. Phantom doesn’t pick up, and I don’t leave a voice message. He calls me back a minute later.

“Sorry, was on the shitter,” he says. “I don’t take my phone in the can.”

“Didn’t need to know that, but thanks for calling back.” I tell him I have a family emergency and I’ll be out of pocket for a couple days, won’t be coming home. “I may not have a chance to get much work done,” I say.

I know I don’t have to explain. Phantom runs a tight club. He knows who owes us money, when it’s due, and who’s assigned to collect.

“What do you want me to do? Give him more time, or send somebody in?”

“Your call,” I tell him. I like to let my prez make the decisions. “But we gave him an inch last month, and this month, he’s taking a mile.”

“Noted. Maybe I’ll go myself. If Malcolm thinks he was shitting himself today…”

I laugh. “Thanks, brother.”

“Take care of family. You need anything, you call.” He hangs up without saying goodbye, and I walk over to test the temperature of Violet’s soup. It’s still hot, so I fold back up the doctor’s notes and put the prenatal vitamins back in the bag where I found them.

If Violet feels strong enough to get up, maybe she won’t automatically assume I saw them. I’ll give her time to tell me the news herself. I need some time to process it too.

“Another sip.” I hold the spoon out to Violet.

She opens her mouth, and I feed her the broth. “I can’t believe how good this is. What did you put in this?”

“Salt,” I laugh. “Good old-fashioned salt. Although you got some fancy shit in that strawberry shaker. At first, I thought it was sugar because it’s pink.”

She swallows, closing her eyes and humming as the plain, tepid broth goes down. “Himalayan salt,” she explains. “So delicious.”

I lit a few candles in her bedroom and brought in clean towels so she’d have a supply in case the soup came back up, but she’s managed to tolerate it so far.

I hold out the mug of ginger tea. “I’m gonna order a sandwich,” I tell her. “I didn’t know how long I’d be here, so I didn’t shop for me. I’ll eat in the kitchen so the smell doesn’t bother you. Unless…” I lift my brows. “You think you’re up for solid food?”

She covers her mouth and shakes her head. “Not yet. Let’s not tempt fate. The fact that you got this much into me is a miracle. Today was a rough day.” She falls silent, and I sit beside her on the bed.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here sooner. Sounds like you’ve been in some kinda way for a while now.” I give her a little opening. A chance to spill what she knows about the baby, but she looks away.

“Shadow, this isn’t how I wanted things to go. As much as I wanted to see you again…”

I hold up a hand. “Well, I’m here now. Let’s make the most of the time we have.” I get up and collect the dishes. “I’ll bring water and more tea when I come back. You want anything? Some of that sports drink?”

She shakes her head. “I’ll let the soup settle. Thank you.”

I turn to leave her room but stop at what she says next.

“I missed you every day. Every single day.”

I don’t know how to respond to that. I firm my lips and head into the kitchen. I put the dishes in the dishwasher and pull up an app on my phone. I order a sandwich and then sink down on a damn berry cushion to wait for the delivery.

I need to face the giant fucking elephant in the room at some point.

She missed me. Missed me every day. I sure as hell missed her every day.

I missed her so much that some nights, I’d lie in bed and my chest would ache.

I’d remember her smell and the way I slept like a goddamn corpse with her beside me.

I feel like I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since she left.

And I asked her to stay, but she didn’t.

Not that I blame her. I don’t know what a man like me could offer a woman like her.

I’m a criminal. Lawless, through and through.

I live by a code, but that doesn’t mean I’m not a single wrong step away from a one-way ticket back behind bars.

I have the money and the power to buy sheriffs, cops, judges today—but I’m almost forty.

How’s it gonna be when I’m sixty and can’t kick ass like I can today?

I have never been a guy who thought he’d live to see the age of thirty, let alone be planning to turn fifty or even sixty.

But meeting Violet changed me. I don’t think I could change enough to deserve her, though.

My phone chirps when the food is here, and since I don’t know the access code to let the driver in, I run to Violet’s room to ask for her keys.

When I enter the room, she’s rubbing her belly through the blanket, staring blankly down at her hand.

“Hey.”

At the sound of my voice, her eyes snap up and she smiles. “I was congratulating my stomach on a job well done. Soup’s still where I left it.”

Something inside me goes feral in that moment. She wasn’t talking to any damn soup. She was talking to the baby. Our baby .

“Good, sweetheart. Rest and I’ll be back.”

She gives me a smile as her eyes slowly close.

I eat standing up at her kitchen counter, dropping Stella a text.

Me: Soup worked. Keeping it down so far. Good call on the salt.

She texts me back a massive row of emojis and likes the text. Stella’s good people. I don’t know a ton about her, but I’ll have to do something nice for her—detail her car or something—when I’m back at the compound.

A few days and maybe Violet will spill it. Tell me about the baby and what she plans to do. What she wants. Until then, I’m gonna do my best not to get attached. I don’t do relationships, but that was before I met Violet James.