Page 45

Chapter 45

Hunter

When Joey arrives, she swings the door open, plants one hand on her hip, and looks me up and down.

“See? She’s fine,” she says over her shoulder to a person, maybe people, we can’t see. “Wait here.” She strides into the room, closes the door behind her, and hits each and every one of my men with the surliest, nastiest stare.

“You all have some serious explaining to do.”

“Good to see you too, Joze,” Greedy teases from the vinyl couch. He’s been pacing since we texted Joey two hours ago.

She sent a message not too long ago, saying she had to stop at the drugstore on her way because she swore she had a pregnancy test at home, but couldn’t find it anywhere.

Whoops…

“Don’t start with me, Garrett Reed,” she singsongs, sashaying over to my bedside. “There are two very agitated men outside those doors who are, A, livid our afternoon in an empty house for the first time in months was interrupted, and B, even more perturbed I wouldn’t let them come into the drugstore with me.”

“Perturbed?” Levi mouths, face scrunched up in bewilderment.

“Sorry.” The word, like every other I’ve uttered, makes me wince.

Joey’s attitude evaporates in an instant. She’s by my side a second later.

“No one’s mad at you, babe. I swear. Though I do have some questions.” She raises both eyebrows, all sorts of mischief painted on her face.

“Help me to the bathroom?”

The nurse came by and removed the catheter an hour ago and helped me use the toilet on my own, but with all the fluids they’ve been pumping into me, I could burst again already.

With slow, deliberate movements, aided by Sione on one side and Joey on the other—although all the guys are squirming and anxious to jump in and help—I make it to the small bathroom.

At the door, I look back, wildly nervous and nowhere near as hopeful as they look. I worry my lip as I take in each guy. Should I invite them in here? They won’t all fit, and if they can’t all be here, I don’t know how I’m supposed to—

“Go on, Mahina,” Sione encourages. “We’re okay to wait here.”

Like always, his soothing tone calms me.

“Shouldn’t they have these available here?” Joey quips once we’re in the bathroom with the door shut behind us. She thrusts the plastic drugstore bag out, the sound loud in the small, tiled space.

Wincing, I hold out a hand.

With a squeak, she yanks it back and pulls the box out for me. “Do you want to pee on the stick or into the cup?”

My eyes go blurry. God, she’s so kind and beautiful and helpful. I wish I could stop the waterworks. It hurts when the salty tears streak down my face and sear the little cuts from the broken glass of the picture frame I clung to as I fell down the stairs.

Flovely. Now I’m crying and in even more pain.

“Cup, please,” I sniffle.

“Hunter.” Her bright blue eyes go wide as she takes me in, then they start to fill with tears. “Shit on a crumbly cracker.” She drops the open box and still sealed contents on the counter and wraps me in a gentle hug.

I squeeze her back, despite the aches and pains. I’m just so damn grateful to have her in my life.

She’s the very best friend a girl could ask for. I don’t know what I would do or who I would be if she hadn’t swept into my life last August.

“I didn’t realize you were genuinely upset,” she says into my hair. “I was just teasing the boys. But you’re really worried, aren’t you?”

She pulls back and holds me at arm’s length.

Oh. The air rushes out of me in a painful breath. “ No . I’m not worried at all about this.” I sweep a hand through the air, gesturing to the half-opened pregnancy test supplies scattered around the sink. “I’m just really glad you’re here. That you dropped everything. That you came—”

Fresh tears wash over me and steal the words out of my mouth. Head lowered, I sniffle and wipe at the corners of my eyes.

“Babe,” Joey deadpans.

When I peek up at her, she’s back to her usual sassy self: both hands on her hips, one brow arched.

“There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you. There isn’t a person in this world I’d let stand in my way of getting to you when you need me, our cohorts included.”

I scrunch my nose. “Cohort is really the word we’ve settled on?”

Joey snorts. “Kylian and Spence use it regularly. I don’t think the rest of us have a say when those two put their heads together.”

A sense of knowing nudges at my subconscious. Spence. Kylian. I turn to Joey, contemplating how much to say, or if I should say anything at all.

On a whisper, I confess, “I think Spence…” I search for the words but come up short.

“Unalived Magnolia?” she asks, deadpan. “Shmurdered the momster? Deleted your egg donor?”

“Joey!”

“What?” She throws her head back and cackles. “You’re the one who always sends me those videos where people recommend books without using the words ‘kill’ or ‘murder.’ You have no one to blame but yourself.”

The last statement hits hard. She’s right. Magnolia is… gone, based on what I’ve surmised. And there’s no one to blame but me.

“Hey, Hunt?”

“Hmm?”

“How’d you get all those cuts and bruises?” She traces a perfectly polished red nail along a particularly nasty purple patch above my elbow.

I don’t answer. I don’t have to. She knows. Just like she knows this is the reminder I need to pull me out of my darkening thoughts.

“She wasn’t giving up, babe. I laid awake so many nights worrying, knowing damn well you weren’t safe while she was still breathing. Kylian assured me Spence had it under control.”

I gasp at that confession.

“It was her or you, Hunter. And I’m really, really glad it wasn’t you.”

She pulls me into another hug, this one tight and desperate, but comforting all the same.

A knock on the other side of the door startles us apart.

“Josephine?”

Eyes wide, Joey slams her palm against the solid wood separating us from her husband. “Decker Crusade, I told you to give us a minute—”

“It’s been ten minutes, Siren.”

“Shit.” She grabs a disposable cup from a stack by the sink and hands it to me. “Fill ’er up,” she tells me. Then she whips around, faces the door, and yells, “We need three more minutes.”

The “pee in a cup” method is far less messy than the “try to aim your urethra and temper your flow enough to pee on a stick” method. Lesson fucking learned.

I cap the test and turn it over right away, ignoring the questioning look my best friend gives me.

While we wait, she helps me wash up, spraying a bit of dry shampoo she pulled from the drugstore bag on my scalp and handing me a fresh toothbrush and mini toothpaste.

“You’re a lifesaver,” I praise. I’m desperate to feel some semblance of clean.

“Better than a life-ender,” she quips.

A mix of horror and delirious giddiness courses through me. “ Joey ,” I shriek, my new toothbrush hanging from my mouth.

“I’m kidding.”

“Girl.” I lower my voice. “Seriously. If Spence hears us joking about—”

She holds out her little finger. “I pinky promise not to make any comments, jokes, or other remarks about what your man may or may not have done to the woman formerly known as Magnolia.”

I link my little finger with hers, then release her, rinse, and spit.

“Are you upset by any of it?” She casts her focus down, fiddling with her phone as the timer counts down on the screen.

“Not even a little,” I confess. I’m hit with a zap of guilt about that, though it’s not nearly as intense as it maybe should be. “Does that make me a bad daughter? A horrible person?”

She lifts her chin and looks me in the eye. “Not even a little.”

The alarm on her phone rings. Time is officially up.

I snag the stick off the counter, keeping it turned down so I can’t see the results. Before Joey can question me, I throw the bathroom door open and find myself under the scrutiny of six very curious men.

All my guys—plus Decker and Locke—stand around the room, on edge.

“I’ll get them out of here,” Joey murmurs, hand held out. “But first, may I?”

Grinning, I hand her the plastic stick. I can’t resist watching her face as she reads the result. She gives nothing away. I should have known. She has the best damn poker face I’ve ever seen. She hands the test back to me, collects her men, and heads for the door.

Once it’s just the five of us—my cohort , apparently—I shuffle over to Greedy and hand the test directly to him.

He flips it over with so much urgency, he nearly drops it. Then he lifts his head, smiles so wide I can see his molars, and lets out a resounding whoop.

“You’re pregnant!”

Chaos ensues. All my guys clammer for a peek at the test, each of them surveying the thin white stick with the kind of admiration one would expect they’d have for the actual baby.

“You’re pregnant.” Greedy loops his arms around me with the gentlest of touches and brings his lips millimeters from mine. “It worked, Tem. It worked. We’re having a baby.”

He blinks, the motion sending tears streaming down his cheeks. Tears that match my own.

We’re having a baby.

When I look back on this day, I won’t think of it as the day I woke up in the hospital riddled with injuries. Nor will I remember it as the day I found out my lover killed off my mother. No, when I think back, this will be the day I found out I’m having a baby. For real. With the men I love by my side.

Sione and Spence clap each other on the back, then in a unified front, they peel Greedy off me so they can wrap me up in a hug.

Just when I think my heart can’t handle another shred of emotion, Greedy tackles Levi on the squeaky vinyl couch, and chants, “We’re having a baby! We’re having a baby!”