Page 104 of The First Cut

“One day, I’ll kill Driller, and then you and our boy will never have to share the same air with him again.”

“Don’t underestimate him.”

“I don’t underestimate anyone. Driller may be a monster, but he has nothing on me. For one thing, he targets women, which makes him weak. He wouldn’t stand a chance up against me. Plus, I have something he doesn’t have.” His hands caress my now empty stomach.

“What’s that?”

“Something worth fighting for. Nothing motivates a man more than his family.”

“The four of us against the world, huh? What happened to you worrying about fucking up?”

“I’m not worried about fucking them up anymore because I know you won’t let me. Nothing scares me except the thought of losing you. You hold my sanity in the palm of your hand, and you don’t even know it.”

“Why do you see me so differently than everyone else?”

He doesn’t answer. Instead, he wraps a handful of my hair around his fist and takes my mouth down to his. He kisses me hard and deep, reminding me that I’m his now and that everything that came before is just fading history like the angsty written pages of a teenage diary.

He kisses me until I lose my breath. When he pulls back, he stares into my eyes. The darkness in them doesn’t scare me anymore. It whispers of promises left unspoken.

“Um…sorry to interrupt.” Nevaeh’s voice pulls us from the moment.

I look over at her and wait.

Her eyes are wide, her skin pale, and she’s shaking ever so slightly. “I think I need to call a couple of club brothers. He’s not in any state to ride right now.”

Hannibal pulls out his cell and fires off a text before slipping his phone back into his cut.

“Go check on him. I’m fine now, I promise.”

“Not leaving you, Lola.”

“I’m not asking you to. I’m asking you to trust me when I say I’m okay. I’ll stay right here where you can hear me call your name if I need you.”

“I’ll stay with her,” Nevaeh offers softly.

Hannibal looks at me in question. When I nod gently, he sighs, kissing my temple before lifting me off his lap and onto the table. He glares at Nevaeh. “Do not make her cry.”

Nevaeh sighs and climbs up onto the table next to me. “I’m not gonna make her cry.”

He continues to glare at her for a second before I say his name softly, making him back off. He stomps into the house, his anger riding him hard now he doesn’t have me in his arms to soften it.

“Driller told you he raped me?”

“Yeah. He told me. I didn’t know the scope of it though. And I didn’t know about the baby. God, Lola, I’m so damn sorry.”

I let my eyes drift closed for a moment and give myself a second or two to take a few deep breaths. “There's a part of me that blames myself for telling Driller I was pregnant.”

“You had no idea he would do what he did. How could you? Only a freaking psychopath would think that was the answer.”

“I know. Even if I hadn’t said anything, it would've become impossible to hide later. I would have just been delaying the inevitable. And all that would've happened is that I’d have fallen in love a little more with a baby that was never meant for this world.”

“Then why do you still blame yourself? I don’t understand.”

“Because when I found out I was pregnant, I wasn’t sure I was ready. This shiny dream of ours had slowly started to rust. A baby is not a Band-Aid. I knew it wouldn’t fix what was breaking between us. It’s why I put off telling Havoc. I needed time to get my thoughts together. I needed to find a way to explain to him that I was unhappy and I didn’t know how to fix things on my own.”

“And then he was gone.”

“And then he was gone,” I agree.