Crash (Brazen Bulls MC #1)(84)

“Let’s go…here, come with me.” Willa led him to a small room, like a closet that somebody had put an old sofa in, and sat him down.

She sat at his side and stared at him for a second or two, her hazel eyes wide. Rad noticed that her color was high as well. She looked scared. This was not helping his sense of calm.

“Jesus f*ck, Wills. What?”

“I’m pregnant.”

His brain had been frantically running through scenarios: Had she seen somebody suspicious? Had there been some kind of contact? Had somebody actively threatened her? Now it skidded to a full stop.

Not a single brain cell had snagged that possibility. They used condoms all the time. Almost. A miss here or there. They’d had that one talk about whether they wanted kids, but that talk hadn’t been about kids so much as it had been about their relationship and where they were headed. That had been the first time they’d said I love you.

“Rad?”

“Sorry…just…shit, baby.” That was all he had. He couldn’t get his brain restarted. She was pregnant?

When Dahlia had made the same statement, about five years ago, she’d stormed into the station to throw a test stick at him and shout the words in front of half his brothers and about six customers.

They’d been about a year and a half from breaking up, about two years from being fully quit of each other, but they’d already been in trouble. They’d been in trouble from a few months after they’d gotten married.

Vegas wedding. Such a f*cking idiotic thing to do.

He’d taken the news with anger first—at her insatiable need for drama, at his inability to think with his brain and not his dick around her—and then with horror. The fear that she’d want to keep it had turned his blood to slush. Dahlia as a mother? Him as a father? Them as parents together? No. What kind of a monster would they have turned that kid into?

But she hadn’t wanted it, either. They’d actually had a few months of calm sailing after she’d ended the pregnancy. The scare, and their instant agreement on what to do about it, had settled them both for a while, and for half a second, Rad had almost believed they’d make it.

Damn, was he glad they hadn’t. What he had with Willa, already, not yet three months in, was better than any moment he’d ever had with Dahlia.

And Willa would be a great mother.

But did he want to be a father? Should he be a father?

Willa took a deep breath and crossed her arms over her chest as if she’d felt a chill. “Look, I know you don’t want kids, and I have no idea if I do, so I don’t know what to do now. If I terminate, or if we have a kid together, I just want to decide together, both of us listening to each other. I don’t want to be alone in this, either way.”

He loosened her hand from its death grip around her arm and held it. “You’re not. I’m here. I just…I don’t know what to think.”

“We don’t have to decide right now. I’m just a few weeks, so we have some time to figure it out. I needed to tell you so I could stop fretting about telling you and get my head back in the game here.”

He laughed. It was like she’d passed him a hot potato—maybe she could get her head in her game now, but his game had just been totally f*cked.



oOo



He spent the afternoon straddling two different worlds. One side of him worked on the brake job and got it done. The other side stared off into space and thought about Willa’s news. By the time he went to pick her up and relieve Wally, he’d made little progress toward understanding what he wanted—and neither, it seemed, had she. They barely spoke on the way back to the clubhouse, where she would wait for him while he was in church, and they’d go home together after.

Once there, Rad had about half an hour before church, so he caught her hand and took her upstairs, to the room they’d stayed in. He sat with her on the side of the bed.

“I know you said we don’t have to make a decision right away, but I need to. That’s how I get my head back in the game, and we got the Russians tomorrow. I need to know. Can we talk this out?”

She nodded. “We can try. I want to decide together. I want us both to want what we decide. It’s too big a deal for one of us to just give in. We need to really agree.”

He understood; any resentment between them about something so big could ruin them completely. “Yeah, you’re right. What are you thinkin’, Wills?”

“You ever notice how everything with us is so huge? These massive crises, one after the other, from the very first moment: the wreck, the brawl at the pool hall, Oklahoma City, Jesse, now this. What if that’s why we feel the way we feel—we’re always in crisis mode, so we’re reacting to that more than relating to each other.”

Her words—their implication that what was between them wasn’t real—hurt, but Rad set it aside. He’d noticed the same thing, and he understood her musing. He’d thought it himself. But he’d come to a conclusion about it.

“I think you’re seein’ it wrong, baby. I think it means we came together without our guards up. We went right through the bullshit and found the truth straight off. That’s how I see it. On the first night, we saw each other for real. Never been anything but real between us since.”

With a smile, she said, “That’s a nice way to think about it.”