Page 87 of Dash

I grab her hands, pulling them away from her sweater. I’m shaking and expecting blood, wounds that I can’t heal, but there’s nothing, just the soft curve of her belly and hips.

“Are you hurt?” I demand again, same question, different wording.

Her eyes open and the look in them scares the fuck out of me. “I don’t… I’m not…” She swallows, her hand over her stomach again. Did she hit it when I pushed her down.

“Babe, talk.”

She squeezes her eyes shut. “I’m pregnant.”

She says it so quietly that I almost don’t hear it.

“What?”

Tears slide down her cheeks, not loud, not ugly, just there. “I’m pregnant,” she repeats. “I don’t know if the baby’s okay.”

She sits up, slow and awkward, her hand never leaving her stomach. My eyes don’t either. She’s…pregnant?

And now, the fear pounding through me is a completely different kind of terror.

She’s carrying my kid, and I just threw her on the ground like a rag doll.

I crushed her under my body while bullets flew around us.

I grab her face between my hands, and her fearful eyes find mine. “You’re pregnant.” The words catch in my throat. “You’re fucking pregnant?”

Something flickers in her eyes, something I don’t like. Guilt, maybe shame, I’m not sure which. “I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

I don’t care about that right now. I care that she’s got my baby in her belly and I might have hurt her…them.

I care that we’re exposed here. “We need to move.”

She flinches. I can’t blame her. I just cut the legs out from under her while she’s freaking out, but we don’t have time to deal with that now. They could come back. They could bring more men with them. Two shootings, and I’m at the centre of both of them.

That shit isn’t coincidence.

It’s a fucking hit.

I lift out of my crouch, peering through the broken car window. I can’t see shit, can’t see the van, can’t see any weapons or danger, but that doesn’t mean we’re safe.

My gaze drops to her belly, the place she’s protecting. To our baby.

Because it is ours.

Fuck. Our kid.

Suddenly, everything makes sense. Her tiredness, sensitive boobs, the emotional outbursts, the distance, feeling unwell…

All the symptoms were there, and I missed every single fucking one. I thought she was leaving me. I thought I’d have to drag her back into this relationship, and fuck, all this time she was spiralling over the life growing inside her.

Does she think I wouldn’t want this baby?

Another pregnancy. Another time.

It smacks into me, the memory of a life taken without discussion, without involvement.

Dayna isn’t Kendall, but she hid this from me and fuck if that doesn’t cut.

I grip her biceps, hauling her to her feet. Dayna wobbles, still protecting her stomach.

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