Well, shit.
I couldn’t move.
I couldn’t speak.
My mind was a chaotic whirlwind.
She was pregnant.
It was mine.
I was going to be a father.
“Fuck,” I rasped.
4
~Natasha~
HE WAS COMING.
Shit.
I was in some major trouble. Trouble I couldn’t save myself from, trouble I couldn’t escape by the skin of my teeth. No, this was far bigger than the usual crap I dealt with.
For once, I needed help.
For once, I needed to rely on people outside of myself.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t going to be the only man I’d ever allowed myself to trust, the man I loved with everything I was.
He’d turned his back.
He couldn’t handle the truth I’d been forced to confess when I’d gotten that awful call.
He’d even accused me of planning the entire thing, of getting close to him because of who and what he was associated with.
The enemy of my enemy.
Basically, he was accusing me of being a whore. Did he think so low of me that he really thought I’d been using him, fucking and faking my love for him just to get something from him?
Tears sprung to my eyes. I wiped them away hastily, but they just kept on falling until I was full-on sobbing. I never let people in, but I’d broken my rule for him. I thought I’d finally found someone who truly understood me, who could love me unconditionally, like I did him. But judging by his explosion of temper when I’d told him that my past had found me, and him storming out with a slew of curses, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
And it was breaking my heart.
The entire situation was.
How could a single mistake stick to me in such a way that it continued to ruin every aspect of my life? My psychotic ex just wouldn’t allow me to escape. Something that’d been little more than a fling on my part had meant a great deal more to him. He was obsessed. He wouldn’t stop coming for me.
“Hey.”
I jerked my head up at the sound of the gravelly voice to find Cole’s best friend and club brother, Mason, leaning against the open door. Wow. I’d been so consumed with my thoughts that I hadn’t even heard him open it. I was surprised the thing was still operational after the brutal way Cole had slammed it behind him earlier.
“Hi,” I eked out, hastily wiping my tears away.
He strode on in, eating up the distance between the door and where I sat on the edge of Cole’s bed really quickly.
“He reacts like that when he feels threatened or betrayed. Can’t help it. It’s a reflex for him,” Mason explained.
“I didn’t, though. I didn’t betray him.”
Mason looked skeptical, folding his huge inked arms across his chest, pressing against his Steel Titans leather cut.
“When we first met and he came to me in my city asking me to run a shipment for him, he wasn’t in club colors. I had no idea he was Steel Titans until weeks later when I’d completed the covert job for him and he paid me with a check from Slade Mitchell. That was when I realized it was a covert job he’d been running for you guys. I don’t pry into my clients’ business. That’s one of the reasons people come to me, for my discretion.” I sighed heavily. “By the time the truth came out, we’d already grown close. I didn’t want anything to mess up what we were building.”
“You had months to tell him.”
“I love him. Why should my past… associations have any role in our relationship, have any impact on it?”
“He’s club, that’s why. We act as one. What he does comes back on us and vice versa. Nik Stone is our number-one enemy. And you’re his woman. Yeah, that’s a big fucking deal.”
“I’m not his woman!” I yelled, before I could check myself. “It was a fling. It meant nothing!”
Mason scoffed, like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, like what I was saying was insane. “You don’t go in for just a fling with a guy like Nik. He usually only screws around with club whores. Anybody outside of them that he sets his sights on isn’t something to be taken lightly. The last woman he took a liking to was Slade’s Old Lady. It ended up with a brutal fucking war and her put to ground.”
I swallowed hard.
“I’m not telling you this to scare you. Just trying to wise you up to the reality here.”
“I get it just fine.”
“Yeah?” he questioned.
Shit. I knew what I had to do.
Time was running out.
Cole had walked out on me.
His sister, Lucy, had no hope of helping me to get through to him. We’d grown close over the last few months and I knew she’d jump to help me if she could, but Cole never listened to her.
But Mason was here.
He just needed some gentle persuasion to ease up with his defensiveness borne from his security role with the club and be opened up to see things from my point of view.
I felt sick to my stomach knowing what I was about to do.
But the situation was as desperate as could be.
I had to stick to my mantra, which had served me well over the years.
Survival above all.
“Yeah, I do,” I told Mason as I rose to my feet.
I made a show of fixing my low-cut scoop neck top, flashing my cleavage in the process.
Mason’s eyes darted right there. His interest was obvious. I could see a struggle there before he dragged his gaze back to my eyes and shifted his weight uncomfortably.
“I need your help, Mason,” I crooned, stepping closer to him.
Cole had basically accused me of whoring myself out for protection so I might as well actually do it. I had nothing left
