Chapter 15 Melissa
Melissa
The room above the Bloody Scythes clubhouse was barely bigger than a jail cell, which fit, because that’s what it felt like.
The window was covered with bars welded in, like the world outside was so hungry it might reach in and pull you out by the hair.
Even with the night on full blackout, the moon managed to sneak strips of light across the bed’s stained sheet, enough to paint a white line across my ankles as I paced.
I’d counted the planks in the floor more times than I’d counted the bruises blooming on my hips, which was saying something.
My whole body buzzed like a tuning fork—nerves, hangover, maybe low blood sugar—but most of the static was coming from one place, low in my belly where I kept cradling it like a stolen wallet.
I could feel the nausea coil there, hot and slow and patient, waiting to show me who was boss.
Below my feet, the war council was in session. Every time Damron yelled, the floor vibrated, and the sound traveled up through the sole of my boot and into my jaw. I tried to ignore it, but all I could picture was the clusterfuck brewing under that nicotine-stained ceiling.
My period was still a week away, but in my heart of hearts, I knew I was going to miss it. Breasts hurting? Not yet. Nausea? Yeah, because I knew. Smells? For now. A woman knew her body.
I planted my hands on the edge of the little table, then thought better of it and braced against the wall instead, forehead pressed to the paint.
I breathed slow, in through the nose, out through the teeth.
My entire world had shrunk down to this one moment—waiting for the boots on the stairs, the click of the lock, and the way the room would tilt when Augustine finally walked in.
When the door cracked, it wasn’t subtle.
Augustine shoved it open like he expected someone to be waiting to shoot him on the other side.
He was still wearing his jacket, still bleeding a little through the tape job on his side.
The look on his face said he’d rather be anywhere else, but his feet brought him to me anyway.
He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, shoulders hunched and so tight he could’ve snapped the jamb with a shrug. His eyes landed on my hand, which was doing that thing again—pressed to my stomach like I was holding in a secret. I yanked it away.
He didn’t say anything. Not at first. Just let the air thicken between us, waiting for me to go first. It was an old habit of his: let the suspect talk, see what shakes loose. I hated him for it, almost as much as I loved him for everything else.
“Any news?” I asked, voice shredded from the last round of dry heaves.
He shook his head, slow. “Same as before. Leatherbacks are moving on the north side. Seneca thinks they’ll hit before dawn. Damron’s got the club on lockdown.” His eyes flicked to the cot, then to my face, then to the floor. “You okay?”
I wanted to laugh. Instead, I just stared at him, tasting the bile in the back of my throat. If I waited, maybe the right words would come. But they didn’t.
He waited, too.
Finally, I said, “I think I’m pregnant.”
The words just slipped out, raw and naked, and hung in the air like a gunshot that hadn’t decided who to kill yet.
Augustine didn’t move. Didn’t blink, didn’t uncross his arms. His face did a whole circuit: shock, then confusion, then something else—hope?
No, not hope. Something uglier and better, all at once.
He ground his jaw, and I could see the little muscle spasm there, the way it always did when he was about to do something reckless.
I kept going. “I’m not sure,” I said. “Just a feeling, and my body feels…” I made a helpless gesture, like maybe I could just peel off my own skin and point to the part that was wrong.
Augustine let out a sound, half-laugh, half-cough. “Fuck.”
That was it. Just that one word, but it said everything.
He stepped in, closed the door behind him, and then stood there, staring at the floor.
The silence was so heavy I thought it might push me through the boards.
I started to pace again, couldn’t help it, boots ticking out the rhythm of panic as I circled the room.
I hugged myself, fingers digging in at my ribs.
He finally looked up. “You sure?” His voice was low, the kind of voice you use when you’re checking for survivors in a disaster.
I shook my head. “Not one hundred percent. But I know what my body feels like. I know we just had sex, but I know. I just know.”
He nodded, jaw set, eyes dark as a bad memory. He ran a hand through his hair, made a face when his fingers came away sticky with sweat and blood. “Okay,” he said, like maybe this was just one more problem he could solve if he hit it hard enough.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know this is the worst fucking timing in the history of timing. We could be dead in twelve hours, and—”
He cut me off. “Don’t. Don’t apologize.” He uncrossed his arms and closed the space between us, slow, like I was an animal that might bolt. He put his hands on my shoulders, heavy and real. “If it’s true, we’ll figure it out.”
I started to shake. It was adrenaline, or maybe fear, or maybe something so old and deep it didn’t have a name. Augustine just stood there, holding me up, waiting for the next bomb to go off.
I pulled away and sat on the cot, folding up tight. “I keep thinking, maybe it’s just the stress. Maybe I’m making it up because I want something to focus on that isn’t a death squad full of Leatherbacks. Maybe I’m just crazy.”
Augustine sat down beside me, careful to keep a little space. “You’re not crazy. But if you are, so am I.”
For a second, we just listened to the noise below: a table slammed, then voices roaring up through the vent. Augustine’s body was a furnace next to mine, every muscle wound up like he was ready to take a bullet and spit it back out.
I glanced at him, tried to read his face. It was a new expression, something I’d never seen on him before. Not fear. Not anger. More like… fuck, I didn’t know. Something fragile, hidden under all the armor.
He cleared his throat. “How long have you known?”
I thought back—really thought back—and the timeline got blurry.
“Not long,” I admitted. “I kept telling myself it was just a fluke. But every time I tried to eat, I puked. I thought maybe it was food poisoning or nerves. But… It’s not.
I shouldn’t have said anything. At least not until I took a test.”
He let the words settle. Then he said, “Do you want to keep it?”
I looked at him, really looked, and tried to see what answer he wanted. But it wasn’t about him. It was about me, about the way my insides twisted when I thought about the future, about the way my hands always went to my stomach, like I could already feel the ghost of a heartbeat there.
“I don’t know,” I said, voice thin. “I don’t know what’s right. I’ve never had anything that belonged to me before, not really. And now—” I cut off, tears prickling at my eyes. “Now I don’t know what to do.”
Augustine nodded, slow, like every word weighed a pound. “You don’t have to decide tonight. Hell, you don’t have to decide ever. If you want to run, we’ll run. If you want to stay, we stay.”
He leaned in, elbows on his knees, and stared at the floor. His hands were shaking, just a little. “I never thought I’d get to be a dad,” he said, so soft I barely heard it. “Didn’t think I deserved it.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I didn’t think I’d live past twenty-one.”
We sat in that, the two of us, the space between us full of what ifs and maybes and every awful possibility.
I could hear the war in the walls, the plotting and the fear and the certainty that somebody would die tonight.
But up here, it was just us. Just two fuck-ups with a future neither of us had planned for.
I closed my eyes and leaned into his shoulder, just enough to let him know I wasn’t going to disappear. He wrapped his arm around me, careful of my ribs, and held me there. His heart thumped under my cheek, steady and loud.
“You’re not alone, Mel,” he said. “Not anymore.”
I let the words wash over me, trying to believe them. The nausea in my stomach eased, just a little. I breathed out, long and slow, and for the first time all night, I didn’t want to throw up.
“I think I want to keep it,” I said, quiet.
Augustine squeezed my shoulder, once, hard. “Then we keep it. And we fight like hell. Anyone fucking touches you, they die. Palin and simple. Kill and ask questions later.” He hugged me, tight, and then backed away. “Sorry!”
I nodded, wiped my eyes, and let myself lean on him for real.
The voices below got louder, a rumble like thunder on the edge of a storm. But in here, for this minute, we were safe.
I melted into him, head on his shoulder, his heartbeat pounding a steady tattoo under my ear. It should have felt like hiding, but it didn’t. It felt like loading a shotgun and waiting for the knock at the door.
We sat like that for a long time, not talking, just breathing each other in.
I thought about everything we’d survived: the chase, the bullets, the blood, the betrayals that stacked up like bodies in a trench.
I thought about what it would be like to bring a kid into that—a world built out of desperation and luck, where every day was borrowed time.
“Think we’re too fucked up to be parents?” I asked, the words barely a whisper.
Augustine grunted. “Isn’t everyone?” He moved his hand over my stomach, just barely, like he was afraid to jinx it. “But I’ll tell you this. If that kid is anything like you, the world’s not ready.”
Tears leaked out of my eyes, slow and hot, but I didn’t wipe them away. I let them fall, soaking into his shirt, because sometimes you had to bleed a little to remember you were alive.
“It’s bad timing,” he said, and there was a smile in it, a real one. “But this kid’s gonna have something neither of us had. Parents who’d die to keep them safe.”
That did it. I broke all the way down, shoulders shaking, my voice a mess as I tried to say thank you, or sorry, or something else that might fix the broken world we’d built for ourselves. He just held on, arms like steel, and let me shake it out.
After a while, the noise below faded. The moonlight through the window was brighter now, painting our shadows on the wall behind the cot.
The world outside was still a shitshow, still dangerous, still waiting for the first explosion.
But in here, wrapped up in Augustine’s arms, my head pressed to his chest, it felt possible to believe in something better.
We sat together, silent, counting heartbeats, as the night wrapped around us like a secret.