Chapter 3
Austin
Six Weeks Later
It's a Tuesday morning, and I'm in the workshop when Cam comes to find me.
I hear her before I see her, the particular sound of her boots on the concrete, and I look up from under the bike I've been working on since six.
Six weeks into prospect life and I've learned a few things.
Early mornings in the workshop are mine if I want them.
My brothers don't start moving until eight at the earliest, and Brick has given me enough to keep my hands busy and my head quiet, which is kinda the point.
My head needs to be quiet. The alternative is thinking about Savannah, and I can't afford to do that and function.
Cam stops at the workshop door. She's Brick's woman, has been around the club longer than most, and she has the look on her face she gets when she knows something the room doesn't.
"Austin, you got a minute?"
I put the wrench down and wipe my hands. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong," she says it in a way that means something is wrong. "I need to talk to Prez, and I think you should be there. It involves you."
I follow her out of the workshop without asking more. Whatever it is, I'll find out when Cam decides to tell me and not before.
Prez is in the main room with two of the brothers when we walk in. He looks at Cam and then at me, and something in his expression sharpens.
"Private?" he asks her.
"Private," she says.
He nods at the brothers, and they clear out without being asked. That's how it works in here. You read the room, and you move when Prez needs you to. I'm still learning all of it, but I'm learning fast.
The three of us go into his office, and he closes the door. I stand with my back to the wall because sitting down doesn't feel right, and I don't know yet what I'm sitting with.
Cam doesn't drag it out. That's one of the things I like about her. She says what she came to say.
"I was behind the bar last night when you were all on the run. Raven was in the main room with the other girls, and she didn't know I was close enough to hear." She looks at Prez first, then at me. "She's pregnant. She's telling the other girls it's Austin's."
The workshop, the coffee I had this morning, and the wrench in my hand; all of it goes away.
"She's lying," I say. My voice comes out flat and certain. "I always covered up. Every single time." I don't want to say Savannah's name in this conversation, but I need them to understand the full picture. "Even before, with Savannah. I was never careless. I was never careless with anyone."
Prez is looking at Cam. Not at me. "How?"
Looking at him, he really doesn’t need to ask the question. He already knows there's only one answer.
Cam nods. "She's been putting holes in the condoms. Austin's specifically, from what I heard. She knows he's heading for his patch, and she wants to be his old lady when it happens."
I push off the wall and start moving because I can't stand still with this inside me.
Three paces to the window. Three paces back.
I think about every time I've been with Raven in the last six weeks: not many, four, maybe five, each one a deliberate attempt to drink Savannah out of my system and each one making it worse.
I think about the condoms I keep in my jacket, my room, the same places I've always kept them, and I think about Raven in this building every day with access to all of it.
"She sabotaged them," I say.
"That's what it sounds like," Cam says.
"I need you to know." I stop moving and look at Prez. "I would never be careless. Not with something like this. I need you to know that."
"I know," Prez says. Simple. No qualification. That's what it means to have this man in your corner.
I sit down. I don't mean to, but my legs decide for me. I end up in the chair with my elbows on my knees and my hands over my face. I’m like that for about ten seconds. I let myself feel the full weight of it. Then I put it away, because falling apart isn't going to solve anything.
"If the baby's mine," I say, "I'm not walking away from it. I want that said now so we're all clear."
"Nobody's asking you to," Prez says.
"And I'm not forcing Raven into anything she hasn't chosen. The baby didn't choose any of this."
Cam looks at me with something that might be respect.
"I know. That's why I came to you first before she had the chance to use it against you.
" She leans back. "Here's what I think. We put her in a room on her own, away from the other girls, away from the brothers.
She's not fair game anymore; nobody goes near her, and she stays here under our roof until the baby comes.
When it does, we do a paternity test. If the baby's yours, it stays. Raven goes."
I look up at her. "You can't just take a woman's baby."
"She sabotaged a man's condoms to trap him into fatherhood," Cam says. "She forfeited a lot of ground when she did that." She holds my eyes. "And that baby, if it's yours, is a Black Saints’ baby. This club will raise it. You won't be doing it alone."
I sit with that. There's something solid in it that I wasn't expecting to feel.
Prez leans forward. "There's a couple in this club who've been trying for a baby and can't. If the paternity test comes back negative, that child still doesn't go without. You understand me? Either way, the club takes care of what's ours."
"And Raven," I say. "When it's done."
"When it's done, she leaves," Prez says.
"She doesn't come back. She doesn't have access to the baby, to you, or to this club.
She knew what she was doing when she did it, and she'll live with the consequences of it.
" He stares at me. "The punishment we'd normally give out for something like this is considerably worse.
She's getting off lightly because she's carrying a child.
The moment that child is born, the leniency stops. "
I nod. That's fair. That's more than fair.
Cam gets up and comes over and squeezes my shoulder. "Get your act together, Prospect. If that baby's yours, it needs you patched in and standing straight before it arrives. That's your job now."
"Cam," Prez says, with the tone of a man who runs this club and occasionally needs to remind people of that fact.
She holds her hands up. "I know, I know. But I'm not wrong."
"No," he says. "You're not."
She kisses me on the top of the head like I'm one of hers, which in a way I suppose I am, and then she's gone. The door closes behind her, and it's just Prez and me.
I lean forward with my head in my hands again. He lets me have it. He doesn't try to fill the silence, and I'm grateful for that.
"Say it," he says, after a while.
"What if I'm not the right man for this?" I look up at him. "I'm a prospect. I broke the heart of the only woman I've ever loved because I thought I was doing the right thing. I've spent six weeks getting through each day, one hour at a time. That's not exactly a strong foundation for a father."
Prez looks at me the way he looks at things he's decided about.
"You've been in this club six weeks, and you haven't put a foot wrong.
Not once. You work harder than brothers who've been patched in for years.
You don't complain, you don't cut corners, and when something's hard, you go at it harder.
" He pauses. "That's exactly the foundation a father needs. "
"I made a mess of things with Savannah."
"You made a choice," he says. "Whether it was the right one is between you and her.
But you made it for the right reasons, and this club sees that.
" He stands. "What happened with Raven is not on you.
You didn't invite this. She brought it to your door, and now we deal with it together. That's what the club is for."
I breathe out slowly. "Thank you, Prez."
"Don't thank me. Go find her. Bring her in here. I'm going to get Knuckles and Braxton."
Finding Raven is not the problem. Her voice carries, and she has a way of placing herself in the centre of whatever room she's in that makes her easy to locate.
She's in the lounge with three of the other girls, laughing at something on her phone, and when I walk over, the conversation dies. They know something heavy is coming.
The other girls read it. Raven doesn't.
"There he is." She gets up and moves toward me with the particular walk she does, the one she thinks I find attractive. "I was wondering when you were going to come find me."
"Raven," I say it quietly. "Come with me."
She looks at the other girls with a smile and starts to put her arm around my waist the way she normally would. I go still. Not away from her, just still, and she feels it and steps back.
"What's wrong with you?"
"Not here." I take her by the wrist, and I walk her down the hall to Prez's office. She comes because she doesn't know yet what she's walking into. She fills the silence on the way with talk that washes over me completely.
When I open the door, Prez is already behind his desk. Knuckles is at the wall to the left with his arms folded. Braxton is by the window. Raven stops in the doorway and reads the room, finally, and I can see the exact moment she understands that this is not what she planned.
"Sit down," Prez says.
She sits. I stay standing. I'm not sitting next to her.
Knuckles closes the door.
The room is very quiet. Prez lets it be quiet for long enough that Raven's composure starts to slip at the edges. Then he says, "We know about the condoms, Raven."
She goes white.
"And we know about the pregnancy." He lets that land. "So what I need from you right now is honesty. Not the version you've been telling the other girls. The actual version."
She looks at me. I look back at her and give her nothing.
"Who else?" Prez says. "Was it just Austin, or did you do the same to other brothers?"
"Just Austin," she says. Her voice is small. "I only wanted Austin."
"Christ," Braxton says from the window.