Chapter 38
Bolo
Ilooked up as Devyn hugged me from behind. Reaching back, I cupped the back of her neck and arched my head back to kiss her. “Where are you going, gorgeous?”
“Next door,” she said with a sheepish smile.
We’d been living at the new place for about a month now. Devyn was twenty-four weeks pregnant and she went over to visit Camila and her baby every day. She was so excited for her own baby and kept saying she was practicing with Kilo and Camila’s son Ravi. It was adorable.
I pulled her around until she was sitting on my lap. Placing a hand on her stomach, I grinned at her. “You’re going to be such a good mom.”
She smiled down at me. “Well, Ravi already has me wrapped around his tiny finger, so I’m pretty sure I’m going to spoil ours rotten. Speaking of, we’re going over baby names again tonight.” She pointed a finger at my nose. “I don’t want to wait until he’s here to name him.”
“Okay,” I said with a chuckle. “I know you’ve been keeping a list.”
She leaned forward and kissed me, then got up and went next door. The women had been loving living so close to one another. They pretty much all congregated at either Kilo’s place, or Hope’s since Devyn’s mom was always making food for everyone.
The moms had all become best friends immediately and spent most of their days together.
I wasn’t sure what all they got up to because I avoided that situation like the plague.
I already had one mom, I didn’t need three extra.
As sweet as Dev, Camila, and Kilo’s mothers were, that was a whole lot of mother-henning in one place.
My dad and Mike were getting along great.
They were currently in a war over who could make their lawn look the best. I swear they were out there at dawn measuring the blades with rulers.
Considering this was Arizona, and most people decorated their yards with dirt, rocks, and cactus, our houses now stuck out thanks to the bright green, well-watered, manicured lawns.
Relay, Isaac, and I were all convinced they were slowly losing their minds.
Mike was retired, and Dad had hired on a crew to take over our jobs for the foreseeable future—at least until this shit with The Collective was over—so they were home all day.
They, too, were trying to avoid their wives and their new friends, so they’d started doing every stereotypical Dad thing they could think of. The lawns were just the start.
They cleaned and maintained the pools at the houses on a strict schedule. Played golf. Did their best to stay out of their kids’ business, even though their wives kept putting them in the middle of everything happening. Some would consider it suburbia heaven.
I really didn’t mind it much, even though I missed my club, and all the wild shit we got up to.
They were still getting into it. Relay and Ruck kept OD, Kilo and me updated with all the latest happening in the hunt for The Collective.
It’s been smaller skirmishes, for the most part, as the club smoked these assholes out of the holes they were hiding in.
As much as I wanted to go help—and I’d told Ruck he could call me if he needed me—I was also content just to be here with Devyn.
She needed me right now. And Ruck had understood that before I even really realized it.
Which was why I hadn’t heard a damn word from him, though I knew Relay and Hype were keeping him updated on everything happening here.
It had been a quiet month since the house fire. Unfortunately, as much as Devyn was trying to keep her blood pressure under control, it was just continuing to climb. Dev was now on two different medications just to keep everything as low as they could. And really it was just ‘acceptably’ high.
She’d cut out caffeine, was taking walks after meals, took her pressure religiously and kept meticulous notes for the doctor. And I could see it in Dr. Natalie’s eyes every damn time we went. It was only a matter of time.
She’d explained to us that with Devyn’s blood pressure continuing to rise, the risk of pre-eclampsia was more of a when, than an if. Dr. Natalie was just hoping to get us to that thirty-six-week mark, though now she was saying she was hoping for thirty-four.
I’d finally asked her, realistically, at our appointment the other day, how early was too early.
She’d explained that the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the hospital she did deliveries and took babies as young as twenty-four weeks.
That was very, very early though, and Dr. Natalie told us that she delivered babies at thirty weeks all the time, when needed, and they almost always did great.
So that had become Devyn’s mantra. Thirty weeks. She’d heard the underlying concern in Dr. Natalie’s tone as well as I had. Even though the doctor was still saying thirty-four to thirty-six weeks, she wasn’t expecting us to get that far.
It was fucking killing me not to be able to do anything to help my old lady or my kid.
I mean, I did everything I could. Something needed to be lifted?
I did it. The cleaning? The cooking? The laundry?
Devyn wasn’t touching it because I made sure it was all done.
I was doing everything in my power to take care of anything that could cause her stress. But this? I couldn’t fix this.
All I could do was watch her worry—though she tried to hide it—and do everything the doctor told her to. So I brought her flowers, made her favorite foods, and made sure she was stocked up on her favorite books and movies.
One good thing about this was we had plenty of time together.
I was thrilled to realize that Devyn wasn’t just the woman I loved.
She really was my best friend at this point.
We started out this journey together not really knowing one another, but we’d been tossed into the fire—I wish that was only metaphorically, but Bowers had seen to that—and had come out the other side stronger.
We were bonded and the love we were piecing together was getting stronger every damn day.
By the time our kid got here it was going to seem like we’d been in a relationship for years rather than six months.
I knew there was still more to learn about her, but sometimes it felt like I knew it all.
I couldn’t imagine loving her more than I did right now. But I knew I would.
Picking up my wrench, I went back to working on my motorcycle.
The days were still warm, but it was beginning to cool down a little at night as fall crept in.
It was September and I knew this year’s holidays were going to be interesting having all these families living within feet of each other.
I just hoped our MC brothers would be able to join us for some of them.
They all stopped in as much as they could, though they were careful about it. The last thing we needed was to have to move again because The Collective followed them to us. I worked on my bike for another hour. I would’ve spent more time out there, but caught sight of Devyn walking home.
“That was fast,” I told her, standing from the stool I’d been sitting on and walking to the front of the garage.
She smiled at me and I saw the fatigue in her pretty gray eyes. “I’m going to go lay down for a nap.”
“That sounds great. I could use one too.”
She stopped and stared at me. “You never nap.”
“Eh, I could use one today.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Are you actually going to nap?”
“What else would I be doing?” I asked, cleaning my hands off with a rag.
“Staring at me while I sleep.”
She was pretty close. I was only going with her because I was worried about her. She looked exhausted. Not that I was going to tell her that. “I’ll be out before you,” I told her.
“Uh huh. We’ll see about that.”
I took her hand and led her upstairs. Stripping down to my boxer briefs, I climbed into bed and curled my body around hers.
Thoughts of what I’d be missing out on if I’d never met her filled my mind as I listened to her breathing even out.
Being here with her was exactly what I wanted.
She would be my choice, always. This life wouldn’t be shit without her and I was going to do everything in my power to keep her safe.
* * *
Grunting, I jerked awake. Devyn wasn’t in bed and there were shadows starting to creep over the floor as the sun went down. “How long did I fucking sleep?” I muttered. I stared blearily at my watch. “Fuck me.”
This was why I didn’t nap. I woke up not knowing what fucking century it was. I hated that groggy feeling I woke up with and usually avoided it like the plague.
Pulling on a pair of sweat pants, I made my way downstairs. “You shouldn’t have let me sleep that long,” I called out. The light was on in the kitchen so I headed that way. The playful words I was about to use to tease my old lady died in my throat as I took in the look on her face. “What’s wrong?”
She sighed, worry and fear heavy on her face. “It just keeps going up.”
I looked at the blood pressure monitor readout. One sixty-three over one hundred and three. Shit. “Have you taken your meds?”
She nodded. “It was higher earlier, so I took a dose like Dr. Natalie told me to.”
“How long has it been?”
“An hour.”
“Okay. Go pack a bag, just in case. I’m going to call the OB office to see what they want us to do.”
She nodded and went upstairs. I punched in the number to the office and waited as it took us to the after-hours services.
I could call Natalie directly, but she had other doctors at her practice and I didn’t want to pull her from a day off if one of them could handle this. No one could work twenty-four seven.
When the operator answered, I explained what was happening.
“Okay. I’ll give the on call physician a head’s up and they’ll give you a call back,” the operator told me. Her voice was soft and kind. She was probably used to keyed up fathers calling on behalf of their spouses. But either way, her voice seemed to get me grounded.