Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Nova
I wake up to the sound of Mei screaming.
It's not the first time and it won't be the last.
The nightmares come in cycles—she'll have a good stretch, four or five nights of solid sleep, and then something will trigger it.
A door slamming in the hallway. A man's voice too loud on the street below.
Once it was the smell of bleach from the bathroom cleaner, and she couldn't tell me why, just sat on the edge of the tub shaking until I wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and sat with her on the tile floor until her breathing slowed.
Tonight it's bad.
I can hear her through the wall, a raw, throat-scraping sound that doesn't have words in it, and I'm out of bed and across the hall before I'm fully awake.
"Mei." I open her door slowly, keeping my voice low and steady the way my professors taught us in clinical psych. Calm, grounded, present. "Mei, it's Nova. You're in your apartment. You're safe. I'm going to turn on the lamp, okay?"
The lamp clicks on and she's sitting up in bed, eyes wide, chest heaving, her hands fisted in the sheets.
She's drenched in sweat. Her t-shirt is sticking to her collarbone, her hair is plastered to her forehead, and she's looking at me like she doesn't know where she is.
"You're in Chihuahua," I tell her softly. I sit on the edge of her bed, not touching her—she doesn't like being touched when she first wakes up from one of these. "You're in our apartment. The door is locked. Nobody's coming in."
It takes her a full minute to come back.
I watch it happen—the snap back to reality moving through her eyes, the way her jaw unclenches, the breath she finally lets out that sounds like it's been trapped inside her since whatever she was dreaming about.
"Lo siento," she whispers.
"Don't apologize." I pull the blanket from the foot of her bed and drape it across her shoulders. She grabs the edges and pulls it tight. "You want water? Tea?"
"Water." Her voice is hoarse. "Please."
I go to the kitchen and fill a glass, and when I come back, she's pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped the blanket around herself like a cocoon.
I hand her the water and sit back down on the edge of the bed while she drinks.
"Same one?" I ask.
She nods. She doesn't elaborate, and I never push.
Whatever she sees when she closes her eyes, she'll tell me when she's ready.
That's one of the first things I learned from growing up in my family—you don't force someone to talk about their pain.
You just make sure they know you'll be there when they do.
She finishes the water and sets the glass on the nightstand. "Gracias, Nova."
"Always." I squeeze her hand once, briefly, and she lets me.
That's progress. Two weeks ago she would've flinched.
I go back to my room, but I don't sleep.
I lie on my back, stare at the ceiling, and listen to the sounds of the city at this early hour of the morning—a dog barking somewhere in the neighborhood, the distant hum of a truck on the main road, the wind pushing against the windows.
My mind is too awake now, running through tomorrow's pharmacology lecture and the care plan I need to finish by Friday, and the clinical rotation schedule I still haven't memorized.
And Doom.
Always, eventually, Doom.
I press the heels of my hands against my eyes and exhale through my teeth.
I'm not doing this. I'm not lying in bed in the middle of the night thinking about Emiliano and his stupid gravelly voice and the way he looked at me in my kitchen earlier tonight like he was one deep breath away from putting his hands on me.
Except I am doing this. I've been doing it for weeks.
My mother would have opinions. All three of my dads would have opinions.
Mom would call me and talk for two hours about the difference between wanting someone and wanting the idea of someone, and Dad would get quiet in the way he does when he's worried, and Pops would ask if the man treats me right, and Daddy would ask if he's earned it.
Has Doom earned it?
I don't know.
I know he shows up at my apartment every day to "check the locks" that he installed himself and that work perfectly fine.
I know he makes sure Lashes eats breakfast.
I know he went to Colombia to help bring those women home, and I know Brick trusts him with his life, and Brick doesn't trust anyone easily.
I know that when he's near me, my whole body pays attention.
Not in the butterflies-and-blushing way I felt about boys in high school.
This is lower, heavier, deeper.
This is heat pooling in my belly, my skin going tight, and my brain going quiet for the first time all day whenever he's in the room.
He's wrong for me. He's a prospect. I shouldn't be going for anyone inside the club.
He's got secrets he carries behind those dark eyes—I watch him sometimes across the compound and see the weight of whatever he's not saying pressing down on his shoulders.
All very good reasons to leave it alone.
I roll over and press my face into the pillow and think about the way his breath caught when I touched the chain around his neck.
Yeah, there’s no way in Hell I'm leaving this alone.
* * *
I head to the clubhouse the next afternoon after my morning lecture.
The ride through the city is one of my favorite parts of the day.
I've got the windows of the borrowed truck down—Amara arranged a vehicle for me and Mei so we don't have to rely on rides—and the Chihuahua afternoon heat pours through, dry and heavy and nothing like the sharp cold of Montana.
The streets near the university are all colorful storefronts, taco stands, and old men playing dominoes outside a tienda with the radio on.
By the time I turn onto the compound road, the city has thinned out.
The gate guard waves me through, and I park next to the row of bikes in the courtyard.
The compound on a weekday afternoon has a different vibe about it than on weekends—quieter, domestic, the business of the club happening behind closed doors while the rest of life carries on.
Ruby's got music playing in the kitchen, something with horns and a singer whose voice sounds like honey poured over gravel.
Oakleigh's sitting at the courtyard table with a sketchbook and a cup of coffee, and Xiomara is on the ground beside her doing something intense with colored chalk on the concrete.
"Hey!" Oakleigh waves me over. "Coffee's fresh if you want some."
"I'm good. Is Lashes around?"
"Inside. She was in the kitchen a little while ago."
I find Lashes in the common room, curled up on the long couch with a blanket over her legs and a book open in her lap that she doesn't seem to be reading.
She looks up when I come in, and the smile she gives me is real but tired—the kind of tiredness that sleep doesn't fix.
"Hey, mama." I drop down beside her. "How are you feeling?"
"Fat." She shifts to give me room. "And tired. And like I have to pee every twenty minutes. But other than that, living the dream."
I laugh.
Lashes has a dry humor that catches people off guard if they don't know her well.
The first time she made me laugh like that, two weeks ago, she'd looked startled—like she'd forgotten she could be funny.
"Can I?" I gesture toward her belly.
She nods, and I rest my hand gently on the swell.
She's rounder this week than last.
The baby's growing the way it should be, from what Ruby and I can tell with our limited equipment.
She needs a proper ultrasound soon. I've been nagging Brick about it.
"She's been moving around a lot," Lashes says quietly. "Started a few days ago. At first, I thought it was gas." She almost smiles. "Then it happened again and I just... sat there with my hand on my stomach for like an hour."
"That's good," I tell her. "That's really good. Moving means she's active, she's healthy, she's developing the way she should."
"She." Lashes looks down at her belly. "You keep saying she."
"Gut feeling probably because you keep saying she too." I grin. "My mom always said she knew with all three of us. She was wrong about Jordyn—thought she was a boy for seven months—but she'll never admit that."
Lashes goes quiet.
The book in her lap sits forgotten, her thumb tracing the edge of a page over and over.
The compound sounds drift around us—Ruby's music, someone hammering in the garage, the distant murmur of voices.
"I don't know how to want her," Lashes says finally. Her voice is so low I almost miss it. "I know she's mine. I know that. But sometimes I look down and all I can think about is how she got here, and it—"
She stops. Swallows.
"I love her already. I do. But I'm scared I'm going to look at her face and see his."
I don't rush to fill the silence. I let her words sit where she put them, heavy and honest, because that's what they deserve.
"You might," I say after a moment. "And if you do, that's okay. Because she'll also have your face. Your laugh. Your attitude, no doubt."
I put my hand over hers on her belly. "You survived something most people can't even imagine, and you're choosing to bring this baby into the world anyway, Lashes. That's the bravest shit I've ever seen."
Her eyes are wet. She doesn't wipe them.
She just nods, once, and squeezes my hand, and we sit like that for a while—two women on an old couch in a clubhouse in Chihuahua, one with a baby she's learning to love and one with a man she's trying not to.
Lashes falls asleep around four, her head tipped against the couch cushion, her hand still on her belly.
I ease off the couch without waking her and pull the blanket up over her shoulders.
The clubhouse is quiet.
Ruby's gone home. Kelsey and Xiomara left an hour ago. I can hear someone in the garage—Compass, probably, banging around with a wrench—but the common room and kitchen are empty.
I'm rinsing out my mug at the kitchen sink when I hear his boots on the hallway floor.
I know it's him before I turn around.
"Lashes is sleeping," I say without turning around. "She needs it, so don't—"
"I'm not here for Lashes."
His voice is right behind me.
Close.