Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Nova
Mei is making coffee when I come into the kitchen on Friday morning.
She's already dressed for class—black jeans, an oversized sweater pushed up at the elbows—and she slides a second mug across the counter as I sit down.
"You're leaving tonight?" she asks.
I nod. "Just an overnight bag. I’ll be back on Sunday afternoon."
She wraps both hands around her own mug and watches me over the rim.
Mei has gotten louder over the past month.
Not in volume, she still moves through rooms quietly, but in the way she takes up space.
She talks more. She holds eye contact longer than she used to, and she doesn't startle when I open the cupboard above the stove without warning.
"He's still not letting himself smile, is he?" she says.
I take a sip. The coffee is strong enough to strip paint. "He smiles."
"He pretends to smile." She points at me with a teaspoon. "Not the same thing."
"He smiled when I got back."
"He smiled twice," Mei corrects. "I was watching."
I set my mug down.
It's been two weeks since Doom and I rode back from Vegas.
Weekdays in the apartment with Mei. Weekends at the clubhouse in Doom's room.
We're officially together now. Whatever that means in a club where most of the brothers nod at me with respect, and a handful nod at Doom with something less.
"I'll talk to him," I tell Mei.
"Don't." She finishes her coffee and rinses the mug in the sink. "He'll smile when he's ready. You can't pull it out of him."
"Since when are you a Doom expert?"
She lifts one shoulder. "Since I started watching him watch you."
She grabs her backpack from beside the door and pauses with her hand on the knob.
"Be safe out there," she says. "Tell Lashes I'll come by tomorrow if she wants company."
"I will."
The door clicks shut behind her.
I sit at the kitchen counter and stare into the bottom of my mug for longer than I mean to.
I get to the compound just after five.
The afternoon heat is starting to break.
That fast Chihuahua shift when the sun drops behind the western ridge and the courtyard goes from blast furnace to merely warm.
The line of bikes catches the last orange of the light.
The dust hangs in the air the way it does at this hour, golden and slow.
Compass is at the gate. He swings it open for me and grins, his teeth bright against the grease smudged across his cheek.
"Hey, Nova." He waves me through. "He's in the garage. Pretending to work on the Dyna."
"Pretending?"
"Same bolt for an hour." Compass shrugs. "Diagnosis: thinking about you."
I'm laughing as I park the truck near the bikes.
Compass is one of the warm ones.
The garage doors are open, and Doom is exactly where Compass said he'd be—bent over the Dyna with a socket wrench in his hand, the line of his back long and tense.
He's stripped down to a black t-shirt, the red bandana tied at his head. Sweat between his shoulder blades has soaked the cotton in a dark line.
He hears me before he turns. His shoulders drop a quarter inch. That's the welcome.
"You're early," he says, setting the wrench on the seat of the bike.
"Couldn't focus at the apartment. Figured I'd come early and bother you instead."
"Were you bothering Mei?"
"Probably."
He turns and looks at me for a moment.
His dark eyes do that slow drag down my body and back up that he hasn't learned to hide yet.
Then he crosses the garage in four steps, his hand finds the side of my neck, and he kisses me without saying anything else.
I taste grease and coffee on him.
When he pulls back, his thumb stays at my jaw. "How was the drive?"
"Long. Traffic past the medical school."
He nods. He notices everything, but he doesn't comment unless he has to.
I follow him in the courtyard.
Razor is there with a beer and a phone, his cut over the back of the chair and his boots up on the table. He glances up when we walk past. His attention catches on Doom for half a second.
He nods.
Doom nods back.
That's it. No words, no second look. Razor returns to his phone.
Two weeks ago, Razor would've called Doom over to ask his opinion on something—a part, a route, sometimes just to shoot the shit.
Now he nods like a man being polite to a stranger. It's been like that since the day Doom came back from Vegas.
I see Doom catch it. He doesn't react.
Not with his face, not with anything you'd pick up unless you've spent a month learning how to read a man who doesn't want to be read.
Inside the clubhouse, Ruby is at the stove, per usual.
The kitchen smells like chile and the slow-simmer of something she started this morning.
Lashes is at the long table with a glass of water and a book she's not reading.
Her belly is bigger this week—five months now, the curve of it sharp against the soft fabric of her dress.
She looks up when I come in and her face softens.
"You made it," she says.
"I told you I would." I drop my bag near the door and slide onto the bench across from her. "How are you feeling?"
"Tired."
"Good tired or bad tired?"
She thinks about it. "Both."
Ruby turns from the stove with a wooden spoon in her hand and a stack of fresh tortillas wrapped in a kitchen towel. "You eat?"
"Not yet."
"Sit down. I'll bring you something."
I don't argue with Ruby in the kitchen. Nobody does.
Doom takes the seat beside me on the bench.
His thigh presses against mine under the table. Easy. The kind of public claim that didn't exist between us until two weeks ago and now does, without either of us having to think about it.
Boulder comes in with Xiomara on his shoulders. He drops her gently to the floor and she runs off down the hallway shrieking for Itzel.
He nods at me, then his eyes find Doom. The pause is brief, but it's there.
"Doom." Boulder's voice is even. "Got a minute later? Need your read on something for the run next week."
"Yeah."
"Garage, after dinner."
"I'll be there."
Boulder moves on to the fridge and the conversation is over.
I feel Doom's shoulder shift beside me.
Not relax—he doesn't relax—but settle.
Boulder is asking his opinion again. That's the first time in two weeks.
Lashes catches my eye across the table. Her mouth lifts at the corner. She sees it too.
* * *
Brick brings in an ultrasound machine in the morning.
It's portable. A laptop-sized unit with a probe attached, the kind a traveling OB might carry.
He set it up on the long table in the kitchen because the light is good and Lashes wanted to be somewhere she felt safe instead of the recovery room downstairs where Mateo is still mostly sleeping through the days.
The kitchen is ours, and no one is going to interrupt us.
I helped Brick get the equipment from the truck. He drove out to his contact in Aldama early this morning—a doctor who owes him from the Diego rescue and isn't asking questions about why a prospect needs a working ultrasound machine for an afternoon.
Lashes is on the bench with a folded sheet over her lap and her shirt pushed up under her bra.
She's nervous. Her hands keep finding her belly and dropping. She picks at the hem of the sheet with her thumb.
"I'm going to put some gel on you," Brick tells her, holding up the bottle so she can see. "It's going to be cold. That's the worst part."
"That's the worst part?" Lashes raises an eyebrow.
"Promise."
She lies back. I sit beside her on the bench and take her hand.
She grips mine harder than she means to. Her knuckles go pale.
Brick squeezes the gel onto her skin. She hisses at the temperature, then laughs at herself for hissing.
"Told you," he says.
He moves the probe across her belly.
His face goes calm and focused, the way it does when he's working—the look I've seen on doctors in the clinic with years more experience than him. He's better than he gives himself credit for.
The screen flickers. Grainy gray and black, the alien geometry of an ultrasound that anyone outside the field needs to be talked through. Brick adjusts the probe and slows down.
"There," he says quietly. "Mira."
The image stills.
A profile. Tiny and perfect. The curve of a forehead, the slope of a nose. A small puckered mouth caught mid-yawn. A hand floating up near the face, fingers loosely curled.
Lashes makes a sound I can't describe.
Half breath, half something else, a noise from somewhere deep that I haven't heard her make before.
"Oh." She doesn't look away from the screen. "Oh."
"That's her," Brick says.
"That's her."
Her hand clamps down on mine. Her thumb digs into my palm. She isn't blinking.
Brick shifts the probe a fraction. The image moves—now we can see a tiny ribcage, the flutter of movement that is a four-chambered heart already doing its job.
He toggles a setting and audio comes through the small speakers.
A rapid, watery thump, fast as a hummingbird.
"That's her heartbeat," I tell Lashes. My own voice comes out uneven. "She's running about a hundred and fifty. That's exactly right."
Lashes stares at the screen. The sound fills the kitchen.
A tear slides from the corner of her eye into her hairline. She doesn't move to wipe it.
"She's real," Lashes whispers.
"She's real," Brick confirms.
The heartbeat keeps going.
Brick lets it run a few seconds longer than he needs to before he moves the probe and the rhythm slows in the speakers, fades.
He measures. Length, head circumference, the things he learned to look for from the books and from Imani's contact who walked him through what to watch for.
Each measurement comes back where it should be.
"She's right on track," he tells Lashes. "Growth is good. Heart sounds strong. Everything I can see from this looks healthy."
Lashes nods. Tears are coming faster now, silent, sliding down both sides of her face into her hair. She doesn't try to stop them.
Brick wipes the gel from her belly with a soft cloth, gentle, and steps back.
"I'll give you a minute," he says, and ducks out into the courtyard to find Imani.
I stay.
Lashes pulls her shirt down over her belly and turns her face toward me. Her eyes are wet but steady.