Chapter Eleven
Willa
The clubhouse was loud with breakfast -- voices bouncing off the high ceilings, forks clattering against plates, chairs scraping against the worn wooden floor.
I sat at the long table beside Lyssa, a plate of scrambled eggs in front of me, and realized with a start that I hadn’t sat at the edge of my chair all morning.
My shoulders were loose, my feet flat on the floor, and when Hayley leaned across the table to whisper something about Beast’s expression when Whisper had brought Daisy to Church last night, I laughed with my mouth full of coffee and didn’t bother to cover it.
“Seriously,” Hayley said, her eyes bright with mischief, “I thought he was going to swallow his tongue when she climbed up on the table.”
“He should know better by now,” Lyssa said, cutting her pancake with precision. “She takes after her mother.”
I glanced at each of them. “I thought women weren’t usually allowed in Church.”
Hayley smiled. “We aren’t, but sometimes they need our input. This was one of those instances.”
The women exchanged a look over my head -- something that would have made me sit straighter three weeks ago, that would have me calculating how quickly I could get to the door.
Now I just pushed my eggs around my plate and tried not to grin too obviously when Whisper appeared in the doorway with Daisy balanced on her hip, the toddler’s dark hair sticking up in three different directions.
“She’s been fighting sleep since four,” Whisper announced, dropping into the empty chair across from me. “I think we might need to invest in a padlock for her bedroom door.”
Daisy made a sound of protest and reached for my plate, tiny fingers outstretched.
I pushed my fork toward her, letting her spear a single egg before she lost interest entirely and slid from her mother’s lap to the floor.
She was halfway across the room before Whisper could react, headed for Gator with the focus of a child who’d decided exactly what she wanted and was determined to get it.
“She’ll figure it out,” Lyssa said, watching Whisper scramble after her daughter. “They all do, eventually.”
* * *
Two Days Later
I sat on Whisper’s porch with my feet tucked under me on a worn outdoor chair, a mug of tea balanced on the armrest. The compound was quiet in the mid-morning -- most of the men at work or already gone on whatever business had brought them back to the clubhouse after breakfast. Whisper sat in the chair beside me, one leg crossed over the other, folding a pair of Daisy’s tiny socks with the absent precision of someone who’d done it a thousand times.
“She fell asleep in the playpen yesterday,” Whisper said, her attention on the small figure making her way across the patchy grass of the yard. “I was so shocked I called Forge at work to tell him. He thought I was joking.”
Daisy stopped at the edge of the porch, looking up at us with the expression that meant she was about to do something she’d been told not to. Her dark hair was pulled back in a tiny ponytail that had already started to come loose, and there was a smudge of what looked like jam on her left cheek.
“No,” she said firmly, pointing at the porch steps.
“No,” Whisper agreed, not looking up from the socks she was folding. “You can’t go down there by yourself. But you can sit here with me and Willa and help me finish these.”
Daisy considered this for a moment, her head tilted to one side, then shook it decisively. “No,” she said again, and took another step toward the edge.
By the time we’d gotten her settled with a cookie and a picture book on the porch swing, the sun had moved higher in the sky, and my tea had gone cold.
I leaned back in my chair and watched Daisy trace her finger along the pages, her lips moving silently as she “read” to herself, and felt the familiar shift in my chest.
I learned which Kings took their coffee black and which ones snuck sugar when they thought no one was watching.
I knew that Whisper always made extra pancakes on Sunday because Forge inevitably showed up with two or three Prospects in tow.
I discovered that Hayley had a particular way of tilting her head when she was trying not to laugh, and that Lyssa could make even the rowdiest table go quiet with a single look.
The knowledge came in pieces -- not handed over all at once, but collected gradually, the way you learn a language by living in a place rather than studying it.
I didn’t realize it was happening until I was standing in the clubhouse kitchen one morning, watching Whisper stir a pot of oatmeal with Daisy balanced on her hip, and found myself reaching for the cinnamon without being asked.
“You’re getting good at this,” Whisper said, her voice casual.
I felt my shoulders drop -- a movement so small I might have missed it if I hadn’t been paying attention. She handed me the wooden spoon. “Your turn. I need to change the princess before she decides to take matters into her own hands.”
I took the spoon without hesitation, without wondering if I was doing it right or if I’d be in the way or if this was another test I was about to fail.
I just stirred the oatmeal while Daisy babbled at me from over her mother’s shoulder, her tiny hands gesturing wildly, and let myself exist in the moment.
By the time the morning of the ultrasound appointment arrived, I’d stopped waiting for the catch -- the moment when someone would decide I’d overstayed my welcome, when Nitro would realize I was more trouble than I was worth.
I’d started offering opinions without being asked, had started moving through the compound with my head up and my shoulders back, had started to understand that I belonged here.
I was pulling on my jacket at the door when Nitro came to get me, his cut already on, his phone in his hand.
He’d shaved that morning -- the first time in three days -- and there was a small cut on his jaw where he’d been in a hurry.
He stopped in the doorway, his gaze moving from my face to the jacket I was zipping and back again.
“You ready?” he asked, his voice carrying none of the edge it had held in the early days. Just a direct question, delivered with the same matter-of-fact tone he used for everything.
I nodded and reached for my purse, slinging it over my shoulder with a movement that was becoming automatic. “Ready.”
He didn’t check if I’d remembered the appointment paperwork. Didn’t ask if I needed to use the bathroom before we left. He just waited while I locked the door behind us.
We walked to the truck together -- not touching, not speaking, but in the rhythm of people who knew exactly how to navigate the same space without collision or negotiation.
The compound was quiet in the mid-morning -- most of the men already at work or on runs, the clubhouse empty except for a Prospect wiping down tables in the main room.
A door closed somewhere in the distance.
A motorcycle rumbled to life beyond the trees. Normal sounds. Everyday sounds.
Nitro opened the passenger door for me without comment, his movements unhurried but precise, and I climbed in. He closed it behind me, then circled to the driver’s side and got in, his weight settling the seat toward mine.
“Clinic’s about twenty minutes out,” he said, starting the engine. “Traffic shouldn’t be bad this time of day.”
I nodded, buckling my seatbelt with careful hands. “We’ve got time, then.”
* * *
The ultrasound clinic sat in a small strip mall two blocks off the main road -- beige walls, framed prints of wildflowers above the exam table, the faint antiseptic smell underneath the hand lotion the technician wore.
I’d filled out the paperwork while Nitro stood behind my chair, one hand resting lightly on my shoulder, his presence the kind of certainty that didn’t need to announce itself to be felt.
Now I lay back on the crinkled paper of the exam table, the thin gown cool against my skin, and watched the technician move around the room with the efficiency of someone who’d done this a thousand times.
Nitro had taken the chair pulled close beside me, his attention fixed on the equipment the technician was arranging.
He’d been quiet since we’d arrived -- not the careful silence of the early days, but something more focused, the stillness of a man who’d decided this moment mattered and was making absolutely certain he didn’t miss any of it.
He rested his hand on the edge of the table, close enough that I could feel the heat from his skin.
“This might be a little cold,” the technician said, squeezing a clear gel onto my exposed belly.
Her name tag read Melissa, and she had the calm of someone who’d delivered good news and bad in equal measure and had learned to carry both without letting either change how she did her job.
“Just going to move this around a bit until we get a good view.”
The wand made contact with my skin -- cool at first, then warming quickly -- and Nitro leaned forward slightly, his weight shifting from the chair to the edge of the table.
The screen beside us lit up with static, then resolved into something grainy and indistinct -- shades of gray and white that meant nothing to me but made the technician nod with quiet satisfaction.
“There we go,” she said, adjusting something on the machine. “Baby A is being cooperative today. Let’s see if we can get a good look at the gender.”
She moved the wand in a slow arc across my belly, the pressure firm but careful, and the image on the screen shifted -- still mostly abstract, but with shapes that were gradually becoming recognizable.
A curve that might have been a spine. A shadow that could have been a foot.
The outline of a head, turned slightly away from the wand as if the baby inside was deliberately making this difficult.
“Definitely a boy,” the technician said, pointing to a particular spot on the screen. “See that? That’s pretty clear.”
Nitro’s breath caught, and I felt it in the way his body went still beside me. His attention moved from the screen to my face and back again, his expression giving away nothing, but I saw his control slip just enough to reveal what lived beneath it.
“Let’s check Baby B,” the technician continued, moving the wand to a different position. “This one’s being a little shy. Might take a minute to get a good angle.”
The image shifted again -- static, then clarity, then another shape emerging from the gray. The technician moved the wand in a careful circle, her forehead furrowed in concentration, then nodded once, decisively.
“There we go,” she said, pointing to a different spot on the screen. “And that’s a girl. One of each -- you’re having a boy and a girl.”
The words hung in the air between us -- direct, matter-of-fact.
I felt my breath catch, my free hand moving instinctively to the curve of my belly where the wand still pressed.
One boy. One girl. Two lives that had, until this moment, existed mostly as concepts -- the possibility of a future rather than the specific reality of one.
But it was Nitro I watched -- Nitro whose face had gone completely still.
His jaw had loosened. His shoulders had dropped.
He was staring at the screen with his elbows still on his knees and his hands hanging open between them, like a man who had just been handed something he didn’t know he was allowed to want.
“I’ll just print some pictures for you,” the technician said, her voice carrying the gentleness of someone who’d seen this reaction before and knew exactly what it meant. “You can take them home, show your family.”
She moved away, giving us privacy, and I reached for Nitro’s hand without thinking about it -- my fingers finding the space between his, curling into the warmth of his palm.
He turned his hand over and laced his fingers through mine, his grip careful but certain, his gaze still on the screen where our children had made themselves known.
The technician returned with two printed photos -- grainy black and white images that looked like abstract art to anyone who didn’t know what they were seeing.
She handed them to Nitro with a small smile, her movements unhurried but precise, and he took them with both hands -- careful, like they were something that could be damaged.
“Congratulations,” she said. “They both look perfect. Strong heartbeats, good measurements. You’re doing everything right.”
Nitro nodded once, silent and focused on the photos. I found myself watching him instead -- the concentration in his face, the faint hitch in his breathing -- and realized, with sudden clarity, that he mattered to me far more than he should have.
We left the clinic twenty minutes later, after the technician had answered all our questions and scheduled our next appointment.
The photos were tucked into the inside pocket of Nitro’s cut -- safe, protected.
I walked beside him to the truck, close enough that our arms occasionally brushed, and kept my gaze on his face rather than on the road ahead.
He stayed quiet, opening my door before moving around to the driver’s side and settling into the seat beside me, solid and familiar.
When he started the engine, his hand lingered on the gearshift for a heartbeat before he pulled onto the road, measured and focused in a way that suggested he was always thinking three steps ahead.
I reached into my jacket pocket and felt the edge of the spare photo -- the one I’d asked the technician to print as we were leaving.
Not the original, not the one Nitro had taken with such care, but a copy -- something to keep close, to look at when the house was quiet.
My fingers traced the outline of it through the fabric.
Nitro’s hand found mine on the center console -- not gripping, not claiming.
His palm was warm against mine, his breathing even and unhurried, his body a solid line of heat beside me from shoulder to knee.
The drive passed quietly, but the silence between us had softened into something calmer.
Something that felt, impossibly, like the beginning of a routine.