Ava Reynolds
After what happened with Reek, I decided I wasn’t begging that man for a damn thing.
I already knew he didn’t want the baby. He had been too clear for too long about how he felt about kids, commitment, and anything that looked like a real future.
So, while his response had still cut me deeper than I wanted to admit, I couldn’t act blindsided either.
I had hidden it from him. He had every right to be angry.
The part I couldn’t get over was how cruel he had chosen to be with it.
Since our altercation, I had thrown myself into my hair business.
It helped that the business was really moving.
Thailand had changed everything for me professionally.
I had the right vendors, the right quality, reliable shipping, and enough money stacking to make me feel like I could really stand on my own two feet.
So, I had been on my laptop every chance I got, answering messages, checking orders, planning content, and running numbers so I could move out of Saint and Zahra’s house sooner rather than later.
I needed space, specifically space from Reek, space from his voice, his smell, and his random pop-ins.
I was sitting cross-legged in my bed with my laptop open and a notebook beside me when Zahra came into the room without knocking.
One look at her face made me sit up straighter.
“What?” I asked immediately.
She shut the door behind herself and came farther in. “Saint told me what happened Sunday night.”
“What happened?”
Her face got serious. “Sienna is dead.”
Everything in me went still.
Zahra sat on the edge of my bed, with one hand resting under her belly like it was too heavy for her back to carry. “Reek killed her.”
My mouth parted. “What?”
She nodded slowly. “She had been working with the Feds, trying to build something on the Cartiers. She was trying to save her own ass by offering them a bigger fish. She confessed all of that to Reek, and he snapped.”
I just stared at her. And then the timing hit me. All of that had happened right before I told him about the baby.
I sat back, feeling sick all over again.
“That explains why he was so angry,” Zahra offered as if that should heal the wounds his words had left.
But that didn’t erase what he had said to me, it didn’t make me less angry or his words hurt less. But knowing he had gone from finding out he had been played by Sienna to finding out I was pregnant with his baby in the same night made me feel guilty for telling him when I did.
I closed my laptop and pushed it aside. “This is about to get so much worse. Once Saint, Icon and Legend find out I’m having Reek’s baby and he doesn’t want anything to do with it, that’s going to be a whole other mess.”
Zahra waved me off. “I don’t think he’s going to completely dismiss the baby.”
I gave her a look. “Did you forget what he said to me?”
“Hear me out,” she pressed. “He may be angry. He may be acting like an asshole. But Reek respects Saint and the Cartiers way too much to fully turn his back on a child he’s having with Saint’s sister-in-law.
That man has too much loyalty to the family to just say fuck the baby forever.
Even if it’s forced. Even if it’s uncomfortable. Even if he hates how it happened.”
I didn’t want forced. I didn’t want obligated.
I didn’t want a man showing up because family politics made him feel like he had to.
I wanted what she had with Saint, what Livia had with Icon, what Aria had with Legend.
I wanted warmth, love, and a man who looked at my pregnancy like it was something beautiful, not some punishment he got stuck with.
But I had not chosen that man. My womb had chosen Reek. Or at least I had chosen to keep his baby after knowing exactly who he was.
“Are you going to be okay with being at Thanksgiving dinner with him?”
I groaned and rolled my eyes. “Urgh. Why can’t he be with his own family on Thanksgiving?”
“He doesn’t have any damn family, remember? That’s why he doesn’t want any kids.”
I could only roll my eyes at her. “I’ll be fine, I guess. I don’t have a choice, obviously.”
Zahra rubbed her belly slowly and looked at me with that big-sister honesty she never softened just because I was hurting.
“This is the hand you dealt yourself when you chose to keep the baby. So now you have to stand in that. If him being involved is awkward, then it’s awkward.
If it’s uncomfortable, then it’s uncomfortable.
But I don’t see him just disappearing from this. ”
I swallowed and looked down at my hands.
“That doesn’t make me feel better,” I admitted.
“It’s not supposed to. It’s supposed to make you deal with it.”
We sat in silence for a minute, before she reached over and squeezed my hand. “You don’t have to like the situation, but you have to survive it…for your child.”
I nodded once, because that was all I had in me.
Then I looked back over at my laptop, at the orders, the money, the plans, and the little bit of freedom I was trying to build for myself.
And I knew that no matter what Reek did or how ugly this got, I was going to have to carry myself through it.
Because I wasn’t begging that man for love, excitement, or permission to be a mother.