Chapter 17
Seventeen
Here, hold my morals.
—Hux to Bernice
Hux
Katana looked like she was about to run away and never look back.
When Katana stayed stubbornly silent, I said, “I’ll find out one way or another.”
Katana shrugged and smiled, though it didn’t reach her eyes. “Sure.”
I let her go and watched her leave, having a bad, sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
The moment the door closed, I walked the food over to the bar that I used as a kitchen table and placed it there before taking my phone out of my pocket and finding the number I wanted.
Beaufort answered in four rings, sounding hesitant when he finally answered with a gruff, “Hello?”
I placed the phone on speaker, set it on the counter, then leaned on the counter with both hands, letting my head hang. “What’s Katana hiding?”
There was a long pause, then, “Give me a minute. I’m in a meeting.”
He hung up, and I knew it was bad.
“Who is that?” The soft voice came from beside me.
Her hesitant hand went to the ball of my shoulder, and the calm that came over me at the simplest of touches from her was nearly overwhelming.
“That’s one of my club brothers, who also happens to be best friends with Katana,” I said.
“Always thought that they were going to get together. They’ve been neighbors for their entire lives.
I think they have some pact at thirty-five that they’ll marry if they’re single.
If anyone knows what’s going on with her, it’s Beau. ”
“Beau?” she said. “Is that the billionaire that owns that professional soccer team?”
“The one that Nettie, Boone’s wife, is on?” I nodded. “That’s him.”
“Oh,” she breathed. “The Dixie Wardens have some really important people in their fold.”
“That they do,” I confirmed just as the phone rang again. I hit answer almost immediately and said, “Tell me.”
“She swore me to secrecy,” he replied. “I can’t.”
“What if I guess?” I asked. “Will you confirm?”
“Yes,” he replied, sounding relieved.
Whatever was wrong with Katana had him worried, and keeping that worry bottled up inside was probably killing him.
“Cancer,” I guessed, going for the obvious one.
Beau blew out a long breath before saying, “Yes.”
My head hung even lower as I breathed, “Fuck.”
I knew it.
For years, it was always one of those things that was at the back of your mind. Our family had a rather aggressive breast cancer gene running through it. Every single female on my dad’s side had been affected by it.
My grandmother and aunt had died from it. Meanwhile, Heidi and Katana had yearly screenings for it.
Katana, however, had always said that she wouldn’t go through treatment for it if it was ever found out that she had it.
“And let me guess,” I said. “She said that she wouldn’t go through treatment.”
“You got it.” He sounded wrecked. “But there’s more.”
“Not sure how this could get any worse.”
“Katana is three months pregnant.”
“Fuck.”
“I went with her to her first doctor’s appointment with the oncologist,” he said. “That’s when she found out that she was also pregnant.”
“What the fuck?” I closed my eyes.
Bernice’s warm weight pushed into my side and her arms came around my arm, pressing me tight against her breast as she rested her head against my shoulder.
“As for whose kid it is, I don’t know. But she moved back to Sawtooth, so it has to be someone here.”
“The only people here that she would even consider are Dixie Wardens.”
“I know,” he said.
“I’ll find out who it is,” I said. “But this pregnancy could work to our advantage. When Aunt Lou was pregnant with Colder, she went through treatment after the first trimester, I think. She’ll want this baby to live, which means she’ll have to go through treatment at least until she has him or her. ”
“I think she’s trying to pretend that it’ll all go away,” Beau said softly. “I was hoping y’all would call. None of my pleading is working on her.”
“I’ll call everyone,” I said. “We’ll work on her.” I hesitated. “You notice her around anyone at any of the parties lately?”
“Couple of people,” he said. “Thumper. And we know she wouldn’t go there. Bells, but that was also with Heidi around, so that’s probably a no-go. Then a couple of prospects. But she doesn’t trust easy, and she wouldn’t date them without them being fully patched in.”
“So we have no idea,” I surmised.
“None.”
We hung up, and my eyes lifted to stare at the food that Katana had delivered.
“What’s her deal with dating guys?” Bernice asked, not picking her head up from my shoulder.
Her touch felt like a calm sea in the middle of a raging storm.
I stood up, and she reluctantly let me go.
That hadn’t been my intention when I stood, so I reached for her and pulled her into my lap after I took a seat.
She came willingly, her head resting against mine.
“Katana comes with a whole lot of baggage,” I said.
“I never knew what happened. Beau doesn’t even know what happened.
But she’s pretty particular about only dating guys that are fully trustworthy.
She sees them being patched into our club as fully vetted ‘good’ guys.
She’ll date a Dixie Warden. She will not date any random man off the street.
That’s why we think she’s with one of us. ”
“And why not Shaw?”
Shaw.
“Why do you know Thumper’s real name?” I grumbled.
“Shaw.” She added emphasis to his name. “Hates that name. I can’t believe y’all call him that.”
“Katana gave him the name.” I grinned.
“I know,” she said. “He came in for a doctor’s appointment.
Was having a…” She trailed off, remembering that she was law-bound not to disclose what Shaw had come in for.
“Anyway, he gave me his real name. Then told us that he hated the name ‘Thumper’ with a passion. So, I’ll not be calling him by that name.
” She sat up and leveled me with a look. “Now, talk.”
“Shaw,” I drawled, “wanted to ask Katana out. And eventually he did work up the courage. But before he could actually ask her out, he walked in on Katana calling him a ‘scared little rabbit’ when it came to domestication. They had a bit of an argument, and she started calling him ‘Thumper.’ It stuck.”
“Burn,” she said. “What makes you think that Shaw couldn’t be the father, though?”
I thought about it for a long moment before I said, “Mostly they fight like cats and dogs. I guess that doesn’t mean that they couldn’t have done it.
But Katana is all about domestication. Thumper—Shaw—is all about living life to the fullest. Absolutely, positively, no settling down allowed for Shaw. ”
“Sounds rather sad. For both of them,” she said. “Are you still hungry?”
Not in the slightest.
“Not really.”
She reached for the box, which shifted her on my lap, placing her ass a little more fully over my cock, and pulled one of the to-go boxes a little closer.
She popped the box open, and the smell of bacon filled my nostrils.
She held up a piece of bacon, and I took it.
She slathered some butter on a biscuit, then smashed some bacon, a runny egg, and some of the cheese onto the biscuit and handed it to me in the box.
I took it, surprised that I’d never thought of the combination.
I took a bite, mostly out of curiosity, and found that it was fantastic.
“Oh,” I said. “This is good.”
She smiled and slipped off my lap, which I immediately didn’t like.
But she came back with a glass of orange juice out of my fridge for both of us.
She didn’t take her seat in my lap again, but she did grab the closest barstool and sit almost directly next to me.
She did the same with her own biscuit and happily munched away.
I finished mine and made another.
Only when I was done did I say, “I should probably call my family.”
She took a sip of her drink and said, “I’ll be right here.”
I called my brothers and sister in a group FaceTime call.
I called Harvey last, just to make sure he knew.
He had.
He’d also been sworn to secrecy.
Once I was done making the calls, I had Bernice stay upstairs to cue up our show and stepped down into the warehouse where I’d caught Katana stacking sacks of feed.
“Should you be lifting that?”
Katana froze.
“Why do you ask?” she asked, looking over her shoulder at me.
“One, because you’re three months pregnant.”
She fisted her hands on her hips and turned around to glare. “Who told you?”
“The question is, why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I need to tell the dad first,” she grumbled. “I just…I’ve had a lot going on.”
She had.
“Why didn’t you tell me about the cancer?”
She scrubbed at her face.
“Because I felt stupid,” she admitted. “I missed my yearly appointment this year. I had other things on my mind. And the one time I miss it and don’t go…I end up missing the fact that I have cancer.”
“Busy with the baby’s father?” I wondered.
She shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Do you want me to tell him?”
She shook her head. “No. I’m going to do it. Eventually.”
“Eventually before you die?” I asked. “Because that’s what happens if you don’t get chemo.”
She looked down at her shoes. “I’m thinking about it.”
“Think about this,” I suggested. “If you get the chemo, your baby for sure lives. If you don’t, and you die before the baby is able to live without you, what about the baby’s father? He’ll lose both of you.”
“The baby’s father won’t care about me.” She paused. “I’m not even sure he’ll care about the baby.”
My brow lifted. “And you think you know what he’ll think based on…what?”
“Based on the evolution of man,” she grumbled. “But I’m going to tell him.”
Before I could ask her any more questions, the door from The Mercantile to the warehouse pushed open and Thumper came through.
He was holding a box full of something and walking toward me, his eyes on the box.
He was digging through it, his brows furrowed and stopped when he realized he wasn’t alone in the warehouse.
He blinked at the two of us.
Katana’s eyes were puffy and red, but no tears had slipped free.
I didn’t look much better, I was sure.
“Uhh.” He looked from me to Katana. “Everything okay?”
She nodded. “Fine. Gotta get back to work.”
He watched her go until she was back inside The Mercantile.
He kept watching the door until I said, “What’s up?”
He cleared his throat and looked back to me, his face a mask of blankness.
“Came by to get your approval on something,” he said as he showed me.
“This is a camera. I want to put it inside the house. It’s not your regular camera, though.
You put it low. Out of eyesight. It’s meant to be unobtrusive, really.
Not recording faces but gaits. It protects the privacy of the house owner.
You don’t see anything important. But the camera technology can decipher who it was in the house based on biometrics with the person’s gait.
Picks up stride length, amount of time a foot stays on the floor during each step.
All kinds of things that make a gait unique. ”
“Inside the house.” I nodded. “Where would this go?”
“I was thinking the main living room. Right beside the front door so it’ll pick up the front and the back door at once.”
“Do it,” I urged.
He nodded. “Okay. I’ll get it in. I just need the code to her place.”
I gave him the code, and he left.
I went back to the apartment and found Bernice on the couch watching her phone.
She had the show pulled up, and she was scrolling with her finger, a small smile on her face.
That’s when I noticed what she was watching. “Are you looking at spoilers?”
“Yeah,” she replied guiltily. “I like to know if there are any bad things happening. I have to mentally prepare myself.”
I grinned. “Let me go change into some sweatpants. I can think of nothing worse than sitting there under a blanket with jeans on.”
She smiled. “Hurry.”