I cross my arms, consider letting the issue go. But if there’s a chance I’m actually pregnant…I look up again. “Why did you steal the boat?”
“What boat?”
“The first night we met, you told me you went to Scotland to steal a boat. Why?”
Chase takes in a deep breath and I’m pretty sure he’s going to deflect my question and tell me we can talk about it at another time. We have a situation on hand right now, anyway.
“I was paid to.”
“You were paid to steal a boat?”
“Basically. But the boat was already stolen…in a way. I was getting it back.”
I sit on the edge of the bathtub. “I don’t understand.”
“The owner of the boat defaulted on his payments. I was hired by the man who sold it to him to get it back. So I did.”
“Is that why you’ve been arrested before?”
Chase doesn’t look surprised that I know. “I didn’t get arrested that time.” He pauses, waiting to see if I’m going to ask him another question. When I don’t, he checks his watch again.
“Lisa told me you came to the bank with a lot of cash. She thought it was weird and had Rob run a background check. She told me that you’ve been arrested more than once.” My spine tingles with anxiety, not just from the unknown results of the pregnancy test, but out of fear this conversation isn’t going to go the way I want it to. “I told myself that it didn’t matter. I love you. I trust you. The past is in the past.” I close my eyes, feeling tears well behind the closed lids. “I’ve been feeling guilty lately because it does matter, and I do want to know. I don’t want to judge you. I don’t want what happened before me to influence what we have or what’s to come. But there’s so much about you I don’t know, and no matter how hard I try to tell myself to get over it, I can’t, and I’m sorry.”
“Don’t feel guilty. And yes, I’ve been arrested more than once.” He gives me a half-smile. “I’ve lost count of how many times, to be honest. I left college because I was presented an opportunity. In college, I was good friends with a guy who had very wealthy parents. They were investors or something…I don’t remember the details. They had a huge penthouse in downtown Chicago and a garage full of expensive cars. My friend liked to take them out and pick up women.” Chase leans on the doorframe.
“One night he got too drunk and somehow lost the keys to his father’s Aston Martin. I was able to track down the car and get it back with no trouble. My friend’s father was pretty fucking pleased he didn’t have to go through insurance or anything and could keep covering up the fact his son was a dumbass. Word got around and one of his friends contacted me, saying he has something stolen too and needed it back, and would pay me ten percent of the item’s worth if I got it back. I recovered twenty-thousand dollars in jewelry, then found out he lost it in a poker game.”
“That’s why you left college?”
“That was the start. The rich businessmen in Chicago talk at the bars after work, and just a week later, someone contacted me about being an ‘independent contractor’ for his clients. When expensive items showed up missing, I’d get them back. Most of the time I recovered items that money was owed on. Lots of money.”
“So, you repossessed things?”
“Yeah. In a way, but a lot less legal, which is why I’ve been arrested so many times. It’s more like bounty hunting for million-dollar items. And I got paid a percentage of the item’s worth. Fifteen percent was my usual rate. And that’s how I met Jax. I was hired to recover a yacht and he was hired to recover a helicopter. That was on the yacht.”
I blink, taking it all in. Chase isn’t a bad person. A knot in my chest loosens, and I feel guilty it was even there in the first place. “Why were the charges dropped?”
“Once we get to the station and both sides of the story are hashed out, things are ruled in my favor. Like the helicopter-yacht guy, once you stop paying for your items, the bank technically owns them. And when people from the bank hire me to go get them, it’s clear I’m not stealing for my own personal collection. It takes a while to get to that point though. And a lot of cops seem to enjoy arresting people. Don’t tell Rob,” he adds with a smile.
“And that’s why you moved a lot too, right?”
“It’s part of it. I’d go where I was needed and enjoyed seeing the different parts of the world.”
People don't take kindly to having items repossessed or foreclosed. That explains the assault charges and makes me realize he’s used to a certain level of daily danger. “Do you miss it?”
“No,” he answers right away. “I enjoyed the thrill of the hunt, but even when I’d find what I was looking for, it never felt like it. I was onto the next, searching for something I couldn’t explain. Something I didn’t know I needed until I met you.”
My heart skips a beat and more tears well in my eyes.
“It’s been three minutes,” he says softly.
“You do it.”
He steps forward and picks up the test, trying to stay calm. I cover my face with my hands, unable to look. My heart starts racing and I feel sick. Maybe it’s morning sickness.
“Just to be sure, one line means it’s negative, right?”
“Right.” I move my hands and look up. One line. Thank God.
“Then you’re pregnant.” Chase flips the test over and two dark pink lines stare up at me. I blink and look at the test again. There are two lines. Two obvious lines. We probably didn’t need to wait the whole three minutes for those suckers to show up. “Sierra?” Chase asks softly, setting the test down. “You okay?”
“I…I…I don’t know. Are you?”
“I’m in the same boat.” Chase takes my hand and leads me to the living room. He slowly sits and I go into overdrive making sure he’s okay.
“You didn’t take your medicine yet tonight.” I spring up and go into the kitchen, returning with his pills and a glass of water. “Take it.”
“Sierra,” Chase says calmly, knowing that I’m desperately looking for a distraction. He takes his pills and then pulls me into his arms. I rest my head on his chest and lay still, listening to his heart beating. “At least we know why you’ve been so tired.”
I sit up so I can look at him, not knowing if I should laugh or cry. It comes out as an awkward mixture of both. “I don’t know what to do. I’m not ready to have a baby.
Chase wipes away a tear. “Neither am I. I don’t know anything about babies. Or pregnancies.” He rests his forehead against mine. “Let’s take a day or two and let this sink in before we make a decision, okay?”
“Okay.” I exhale and melt into Chase. My mind is running a million miles an hour and I’m working hard to resist getting up and Googling all things pregnancy. I always knew I wanted to get married and have kids. I didn’t expect either of that to happen anytime soon…or at all, after Jake died.
I’m still getting used to the fact that I was able to fall in love again.
“Are you tired now?” Chase asks.