Storm: Keira? Everything okay?
With my eyes stinging, I typed back:
Me: I think I’m in danger.
His response was immediate.
Storm: Where are you?
Storm: What’s going on?
Storm: I’m coming—send me your location.
Me: I’m pregnant, Storm.
Silence.
Then my phone rang and I started sobbing the second I picked up. Relief entwining with terror, merging with joy because he cared.
He cared.
My dad was wrong. So wrong.
"Where are you? Are you safe?"
His voice was strong, calm, with no fear—why would he be scared? My dad was a pissant church minister to Storm. A nobody, a nothing. He was a Sinner, and at that moment, he was my dark knight.
"Baby girl?" he prompted.
"Mom wants me to have an abortion tomorrow," were the only words I could get out.
"Do you want an abortion, Keira?" he asked softly, like he was asking if I wanted KFC for dinner. There was no judgment in his tone, not much of anything at all.
My mind whirred as I was faced with a decision I shouldn’t have to have. How did women do this? How did they decide? I wanted to be a nurse, I wanted to go to college… I wasn’t ready to be a mom, but fate had decided that wasn’t my path.
I placed a hand on my belly as I heard the lack of emotion in his voice.
I knew why, too.
Whatever I wanted, he’d go through with for me.
This was my choice because it was my body, my future, and I knew, whichever path I took, my life had changed forever.
I suddenly felt incredibly young, stupid, too immature to raise myself never mind another living person, and then he said, "Baby girl, it’s okay. You’re breathing like crazy. Inhale with me, and exhale when I do."
Standing in a dirty alley, a grimy brick wall at my back, a chain link fence in front. I smelled crap and my own vomit, and there was a puddle just a few feet away that looked dubious because we hadn’t had rain in a few days, but I listened.
I breathed with him.
I exhaled when he did.
And as he calmed me down, I knew that I could do this.
I knew that he’d help me do this.
"I don’t want an abortion."
His sharp exhalation, so rushed after the calming breaths we’d been taking, told me everything.
He hadn’t wanted me to have one.
"I love you, Keira."
My eyes flared wide at that, at words I really needed to hear right now, and it was so easy to let them fall from my lips as well, "I love you too, Asher."
Twenty
Storm
PRESENT - MARCH
I squinted at the laundry, blinking a couple times to make sure that my eyes weren’t deceiving me.
"Why the fuck is everything pink?"
I wasn’t that guy. I knew how to take care of myself, knew how to do the goddamn laundry, and throwing in something red with a white mix was pure idiocy.
Growling under my breath, I dragged out the sheets that were newly fucking neon pink and found the culprit.
"Cyan!" I hollered.
I didn’t like to raise my voice at her, but in this damn house, and with the TV on, she’d never hear me otherwise.
A few seconds later, I heard thudding down the hallway, and a quick peek out of the door had me rolling my eyes as she did three cartwheels, two flips and a forward roll to reach me.
This kid.
She’d better be the next Simone Biles was all I was saying.
She beamed at me when she landed perfectly, and I sighed, unable to stay grumpy when she looked up at me as if I were a fucking rockstar. I wasn’t sure why she looked at me that way, but she did, and I didn’t want to change that.
So, even though I was pissed, I channeled calm and asked, "Cy, what did I tell you about laundry?"
She blinked. "To sort clothes into piles."
"Which piles?"
"Darks and whites."
I pulled out the bright pink leotard, a cotton one that apparently fucking leached color. "You sorted them, so why did you dump that in with the rest of the load?"
Her eyes widened at the pink laundry and she winced. "I needed it to be clean."
"Why?"
She sucked her lips between her teeth. "It was dirty."
"We’re doing a dark load tomorrow, Cyan," I grumbled. Would bleach make the pink sheets white again? Christ, okay, maybe I was that guy. "Couldn’t it have waited?"
"There was—" She ducked her head. "—blood on it."
My brows rose. "Where?" When her cheeks turned pink, mine puffed up.
And… I got it.
Of course, she had to get her period the day that her mom was working at the diner. Was fate fucking with me or what? Couldn’t have been yesterday or tomorrow that she got her period.
No.
Today.
Fuck.
"Do you need tampons? Or pads?" I asked, trying to sound like I wasn’t choking. Like I was cool with this when my little girl shouldn’t be dealing with this shit at eleven.
She fidgeted. "No. Mom bought me some stuff and had it ready for me if I needed it."
Crap.
"The blood on the leotard…" I shot her an embarrassed smile. "Everything’s okay, right?"
One time, Keira had bled through her pants, and I knew that shit happened more often than a woman would like, but this was my kid’s first period and she was going through it without her mom…
It wasn’t like I had to call an ambulance or anything.
Right?
Just as I started to sweat, she dipped her chin. "I got it to fit."
Okay, just grab me a fucking shovel so I could dig a hole for myself.
‘Got it to fit.’
Jesus.
Boys had it easy with the whole ‘voice breaking’ and ‘wet dreams’ shit.
Grimacing on her behalf, I asked, "Do you need some Advil?"
"No."
"What about a hot water bottle?" I’d seen Keira use one of those before. I’d even seen her puke. Cyan didn’t look nauseated though.
"No." She shot me a shy smile. "But thank you."
Then I thought about how she’d come rolling down the hallway like she was at the Olympics and called myself a dumbass. Of course, she was okay.
"You could have just told me about you getting your period, honey," I chided softly. "I don’t bite. You know that. You can tell me anything."
"Anything at all?"
I nodded.
"Sorry about the sheets."
"Guess we’re going pink for a while, huh?"
Her lips twisted. "I like pink."
"Shoulda called you that, not Cyan." Her giggle made me feel better for hauling her in here like she’d committed a crime. "You go finish your homework. I’ll figure this out."
She peeped a smile at me before she rushed out of the laundry room, leaving me with a ton of pinks. Because I had zero idea how to fix this, I grabbed my cell from my back pocket and called Keira.
"Hey. You pick Cyan up okay?"
Why did her voice do shit to my insides? Making hunger lash at me, my dick surging into a full, agonizing erection from my self-imposed chastity.