“I’m leavin’ in ten seconds. If any of you hooligans want a ride, you better be in the car ’fore then, or I’m happy to leave you behind,” I hollered.
Unfortunately, everyone found a seat in one of the two cars in five.
Loulou
My head ached, my breasts were swollen so big they throbbed to a painful beat, and I was so nauseated, it was an effort not to throw up with nearly every breath.
Yet I loved it.
Being pregnant.
Knowing I was harbouring two little souls that were a part of Z and a part of me. It was like living with a miracle inside me. It made me understand religion in a way I never had before even after years of attending service at my grandfather’s church. It felt like something more than biology to have life forming––a manifestation of our love forming––inside me.
But of course, in typical Garro fashion, they made me emotional as hell.
“Are you cryin’?” my husband asked as we finally took the turn off the snow-glazed highway onto the road that would lead us deeper into the mountains near Whistler.
I blinked hard and tried to sniff silently as I resolutely stared out the window at the glistening powder on the trees. “No.”
A hard pinch to my shoulder had me whipping around to glare at the three people in the back seat.
Harleigh Rose grinned wickedly, and announced, “She totally is.”
“Am not,” I retorted, suddenly reverting to the teenage attitude I’d left behind years ago. H.R. did that to me.
“What’s this then?” she demanded, leaning forward to swipe her thumb under my left eye. It came away wet.
I glowered at her, then turned back in my seat.
“You wanna apologize for bein’ a brat?” Zeus asked her mildly.
We both knew him well enough to know his intent did not match his tone.
“She can handle it,” she argued.
And it was true, normally, I could handle any of the teasing heat King or Harleigh Rose threw at me. It was the language of love in the Garro family, in the Fallen family, and I was just as fluent after years of being Zeus’s wife as the rest of them.
But I felt almost seasick from the pregnancy hormones, as if emotion was lopsided and every thought was blurred with dizziness. I sniffed, preparing to defend myself, but my overprotective husband beat me to it.
“Can it, babe. Lou’s not feelin’ great.”
Immediately, Harleigh Rose’s face melted with concern, and those hard blue eyes went soft like overwashed denim. When her hand touched my shoulder this time, it was gentle. “What’s going on? Are you okay? Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
“It’s nothing,” I assured her, shooting Z a sidelong glare for worrying her. “I’m just a little under the weather. Nothing to be scared about.”
My best friend’s eyes turned to stone again. “You promise?”
My heart burned at her concern. H.R. was as rough as the motorcycles she was named after, but secretly tender as the second of her names. I both loved and hated that she felt for me enough to ache for me.
“I’m good,” I swore.
“We deserve to know if something’s wrong with you,” Nova inserted, leaning forward to use the force of his thickly lashed bedroom eyes on me. “We’re family.”
“You think I don’t know that?” I retorted, needing to move on from this conversation because I hated them worrying, and I hated lying to them, even if it was by omission. “You guys mean everything to me.”
“Damn fuckin’ straight,” he agreed. “If you’re sick, we’re all sick. You get me?”
My lips twitched, but I knew he was serious as hell so I bit back my smile. “I get you, Nova. Now, quit frowning or you’ll crease that pretty brow and ruin the only thing you have going for you.”
Everyone else burst out laughing, but Nova only leaned back and shared a quiet, intimate smile with me that said more than he ever would with words. He loved me, and it was important for him that I knew that.
My throat ached and tears crawled up from the backs of my eyes.
“Fuck,” I muttered as I turned back to face the front.
“Warrior,” Z reminded me quietly as Nova, Lila, and H.R. began to chatter about something else in the back. His heavy hand landed on my thigh and gave a rough squeeze.
“We’re here!” Harleigh Rose crowed as we turned left onto the long drive that led up to the cabin.
There was a collective gasp from the girls as we saw the reconstructed cabin for the first time since Zeus had started to work on it again. He’d begun construction almost as soon as it had burned down two years ago, but he refused to hire contractors or even let any of his Fallen brethren help with the project. He’d built the first cabin, and he alone would rebuild the second one.
It was no wonder that it had taken him so long when it was easily twice the size of the original. Made of massive cedar logs my biker lumberjack had cut down himself, it was two stories with a steeply peaked roof and beautiful gables. It looked like something straight out of Cressida’s Pinterest account.
“She’s crying again,” Lila noted as Zeus parked at the top of the hill beside the pale yellow, snow-covered home.
“Hell, if I cried, I would too. It’s sick, Dad,” H.R. praised as she opened the door and slid into the knee-deep snow. “Seriously, it could be in some kinda home magazine.”
“You like it?” Z asked me quietly as the rest of them got out of the SUV.
I ripped my eyes off the house and turned them, shining with tears, to my man. “You’d have to be dumb and blind not to love it. It’s almost as beautiful as our house in Entrance. Only reason it doesn’t beat that is because we don’t have any memories here yet.”
His lips twitched. “Well then, get your sweet ass outta this car and let’s get on with makin’ some memories.”
I laughed and opened the door to jump down into the snow, but he called my name, and I paused to look over my shoulder at him.
His eyes were liquid silver with banked heat. “Don’t think one’a those memories isn’t goin’ to be me spreadin’ you out on the dinin’ room table and feastin’ on you for hours. I’m sure we can convince the lot of ’em to take a long, long fuckin’ walk at some point.”
“I’m counting on it,” I told him with a saucy grin before I hopped out of the car and moved over to Cress where she stood beside King’s bike to wrap my arm around her waist.
“Hey,” I said softly. Leaning my head against her shoulder, I loved the way she smelled of books and apples.
“Hey, honey,” she murmured back, tipping her head against me. “How’s my girl?”
I bit my lip but didn’t stiffen the way I wanted to. Cressida was one of the most perceptive people I knew, and though the question was asked mildly, I wondered if she’d guessed about my pregnancy.
The desire to tell her was powerful. Cressida had been my teacher and my confidante before I’d even reconnected with Zeus and met the rest of his family. There was a soft, eternal bond between us, a gentleness that swaddled me like velvet. I felt safe and harboured by her love, and I knew she would be nothing but supportive and thrilled at the news, especially because she’s been secretly longing for a while now to get married and have babies herself.