Page 11 of Outlaw

I watched him go, wanting to ask,What if she is? What then?

He wouldn’t kill me, would he? My death wouldn’t change anything. Maybe I should run. He was leaving. We could go. Drive north and not look back. No. Hudson would send out a search party, and we’d be on the news. I couldn’t do that to Stevie. I wanted to give her a perfect life. The one I hadn’t gotten.

When he was gone from sight, I closed my eyes and tried to calm my breathing before going back inside. I had to explain this to Stevie or prepare her that someone was coming to do…well, I wasn’t sure. I needed to google how a paternity test was done. If they were going to take her blood, then this was about to get dramatic. There were few things that Stevie hated more than needles.

Taking my phone, I quickly did a search on what to expect with a paternity test. Finding the answer, I sighed with some relief. He would just need to swab inside her cheek for a sample of her tissue. There would be no wailing from her. I could solely worry about my potential upcoming death.

I read the last text from Hudson. He was checking on us. Making sure we were doing okay and asking if I needed him. He was the first real security I’d had since…well, since my dad.

Once, I would have balked at marrying a man who didn’t give me butterflies at the sight of him. But that had all been before Vegas. That night had changed me. I’d woken up the following two months. Realized that love wasn’t tingles and flutters in your stomach. That was silliness that the little girl in me had had to grow up and move on from.

Love was being safe. Knowing you were wanted. Love was being comfortable. It wasn’t about hot sex and multiple orgasms. It was having someone to raise your child with, build a life with, and grow old with. Not worrying that you’d lose them or that they would leave you.

When Hudson looked at me, it was as if he saw no one else. Iwas it for him. He wanted to be my safe place and Stevie’s father.

I could lose it all. Linc Shephard was about to blow up my carefully laid plans.

Since my first day of working as a dental hygienist for Hudson, I’d seen a future for me and Stevie. He couldn’t take his eyes off me. Finding reasons to have me in the room with him. Seeking me out to talk about the simplest things. Then, he asked me to dinner. It escalated from there. Within a month, we had started dating exclusively. Before him, I hadn’t dated since Bastian. Being a single mom made it hard, and having to work and go to school for my dental hygiene degree was enough time away from Stevie. I hadn’t wanted to add to it by bringing a man into our lives.

Hudson had been the perfect fit. He took me and Stevie on dates. We became a family—or the closest thing to one that we could be.

But my lies were all coming back to haunt me now, and I was pressed into a corner.

Tears stung my eyes, and I fought off the need to cry. I was going to let Stevie down in more ways than one today, and it was all my fault.

Five

Linc

I was smoking a fucking cigarette. Leaning against the hood of my F-150, I inhaled deeply in hopes that something would help take away the tension radiating through my body. My eyes stayed locked on the second floor of the motel, not taking them off the door that read 210. I didn’t trust the woman. She looked like a deer caught in the headlights and ready to take off running. Which didn’t make me feel better. It only heightened the dread slowly working its way through my veins.

She might not know who the father was, but it was clear in those eyes of hers. What the fuck color were they? Jade? Was that even an eye color? You sure as hell couldn’t call them green. That was too basic of a description. Something about them tugged at a memory that seemed to be dangling just out of my reach.

Scowling, I pulled more of the poison into my lungs. It wasn’tlike I hadn’t pulled up that face hundreds of times since the night we’d fucked. My memory just hadn’t been doing her justice. Which I thought had been impossible. Until yesterday, I’d assumed the opium high had created that perfect face in my memory. But fucking nope. She was even better than the fantasy.

None of that mattered. If the kid was mine, that meant she’d not taken the pill I’d left for her, knowing she had no way of ever contacting me if she was pregnant. I’d been used.

I took the cigarette from my mouth before I bit off the tip. Fuck! What was I going to do if that little girlwasmine? Letting her walk away with my daughter and allowing some other man to raise her would be best for her. That had been her plan after all. The marriage certificate had led her to me, and she hadn’t come to tell me I had a kid. She’d just come for the divorce. So, she was guilty of not only having my kid, but also keeping her from me.

The silver Mercedes sedan pulled up beside my truck, and I dropped the cigarette to the concrete before covering it with the toe of my boot. Burl was here. The urge to send him away and let this go was there. But I’d not be able to get it out of my head. I’d think about the kid. Guilt would creep in, and it would eat me alive. I had to fucking know.

Dr. Burl stepped out of his luxury vehicle, and his gaze swung to mine. I hadn’t given him any information other than I needed a paternity test. In the past, I’d had to call him to do this for one of the guys, but not me. This was going to be a first.

“Morning,” Burl said, tipping his cowboy hat back on his head.

He looked like he had been down at his stables. His worn jeans were dusty, as were his boots. Unlike the family, Burl didn’t have a stable full of thoroughbreds that he bred and raced. He had quarter horses and a couple of Tennessee Walkers. His wife had once been a champion barrel racer and now taught riding lessons.

“Are we testing a baby or a kid?” he asked me.

I glanced up at the door. “Four-year-old girl.”

“And, uh…” He cleared his throat. “Which one of the guys do I need to swab?” The hesitancy in his voice gave away his unease at having to ask me that.

I cut my eyes back to him. “Me.”

The flicker of surprise was gone as quickly as it had come. He was a master at shutting down his expression and masking his thoughts around us. “Okay. Then, we can go ahead and swab your cheek before we go to the room.”

He set his small case down on the hood of the truck then reached into it. When he turned back to me with the sterile cotton swab, I opened my mouth so that he could rub the tip inside my cheek several times. I’d never had to do this since fucking without wrapping my dick up was something I didn’t do. My one exception with the blonde goddess, who I’d fucked like a damn dog in heat, had brought me to this.

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