Page 59 of Devil to Pay: Cutter

“Baby,” I say. She gets it. I need her safe, but I need to be with my brothers. Aja nods but then reaches her hand across the seat to take mine. She pulls it onto her lap, pressing my palm against her thigh while covering it with her own hand.

There’s not much more to say.

19

AJA

His hand warms the spot on my thigh where I keep it pressed. I think we both need this contact. So much has changed in a just a week. When I think about it, it does my head in. From finding out I’m pregnant, to telling Cut and having him flip out, to taking a road trip to end my pregnancy, Rough joining me, getting ambushed and kidnapped, my escape and injuries, the hospital and Cutter telling me he made a mistake, that he wants us to have the baby and be a family.

What?Who could blame me for my head spinning?

Cutter’s quiet as we drive. Before we get too far away from Michigan, I need to know where his head is really at.

“Are you sure you want to go through with this pregnancy?” I ask. “It wasn’t just the fear of hearing I’d been kidnapped and injured? Because we can’t go back. Once this kid comes, we’re parents, Cut.”

He squeezes the spot where his hand rests. “When I finally got a hold of you and you said you thought you’d be a shit mother… Aj, baby, it made me think. Hit me like a brick between the eyes when you said that shit.That’swhy I freaked. The thought of me as a father, when my father was such a fucking asshole. My mother wasn’t much better. My father never stayed faithful to my mom, not ever. But I met you and I chose to be different from him because I love you.”

“Cut—”

“No. You asked. Now, let me finish. I love you. I make the conscious choice to be the man you need me to be. When I heard you say you’d make a shit mother, it gutted me. If I could make the choice not to be my dad with you, then why couldn’t I make that same choice with our kid?”

My eyes begin to well with unshed tears.

“Do you believe me?” he asks. The air in the cab becomes so thick, as if everything—the whole world—rests on my answer. I close my eyes to rid my mind of any distractions and let the question swirl around my brain a time or twenty. Do I believe him? Do I trust him? Do I? Do I? Do I?

Yes.

He came for me and the first words out of his mouth when I opened my eyes were that he wanted us to keep the baby and to be a family. He could have said or done a slew of other things. He could have just as easily gushed about how happy he was that I was awake and not said one word about the baby.

When I open my eyes again, I take in a breath, turn my head to him and answer, “Yes.” And that’s when it happens. It being a truck that rams into the back of our truck.

“Fuck,” Cutter yells, his muscles straining as he tries to keep us in our lane, to keep us from spinning out. We’re rammed again from behind. My whole body juts forward, straining against the seatbelt. Cutter’s head stops millimeters from slamming into the steering wheel.

The truck gives chase, joined by men on motorcycles as we weave through traffic trying our best to shake them.

This is bad.

“Cut,” I yell after he swerves and my head cracks against the window. One of the bikes moves in parallel with Cutter’s window. Despite wearing shades to hide his eyes, the biker’s face looks manic. He draws his gun, firing into our truck.

“Get down!” Cutter shouts, shoving my head down just as the bullet from the asshole’s gun shatters the window, spraying glass all over Cutter and me. He just touches my arm one time before slamming the accelerator down, causing both our heads to whip backward this time. The whole left side of his face is sliced and bleeding. He and I will be lucky if we don’t end up with whiplash. That is, if we make it through this alive.

The men chasing us aren’t as careful, forcing cars off the road violently if necessary by crashing into their tail ends or sideswiping their doors.

I look on in horror behind me as a compact car spins out, crashing into the median. “We’ve got to get off the highway! They’re going to kill someone!”

Cutter nods once sharply before wrenching the steering wheel hard, cutting us across two lanes of traffic to an off-ramp. The tires spin out on the gravel as we almost miss the road.

He takes a sharp right, speeding down that bumpy road until we come to a small town. Pretty much nothing more than a gas station with a convenience store and McDonald’s attached, and at the edge of town, a garage and an old, broken-down bar. The building leans to the left, reminding me of the three little pigs and the house made of sticks.

There are some beat-up pickups and a couple of bikes, but there weren’t enough bikes to be a biker bar.

“Dropping you off, baby,” Cutter says.

“What?No!” I screech.

“No arguing. Need you safe. Place like that, they carry. You call Vlad.”

“Ineedyousafe,” I cry, literally cry with tears and all.

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