Page 47 of The Wild Charge

Eden squeezed her own eyes shut to block out her friend’s judgmental, shocked stare. “I know, I know, I’m an idiot.”

Doubly so, considering how long it had taken her to figure out what was going on. The fatigue, the queasiness, the spontaneous urge to cry over work: none of it was normal. She’d known she was out of pills, technically, but she just hadn’t thought that this could be the reason.

The epiphany had broken last night, when she curled up beneath the covers, surprised to realize that sleeping alone was an unusual state these days; that Charlie slept over more often than he didn’t. She’d missed him, a quiet pang in her chest…one that had quickly turned to a full-blown nauseous stomachache, and then the thoughts had started clicking together, rushing against one another like dominoes. A cascade of sudden understanding that had led her to spend most of the night on the bathroom floor between bouts of retching.

Or maybe that was just the morning sickness.

When she opened her eyes, Axelle was giving her a sympathetic look in a role reversal that left her stomach doing cartwheels.

She stood, bag clenched tight in a shaking fist. “Well. Guess there’s only one way to know for sure.”

Twenty minutes later, she cracked open the bathroom door, but could only invite Axelle to take a look with a flick of her fingers, voice caught in her throat.

“Oh,” Axelle said, when she gazed down at the sticks lined up on the edge of the counter. Only one syllable, but it had been uttered with the air of someone who’d just received terrible news. “All of them, huh?”

Eden swallowed down a surge of bile, and nodded.

“Shit.”

The air conditioning kicked on with a low hum and rattle.

“So…what are you gonna do?”

“I don’t know,” Eden choked, because she really, really didn’t.

~*~

For Fox, no place had ever felt like home. Not in the way the rest of his brothers meant it.I’m headed home, Mercy would say with an offhand wave, off to his little white house, and his old lady, and his kids.I’m going home,Ghost would mutter, frustrated with the day, and Fox knew that Maggie had something hot in the oven and the baby would be crawling around like a fiend, a carbon-copy of his father. Walsh’s home was a huge, sparse kitchen, and a petite wife, and a barn full of horses; it was Violet with those big, blue eyes that were calculating on Devin, unreadable on all the man’s offspring, but soft as cornflowers on Walsh’s little girl.

But Fox had always been the transient type. He’d never had his own place. Whichever city he was in – London, Amarillo, New York, Atlanta, Knoxville, New Orleans – he lived in a clubhouse dorm. Given his specialty, and his constant movement, it wouldn’t have made sense to rent a place all on his own. Plus, he wasn’t big on housekeeping.

No, he’d never had a place he called home, so it surprised him to pull into Eden’s driveway and feel an unfamiliar knot loosen in his chest. Relief, he realized, with something of a start. He was relieved the trip was done, and they were back here now, in front of the house where she lived, about to see her again.

Huh.

“What the hell are you smiling about?” Tenny asked sourly.

Shit, he was smiling? Oh well.

He hooked his helmet on his handlebars and fluffed his hair with a few passes of his hand. “Maybe it’s just because I’m not the most miserable bastard in the world,” he shot back, offering his brother his fakest, most blinding grin.

Tenny rolled his eyes and swung off his bike.

Reese, when Fox looked to him, was simultaneously tugging off his gloves and gazing at Tenny with something like fondness. It was a subtle expression on him, nothing overt nor noticeable to anyone who hadn’t spent any time around him, but for Fox, who’d grown used to the boy’s blank, automaton stares, it was striking.

Well, the two of them would have to figure things out on their own. That, or, if they tested his patience much further, Fox would clap their idiot heads together and confess for each of them by proxy. See if he wouldn’t.

Axelle’s car was parked in front of the garage door, and she was the one who greeted them when they trooped into the kitchen. “Hey,” she called, from her place at the sink, where she was filling a glass already loaded with ice.

“Hey,” Fox returned – and then pulled up short when she caught his gaze and pinned him with alook. It wasn’t the sort of look he’d seen on Axelle personally, but it was one he knew all-too well.

He’d just walked in the door and he was already in trouble.

“What?”

“Nothing.” She shut off the tap and turned away, heading for the hallway. “We’re all set up in the office.”

“Heh,” Tenny said behind him. “What did you do?”

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