“Here’s your double shot latte.” Rachael placed the steaming cup of coffee across the counter. It spilled a little and Mrs. James gave her a dirty look but she just ignored it. Just like she’d been ignoring everything over the past week. Ever since D-day.
That’s how she’d been thinking about it. Ever since that day a week ago, her world had stopped, and then been remade into a new place that she didn’t know. She was walking in unfamiliar territory, and it terrified her. If there was anything Rachael Donohue hated, it was being afraid of anything.
She’d always been the first one to go head-first down the slide. She’d been the first one to jump off the water tower. She’d been the first to hop on Peter Tippen’s new dirt bike. Sure, she’d broken her arm in three places and she still had the scar on her hip from the rocks she’d crashed into, she’d been fearless. Always had been. Full speed ahead. No fear. No doubts. No second thoughts.
In a single moment, that all had changed.
She didn’t know what the hell to do about it. She glanced at the clock. Her shift was almost over, thank god. She didn’t think she could take any more snarky comments from the inimitable customers of Mayville. Customer service had never been her strong suit but now it seemed even farther out of reach.
“Hey, Rae,” Her manager Tom said as he started to close down the register for the day, “You seemed distracted all shift. Everything all right?”
She bit her lip against the urge to tell him to mind his own business, instead just forcing herself to nod and smile as best as she could. “I’m good, Tom. Just feeling a little off, you know? It happens. I’ll get over it.”
Liar. her inner voice cried. Liar, liar, pants on fire. You’ll never get over it.
But her manager just nodded. “Why don’t you go ahead and clock out for the night. I can finish up here.”
“Really? Thanks Tom.” Rachael had to fight back sudden tears at the kind gesture and hurried to leave before she started blubbering like a baby and really made a fool of herself.
“Have a good night.” She said, throwing a wave over her shoulder as she grabbed her purse and headed outside into the balmy night air. Spring in Texas was as warm as summer in other places but it was a mild night and Rachael took a moment just to take in a deep breath, smelling the sweetly scented flowers on the light breeze.
Despite her best efforts, her thoughts circled back to one thing she’d been trying to avoid. She knew she had to tell Johnny the truth. It wasn’t just thoughts of him she’d been avoiding, either. His phone calls. His texts.
She knew he thought it was because of that stupid fight at the club but it was so much more than that. And what was worse, she still had no idea how she was going to tell him. Just the thought of it had her throat closing as the nerves tried to sink in.
Only two other people knew about the baby. Her sister Hannah and her best friend Elsie. Rachael had made them both swear to secrecy on pain of an agonizing death. As far as she knew, they kept their word, and would continue to do so if they knew what was good for them.
Where is that fearless Rachael? Where the hell did she go? That damned inner voice was back and all she could do was shake her head. She didn’t have an answer. The old Rachael would never have hesitated to do what she needed to. She never would have been found standing in a parking lot too scared to act, too scared to face her fears.
I don’t want to be that girl. Rachael thought, trying to banish the nerves that had exploded like a hundred butterflies inside her. She fought them off tooth and nail as she made her feet move once more and climbed in her truck. She knew what she needed to do, damn it. No matter how much she didn’t want to, she knew she had to face Jackrabbit. She had to tell him the truth. Because in the end, Hannah was right—like always. He deserved to know.
The drive to the Roadburners clubhouse was nothing but a blur. All Rachael could remember was the feel of her sweaty palms gripping the steering wheel so hard it turned her knuckles white. She practically had to pry them off one by one after she had parked in the lot outside the warehouse looking building that was the clubhouse.
She could hear the ruckus coming from inside. A mix of drunken shouts, raucous laughter, and rowdy music that mingled together in the evening air. Rachael took a deep breath, and another. It was time. No more stalling. She wasn’t about to run away afraid with her tail between her legs. This was too important. Damn it. She hated feeling like this. So uncertain. So unlike her.
She was always confident. She always knew what she wanted and she never let anything stand in her way, and she certainly wasn’t going to let anything stand in her way now, not even herself.
With her resolve somewhat bolstered, Rachael slid from the jeep and made her way to the front door on legs that trembled like leaves.
“Get a fucking hold on yourself, girl. You’re Rachael Donohue and you are fearless. And you can absolutely do this.” She gave herself a little pep talk along the walk and all too soon she was at the door. There was nothing else for her to do but reach out, grasp the handle, and pull it open.
The noise hit her first. Even louder than the muffled din that had reached her outside, it was nearly deafening as she made her way through the crowded bar. Or at least she tried to. Rachael found herself have to push bearded, leather clad bikers out of her way just to take a few steps and every few paces she would get jostled as some drunk asshole bumped into her.
She was gritting her teeth by the time she made it to a small clearing right beside the wooden bar itself and scanned the crowd, hoping to spot Jackrabbit but it was just a sea of black leather and rowdy partiers.
“Damn it, Johnny. Where the hell are you?” She muttered under her breath but the words were instantly lost into the noise of the clubhouse.
“What’s a pretty girl like yourself doin’ in a place like this.” Rachael turned to cast a look of disgust at the drunken pick up line and found herself looking at a very big, and very drunk leather clad biker. He leered down at her with alcohol glazed and bloodshot eyes.
“Not interested.” Rachael said with another scathing look before turning back to her perusal.
“Hey, thasss not very nice.” He slurred again, this time reaching out and grabbing her shoulder, hard. Rachael didn’t think. She just reacted, every instinct inside her firing at once. She whipped around back to face the idiot who kept trying to hit on her and at the same time her right hand balled into a fist and came up swinging. It landed square on the man’s cheek and pain radiated from her fingers all the way up her arm.
“Leave me the hell alone!” She shouted, cradling her injured hand close. She’d just started to turn back around, the man already forgotten when she felt it. The hands on her back, the sharp pressure and he shoved her into the edge of the bar.
Those instincts must have still been in full gear because she reacted faster than she could thing. Her arms wrapped protectively around her middle, her fear for herself forgotten. All that mattered was keeping her baby safe. She rounded on him like a feral animal, ready to keep fighting if she had to.
Rachael clawed at his face, his arms, anything she could reach. She felt wild. Out of control. All the stress and fear and terror and panic from the last week bubbling up to the surface.
“Don’t you dare touch me, you pathetic, disgusting, douchebag! I’m pregnant! You hurt me that’s one thing, but you hurt my baby and I swear to god I’ll claw your eyes out, got it?!” She shouted the words, lost in the blood-pumping heat of the moment and it took her a long moment to realized that there was another set of arms around her, gentle arms, arms that were struggling to pull her back from the douchebag who was now staring at her in shock. And he wasn’t the only one.
Slowly, Rachael noticed the hush that had fallen around her and even more slowly, she turned to look over her shoulder. Her eyes collided with Jackrabbit’s, emerald green against ocean blue but now his was wide with shock.
Her mouth gaped open and close as she struggled for what to say, how to explain. Out of all the scenarios she’d come up with of telling him about the baby, this certainly hadn’t even been one that she considered.
There was a frozen moment, and then as if jumping into double speed, Jackrabbit swept one arm under her knees and the other under her shoulders he picked her up to hold her against his chest as if she weighed nothing.
He didn’t stop as he carried her through the crowd and Rachael could feel the Roadburners curious gazes but all she could do was sit there in his arms and let him carry her.
“Really, Johnny, you can put me down, now. I can walk.” Rachael demanded, but her voice was soft, at odds with her words. It didn’t matter. He didn’t listen to her anyway. He didn’t even pause until they were walking down a short hallway.
He took a quick turn into a large storage closet, still not putting her down until the door was shut and locked tight behind them, trapping them inside.
***
There was loud ringing in his ears. That’s all he could think about, wondering absently if maybe he was going deaf. Maybe he’d had one too many head injuries and it was finally starting to show. It was the same ringing he remembered from his time in the military right after a bomb had gone off. The same exact sound.
In fact, he felt like he was back in that war zone, bullets snapping overhead and adrenaline pumping through his veins like a drug. His body was shaking and his senses were on high alert. At any moment he was expecting his enemies to start raining bullets down on him, but this wasn’t the war. This was something else altogether, something else that he’d never face before, and damned if it didn’t scare the shit out of him more than being in battle ever did.
Over and over again he heard her words playing in his head like a broken record. Pregnant. Baby. Pregnant. Baby. Pregnant. Over and over they echoed, growing louder and louder until he squeezed his eyes closed, convinced that his head was going to explode as the ringing grew even sharper.
Jackrabbit opened his mouth, trying to say something, anything at all, but he couldn’t form a single word. His throat had suddenly gone tight. I can’t breathe. The thought was surprisingly calm. I’m in shock. I must be in shock.
That was the only explanation for the sudden numbness that had spread throughout his body. Or maybe it’s just lack of oxygen.
“Jackrabbit?” Rachael said tentatively, “Johnny?” It felt like he was moving in slow motion as he glanced down into her waiting face.
“Are you planning on putting me down anytime soon?”
As her words registered he looked down, realizing for the first time that he still held her in his arms. With a cough to clear his throat, he slowly released her and let her slide down his body to set her on her feet like she was made of porcelain. He was just going through the motions without realizing what or why he was doing them.
The silence stretched out between them but Jackrabbit’s mind was blank, still wrestling with the bomb that Rachael had just dropped. She stared up at him for a long moment before the silence finally grew too much for either of them to handle.
“Say something.” She said, the words exploding from her.
But that was the problem, he had no idea what to fucking say. He didn’t even know where to begin.
“I don’t even know where to begin…” He trailed off, trying to get a grip on his thoughts but it was hard with his pulse pounding hard in his ears. “Rachael. You’re…”
“Pregnant.” She finished the sentence for him when he couldn’t force out the word. He gave her a look with brows raised.
“You’re sure?”
Slowly she nodded her head. “I went to the doctor on Wednesday. I am definitely pregnant. I’m still figuring out what I’m going to do but I just… I just thought you should know.”
“Hell of a way to tell a guy.”
“Yeah, well, that wasn’t exactly how I had it planned. But when that guy shoved me I just…I snapped.”
“He hurt you?” Jackrabbit said, his voice suddenly low and deep at the thought of anyone laying a hand on her. He’d only walked in to the tail end of whatever had happened.
“No, he didn’t hurt me. Just startled me. Didn’t like it when I turned him down. Believe me. I know how to handle guys like him.”
“Rachael, you have to be careful.” He shook his head as all the conflicting emotions raced through his blood stream and left him a mass of confusion.
All the reason’s he couldn’t be a father ran through his head at once. He didn’t know the first thing about what made a father, his own had been less than ideal before leaving them for good, let alone being a good partner.
He was allergic to commitment. He knew that. Rachael had known that. And as far as he could tell she’d felt exactly the same. So were did that leave him now. Where did that leave the two of them?
His chaotic thoughts battled each other, muddy and confusing and all tangled together in a mess that he didn’t even know where to begin sorting through. But riding underneath them all was a deep seated doubt that had grown and thrived within him long before Rachael had crashed into his life.
Jackrabbit opened his mouth and the words were falling out of his mouth before he could even think to stop them.
“Are you sure that I’m the father?”
Rachael recoiled as if he’d slapped her.
Guilt instantly assailed him. But before he could even open his mouth to form some sort of apology, her hand was flying towards him. His cheek stung like fire where it landed and then she was turning away with a huff of anger.
“I just thought you deserved to know.” Her eyes were burning with green fire. “Well, I’ve done the right thing told you, and now I’m done here.”
Jackrabbit took a step after her as she threw open the door to the storage closet. It crashed against the wall with a loud bang. Rachael didn’t stop as she made her way through the bar, storming out of the clubhouse and leaving him standing there, arms outstretched and mouth gaping open.
Jackrabbit took two stumbling steps after her but something stopped him. Memories of the past rose up to choke him, memories of betrayal, memories of broken trust, and memories of heart ache that he swore he’d never suffer through again.
He’d done that once. He’d gone and fallen in love with a girl that he thought cared for him only to have that love thrown back in his face. Well, it had been a bitter fucking pill to swallow but he learned his lesson. Don’t trust anyone. They’ll just turn on you in the end. They all did.
Shaken more than he wanted to admit, Jackrabbit swiped a hand over his face. Hell, he didn’t know the first thing about raising a child. With a sharp, humorless laugh he finally walked out of the storage closet. He needed a drink, damn it, and a stiff one at that.