Twelve
Seven months later
The cool ocean breeze blew gently across Brooke’s face where she sat at a table on the patio of Jax Chamberlin’s home on a Malibu beach in California. The setting should have eased her jitters, but tonight, she doubted there was anything short of a miracle that would make that happen. Watching Keaton and a couple of other Renegades work with Justin on fight moves wasn’t helping.
“I’m not sure if I should be happy or terrified.” She smirked at Ellie, who sat beside her, legs crossed, bare foot swinging, a hard lemonade in her hand. “Are they helping him or creating a monster?”
Ellie’s smile widened. “Mmm, probably a little of both.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
She lifted her drink toward Brooke. “One of these would help you relax.”
She smiled. “Not tonight, thanks.”
“You okay?”
Brooke nodded. “Just tired.”
“You’ve been tired a lot lately.”
She shrugged. “Stress.”
“You should get in to a doctor, Brooke. Make sure you’re not anemic or vitamin deficient.”
“Yep.” There would be a lot of that in her future. “I will.”
The summers in Southern California might be absolute perfection, but on the shore, when the sun dropped and the fog crept closer, Brooke found herself reaching for Keaton’s sweat jacket. The one he’d brought especially for her even when she’d insisted she wouldn’t need it. And tugging the jacket on reminded her it always took her a couple of weeks to acclimate from the East Coast’s humid heat to the West Coast’s dry warmth. Keaton seemed to know her better than she knew herself.
Keaton crouched and extended a hand toward Justin, palm out. “Aim and kick.”
Justin tilted his body backward to balance on one leg and used the other to hammer a quick, hard strike. The slap of flesh against flesh sang on the breeze.
“Nice.” Rich approval in Keaton’s voice made a smile break through the concentration on Justin’s face and warmed Brooke’s heart.
All the guys were good with kids, probably because they were really just big kids themselves. But she’d been both impressed and moved when he’d stepped into a position of male role model for Justin so fluidly, so easily.
“Now pivot and jam Troy with a palm strike,” he told Justin.
Her nephew’s moves were strong and practiced. Moves Brooke had been watching him make for six months now. Ever since he’d recovered from his last procedure, his lung capacity had blossomed and Justin had taken up an intense interest in Keaton’s love of martial arts.
Justin turned, set his bare feet in a solid scissor stance, and drove the heel of his hand up and into the hand Troy held just below his chin. Another slap of flesh sounded in the night, but Troy hammed it up. Performing the perfect stuntman’s impression of a real hit, Troy snapped his head back with a grunt, reeled backward, and fell to the ground, rolling away.
The melodrama started Ellie giggling.
“Oh God,” Lexi said with here-we-go lightheartedness. “Ellie’s giggling.”
“And after a couple of glasses of wine…” Rubi shook her head. “It’s going to last the rest of the night.”
“Come on, he’s funny,” she said in defense, and started laughing again as she pointed at him rolling around on the grass, holding his face and moaning. “Look at him.”
Jax chuckled and wrapped his arm around Lexi’s shoulders. “He’s an idiot.”
“Yeah,” Ellie admitted, “but he’s an adorable idiot.”
Troy went limp in the grass and looked at Ellie upside down. “Hey, you’re supposed to be on my side.”
“I am, babe. I said you were adorable and funny.”
“This is no time to mess around.” Keaton drew Justin’s attention from laughing at Troy. “You’ve still got a guy at your back.”
Before Justin could turn, Wes, who had to be ten times Justin’s size, closed a forearm around his throat with a cartoonish growl.
“What the hell?” Rubi, Wes’s girlfriend, made a face. “Was that supposed to be a pirate?”
Wes turned his head toward Rubi. “Baby, you don’t watch near enough movies. Remember we had a talk about unearthly beings in sci-fi—”
Justin crossed one foot behind Wes’s, ducked from under his arm, and used it to push him backward, tripping the Renegade. Wes landed on his ass. One second Wes was standing, the next he was on the ground. It happened so fast, Brooke’s mouth dropped open in shock.
Keaton howled with laughter. He doubled his arms over his stomach and stumbled back a step, then bent at the waist, barely able to hold himself up.
“Oh my—” Brooke started, sitting forward in her chair.
“You little…” Wes laughed the words, jackknifed into a sitting position, and reached for Justin.
Justin screamed and jumped away, but Wes got ahold of his T-shirt and hauled him back. Justin was already laughing when Wes grabbed his waist, but then the tickling began. Justin squealed and giggled and cried for mercy.
Everyone was laughing—the guys even harder than the women. But Brooke heard a little rasp in Justin’s cries that made alarms ring in her head, and she pushed from her chair. “I think that’s—”
A hand closed on her shoulder. “He’s fine.”
Her sister’s voice jerked her attention to the right. She was in a different pair of scrubs than she’d gone in to work wearing, and she looked tired. “Don’t you hear—?”
“That’s because he’s screaming,” Tammy said, her smile relaxed and happy. Which helped Brooke relax.
Until Justin’s “No, no, no!” shivered over her spine. And she turned to find all three giant Renegades carrying a tiny Justin toward the pool.
All of Brooke’s muscles tightened. She pulled in a breath to tell them to stop and took a step that direction, but again Tammy stopped her. “Brooke. He’s fine. You’ve been so overprotective lately.”
And just like that, her emotions went completely haywire and a push of irrational tears burned her eyes.
Shit.
The splash made her head swivel again, and Brooke piled her hands over her heart, caught between angst over the unknown happening in her body and more angst over Justin’s ability to breathe. After so many years of watching Justin struggle for every breath, she still had a hard time embracing the fact that he could now act like a normal kid.
But all three men stood at the pool’s edge, their humor now faded into intensity as their gazes homed in on the boy beneath the water, ready to pull him out on a second’s notice. And a wave of deep, moving emotion rolled beneath her hands, rocking her foundation.
These men, really nothing more than acquaintances to Brooke, Tammy, and Justin, had taken the three of them in as if they had always been part of this ever-growing Renegades family. Brooke had experienced a sliver of this, just one way they showed their all-encompassing loyalty to each other, when she’d lived briefly with Ellie and Troy after Ellie had quit the road. But the way they’d taken Justin in like their own nephew and treated Brooke and Tammy like sisters for no other reason than because they were important to Keaton humbled Brooke.
And she was pretty damn sure this emotional roller coaster was going to kill her long before she ever found the courage to tell Keaton…
Justin’s head broke the surface, his lungs filled with air, and the first thing he did was burst out laughing. The second thing he did was splash all three of the men standing there. Brooke released her own breath—air she hadn’t realized she’d been holding—and her body sagged with relief.
Ellie walked to the pool edge with a towel and waited while the guys dragged Justin out of the water by the arms, then she wrapped the fluffy terry around him. Justin’s face glowed with vibrancy and life and joy.
And tears swelled in Brooke’s eyes out of nowhere.
“You’re tired.” Tammy rubbed her back and walked her a few steps toward the pool, frowning with concern.
“Me? You’re the one who’s been on your feet all day.” She worked up a smile for her sister. “So? How was the first day at the big, fancy teaching hospital? What’s with the different scrubs?”
Tammy’s smile beamed, and she rolled her eyes. “It was amazing. All except the part where my last patient threw up all over me—hence the replacement scrubs.”
The mention of vomit made Brooke’s stomach roll toward her throat. She curved her lips over her teeth and focused on controlling the wash of nausea.
“But I’ll tell you all about it later,” Tammy said as they approached the guys and she thanked Ellie for the towel. She rubbed her son’s wet head. “Time for this one to get to bed.”
“Did you see me, Mom?” Justin chattered with excitement. “The guys taught me…”
Tammy walked back to the table with Justin, Troy, and Wes. Keaton stepped up to Brooke and reached for the zipper of the jacket, tugging it into place. “Cold?”
She snuggled close to him with the first real fear of driving a wedge between them since they’d gotten back together. “A little.”
He turned her toward the house and wrapped an arm around her. “You don’t feel good, do you?”
He didn’t sound particularly alarmed, and Brooke felt guilty. This had suddenly become her new normal, which she neither liked nor could control. They stopped at the table where everyone except Tammy was comfortably seated again, opening another round of drinks.
“I’m fine,” she told him, forcing a smile that seemed to drain her strength. “Just tired.”
“I think we all need some good sleep.” Tammy pulled a Renegades logo sweatshirt over Justin’s head and smiled at Brooke. “Ready?”
Brooke hesitated. She hoped she would find a moment to talk with Keaton alone tonight. Between the move, Justin’s school, and Brooke’s, Tammy’s, and Keaton’s schedules, they hadn’t gotten much more than a few stolen moments together.
He’d just returned from a shoot in the Mojave Desert this afternoon and had a new shoot starting tomorrow on the other side of the LA basin. That meant he’d be working sixteen-hour days, six days a week.
Which left Brooke holding this secret time bomb until she saw him again.
That led her to fear and doubt and anxiety of how they would ever make this work. Spiraling into panic that she might have moved her sister and nephew to California only to have her relationship with Keaton fall apart when he found out—
Keaton gave her shoulder a squeeze. “I’ll take her home.”
It took a second for her to untwist her mind only to get confused again. “I live the opposite direction—”
“Yeah, well, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about that.”
He used his foot to angle a chair and eased into it, pulling her onto his lap. Brooke couldn’t look away from his face, from the intensity in his eyes. He was focused in a way that told Brooke this conversation had a very specific purpose. The fact that everyone else was also listening should have been weird. Brooke should have told him they’d talk about it privately, but instead of the others’ presence feeling invasive, it felt supportive. Nurturing. And Brooke realized this was probably a lot like what it felt like to have a big, close family always butting into your business.
God, she understood why Ellie loved it so much. Brooke did too.
He pulled out his wallet, opened the fold, and drew out a key. “I think it’s about time you gave your sister and your nephew some space.” He grinned. “And come crowd me instead.”
Her mouth dropped open, a fist of emotion grabbed her heart, and her eyes instantly blurred with tears.
“Awww,” Ellie said. “That’s so sweet.”
A murmur of agreement passed among the other women while a mess of emotions jumbled with just as many conflicting thoughts.
“Oh my God.” The words came out in a choked whisper, and she covered the tightness at the center of her chest with one hand. Tears spilled over, and embarrassment clouded the joy. She covered her face with both hands and huffed, “I’m sorry.”
“Mom,” Justin’s bewildered voice cut into the moment. “Is Aunt Brooke moving out?”
“Shh,” Tammy told him. “Let her answer.”
“But she’s crying,” Justin said. “Can’t we just have Keaton move in with us? I’d share my room.”
Everyone busted up laughing, including Brooke. And when she cleared the tears from her eyes and looked at Keaton again, he was sharing one of those guy smiles with Justin. “Because I am just that cool, aren’t I, Justin?”
“Totally,” he said, utterly serious. “Aunt Brooke, I’d even clean the toys out of my closet to make room for his clothes.”
“Dude.” Keaton fisted the hand holding the key and held it out to Justin. “You are so freaking awesome.” Justin beamed as he met Keaton’s fist. Then Keaton gave Justin a secretive look and tilted his head toward Brooke, whispering, “But if Brooke comes to my house, then you have two places to live. How amazing would that be?”
His eyes went wide. “Oh, yeah.”
Brooke turned into a broken faucet. More tears leaked from her eyes. She tented her hands over her mouth and murmured, “God, I love you so much.”
He lifted the key again and gave her that look. The one that always floated in his eyes when he told her he loved her too. “Which is why you should take this. Because people who love each other should be together.”
“Mom says that all the time,” Justin agreed.
She reached out and stroked Keaton’s face. “I need to talk to Tam—”
“No, you don’t,” her sister cut in. “You should do it.”
“You should totally do it,” Justin agreed.
Keaton’s face broke into a beaming smile, and he laughed.
“Take it already,” Ellie said. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Thank you,” Rubi said, her voice brimming with attitude. “I almost split a seam holding that in.”
“Shush,” Brooke told everyone. “Jeez. Keaton’s spinning my head fast enough.”
“Welcome to Los Angeles,” Rubi whispered with an evil little edge. “Jump into the fire, it’s warm down here.”
“Baby,” Wes murmured, “save that good stuff for the bedroom.”
“Hello,” Tammy said, a reminder to Justin’s presence.
“Gah.” Wes rolled his eyes. “Kids.”
And more tears burned Brooke’s eyes. “Keaton,” she said softly, “I think we need to talk before—”
“Okay, okay,” he said with a dramatic you’re-crushing-my-jam flair. “Girl, you’re always demanding my A-game.”
His fingers disappeared into his wallet again and emerged this time with…
A ring?
Brooke gasped, along with every other woman at the table. Her heart jumped, tripped, tumbled, then got up and did it all over again. “What… What…”
Wes, Troy, and Jax pushed to their feet simultaneously as if they were choreographed and leaned in.
“Is that a fucking ring?” This from Troy.
“Mom,” Justin complained. “I can’t hear.”
“That’s the point,” Tammy told him. “Now be quiet so I can.”
Brooke pried her gaze from the gorgeous sparkling band she couldn’t even see because of the tears blurring her vision. Man, this wasn’t falling into the right fairy-tale order of progression at all, yet that didn’t make her want any of it less—no matter what order it came in.
“You bought her a ring,” Wes accused, “and you didn’t tell us?”
“What the hell?” Jax wanted to know.
“Girls, girls,” Rubi told the three of them in her sweetest tone, “don’t get jealous. You’ll all get yours when the time is right.”
Wes spun around and picked her up and threw her over his shoulder. Then smacked her ass. Rubi squealed and laughed, and as the other twittered with teasing and excitement, Brooke leaned in, pressed her cheek to Keaton’s, and said, “We need to talk.”
Rubi pushed against Wes’s back, struggling to shoot a glare over her shoulder at Keaton. “You, mister, had better get that fine ass of yours out of that chair and drop to your knees. As in now.”
Wes spanked her again. “Who’s ass are you calling fine? Those words have my name stamped all over them, so don’t be applying them to another guy. Understand?”
Brooke laughed at their antics, but everything inside her vibrated and jumped and snapped. She pressed her hands to her cheeks, utterly overwhelmed, whispering, “Oh my God, Keaton…”
“My knees are busy at the moment,” he told Rubi without looking away from Brooke. “What’s going on, beautiful? Talk to me.”
“Do you feel those daggers piercing your skull?” Jax asked Keaton. “’Cause I’m pretty sure Rubi’s eyes are registered as lethal weapons with every branch of special forces in the military.”
“It’s true,” Lexi agreed. “You should really just do what she says. Besides, it’s a photo op, and you know we always need promo material for the website.”
“Hell no,” Jax disagreed. “Don’t you dare let our groupies know Keaton’s off the market. We’re droppin’ like flies.”
“And what, exactly,” Lexi wanted to know, “is the problem with letting ‘groupies’ know you’re off the market?”
“The more you’re around them,” Keaton said, referencing the other Renegades and their girls, “the easier they become to ignore. But the natives are getting restless, so you’re going to have to tell me pretty quick, because the girls can only play smoke and mirrors for so long before those guys cut themselves loose again.”
“Oh my God…” She curled his T-shirt into her fingers. “I don’t think doing that here is a good idea. I’m not sure how you’re going to react—”
“To you being pregnant?”
Brooke’s breath caught. Her eyes locked on his. No one else seemed to hear what he said. They continued to chatter and tease, but it faded as a bubble seemed to close around Brooke and Keaton. Then her heartbeat grew really loud in her ears. And every breath she took sounded like a rasp across sandpaper.
“You…? How did you…?” Her stomach flipped so hard, she winced and covered it with her hand.
“That’s one of the ways,” he said. “Your exhaustion was another one. All these tears spilling out of you—when you’re happy, when you’re sad, when you’re mad, when you’re confused. The way you forget your keys and your phone. The way you keep knocking over your drinks at restaurants.”
“That doesn’t… How the hell do you…?”
“My sister is pregnant,” he said. “I may not have mentioned it because I only found out about two months ago and I only remember it when I call home, which is usually when I’m on the road, because that’s when I have time, hanging out in the hotel room. And every time I call home, all I hear about is the misery she’s going through, which sparks tales of how hard my mother’s pregnancies were with us. That, along with the way you’ve been feeling for going on two months, adding in that broken-condom episode about three months ago… Yeah, I’ve been suspicious for about three or four weeks. I’ve been pretty damn sure for about two.”
“Jesus.” She squeezed her eyes closed and rubbed her forehead. “I didn’t even figure it out until yesterday.”
“You’re juggling a shitload of stress, Brooke. Your mind is in a dozen other places, and you always put everyone else first. It doesn’t surprise me that your own needs weren’t on your radar.”
When she opened her eyes, the first sight that registered in her brain was his soft smile. “You’re…not, I don’t know, upset?”
“Hell no.” God, his eyes sparkled with excitement. “I can’t fuckin’ wait.”
Relief washed in. Only to be followed instantly by the realization that his proposal had been prompted by the pregnancy.
Fuck. This. Roller coaster.
“Well,” she exhaled and pulled her whiny, pansy ass back into line. “That’s good news.”
“So…” He lifted his brows. “You’re happy about it too?”
That wasn’t exactly the right word. Shocked, terrified, already in love with the idea of having his child…but happy? She released a breath, and a smile fluttered over her lips. “Yeah.” Then she added, “But, look, I don’t want to rush into anything. Our schedules are crazy, we haven’t been seeing each other when we live in the same town… Maybe we should just stay where we are for a while and see how things go.”
A tarnish dulled his smile, but he ran a hand over her hair. “I bought the ring four months ago, Brooke. Long before any thoughts of kids came to mind.” His fingers came around and slid over her jaw. “I knew those first few days after you’d left Austin, I wasn’t going to be able to live without you. Like I told you in the beginning, I’m not good at this, and I’m going to make mistakes, but one mistake I will never make again is letting you go. Because I love you more than anything.”
She dropped her forehead against his and started bawling.
And Keaton started laughing.
“Hold on,” Ellie said. “I’m not tipsy enough to be hearing things. And I’m pretty darn sure I heard someone say pregnant.”
“What?” A chorus of voices followed, both male and female.
Then hugs and high fives went around the group, while Brooke rested her head on Keaton’s shoulder and let him support her and take care of her. And the feeling of having him there, wanting to be there for her, for them, for the family they would soon become…completed her in a way she’d never even known she needed.
And finally, Keaton pressed a kiss to her temple. “Are you ready to go home now, princess?”
“Princess?” She laughed the word. “No one’s ever called me princess.”
“Well, get used to it,” he said, his cocky attitude swaggering through his voice. “Because you’re going to get treated like effing royalty now, baby.”
She was smiling when he set her on her feet, then dropped to one knee.
“Rubi has a point,” he said. “We’re only doing this once, so we should do it right.” With his eyes on hers, he said, “Are you ready to do this with me? This crazy life? Together? Forever?”
She choked out a laugh. “As long as we’re together forever—absolutely.”
“Then let’s get some princess-level bling on this pretty finger.”
He slipped the sparkling band with a center diamond she’d have to appreciate in detail another time—maybe in another month or two when the hormones leveled out and she could stop crying at every little thing—onto her left ring finger so gently, she almost didn’t feel it. But she felt a shift inside her. A grounding force. A deep and honest love.
And when he tilted his head back and looked up at her with the same love filling every inch of his expression, Brooke wished she could capture the moment in time.
He sighed, an utterly content sound that resonated inside Brooke. “I love you—”
She cupped his face and bent, pressing her mouth to his. When she pulled back, the cheers of their friends and family filtered in, and Brooke matched and finished Keaton’s sentiment with, “—so very much.”