“Dude, not sure how you could’ve fucked that up more,” Adam said.

Trevor looked away and took another sip of his bourbon. A few hours had passed since “the incident,” and he’d had time to calm down, stop seeing red, and review his every action and what he’d said, and yeah… He’d fucked up so bad, it was possible it was the biggest fuckup in the history of fuckups.

Hence the bourbon.

“I should’ve told her the truth,” he admitted.

“Yuh think? Jesus, man, she ended up finding out about you in front of everyone. I heard it was painful for everyone to watch. You put her out there, left her swinging.”

Trevor’s stomach clenched and bile rose in his throat. He had. He so fucking had. He should’ve told Rebel he’d been in prison. He shouldn’t have lied to her about his past. She still might’ve left him when she’d found out about the drug dealing, but at least he wouldn’t have been outed in front of everyone like a damn soap opera. Justin would have woken up, with Trevor already in there, having told her the truth in his own time, his own way, able to explain to her his history. Still, not that she’d have forgiven him considering what happened to her brother, but she sure as hell wouldn’t have run off and left him in the dust like a bat out of hell.

“Dude, I know this was your first real relationship, but damn, you could have done better. Now you’ve lost her. The women are pissed as hell. We’re all pissed. You drove her away!”

Trevor slammed his fist on the table. “You think I don’t know that? I know she’s gone. Gone and not fucking coming back.”

“And she’s pregnant,” Adam said quietly.

Trevor gritted his teeth. “Here we go…”

“When a woman tells you she’s pregnant, your response is not to push her away.”

“Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black? I seem to remember you smashing a lamp against the wall and tearing the fuck out of Dodge when you found out Rachel was pregnant and you thought the child might not be yours. Rebel was raped, by two different assholes. She doesn’t even know who the father is and never will.”

Trevor took a deep breath. He thought he’d finally found a woman for himself. Free and clear. He’d never had that before. Never. He’d either shared women or been partial to women who always seemed to be taken with other men. His first girlfriend who messed around with his best friend proved that. He was tired of it, bone tired. This new Trevor required a different type of woman. A woman who was his and his alone. He thought he’d found that. And now he’d found out the woman he loved was pregnant and she wasn’t carrying his own fucking child?

Would he ever get a break?

“This was the first woman who’d ever been mine. The first woman I’d loved. Do you hear me? Loved.” Trevor paused and downed another swig of bourbon, letting that shit burn right on down his throat. “I wasn’t sharing her with anyone,” he rasped. “You can look but you can’t touch. And I was all over the idea of fucking her and filling her with my seed and planting my kid there. Here’s what you don’t know.” He jabbed a finger at Adam. “I’d stopped using a condom. I wanted her pregnant with my kid, and I thought she did too. But she was already fucking pregnant and she hadn’t told me. Rebel had her secrets, too.”

“If it makes you feel better, Justin looked surprised to hear that too. He didn’t know and he’d been living with her.”

“Rachel knew.”

“Rachel told me she’d guessed. Caught Rebel throwing up yesterday morning and put two and two together. Rebel swore her to secrecy. Rachel said she did her best to talk her into telling you the truth. She thinks Rebel was about to tell you, on her own, trust you with that before this happened. I bet she didn’t want you to find out her secret that way any more than you’d wanted her to find out yours.”

Trevor swallowed another gulp of bourbon. “Yeah, well,” he gasped. “Too damn late for both of us, isn’t it?”

Disgusted, he pulled out the box he’d been carrying in his pocket, the small ring box he’d picked up just yesterday with Adam on a scavenger mission to town, and threw it on the dresser. The box he’d planned to pull out once he got a moment alone with Rebel.

That was all over with. All over.

Justin tried to act like he was perfectly fine and fully recovered from his illness, but Rebel knew better. He ended up falling asleep in the backseat of Krissy’s car twenty minutes into their journey. This was hard to do considering he was sitting upright, squeezed between both Tiana and Kati, who had given him the hump in the middle to sit on.

The car had been quiet though as Krissy drove to the “girls’ lair,” as she liked to call it, a nice comfortable house they’d found in the countryside on the outskirts of a small town named Sanger. It was only about a forty-minute drive from the farm they’d left. The ranch-style house was one story with five bedrooms and was all cleared out and already stocked with provisions. Krissy, Kati and Tiana had already staked their rooms during the last week that they’d lived there before they’d made contact on the farm, so Rebel walked in quietly with Justin, who was only half awake, and claimed the last two available rooms in the back of the house.

Later, they all sat in the kitchen while Kati and Tiana pulled together a quick meal of canned foods. Krissy, Tiana and Kati chatted while both she and Justin remained silent, essentially dead on their feet.

How could she speak when her very soul had been ripped from her body? When it turned out the love of her life was a murderer and a drug lord?

She’d fallen in love with the villain in a bad movie. How was that possible?

Her stomach twisted into knots so she ate very little, mainly picking at her food. Justin ate some, and she noted the sweat beading on his forehead despite the cool house that was climate controlled due to the generator producing enough electricity for the all-important air conditioner. There were solar panels covering all of the roof too.

Rebel made her excuses and led Justin to his bedroom. The two of them had tiny rooms, both with twin beds. This was fine. A bed was all she needed. She pulled out Justin’s medicine kit, which Christian had thoughtfully stocked and quietly handed off to Rebel before they left. She wasn’t sure Justin even knew it existed. He was still coughing some, but not like before. She shook out two painkillers and his antibiotics, anti-cough meds, and made him take it all with some water, made sure he was in bed, comfortable, with his shoes off, and went to her own room and closed the door.

She sat on the bed and looked around at the former child’s bedroom. The pink and purple décor. The dolls and Barbie clothes. And tears started to roll down her cheeks. Her shoulders shook. A sob tore through her chest. She lay down on the bed and tucked herself into a protective ball and cried and cried. She cried for herself, for all the dreams she had, for the betrayal she felt, and she cried for her baby, who, yet again, would not have a father.

And also, she cried for the world that was gone and would never return.

“What is wrong with me?” she whispered to herself. Why couldn’t she seem to find the right man? She’d been so on it when it came to her job, her career, but when it came to men, she was miserable. A total failure. Other people seemed to find that person who was right and then stay with them. Why couldn’t she do the same?

Trevor had lied to her, tricked her. She cried harder and clutched her pillow as the torment racked her body.

They stayed at the house in Sanger for three days. Rebel mainly slept. When she was awake she checked on Justin, who seemed to be mainly sleeping too. The other women kept them fed, asked her if she needed anything, helped Justin when necessary, but left her alone to her misery, which was exactly what she wanted. That’s exactly where she was, in misery, a hole so dark and black it was difficult to get out of bed. She’d been pushed right back to that place she’d been at right after the end, when she’d drifted around in shock at the devastation of the whole entire world.

Finally, one morning she woke up to find Justin standing next to her bed, coffee cup in hand, smile on his face.

“Hey,” she mumbled.

“Wake up, sleepy head.”

“Huh, this coming from the man who slept the last three days away.”

“Recharging. Ready to go now.”

She rolled over with her back to him. “Well, that’s you, not me. I could use a few more hours.”

“Yeah, guess being pregnant would take a toll on a person.”

She stiffened and rolled back to look at him, letting all her anguish show plainly on her face. “Oh, Justin, I’m so sorry you had to find out like that. I meant to tell you—”

“That’s okay, no need to tell me. I’m sure I would’ve noticed by the time you went into labor. I’m observant like that.”

“Justin.” She sat up. “Look, I found out only the day before we got in the RV and left for Casa de Fruta. It was so shocking, I was just trying to figure it out in my own head first before telling you, then you got sick. I didn’t have a chance to tell you before you jumped on Trevor. I was going to tell you. In fact, I was eager to tell you. I needed your advice.”

She noticed the lines around the corners of his eyes and near his mouth softened. His grip on his coffee cup loosened. He sat down on the bed next to her. He looked clean-shaven, like he’d just stepped out of the shower. Meanwhile, she was a rumpled mess.

“It wasn’t like I’d known the whole time we were traveling together and I didn’t tell you. I only found out recently and I freaked out because…because I knew this was a result of when I was raped and beaten in my own house.”

“I knew you’d been through something horrible when I found you, but you’ve never wanted to talk about it.”

She took a deep breath and decided now was as good a time as any to bare her soul. “Right at the end, when there were still a lot of people alive but everything was chaos, I opened the door and let them in because they were friends. Two guys I’d known for years who I’d worked with on various sets. They beat me and raped me, taking turns.”

“Rebel.”

“Yeah, it was pretty awful. That’s also why when you found me I was such a mess. I was recovering from not only the end of the world, but from that betrayal. Can I tell you what bugs me most about this?”

“What?”

“I know this may sound weird, but it bugs me that I’ll never know who the father of my child is. Both of those guys were white and they looked similar. Same coloring, same build. Is that odd that that’s what I’m worried over? Not so much the labor or the fact that I’m bringing a child into this weirdness, but I’m tortured over the fact that I can never tell my child who their father is.” A sob unexpectedly bubbled up in her chest. “I just never expected to ever be in a position like this. I always thought if I had a child it would be my choice, and the father would be a man I loved, a man who was ready and eager to raise the baby with me.”

Justin took her hand. “I’m here. I can be the father.”

Tears ran down her cheeks. “You’re such a nice man,” she whispered. “I still wish you weren’t gay, you know.”

He smiled. “And I wish you were gay. And a man.”

She wiped her cheek. “I was kinda secretly wishing Trevor would’ve taken the role as father and you would’ve been the beloved uncle. But that didn’t exactly work out.”

“Rebel, he’s—”

“I know, I know,” she cut him off. “I know everything. Let’s not revisit my errors, okay? Not today.”

He sighed. “Okay. I’m not leaving you. I’m here for you, like you were there for me while I was sick. You stayed with me every step of the way and made sure I got what I needed. Thank you for that, Rebel.”

She turned and gave him a hug; his arms slid around her and hugged her back. “I’d do anything for you, you big lug. Don’t you know that?”

“Same here,” he responded. “Anything, Rebel. Anything.”