Page 73 of Sinister Red
Not when the contents of that envelope make me so happy I could cry.
Which is something I’ve been doing a lot of lately.
I cry while I sneak down to the bathroom and quietly dry heave my brains out before Sam wakes up every morning. I cry when I can’t eat my favorite foods because they make me nauseous, or when I eat too much of the ones I can still stomach and convince myself I’m going to blow up like a balloon. That makes me cry too, the fact that I can’t fit into my jeans anymore, even if it’s only by a little bit. God help me if that one commercial for the Humane Society comes on. I’m a fucking wreck during that shit, and because my emotions are all over the map, my boyfriend is starting to get suspicious.
We’ve been together nearly every single day since Harlow and Marbles got married, and I had no idea how much I’d missed Sam, how big the void created by his absence was until I was with him almost twenty-four-seven, but it was huge and I’m more than happy to be living the way we are now.
Which is not in some crazy little bubble where I quit my job and Sam moved in before we both became hermits that do nothing but hang out together.
I still work with my dad and occasionally help out at the hospital, and I do things with Harlow all the time. My Red still runs the club and screws around with the rest of the guys, but he moved in with me the same night our best friends got hitched and we’ve been happily living together ever since. So yes, we are together all the time, but not in some weird, stage five clinger sort of way, and that’s just another reason that’s made my anxiety spike.
How do you hide a pregnancy from the man you live with and love, the father of the baby, for almost four months without him catching on?
I didn’t think it could be done, honestly, but there are a couple relatively decent reasons why I tried and kind of succeeded.
For starters, I was worried.
Not about Sam or his reaction, not about anything as it pertains to our life together to be honest.
My Sammy has shown me time and time again over the course of our relationship that he is devoted, dependable, loyal, and the most loving man I have ever met. I never had any reason to question him years ago, and I definitely don’t now, so hiding the baby isn’t because I don’t think Sam would want it or be the best father he could be.
And at this point in our life, the Wulven Kings have nothing to do with it either.
As soon as Sammy took over, he started making changes.
Little things mostly, and nothing that restructured the entire club, but he had Crunchy do a full workup of all the books and finances, and when he was done and they saw that the club itself had tons of cash lying around collecting dust, my Red put it to use.
He upped the security around the clubhouse, fixed the issues that allowed the Demon Seeds to breach the perimeter, then basically gave Spidercarte blancheto take a large portion of the money and start investing in a security system that will rival the goddamn Pentagon when it’s done. Unfortunately, his plans were put on hold for a while because—thanks to Marbles, Mortimer, a lot of jello shots and a late night alone—the Wulven Kings clubhouse sort ofblew upa few years ago.
Which brings me back to my original point about how the WKMC isn’t really a concern for me.
Not only was Sam making changes to overall safety, but they’re currently keeping things pretty low-key because the boys are all hunting for a new clubhouse. They have been for a while and it’s scaled back a lot of what they do and how they do it. But it’s not just those things either that put me at ease. No, it’s mostly the fact that Sammy quit going on runs himself and gave everyone on the EC the option to sit them out when it came to moving product.
And he stopped dealing in drugs.
They may not sound like massive changes to anyone else, but to me… they were huge. Knowing that Sammy wasn’t going to be leaving me for days or weeks at a time, not worrying myself sick over whether or not he’d come home and if he did, would it be in an orange jumpsuit or a body bag. The simple fact that he decided to run the show from the clubhouse—or MACs after they close since the actual clubhouse is gone, these men are surprisingly picky about finding a new one, and the bar is where they hold church right now—made my fear of the lifestyle of the Kings seem unwarranted.
And I know my man has been doing all of this for me.
Sam listened when I told him why I left all those years ago, and not only did he reassure me with his words that things were going to be different, he reassured me with his actions.
So between the club and Red’s involvement in it not being a concern, you’d think I don’t have any reason to be worried, so why hide the pregnancy?
Because I was still fucking worried.
When I was pregnant before, I didn’t make it through the first trimester before I lost the baby and unfortunately, my mind sort of defaulted back to that line of thinking.
I’m pregnant, there’s risks, but if I don’t tell anyone then no one else will get hurt if I lose this baby too.
It’s wrong, keeping it from Sam for a second time. I know that, and I’m sure I’ll regret doing it once I finally breakdown and tell him everything when he gets home, but I was so worried about losing this baby the same as I did our last one, I convinced myself waiting until I made it past eight weeks, then twelve, was the best way to go.
Then you add in the fact that I didn’t really have any obvious symptoms until I got through the first trimester and hiding it made sense to me.
Granted, I’m only about two weeks into the second, but then as soon as I was three months and one day pregnant, our little bean was likehey, we made it, let’s party!but by party they meanmake you puke all the time, give up some of your favorite foods, and stop sleeping almost entirely.Up until then, keeping this a secret was a lot easier, but it’s definitely game on now, and considering all of those things as well as the fact that Marbles, of all fucking people, has become my own personal sedative—something about watching him and my man talk knocks me out almost every time we’re together—I’m starting to show a little, and my libido is so high all Sammy has to do is accidentally brush against any part of my body and I’m ready to maul him, I can’t hide this much longer.
And he’s starting to notice.
He’s worried about me, I know he is.
