Loving somebody changed people. It made them do stupid things. It made them change who they were and I’d seen it firsthand. My family had loved and lost, been broken and damaged. They changed important things about themselves and their lives. And for what? The idea of soul consuming love, which in my opinion, didn’t exist. It was simply the idea of love that they wanted; the bullshit they were fed growing up.

I dried off quickly and pulled on a pair of grey sweatpants before I went back downstairs. The second my foot hit the bottom of the stairs, I rolled my eyes; Mace and Scarlett sat on the sofa mid make out session. “Get a room,” I muttered as I flopped down in the only other chair. “You two are kind of nauseating,” I grumbled, my bad mood seeping out as I threw my feet up on the coffee table.

Mace smiled as Scarlet shifted off his lap to curl up beside him. She looked over at me and called me on my shit. “Stop being a bitch. She just needs some time to get her head together. She’s scared,” Scarlett told me looking unsure and a little guilty. This didn’t bode well for me.

“You know something I don’t?” I asked; the expression on her face confirming my suspicions. “Spill it, Scarlett.” My palms began to sweat and my empty stomach rolled in an unpleasant way.

“Well, it’s not my something to tell. You should talk to her soon though. Just, umm…it’s something important you two should talk about,” she told me quietly avoiding my eyes. It was unlike Scarlett to be quiet about something. Usually, she’d be stomping around and ranting like a crazy chick.

My body went rigid at the possibilities of this ‘something’. Jealousy hit me in a rush. The first thought I had was what if Teen had met somebody? No, I was being a dick. It’d been a week since I found out she was knocked up. A week wasn’t long enough to…Fuck!

How many times had I given the business to more than one broad in a week? A week was too long for me not to have talked with her about this clusterfuck. I shook my head in an attempt to dispel my messed-up thoughts. I was a slut at the best of times, but she wasn’t me. She wasn’t a slut; she was pregnant with my kid. My kid. And she was fucking my head up. This shit wasn’t normal. My mind was a constant tornado of thoughts, worries and confused-as-fuck feelings.

I didn’t get jealous; that word shouldn’t even be in my damn vocabulary, and it never had been before. Elbows on my knees and head in my hands, my mind ran a thousand miles an hour giving me whiplash. I figured it was time to sort this crap out. I had no clue what the hell to do, but I had to do something. I knew it wasn’t fair to Teen to go through this alone. It was as much my problem as it was hers. I sure as shit wasn’t ready to be a dad, but it looked like I didn’t have a choice in the matter. And if I had a kid, it wouldn’t grow up not knowing who I was, not being in my life. Every kid needs a dad, right?

I picked up my cell from the coffee table and dialed Teen’s number for what felt like the thousandth time, only to get a recording telling me the voicemail was full. I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared slapping it against my palm, while worrying my lip rings between my teeth. “I’m going over there,” I told nobody in particular as I stood, determined to talk to her one way or another.

“She’s at work tonight,” Scar warned.

My steps faltered. “Fine. I’ll go there then. I have to make sure—“

“You’ll only piss her off more if you show up there and embarrass her. You know that,” she reminded me.

“Well, I can’t let it keep going on, can I? I know she’s mad at how I reacted, but she needs to understand I’m fucking confused,” I answered running my hand through my hair with agitation.

“Sit down, shut the fuck up and wait till tomorrow. You want to win her over? You have to play this her way. Not yours.” Scarlett clearly thought she was onto something, while Mace sat there daring me to wipe the smirk of his face. Cocky asshole.

My feet rooted to the spot, I told her, “I don’t want to or need to win her over. I just need to talk to her,” I finished on a growl.

“Sure thing,” Scar smiled handing me a beer with a satisfied smile and nodding her head to my vacated seat.

With a scowl, I took the cold bottle and slumped down into the cushions flipping my cell around in my hand and completely ignoring the game starting on the TV. Scarlett was probably right. After all, she and Teen had been best friends since they were kids; I’d only known them for about three years. It’d only piss her off if I went storming into the bar where she worked demanding she talk to me. Scar was definitely right. I had to wait.

“Will you two cut that shit out,” I bitched at them during the game. Every time I moved to get another beer, I’d come back to them in various stages of make out. “If I end up seeing your ugly, white ass bobbing around on my sofa, I’ll be scarred for life.”

“Suck it up. It’s not like I haven’t had to endure years of you and your dirty bimbos trying to jump each other’s bones even before you got in the damn door,” Mace smirked. He’d changed in the last few months. He was, well, he was happy. The happiest I’d seen him in a long time. As sickening as they were, I was good with it. Mace deserved it, Scar too. When they fought, it was funny as fuck; those two could give as good as they got. Mace was a bossy prick, and Scar, she didn’t take his shit; he pulled it she called him on it. They both had their fair share of bad hands, but they both came out winning.

Scarlett was my boss. I worked as an artist and body piercer in her tattoo parlor Needle’s Kiss. We had been good friends until the day my big brother Mace walked into the shop after he finished his last tour in the Special Ops. Ever since then, we’d become a family. Or rather, as close to family as you can get. Scar and Mace were due to get married and this was another example of the L word changing people. Mace was now doing private investigation work for his buddy, and Scarlett, shit, she was talking about dresses and flowers and crap; something I never thought she’d do, but that’s the proof: love made you forget who you were. Mace smiled often, which made me and everyone else around him happy, I hadn’t seen a smile on his face since the day he lost his little girl, my niece, that is, until he met Scar.

The game wrapped up and Mace called out as they headed to the door, “Get your head sorted before you see her or you’ll say something assy.”

Scarlett slapped his ass and laughed, “You’d know all about assery of the mouth, wouldn’t you?” When Mace picked her up and threw her over his shoulder, she screamed, “Put me down, asshat!” He nodded his head to me and left with a goofy smile on his face.

Bored out of my mind, I just sat around for a while, played a game on my cell and tried to draw some new art for a client. Nothing was distracting me; I was twitchy and thinking too much again. I’d normally find entertainment in the form of a bottle of bourbon and a willing female body, but I had been in somewhat of a rut since this entire fiasco with Teeny had started. Maybe I was coming down with the flu…that made perfect sense; it was the flu I decided ignoring the fact that I hadn’t been sick since I was a kid. I tapped out a tune on my knees for a while, and then played with my eyebrow ring. I mindlessly flicked through the pages of the new Harley Davidson Magazine.

Screw it

Looking at the time on my cell, I realized what felt like forever had only been two very long hours. I couldn’t sit still. I couldn’t sleep. I needed to talk to her. Throwing on a fresh set of black jeans, a grey cotton shirt, beanie and my boots, I grabbed my cell, wallet and keys and shoved all my crap in my pockets. I jumped on my Harley to take the short ride to Teeny’s place. The beautiful matt-black metal of my girl, the rumble of her between my legs, the power under my hands did nothing to settle my nerves. A ride on my Fatboy Lo always calmed me down. On the way to Teen’s though, my nerves were shot to shit. Why the fuck am I even nervous?

I pulled up along the side of her building and cut the engine. The bike went silent, the metal still warm under my thighs. Taking a deep breath, I steeled myself, walked quietly up the stairs to Teeny’s second-story apartment and knocked on the poorly painted front door. It was in darkness. Her beat-up Honda wasn’t out front either. I was tired of this game of ‘hide the baby momma’, so I figured I’d just wait for her to get home. I kinda looked like a creeper standing outside her door, so I made my way down to sit on my bike; it was out of the way hidden in the shadows. Yeah, cause that wasn’t creepy either.

I didn’t have to wait long. Less than half an hour later, I heard her piece-of-crap car long before I saw her pull into the parking lot out front. I threw my leg over my bike and headed toward the complex. The street light out front was busted causing the place to be darker than normal; there was just enough light, that as I walked behind her, I could see her sexy little ass encased in those prissy jeans she always wore. I caught up to her at the bottom of the stairs and I reached out to touch her arm before she could make it any further.

Next thing I knew, Teen spun, her fist flying right into my nose. At the same time, she drove her knee up into my groin dropping me like a sack of shit to the ground.

“Fuckkkkkkkk,” I groaned cupping my junk as I rolled up onto my knees trying to get my breath back. Pain shot up into my stomach with each attempt. No go. I dropped down onto all fours. My sack had to be in my throat; I could feel it choking me.

“Oh, it’s just you,” Teeny breathed hard.

I looked up at her through narrowed eyes. “Oh, it’s just…fuck. Princess, what the hell you do that for?”

“Well, you deserved it. You don’t sneak up behind a chick and expect not to get hit. Now, get up, dipshit. You’re making a scene,” she hissed looking around the complex.

“You put me on my ass. How am I the one making a scene?” I growled as I stumbled to my feet, the pain slowing to a deep throb. “Damn it, Teen. You near on broke my nose and I’m pretty fuckin’ certain my balls are permanently damaged.” The urge to vomit was coming in waves.

“What are you doing here?” she asked making for the stairs.

I took tiny shuffling steps after her. “We gotta talk. This isn’t goin’ away and you need to talk to me,” I told her as I took the stairs tentatively.

“Listen, captain obvious, I told you it wasn’t your problem.” I shuffled through the door once she opened it and eased down on the sofa.

"Look, I helped get us into this mess, and I…well…I just wanted to apologize for the way I handled it when I first found out. I was taken by surprise, but it still wasn't cool. I never expected anything like this to happen. I mean, we used protection and I just assumed that you'd be using something too. Something chicks use. The pill or some shit. Birth control. Weren’t you on the pill?" Great. I was rambling.

Teeny ignored my verbal diarrhea coming back out of the small kitchen where she’d wandered while I’d been speaking.

“Oomph, shit,” I swore when she threw a bag of frozen peas that landed a bit too heavily on my crotch. “I didn’t know you could do that,” I grumbled adjusting the makeshift icepack.