Apollo (Cerberus MC)

“I can’t do that.”

Why was I so willing to get married so my baby has a father and a last name, but I can’t seem to accept help from my own sister? It just seems different.

Another frustrated sigh rushes out of her mouth as she plops down on the edge of the bed. “Have you always been so stubborn? Wait, don’t answer that. I already know. Listen, April, you’re going to have to learn to accept help. It’s impossible to do everything by yourself. I want to help—”

My phone chimes with a text, cutting her off, but I ignore it. I know who the message is from. He’s been sending them all night, and they started again just after the sun came up.

“Are you going to get that?”

“No.”

“Is it Apollo? Are you going to tell me what happened, because if he hurt you or touched you or tried something you didn’t want, Javier will gut him without question?”

“He did none of those things.”

“But he did something to make you pack your bags in the middle of the night and take off.”

“Stay out of it,” I mumble.

“I won’t,” she says, that stubborn trait she accused me of having rearing its ugly head.

“Read them,” I say, pointing to the phone on the bedside table. “Tell me if I’m acting like a crazy person, but know he promised me that he wouldn’t have other women on the side.”

She picks up the phone, easily opening the texts because I don’t have a lock screen.

“You made him—”

“He made the promise,” I clarify. “I didn’t prompt him. I only asked that he be discreet.”

She cringes as she reads the slew of apologies. He started messaging, asking me to call so he could explain, and when I didn’t, he laid it all out in the text messages.

“I can’t believe he left in the middle of the night, leaving his pregnant—”

“You know full well this baby isn’t his.”

She frowns at me, giving me a quick nod before looking back down at my phone. I don’t know if it counts as loyalty or not that she was so willing to pretend she believed my lie.

“He seems really apologetic. Said he left to go break things off with someone he was seeing casually.”

“I read them.” So many times. Over and over until my eyes swam with tears so thick, I couldn’t even see the screen any longer. I wanted to believe him, wanted to tell him where I was so he could come here and beg me not to leave in person.

But that would make him crazy. He should be relieved that I left, that I’m no longer holding him to his promise. Why keep one when he so easily broke another?

“Does he know that the baby isn’t his?” she asks as she finishes reading and places the phone back on the bedside table.

“I haven’t even kissed that man,” I confess. “He was doing me a favor, but I realize now the entire thing was foolish.”

“That’s a pretty huge favor,” she whispers.

“Huge,” I agree. “But now it doesn’t matter.”

“Because he handled a situation wrong?”

“What if he slept with her?”

“Would it matter if he did?”

“He told me he wanted to date me, Cara. He brought that up, not me, and then he turns around a couple hours later and goes to meet another woman.”

“Do you think he slept with her?”

I shrug. “How should I know?”

“What does your gut tell you?”

I scoff. “My gut tells me nothing. My limited experience with men tells me that I can’t trust a single one of them. Every man is out for himself.”

“That’s not even close to being true. Maybe with the men in California, but the Cerberus men are a different breed.”

“Are you telling me he’s a good man?”

She doesn’t immediately answer, and it begins to confirm my reasoning for leaving.

“I know all the men who have significant others are incredible men. I know that Apollo was wild before, and he was entirely unapologetic for having a good time with a variety of women, but I also think all the guys were. I also know that when they fall, they fall hard.”

“He isn’t falling,” I argue. “I’m manipulating him into marrying me and helping me raise a child that isn’t his.”

“I haven’t been around long, but I know that he wouldn’t allow any of this to happen if it wasn’t something that he wanted. I’m going to get out of here because I think you have a lot of things to think about. Just know that before I left the clubhouse to come here, Apollo told me that he’s still going to be at the magistrate’s office at eight fifteen tomorrow. He said to let him know if you don’t plan on showing up.”

Cara presses a kiss to my forehead, rests her hand on my lower abdomen, and then walks out of the hotel room.