Just Kidding (SWAT Generation 2.0 1)

“Been out looking right along with half of Kilgore,” Malachi murmured softly. “So yeah, we know what happened to your sister.” He turned to me. “Heard you’re gonna be a daddy.”

I felt something in the vicinity of my heart start to swell as emotion overcame me.

I was going to be a father.

“Yeah,” I croaked.

“Congrats,” Bourne said. “Welcome to the lost dad’s club.”

I snorted.

Bourne didn’t have a baby. But his brother, Booth, did. And spent just as much time taking care of the kid as Booth did.

“What’s going on?” Adam asked.

I looked at one of my best friends in the world and immediately explained what I suspected.

Adam’s glare was ferocious.

“Let’s go fucking ask her, then,” he suggested.

“Best idea I’ve heard all night,” I muttered, turning and walking up the front walk of a woman that at one point in time I’d thought I’d known.

Turns out, I didn’t know her at all.

Oh, and she wasn’t home.

Her husband, however, was.

And he was most helpful with his houseguest for the evening.

***

Rowen

“I have to pee,” I groaned.

Max chuckled and moved to help me out of the bed.

My mother had disappeared out to the nurses’ station about twenty minutes ago, and I was so sore and unsteady on my feet that I was unwilling to be picky about who helped me out of the bed.

“Thanks,” I muttered, holding onto my gown at the back and my IV pole with both hands. “Can you close it behind me?”

I heard it close behind me and stared at myself in the mirror.

Dax was right.

They hadn’t had to cut my hair again.

Honestly, if you looked at me, you wouldn’t think that I’d just taken a hammer to the temple.

There was no outward sign that anything had happened.

Inwardly, though? Yeah, my brain was throbbing like a bitch.

After using the bathroom and washing my hands again, I made a half-assed attempt to tie the gown in the back so that I wouldn’t have to hold on to it. Then made my way out the door.

I arrived just in time to hear Max say, “Dax isn’t here. He got a SWAT call and left about a half hour ago.”

I narrowed my eyes and looked at the door that Max was barely holding open and saw Rachelle on the other side.

“I wanted to apologize to Rowen, too. Is that okay?” Rachelle pleaded.

I was about to reply with ‘hell no’ when another voice entered the fray.

“I don’t think that’s gonna work.”

Max opened the door a little more and placed his big body into it, blocking the way to me but also allowing me to see who’d just spoken.

It was Hayes.

He was another new member of the SWAT team and one that I didn’t know all that well just yet.

I had a feeling being with Dax would mean I’d get to know them all at some point.

Rachelle turned and pressed her back up against the wall right outside my door. I could just barely see her from where I was standing.

My mother was turned and surveying everything from across the hall.

“Ma’am,” Hayes said as he removed a set of handcuffs from his pocket. “If you could please come with me.”

Rachelle shrieked then. “I will not!”

There was a crowd gathering around now, and even the throbbing in my head couldn’t stop me from watching the show in front of me.

“I didn’t do anything!” she continued, her voice so high-pitched that I couldn’t help but wince as the pain started to pound even harder in my skull.

“Ma’am,” Hayes said, moving closer to a clearly not-going-to-cooperate Rachelle. “Time to go.”

Rachelle went wild then, throwing herself forward, her hands curling into claws as she aimed them at Hayes’ face.

Hayes caught her and had her face first onto the hospital floor in about half a second flat.

I watched with enjoyment as her face was pressed to the nasty floor and she was handcuffed.

“So what did she do?” Max asked curiously.

Hayes opened his mouth to say something, but Rachelle started spitting venom.

“That bitch,” Rachelle growled. “I should’ve never let her do this. But Rowen and her smug ass face. I wanted to ruin it after what she did to me.”

What I did to her?

What the hell had I done?

Then Dax, who was the latecomer to the party, arrived.

“Sorry to inform you,” Dax replied. “But my girl didn’t do anything to you. You did everything to yourself.”

“I was forced to tell my husband what I’d done down to the smallest of details. He didn’t take kindly to being married to someone who was practically a sex offender, so he filed for divorce.” Rachelle turned her venomous glare toward me. “All because that one had to go and open her mouth in a public place. One of my husband’s business partners heard and told my husband. Now he’s divorcing me and leaving me penniless.”

“Being penniless will be the least of your problems,” Dax supplied. “Thanks, Hayes.”