Page 27 of Wicked Brutal

Nobody moves. Not even Iz. The fluorescent lights buzz overhead, and somewhere out in the hallway somebody shouts and a locker slams, but inside the lab there’s nothing.

Xander blinks first. “Pregnant.”

“Yeah.”

“Yours?” I just stare at him. He lifts both hands off his knees. “Had to ask. It’s a formality. I’m required by law.”

“No, you’re fucking not.”

Iz’s mouth opens, and Kaiden points at him without looking away from me. “Don’t.”

Danny still hasn’t moved, and that’s the thing that’s pulling at me. Kaiden’s staring at me, Xander’s already three steps into processing it, Iz is visibly restraining seventeen inappropriate comments — and Danny is completely still, his phone lit in his hand, his thumb suspended over the screen.

And suddenly I’m not standing in an empty classroom at Edgewood. I’m sitting beside him on the bathroom floor at Kaiden’s, months ago, while he holds an ultrasound picture like it weighs a thousand pounds. I’m remembering the bottles we took away. His phone that Iz had to confiscate because Danny kept trying to text Becca when he was drunk enough he could barely stand. The three things that circled through him after the crash, over and over — Daisy, the sister he’d already lost; Becca, the girl he thought he was losing; and the baby he didn’t even know he wanted until it was gone. I remember watching one of the smartest people I have ever known become completely incapable of solving the one thing that was actually killing him.

“Danny,” I say.

His eyes lift to mine. “I’m okay.”

Nobody in this room believes that sentence anymore, from any of us. But nobody calls him on it either.

“How far along?” Kaiden asks, dragging the room back.

“About ten weeks.”

Xander does the math first, and his eyebrows go up. “New Year’s.”

Iz slowly turns toward Kaiden with a look of dawning delight, and Kaiden says, “No,” before he can get a syllable out.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were building toward something.”

“I was thinking, Kaiden. Silently. Like a monk.”

“You’ve never had a silent thought in your life. Don’t start with the guest-room questions.”

Iz considers that, weighs it seriously, and nods. “Fair. I’ll circle back.”

I almost laugh. Almost. Kaiden looks back at me. “When did you find out?”

“Valentine’s Day.”

His expression changes. “You’ve known for a month.”

“Yeah.”

“And Ally?”

“About two weeks longer than that. She sat on it before she told me.”

“She didn’t tell you right away?”

“She didn’t know how. She’d talked herself into carrying it alone. It’s kind of her whole thing.” I say it lighter than I feel it.

Danny finally moves. He sets his phone face-down on the table, deliberate, and looks at me. “How did she tell you?”

The question is quiet, and I know exactly why he’s asking it. “A test,” I say. “She put a positive test in my hand and closed my fingers around it before I could look.”