Page 15 of Biker Orc Baby Daddy
On my way out, I pass the plaza directory mounted near the main entrance. It's one of those illuminated boards with little slides for each business name and suite number. I've walked past it a thousand times without really looking.
I look now.
Alphabetical order. Beauty Bar, suite 204. Fishborn Financial, suite 310. Sleeping Beauty Mattress Co., suite 118.
No Sparkle or Glitter or Sis Beauty.
But tucked near the bottom, in a slot that looks newer than the others, slightly crooked:Sparkle, suite 103.
Just Sparkle. No "Beauty." No description.
Suite 103.
Ground floor. East side of the building, if I'm remembering the layout correctly. Near the coffee shop and that weird candle store that always smells like someone's burning a Christmas tree.
I could walk past tomorrow. Just to check. Just to see if?—
No.
I turn away from the directory and head for the exit.
If she wanted to be found, she would've left a number. A real name. Something other than a glitter-covered napkin and a nickname that tells me nothing.
She left, and I let her go.
That's the end of the story.
Except it doesn't feel like the end.
It feels like I'm missing half the data, trying to solve an equation without knowing all the variables.
And I hate unsolved equations.
CHAPTER 3
CECIE
Three weeks later, I'm staring at two pink lines and wondering if the universe has a sick sense of humor.
Of course.Of course the one time I throw caution to the wind and sleep with a mysterious motorcycle orc, I end up knocked up. This is what I get for trying to have one spontaneous, romantic night.
The test teeters on the edge of my bathroom sink, mocking me with its cheerful little plus sign.
"Fuck."
My voice echoes off the tiles. The pop-up stall doesn't have a bathroom, so I'm in the plaza's public restroom, sitting on a toilet lid at seven in the morning before anyone else arrives. Professional. Dignified. Exactly how I pictured finding out I'm going to be a mother.
I grab the test, wrap it in half a roll of toilet paper, and shove it deep into my bag. Then I wash my hands three times because apparently that's what pregnant people do now. Clean things. Obsessively.
Ridge.
His face swims up in my memory. Those shoulders. That grin. The way he'd looked at me like I was the only person in the room worth noticing.
And then he vanished like smoke.
I tried looking for him. Spent two days after that night casually asking around the plaza if anyone knew a guy named Ridge. Got nothing but blank stares and a few suggestions to try the Iron Horse, the orc bar three blocks over.
So I went.
