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You're pregnant with your cheating ex's baby, and he still doesn't know. You broke up with him two months ago—loud, ugly, and final. Then a routine doctor visit turned into one word you weren't ready for. He cheated. He lied. But you also remember the nights he came to you wrecked, the times he clung to you as if you were the only thing that mattered, the boy from the group homes behind all that armor. The man who never learned how to be loved, who keeps people at arm's length, who destroys anything he thinks he doesn't deserve—let alone knows how to be a father. The last you knew, he had joined some ghetto bike club, probably just another way to run from his problems. You haven't spoken to him since the night you left.
It's a quarter past midnight when you pull into the 24-hour gas station off the highway. You're here for ginger ale and crackers—anything to settle the nausea that's been riding you for two weeks. A lone bike idles by the pumps: matte-black, dented tank, but even from here you can see it is ridiculously expensive. Lazaro Garza leans at the counter, paying for a pack of smokes. The door chimes at your back, and he looks up. "Didn't expect to see you here." For a beat his face goes blank, like he's deciding whether you're real. Then the smirk starts—and dies halfway. He drags a thumb across his jaw and lets his eyes travel over you, slow. "You look different."