12 Rounds

Chapter Sixteen

Less than ten minutes into this little road trip, and Gemma still hadn't said a word to him. She'd fiddled with the radio to kill some time, muttering under her breath about that damn Ariana Grande or whoever she is and some song she didn't like. Then she'd taken extra care to check the GPS on her phone not once but twice, even though he'd already plugged in the address to the casino for her before they pulled out of T-M's lot.

His only real play here was to just settle back into the passenger seat and let her drive. She'd come around eventually - he just had to be patient and give her the space and the time to see what he'd already known for a long time. And if she didn't... he'd deal with it if it came to that.

After another couple of minutes of dead air, his mother glanced at him warily from the corner of her eye, and pushed out a heavy sigh as she drove them out onto the interstate.

"So... Happy's really gonna be a father, huh?"

And maybe she had the right idea here, too. Ease into it by talking about someone adjacent to the person Gemma wanted to tiptoe around. Start off somewhere safe and relatively non-threatening.

"Yeah," he chuckled good-naturedly. "You know, the crazy thing is that I think the only person who's really not that all surprised is Hap. She's still havin' a hard time with it though, at least I think she is."

Gemma's head turned sharply at the word she, and he jumped into damage control as fast as he could. He wasn't sure how much Clay had actually told her about Liv, other than to go out of his way to say that Jax was seeing a waitress, so it was anyone's guess if Gemma really understood how Liv and Jo were connected.

"Hap's baby momma is... let's just say this wasn't exactly planned, ya know?"

"No shit," she huffed, shaking her head. "Most babies aren't exactly planned, but you know that better than anyone. Does she know about all that?"

So, suddenly talking about that was back on the table now? Suddenly she had no problems hurting his feelings and driving that knife in his back just a little bit deeper? This road trip was going to go off the rails real quick if she couldn't get her act together. But for now, he was willing to give her a little bit of rope - but just a little bit.

"Yeah," he shot back. "She does."

Gemma's eyebrows flicked into her forehead for just a moment and then she smoothed her expression into an impassive and unimpressed mask. He had a feeling this was probably how this interrogation was going to work - her poking and prodding to find out just how much Liv knew about him and just how much he knew about her, all so that she could figure out exactly what she was dealing with.

For all intents and purposes, he really had treated Liv like an old lady right from the start - at least in terms of disclosure. He'd told her things he'd never even dream about telling anyone outside of the club, let alone a casual hook-up or even someone he'd called a friend. The things Liv knew carried some heavy weight - for both of them. And once he'd gotten to the point where he was ready to talk, he'd told her without any hesitation.

"Anyway," he glanced at her pointedly before shifting his eyes back to the open road in front of them. "Hap's baby momma wasn't exactly lookin' for anything long-term with him, at least not right away. My guess is that's changed since yesterday, but they were just hookin' up in the beginning. Things have always been a little complicated between them though."

At least Gemma was willing to go off on that tangent for now, and she cocked an eyebrow at him, signaling she wanted him to explain what a little complicated meant. But in order to fully explain it in a way Gemma could understand, and without omitting some pretty important details, somebody else would also have to be brought into this conversation too.