Race the Storm

Chapter 4

Willa stared out the front window, her mind spinning as she searched for a way out of this situation. She had to protect herself and the baby until someone from the Estate realized they were gone and sent someone to find them. At least this guy seemed inclined to keep the baby safe, which meant keeping her alive.

"So. Okay." Her voice was shaking, so she gulped and popped open her water bottle. She took a few sips to steady herself and closed it, tightening her fingers around it to keep her fingers from trembling too hard. "Do you think we were in a relationship that I forgot?"

His eyes cut over to her, confused, and then he made a frustrated noise. "No, it's not--it's not like that."

"Then maybe explain it to me," she said, trying to keep her tone gentle and understanding.

"It's complicated," he said. Maybe she was imagining it, but the tips of his ears looked awfully red. Was he embarrassed?

"It's all right, take your time."

"Willa, listen. I'm telling the truth," he said, probably catching onto her forced change of demeanor. "You're a surrogate, right? And you're supposed to be carrying some nice, normal couple's baby. And the Estate is this really posh surrogacy clinic."

"Right," Willa said. She was still sitting with her back mostly against the passenger side door, watching him warily even though she was trying to look relaxed.

"And did you reach out to them wanting to be a surrogate?"

"They contacted me," Willa said, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Was it after you participated in some kind of medical trial?"

Willa's arms tightened. If he worked at the Estate for real, he probably knew about that, and if he didn't, maybe it was a lucky guess. Money had always been tight or nonexistent in her family, and her brother was about to go to college.

Last year, right out of her own college years, she had started signing up for medical test groups. Nothing major or super dangerous, just things here and there to get a little money. She had considered donating her own eggs, but instead she had signed up for a few drug trials and other things. She always figured that the Estate had discovered her somehow through one or another of the trials she had signed up for; she had put in for quite a few of them over the year.

"I'm going to take your silence as a yes," Jax said, "Plenty of testing groups are legitimate, but one you joined must have been run by the..." He started to say something but backtracked. "The people who run the Estate."

"And that's a bad thing?"

"They picked you out for a reason," Jax said, "They're looking for particular people, and from there, they offer you opportunities. For you, it was the Estate."

All of this was a lot for her to deal with, especially when she didn't believe him. She wrinkled her nose and took another deep breath. "But that doesn't mean that this is my baby. Or yours."

"I'm a part of a group of people with certain abilities," he said, "And they're trying to replicate that. Instead of IVF, like they said, the procedure they did on you was artificial insemination. It was your egg. And my...genetic material."

That was a lot to unpack. She couldn't even focus on the second half of what he had said, her mind skipped away from it, because this wasn't her baby. Like what did he mean by certain abilities? Was he really good at glaring intimidatingly? Or being stoic? Willa blinked. "And you just gave this shady group in charge of the Estate your sperm?"

"We have to provide a variety of biological samples every month," he said in an emotionless tone, like he was enduring a bad memory that he didn't want to face. For a moment, she felt bad for him. Actually, she did really feel bad for him in general. He must've gone through some kind of mental breakdown to come up with all of this.