She caught my gaze with hers. “It wasn’t—I didn’t—”
I reached up and squeezed her hand. “You can say whatever you want.” I shot her a smile. “Client-attorney privilege.”
Humor gleamed in her eyes again before it slowly died. “I’d let him sleep with her if it helped him control his demons.”
“You would?” I sputtered.
Slowly, Giulia nodded. “I’m surprised too. I didn’t think love would be like this.” She rubbed a hand over her chest. “It hurts, but it makes you want what’s best for them, you know? I need him to be…” She paused, blew out a breath. “Nyx isn’t the kind of guy who wears happiness well. So it isn’t that I need him to be happy. I just need him to have a baseline.”
“You’re his baseline.”
“Sex is his baseline. Don’t get me wrong, I’m horny as fuck right now. I’m on him more than he’s on me—” Well, privacy just flew out of the window. “—but after I give birth, that’s going to have to stop.
“I’m just worried, I guess. She hit me on a sore spot, and it blindsided me. Not just about the weight, but about Nyx needing more than I could give him.”
Shaking my head, I told her, “Giulia, I’ve known Nyx a lot longer than you have. I’ve seen him fuck his way through a lot of women. Sex is a constant. It never stopped his demons from clawing at him. Sex isn’t enough for that.
“You have more than sex. I don’t know what you have, to be fair. You’re both lunatics, but you seem to mellow him. Maybe you’re crazier than him so it means he has to be the rational one; I don’t know, and it’s not my place to. You have your dynamic, it works for you, so now you have to have faith in that.”
“We didn’t plan this kid,” she rasped.
“You didn’t have to. The second Nyx put his dick inside you without a wrap, I know he’d have been prepared for this to happen.”
Giulia stared at me. “You’re right.”
I patted her hand. “I usually am.”
Parker: Well?
Rachel: I don’t want to talk about it.
Parker: When do you ever? Remember that time you didn’t want to tell me you had to go in for a Pap smear?
Rachel: That was our first year working together, wasn’t it?
Parker: Yes.
Rachel: Those were the days. When you weren’t insufferable.
Parker: You love me as I am.
Rachel: Sigh.
Parker: Well?!!!! Don’t you dare leave me in suspense. Just because I’m in freakin’ Pennsylvania does not mean I won’t drive over and comb through your trash to find the pregnancy test.
Rachel: You know how creepy that sounds?
Parker: I know your menstrual cycle, Rachel. How’s that for creepy?
Rachel: We need to work on boundaries. :P
Parker: My point is, if I know your cycle, I should know when that cycle stops.
Rachel: Isn’t it starting?
Parker: No. It’s stopping. If you’re pregnant that is.
Rachel: I am.
Parker: Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
Rachel: Reassuring.
Parker: Invoking them might get us through the next couple months of your first trimester. Honey, you’re too busy to be pregnant.
Rachel: I know.
Parker: Damn.
Rachel: Yeah.
Parker: How are you feeling?
Rachel: Nauseated.
Parker: Saltines.
Rachel: I hate those.
Parker: I know. We all do, but they’re a literal gift from God.
Rachel: Dramatic.
Parker: Eat them. I’m going to have to change your food order too. You don’t eat enough.
Rachel: No, leave it as is. I’ll be fine.
Parker: Shall I schedule you in with your OB/GYN?
Rachel: Leave it for now.
Parker: You need to make an appointment.
Rachel: Parker! I know you’re trying to help, but I really just need to think about this.
Parker: Are you going to have an abortion?
Rachel: No.
Parker: Well, then.
Rachel: Just let me process it. Give me Christmas to figure things out.
Parker: Babies wait for no man. Or woman, I suppose.
Rachel: Trust me. I know.
Parker: Might just be what you and Rex need.
Rachel: How do you know he’s the father?
Parker: Honey, that might be the funniest thing you’ve ever said to me.
EIGHT
REX
Rachel jumped when she flicked on the kitchen light and found me sitting there. Her brow puckered as she stepped over to the table.
“Jesus, Rex, you surprised me! What are you doing sitting in the dark?”
On any other night, I’d have logged the memory of her scent drifting toward me, her tired eyes, soft and warm if astonished, latching onto mine as she approached me in nothing more than a strappy cami and a pair of sleep shorts.
But this was tonight.
The night my father had asked me to help him rejoin my mother.
I wanted to scream that it wasn’t fair, but I’d long since left my teen years behind. Naïveté was something that had drifted away before I hit eleven. I knew life wasn’t fair. Had witnessed its inequalities with my own goddamn eyes, but this situation was somehow worse than all the shit I’d seen and done.
“Have you eaten?”
It took me a second to realize she’d spoken to me, and I just stared at her.
Did it make me fucking weak that the question filled me with despair? Hopelessness?
What was the point of anything?
My dad had taught me that a man cherished his woman, that he worshiped her. What was a man supposed to do when his woman didn’t want that from him?
“Rex? What is it? What’s wrong?”
Bitterly, I asked, “That’s it, then? We’re just going to act like we haven’t been arguing?”
“We argue. It’s what we do.”
That wasn’t much consolation.
Her frown deepened when I didn’t answer as she rounded the table then stood at my side. I wanted, so fucking badly, to push my head into her stomach, to have her hands—
I closed my eyes.
That wasn’t to be.
That wasn’t how we worked.
The softest brush of her fingers drifted along my cheekbone, and when I felt them grazing a couple strands of hair away from my forehead, tucking them behind my ear, I turned my face into her hand.
That she touched me at all was a testament to how shitty I must have looked.
“You going to do a Storm?”
I didn’t open my eyes. “Huh?”
“Your hair. You going to grow it out?”
“It needs cutting.”
She hummed then surprised me by admitting, “It suits you.” I didn’t believe her. “But I always did like you with short hair.” I didn’t say anything, but after a good long while, she asked, “Bear?”
I nodded.
My whole body ached with incoming grief, but tears had no place here.
“Bad news?”
How the hell did I answer that?
Inside, words churned around in my head, but she wasn’t my girl anymore.
Even if she’d always be that to me, now, she was the club’s lawyer.