This knocked me out of my own empathetic state. “Oh, right. Of course. I forgot that everything is worse for you than everyone else in the world. I forgot that poor little Jace Adams is the most important fucking being to exist, so of course his pain is above all others. Hey, it’s almost as if you were growing the child in your stomach, feeling her kicks. It’s almost like you had to push her out of your vagina while feeling your heart tear into pieces, knowing you’d never hear her cry or laugh or anything. Sorry, my bad.” Hot, bitter tears rolled down my face in twin streams of pain.
Yeah, my pain and anger might turn me into a sarcastic bitch, but at least I wasn’t a narcissistic cunt.
We were definitely a match made in hell these days.
“Wow. Okay, I think we all need a breather,” Rhett, the peacemaker, tried to interject. “Why don’t we take a minute and…” He trailed off at the sound of crunching steps, and a second later both boys were in front of me as a huge, black-clad dude burst into the clearing.
Despite Jace’s absolute fury with me, he’d still stepped between me and whatever was heading for us, and I clung onto that fact through the intense pain assaulting my chest.
It had hurt as much as I’d expected to reveal the truth, and he’d taken it about as well as I’d expected. As an adult, I understood that taking Jace’s choices away by lying to him was probably not my finest hour. But I’d had good intentions. For what that was worth.
No time to worry about the past, though, when the present continued to try and kill us.
It took a second for the guys to relax their pose, and when they moved aside, a familiar figure came into view. Before I could stop myself, my legs were moving as I pushed through Jace and Rhett and all but threw myself at Grayson. He caught me easily, hauling me up, and my legs wrapped around his waist as I sobbed into his chest.
He grew tense under me, and I was about to release my hold, thinking I’d made him uncomfortable, when he snapped, “What did you two do to her? I swear to fuck, I will beat the shit out of you both if you hurt her.”
Jace snarled. “Billie is a big girl. She doesn’t need you to defend her lying, deceitful ass.”
I couldn’t see any of them; my head remained buried against Grayson, and I just breathed in his cool, clean scent. Unlike the rest of us, he’d had a chance to shower and change his clothing, and it was comforting to be held against him. To know he was safe.
“You better cut that shit out,” Grayson told Jace. “Your issues with Billie happened eight years ago. We are in a new crisis, and it’s going to take all of our time and focus to get through it.”
“He knows,” I whispered against his shirt. There was no way Grayson should have been able to hear me, and yet he did.
“Knows what?” he asked.
I couldn’t say the words out loud again. The last thing I needed was to trigger myself back into the need for hardcore pharmaceuticals to get through the day.
“Billie was pregnant with my baby when she left me,” Jace said, trying and failing to sound casual. “She lied so I’d have a better life without them, and then she managed to almost die in a fire.”
He didn’t mention Penelope dying in the fire, as if he was more upset that I’d almost died. But shit, that couldn’t be the case, because he hated my guts and made no secret of it.
Grayson’s hand came up and threaded in my hair, holding my head as I continued to cling to him like a weird monkey. “Oh, Prickles, baby. I’m so fucking sorry to hear that.”
Crap on a cracker. This was too much to handle.
Squeezing my eyes closed as hard as I could, I forced the tears to disappear. I forced them back down inside, where they could stay for another near-decade.
Jace must have made a move to say something else because Grayson took a step forward, and I swore I could feel Jace at my back. So close that I was almost sandwiched between them. “Don’t make this about you, Adams,” Grayson ordered him. “For once in your damn life, don’t make it about you. I’m not saying you don’t have a right to mourn and feel the pain you clearly are in, but in that same vein, you don’t have a right to take that pain out on Billie. She hasn’t taken hers out on you. Repay that fucking favor.”
A deep exhalation of air washed over my back, and I was desperate to know what expression Jace wore, but at the same time I wasn’t quite ready to stop hiding. “I’m taking Billie to the car,” Grayson said abruptly. Rhett gave an okay, but there was nothing from Jace. “You two assholes clean up here and grab your shit. Meet us through the trees over there in a few minutes.”
He started to walk, and two minutes later, the light grew brighter around us. I lifted my head to find we were in an open part of the forest, Grayson striding along like he wasn’t carrying me in his arms. His vehicle came into sight soon after that, a large army-style jeep, and after he opened the front door, he deposited me easily into the seat.
“Buckle up, Bellerose,” he told me. “We’re getting the hell out of here.”
Swallowing roughly, I lifted my face, wishing it wasn’t all blotchy and tear-stained. I didn’t need a mirror to know how rough I looked, but it didn’t appear to bother Grayson as he reached out and brushed a thumb across my cheek, chasing the moisture there. “It’s going to be okay,” he murmured. “Secrets are the death of love, but once they’re out in the open, you can start to heal. Jace is a stubborn bastard, but when his shock wears off, he’ll realize that you’ve both been hurt and suffered over the years—you much more so than he ever did. It might not feel like it now, but this was an important step forward for you both.”
He was right—it didn’t feel like a step forward. It felt like I’d been run over by a damn truck, which then proceeded to back up over me to ensure the job was done right.
“What’s happening with the hit out on us?” I asked, my voice rough as shit, but I desperately needed a subject change.
Grayson nodded, accepting that I wasn’t ready right now to dig deeper into my soul. He allowed my subject change, and I was grateful for it. “I’ll fill you all in when the guys get here,” he said quickly. “Suffice it to say, we’re not out of danger yet, but the time for laying low has passed. We can’t keep hiding you guys indefinitely, so we’re going to try and turn the tables.”
He paused, and I raised an eyebrow, encouraging him to continue. I didn’t have his background to figure this shit out on my own.
“Flo’s funeral.” He grimaced, and guilt flooded through me all over again about her death. What was being said about how she’d died? “It’ll be the first time we’re all together again in the public eye and the perfect opportunity for someone to take another shot at us. Only this time, Angelo is going to have his people surrounding the area.”
Angelo. It wasn’t that I’d forgotten about my fake baby daddy, it was just that there were other pressing things on my mind. But with Grayson’s reminder, I was also reminded of one additional thing…
I was no longer fake pregnant. Shit, did the Ricci family know?
And if so, what was the fallout?
Whoever set up the hit at the farmhouse, if I’d been one of their intended targets, might have some competition soon. Giovanni would not take kindly to the subterfuge, and the moment he found out, my life would be forfeit.